Feb 12, 2019 City Council on 2019-02-12 11:30 AM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, excuse me, February the 12th, 2019. It is 1135 a.m. Hopefully I won't be saying we're adjourning at 1135 p.m. tonight. We do have a quorum. We'll go ahead and open up the meeting. Our first item is Work Session, Citizen Comments on Consent Agenda Items. Are these Consent Agenda? I think these are individual items. Same, 2A and 2B. Okay. Okay. I don't see any comments for Consent Agenda Items. Let me just double-check. Okay. All right. Then we will go for Request for Clarification of Agenda Items listed on the agenda for February the 12th. Clarification for Agenda Items. Yes. Council Member Armitage. I don't need clarification, but I'd like to pull Item J. I'm going to be voting no on it. Okay. We're pulling Item J. All right. Any other clarifications for Agenda Items? Seeing none. Okay. We'll move on. And if you have one just, if you remember later, just let me know. Moving on to our Work Session Reports. Work Session 3A, Receive Report, Hold Discussion, Give Staff Direction Regarding a Mid-Year Update on the Denton Chamber of Commerce, the Denton Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Denton Chamber of Commerce Office of Economic Development. And if we could, once the Chamber Representatives begin their presentations, if we could just let them get through there and save our questions for the end, that'd be great. Good afternoon, Mayor and Members of Council. I'm Caroline Booth, Director of Economic Development. And I am here today to introduce to you Eric Clark, who is the Board President of the Denton Chamber of Commerce. And he and some of his colleagues on the Board are going to be presenting information to you about the Chamber of Commerce and its three operating divisions, how they're funded, and how they interrelate to each other. So at this time, I will turn it over to Eric. Do I need to introduce myself again, since Caroline did that? All right. Good afternoon, Council. My name is Eric Clark. I serve in a voluntary capacity with the Denton Chamber of Commerce as the Board Chairman. I'm with me today to assist in the work session is Marty Rivers and Hank Dickinson. Marty currently serves as the Chairman of the Economic Development Partnership Board. And beginning April 1st, Hank will take over as the Board Chair for the Convention and Visitor Bureau Advisory Board. Members of the outstanding staff of the Chamber, ED, Partnership, and the CVB are in attendance as well. They are prepared to answer any detailed questions at the end of the presentation. Today we are here to review the positive work the Chamber is conducting throughout our city. Part of this work includes two services the Chamber executes in concert with the city. My hope today is that you find the presentation a proactive demonstration of our willingness and desire to be a valued partner. As an organization, we continue to work closely with city staff in a positive manner to accomplish the goals set forth in each of these contracts. Currently, the Denton Chamber of Commerce is an organization in excess of 700 local business owners. The Chamber's focus is to advance general welfare and prosperity of the Denton area. We do this on behalf of our members by providing leadership on key issues that impact economic growth, educational services, and quality of life. In this slide, you see three organizations, the Chamber being in the center. The funding of this silo of the organization comes solely from Chamber memberships and services provided to our members. The CVB and ED partnership are contracts the city enters into annually. These two functions are contracted services the Chamber executes on behalf of our city. In my opinion, who better to help achieve and set aside the objectives you provide than local community stakeholders? It is important to note, under the executed contracts, all funding in the three organizations are kept 100% separate. In an effort for multiple levels of transparency, accounts, bank accounts are kept at separate financial institutions. An audit report for both the EDP and CVB financials is provided to the city monthly. This slide is an overview of our programming that is provided to our members and nonmembers throughout the year. I'd like to bring your attention to the Chamber's Women in Commerce initiative. Pat Sherman, with DATCU, currently chairs this committee. With Pat's leadership, the monthly WYNC events have over 100 women in business in attendance. The popularity of this program continues to increase each month. This is an initiative the Chamber is very excited about. The Chamber is also a major organizer of the Community Job Fair, Dent County Days in Austin, when DISD foundations adopt a school. Of importance, since 2014, the Chamber has raised over $30,000 and dispersed $40,000 to new teachers. As you are all aware, Chuck Carpenter retired January 1st, after 36 years as the Chamber President. A seven-person panel was formed in September to conduct a nationwide search for a new Chamber President. This past Friday, we interviewed a very strong candidate from Abilene. She was brought to Denton after multiple phone and virtual interviews. She spent the day Friday getting a behind-the-scenes tour of our beloved city. This included a tour of our industrial area west of 35, a tour of the city's new convention center, with her last stop being a meet-and-greet with the mayor and city manager. Based on the search committee's recommendation, the Executive Board will be extending an employment offer. The number one goal was to make sure we find the right candidate as we desire to enhance our Chamber and our city. I now like to introduce Marty Rivers, who serves as the Chairman of the Economic Development Partnership Board. Thanks, Eric. Good morning. Good morning. I'm going to have to use these. Right, just a brief update on the Economic Development Partnership Board, our mission is to proactively promote an environment in Denton that encourages commercial and industrial development by expanding and diversifying the tax base, creating jobs, and improving the quality of life. It's called the Partnership Board because we're in partnership with the City of Denton, and that board is created by an ordinance, and just kind of as a reminder, our board is comprised of 12 people, two city council members, and currently, that is Gerard and Keely that serve on the board, two Chamber representatives, and that is myself and Jill Jester, a local attorney, two of the top 20 highest tax-paying entities in the city. We have representatives from Peterbilt, Chris Davis, who's the plant manager out there, and Steve Edgar with Medical City Denton. We have the office of the president for the University of North Texas and Texas Women's University, or their designees, so those two folks show up, but they have designated Mike Rondelli, who's the associate vice president of innovation for UNT, and Jason Tomlinson, who's the vice president and CFO of TWU. We also have representatives from the Black and Hispanic chambers, we have John Baines, a local CPA, and Jimmy Mejia, a local small business person. We have an aviation expert, Bob Eames, who's currently on the board, he's a local attorney, and an aviation aficionado who's been involved in the airport out there for quite a while, and one at-large member, and we just appointed, or you just appointed, Tony Clark, who's regional CEO of Independent Bank. We have three ex-officio members, the chamber president, the city manager, and the superintendent of the Denton Independent School District that are in attendance as well. There's a summary up here of our target industries, I know you guys have had this in advance, so I'm not going to go through all of those. One of the ones I did want to point out was the supply chain of existing primary employers. Peterbilt is a really good example of that, they came here 30 years ago, roughly, and even at that time, they didn't know how many trucks they would be making now, and the types of employers they would be bringing. They require a lot of their suppliers to locate within 30 miles of their plant so that they can get supplies there faster, so that's been a nice growth. We have a contract with the city and some requirements, so we need to fulfill on our side, and in 2017 and '18, the goals and the achievements are there. We exceeded all of the goals that were set out before us, including the private funding. We raised $77,000 a little over that last year, and then so far, year to date, roughly five months. We are ahead of many of the areas, we're a little bit behind on a few of the areas leading up to that, but so far, our private funding has raised a little over $64,000. That comes from 66 different small businesses and individuals in the city. Just wanted to run through, I'm not going to go through all that, you've seen it, you guys are aware of a lot of those projects that have come through us the last five years or so. The important thing I wanted to point out today with regard to this list is some of the timing on how long it takes to make initial contact, however we get to the initial contact and how long it can take sometimes to get through the EDP board, get through the city council, and actually come to fruition one to four years is represented on this slide. And then just a brief summary of the projects that we're in contact with right now. You might recognize number one that came through city council last week. We also have a site visit scheduled next week with number two that's coming, got some representatives coming to town to visit with us as well, so some pretty good activity going on which that'll help add to our site visit goals, and if you have any questions specifically about the slides, I'd be happy to answer those when we're done. Thank you. I'd like to introduce Hank Dickinson to come up and visit about the CVB. Thank you, Marty. As noted, I'm an incoming PRDB, but my predecessor who was here today was instrumental in a lot of the heavy lifting, so I want to acknowledge Bob Moses for everything he's done. Bob's been a big part of what we're trying to get done as the CVB board. And one of the things that he helped fine tune was our mission statement. So just to reiterate, the purpose of the CVB is to market Denton, and this includes attracting individuals, tour groups, conventions, meeting groups, even sporting events to our town, and then provide management because we want to ensure a positive experience and have some repeat visitors to our town. This slide's going to show you the makeup of the board, and it's important to note that Gerard, Deb, and John are all a part of this board, and given their busy schedules, they probably can't make every meeting, but they are absolutely more than welcome every time we get together quarterly to discuss what's going on. Three major groups of the CVB were focusing on sales, marketing, and our brand-new Welcome Center, which has been fantastic. And like Marty mentioned with ED, our board is made up of a lot of people from around the business community, as well as higher education here in this town. This is going to show you the wheel and spokes that pretty clearly identify how visitors impact Denton, and it could be anything from lodging to restaurants, gasoline. In a town full of musicians and talented people, we're impacting the entertainment rentals. So there's a number of different ways that we feel like the effect on the local economy is positive. How do we get the job done? Through sales and marketing efforts, and you see a lot of examples on the right-side column and then targeted advertising. I think it's important to note that the Texas Association Market is really who we are pushing to as a primary target, and that has done wonders for us through the years. These are actually what were held in Denton in 2008, and you'll see with 78 groups, conventions, and tours, that's an estimated impact north of $2 million. Actual bookings are occurring in 2019-20 all the way through 2024, and you can see the estimated increases now that we are actually, in fact, a convention city. Actual bookings solidified in 2018, again, some of these booked in '18, they arrive in 2019, but you'll see 58 definites, and again, estimated impact is 3.3-plus million for all of that. Kind of a bang for your buck scenario here. This graph demonstrates the booking amounts in relation to the budget allocation received. I feel like we're good stewards of the money that's coming in. And then just a quick recap of the marketing efforts. The CVB partners have a lot of festivals and events that come to town to help stretch the dollars on both sides, but the bottom line is we're always striving to maintain that Denton feel for whatever comes here, and you can see over on the right side, the welcome center, DentonRadio.com, which is receiving a lot more attention right now, social media and website, and the increases that go along with those. So we're very, very happy with the partnership. Feel like we're making a lot of really good inroads, our city's growing, the opportunities are growing, and the CVB has been very active trying to maintain that growth. At this point, I'd like to bring Eric Clark back up to wrap things up. I just want to say thanks once again for the opportunity today. As you can see, the Chamber of Commerce is positioned well for the future, and both contracted services are providing a positive return to the city. We are open to working collaboratively with the goals and improving the quality of life in our amazing town we call Denton. This unique structure with local community stakeholders provides cohesive oversight and enabling the opportunity for all invested partners. If you have any questions, we're here to answer those. Council questions? Council Member Briggs. I have a few questions. Okay. As I started, on the list of private investors, is there a way to find out who those are, or is it just, is it private, mean private? No, those are certainly, we've got a running list. If you want those, we can email you all our list of private investors. And before we go on, I may end up calling some of the staff up here for some of these questions. That one, I know. Yeah. Not a problem. Well, just to see, you know, who's contributing and giving back into the community would be helpful information. And I appreciate the slide which separates the three because generally it just always, you know, when people refer to it, it's chamber. And then when you look at it, that chamber's completely funded by, so anyway, I appreciate the differential slide. On the prospects of jobs, the current ones, most of those seem to be distribution and manufacturing. And then there's a list of target industries, which is a pretty broad list that aren't really on the current. Do you have any idea why these are the jobs, or these are the companies that are migrating here instead of any of the other industries? I don't, I'm going to give you a general answer. I'm going to let Adam, the expert, who is our VP of economic development, he'll be able to tell because he's the one out on the site visits talking to the brokers. And if there's anything we can do to encourage that list of other. Okay. So the question was, why are the more distribution centers and manufacturing prospects looking here versus the other target industries? Well, I mean, I guess you could phrase it that way. I'm just curious. Yeah, I mean, when you look at the list, that's pretty heavily weighted compared to the list of industries that we can target. Sure. Is there anything that we can do or have not done to expand that list to the other industries? There are some things that I can change up in terms of target marketing towards, you know, more towards aviation, aerospace, which we do have a few of those, you know, this is just the list of the hot ones that we have coming down the hopper that are coming in town over the next couple of weeks. But we are working, you know, 20 to 25 plus more additional projects. We are we've seen a big uptick in distribution and cold storage projects, mainly because of the cluster that has been built here has, as we all know, with, you know, target and Winko foods, US cold storage, now the new the new one that's coming in as of last week. So cold storage is definitely something that's looking here and we have a couple more looking as well. And then, you know, a lot of big distribution center products because they're seeing these other companies coming in and they you know, they know that we have developed land here that's ready to go and shovel ready. You know, a lot of the brokers and consultants are seeing us as a hot market right now because we're one of the few communities left in the DFW Metroplex that still has developable land. Right. Yeah. And we're just a really great location. A great location. Absolutely. For it. Okay. You know, you have the 35's that meet and then, you know, 380 running east and west and the airport and community owned city owned utility so it's that's kind of what's driving driving those projects. Okay. Thank you. And I have one. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Yes. Caroline. Yes. If you have something you'd like to add, please. I just wanted to add a couple of things to what Adam said. Three of these five projects are considered target industries, advanced manufacturing, two of them there and then the first one is a significant consumer of municipal utilities. So three of them are in the target industry category. And then I also wanted to mention and I think Adam was talking about available land for industrial development and, you know, how we have that and other communities are built out. One of the challenges that we do see in recruitment is our lack of available or sort of shovel ready Class A office space of significant size. Sometimes we can't respond to project leads because that's not an asset that we have existing. And, you know, there are conversations about how we might be able to affect that, you know, change that. So we're having those conversations in the background. But if we don't have the type of facility that a company is looking for, the ability to get it on the ground quickly, we're not able to be responsive to those kinds of leads. So like a built facility with thousands of square footage that's already available to just move into and right of Class A office space. It's important to have that distinction because that's what you know, your R&D folks and your middle office and front office. That's what they're looking for. And we just don't have that in our portfolio at this point in time. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I have and on the CVV, you aren't going to get away. So I noticed that horse country tours weren't listed on there, were they? And that's a big part of what you'll do. I mean, it's and it's also it takes advantage of the uniqueness that we have in our city, which is still open space and horse ranches and further out. I'm just curious the number of the tours and you guys are still providing those. If you have any specifics on that. It's you're right that we still operate that way and Dana's got that information here, Dana Lodge. Well, thank you for mentioning horse country, because if you know anything about me, it's one of my passions that we've promoted at the CVV. But we still are rocking and rolling with the horse country tours. We do about 30 a year. Some of them are day tours out of the Metroplex. Others are tour operators that come from all over the world, actually, and come and stay in our hotels and enjoy other aspects of Denton besides the horse country. But we're still on target for about 30 to 35 a year that we give motor coaches filled with about 50 people when they come to town. Thank you. And then on I forget what slide it was it talked about something that was lost that might have been leads at this one right here. Yes. Yes. Can you explain that a little bit and why those were lost? Or if you know? Yeah, yeah, we we track all of our definite and lost. We do go after as Hank mentioned, we do go after the Texas Association market. Those are normally annual meetings. They're looking at every city in Texas, for the most part. And even if we lose their annual meeting for 2019. We go right back after them for 2021 2022 2023. So it was lost on that one particular year that we bid on it. But in our minds, it's not lost completely, because we are going to go after them. You know, there's a multitude of different reasons that we lose a group. For one thing, Denton was not on anybody's radar as a true convention city before about a year ago. So it's some of our marketing efforts to go out there and change their minds and let them know, yes, we've arrived, we have a beautiful facility, and we're here to take care of their groups. We battle a little bit about people thinking that we're so far north, that we're a little bit difficult to get to when they're thinking of their constituents coming to a conference. But in our minds, we basically haven't lost him, we're going to go right back after them. They're usually required to cycle around the state. So one way or another, we will get them. Okay, thank you. Yes, Councilmember Armitage? So I have a question, a similar question about slides 13 and 17, and I guess we could do 13 first. I was wondering if you could speak to how these effects are measured, you know, how you define a fact, how you measure it. And I know that you don't have time now to go into, you know, the data on each of these individual categories, but if in addition to answering that question, if you guys could send us whatever data you have, that would be really helpful. No problem at all. Are you -- would you like to hear just, like, a general overview of the formula and how that economic impact -- just to kind of nut and bolt how that -- That would be great, yeah. So we do use an estimated economic impact formula. It's an all-encompassing number that includes not only the lodging, but the restaurants, the shopping, gas, the different various things that could be purchased in our community while they're here. We actually have a brand-new estimated economic number for 2019 and moving forward. This number got changed for this year because we now have the convention center for one year under our belt, and it became obvious that we needed to update that number to be more reflective of what is actually happening here in Denton. So a short answer is it's approximately $188 per person per day. And again, that's all-encompassing with lodging, meals, AV, all the things that happens when they come for a conference. Yeah. And so, you know, my guess is that these different areas are not evenly weighted, right, and obviously it depends on individuals, but which would you say of these areas, you know, most of that -- what is it, $188 per person goes towards that restaurants? $101 is the lodging, and about $87 then is the rest of those businesses in Denton. Obviously restaurants is a large portion of that, meals. And, you know, on the low end, would you say that -- I'm just guessing, you know, office supplies -- It's on the lower end, but you'd be surprised when you have a large convention in town. The things that they need from an office supply store immediately, so it's a surprising one, but we've been watching the conventions that have been in town for the past year and seeing -- and they really helped us create this list. Okay. Yeah, thanks. I would love to see, you know, how that is kind of divided up, and also I'd be interested to see, you know, of the, you know, restaurants and, you know, entertainment expenditures where geographically, you know, those tend to be located in town. You know, I imagine you track that, too, and if you have, you know, to the extent that you've been following that, are you trying to -- is there a goal to kind of focus people to downtown or to spread more to other parts of town? We always talk about our downtown just because we feel like it is such a part of who we are, so we always let people know, you know, about our wonderful historic downtown, but these numbers don't reflect just the spending there. It's really the spending across town. Thank you, and for '17, which is slide 17, which is the economic impact, I'm guessing that that's the -- those numbers on the bottom are kind of the sum total of those -- Yes, of the estimated economic impact, yes. Okay. Yes. Okay, thank you, and then I had another question about hot funds, and I know you know a lot about that, and this is more -- this is a question that I get from people, and that is, you know, why -- what would be a good way to answer to, you know, people who want to know, because we've got a lot of people who apply for hot funds from the city, what's a good explanation as to, you know, why does such a large percentage of that hot funds end up going back to -- or end up going to CVB? Well, I mean, I think that's probably a really, really long answer, but for one thing, we're representing the city 365 days a year, so a lot of those other entities are asking for hot funds for their one-day festival or their three-day festival. We are out there presenting Denton on a large platform to a lot of different people for lots of different groups 365 days a year, so it's really -- we really are the marketing arm for Denton to put that best face forward. Thank you. Any other question? Mayor Proctor. Yeah, just kind of a follow-up on that, Dana, if you would. A number of those groups -- stay up there -- a number of those groups you actually partner with, so they're getting hot funds from the city, and you do some match funds. Yes, we do. To help advertise those groups as well. The one with the -- Is that the one after that? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So what we do in order to stretch the dollars for all of our festivals is we match whatever funds they would like to put towards an advertising or marketing effort, so if the Denton Black Film Festival wants to give us $2,000 for an ad, then the Convention of Visitors Bureau matches that with $2,000, and we place a $4,000 ad for them, so it gives them a greater amount of exposure. It also allows all the ads that we help place or marketing efforts that we place still have a Denton feel, a Denton identity, and yet stretch everybody's dollars. Okay. Yes, Council Member Meltzer. I realize you might feel a little like the guy who gets two ties from his father for his birthday, and he makes a point to wear one of the ties next time he sees his father, and the father says, "What's the matter? You don't like the other tie?" Yeah. So, you know, you show us this nice list of projects, but I'm going to ask about the other tie. Okay. Yeah. Just following up a little on what Council Member Briggs was asking, regarding the grid of target industries, I think that it's just super helpful learning for us, first, that Class A office space is a requirement, but I'm curious what else you might add in terms of if there are other cities that seem to be doing better than we are in the other areas, what is it that they're doing that we could conceivably, you know, learn from? Are there any insights that might give us guidance? Sure. You mean such as, like, developing -- Yeah, but what are they doing to attract the other areas that we don't seem to hear as much from, and, you know, got the office space note for sure. Uh-huh. What else? You know, are there tactics? Is it intrinsic features of those cities, or are there sort of, you know, tactics or self-cycle things that could make a difference? Well, it's -- you know, I think it's really all of the above. It's -- you know, first, you've got to be a location of interest. You've got to have -- the real estate typically has to be there. You either have to have the Greenfield site that they're looking for that's developed, or you have to have the office space on the ground, which we are talking to some office developers right now about possibly putting in some Class A or Class B space, but, you know, it's a work in progress, but, you know, I think we measure up very well with every other community. And everything that they're doing, you know, Frisco and Planner, you know, they're becoming more and more built out. We compete very well with McKinney and with Garland. You know, Garland has several million square feet of industrial speculative space already on the ground. So, I mean, if somebody's coming in that already wants that space there, I mean, they, you know, they can beat us on that, but we definitely, you know, we definitely take the trophy home for having the developed Greenfield space, but, I mean, I think we measure up very well with all the other communities in the DFW market. Any -- do you foresee any -- I see Carolyn's ready to add to your comments. Yeah, I'm just -- I'll give you both a question, you know, are there any changes in tactics that you considered just based on what you're seeing in terms of, you know, what seems to be working out there? Sure. We're always -- I mean, we're always evaluating every single thing that we do, and this year we did change a couple of items, you know, from the marketing perspective and different things that we're doing as far as consultant forums and target market trips. We're doing some more things with Team Texas and with the Dallas -- Dallas Fort Worth marketing team for that matter, but, you know, going to different markets and marketing ourselves with just, you know, we typically take five communities from the Metroplex and go and market ourselves to these site locators and consultants. But I'm typically picking the marketing trips where we can target the advanced manufacturing of aviation and aerospace, such as a conference that's coming up in Orlando that targets specifically aviation and aerospace market, and then, you know, other things that are targeting specifically consumers of municipal utilities, such as, you know, Fabtech Expo that, you know, targets, you know, high power generators that are doing metal forming, fabrication, welding, and stuff like that. And then advanced manufacturing, we're always targeting renewable energy. I mean, we're doing things to do that as well. We just got back from California doing an item with Team Texas that targeted renewable energy. So, I mean, we're constantly evaluating everything that we do, and we change a couple of items every year to try to meet these demands that the city wants us to target. I'm not going to add much except to your question about what do other cities do or have that we don't. I do think it's really important to remind everyone that 700 communities in Texas have type A or type B local option sales tax funded economic development corporations, which means that they have a dedicated source of funding for their economic development efforts in their communities. I think all of the competitor cities that Adam mentioned, except for Garland, have them, and that allows them an incredible amount of flexibility in the way that they can incentivize companies because they're not tax based incentives. It allows them to own land, give land away, sell land for $1, develop business parks that include that Class A office space that we all want, develop industrial parks like we have a private developer doing out here in West Park, but the EDCs have the ability to do that. So Denton does a good job with what we have, but we start at a disadvantage in the economic development playing field here in the state of Texas because we do not have an EDC. So I know that I've spoken with you all about that before, some of you are very familiar with it, but I think it's an important time to remind everyone of that and it really does speak to your question about what resources other folks have and the things that it enables them to do to be successful. Thank you, I'm really listening, even though you couldn't hear me, because I know these are the areas that bring the jobs that pay enough for people to afford housing in Denton, so thank you very much. You're welcome. Yeah, sure, if you'll come on up, then we'll have Council Member Huss, but has a couple of questions. I'd just like to offer, I'd love to have a joint City Council Economic Development Partnership Board meeting to go through, this is a long conversation that we're not going to talk about. The target markets are here, they're our target markets, those can change at any time, and I think it'd be really beneficial if we were able to sit around the table and talk about this sometime. I know you guys probably have a very packed calendar, but I would like to offer that up if that's something that we did it two years ago in Carolina, I think, try to do that and be happy to do that again and just sit around and talk about what you guys want, how we're looking at things. Our goal is to get them here and make sure they fit our criteria, and your job is to help decide if we want to do something about it, so I'd just like to offer that. Great, thank you, Marty. Thank you, so Mr. City Manager, I don't know the best process for this, but my ask is that we maybe create a way for these entities to reciprocate, right? So if I hear Adam say high energy users are our target, and I see this body say, "Hey, we don't want high energy users," that makes his job difficult and it gets out, right? There's no question those issues make their way into people's minds, so we're saying, "Hey, we want these companies," and companies are saying, "I don't know about things there," and so what I'd like to do is create a vehicle, by the way, that they can also communicate back to us, and I don't know what that looks like, and so I'd yield to your expertise, but I'd like a way that they can come back and say, those entities can say, "These things are problematic," or, "Here's our report card," as a body, "Are we staying true to our ask of them and also creating a vehicle for them to kind of highlight those concerns, mixed messaging?" And so it may not fix it, hello, but it'll tell them, it at least gives them an opportunity to pinpoint some of these things. So during this presentation, we then have some documents that say, "Well, here's the mixed messaging we sent that made those closings difficult," so that would, again, I don't know what that looks like, but that's my ask. Well, we certainly have that ability to, each year as we update our economic development target industry list and policies, so that policy packet that we put together for council and get your input on, there's recommendations that we try to accept from the EDP as well, and so I think it's a living document as industries change or as challenges are out there. If we need to do something different, we've got that ability for that to be dynamic and come back and recommend changes to you really any time we need to. I guess I've got a question. Update on the TPID. Anybody have an update on the TPID legislation? I can tell you that it is going to be offered at the state as a statewide bill versus the five cities that were originally coming together to ask for that, so it is moving forward, and it's being asked as a statewide, as for everybody, and so it is moving forward at this particular point in time. So when you mean a statewide bill, you mean that basically cities would not have to go through this process of individually sponsoring resolutions for legislation. It's just saying, hey, if you want to do it, it's available. Correct. So it really doesn't give any competitive advantage once -- if everybody's doing it, you're just sort of back to zero, I mean, in essence. That was some of the rationale for it in the beginning was it provided some type of competitive advantage because other cities had it, and we didn't. So yeah. Okay. Caroline, did you have a -- My understanding was -- and if I'm incorrect in this, please let me know, but my understanding was that the five cities that had submitted individual local bills, that their bills are being combined into an omnibus bill, which will be passed as one, but doesn't -- it gives all those cities who requested the authority it at the same time, not every city in the state. Gotcha. All right. Fantastic. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, Councilmember Duff. What kind of impact does having a lot of available upscale housing for people, you know, companies that are moving here, is that an impact? Is there anything that comes up? Well, I'll speak to this as a business leader in the community. When I go to my client's office or -- and talk to the other guys in business, and you look at the high wage earners in town, they often don't live in the city of Denton. You know, if you look at the university, a high level professor, or maybe even some of these industries that we're trying to recruit to town, they move to Argyle, Highland Village, Aubrey, the surrounding areas. We only have a few small pockets in town of homes over, you know, that half a million to $750,000. I don't live in one of those. I'm just saying from those colleagues, that's important to have that to attract those people we want to come here and work. We want them to stay in our town. That's kind of -- I've talked to, you know, Councilman Meltzer about that before. We need a diverse blend in town from, you know, affordable housing to where those -- we don't lose those dollars going down by the lake or going north of town. And I have no facts about that. That's Eric's opinion. As a businessman in town, okay, I want to be clear about that. >> Did you have a follow-up? >> Yeah. >> I see. >> Well, you know, I have heard, you know, I don't have direct conversation, but University of North Texas have a problem recruiting the kind of professors they want because they look around and they don't have a place in Denton to live. And I would think that some of the, you know, campus-type counties -- >> Yeah, I don't think we're off-posting because he's talking about economic development and housing and recruitment. >> Yeah, I am. >> Yeah. No, I'm just answering her question. Yes. >> Okay. But I think that having, you know, upscale housing would be a help to bring some of these companies in. >> I can say that I've had members, just at-large members, no one on our board, kind of tug me to the side saying, hey, have you thought about this? I have heard that as a chamber member. >> Councilmember Armitage. >> Yeah. So just to speak to what was just said, you know, I can see how housing for, you know, highly paid CEOs and, you know, how they would want some of this more highly priced luxury housing that might lead them to places like, you know, Argyle or where else did you mention, you know, Plano, Frisco? >> The surrounding area. >> The surrounding areas. Actually, you know, university professors, you know, speaking as one, you know, don't I think we make less than people tend to think that we make, but what I was wondering about and you might not know, you know, the answer to this, but I'd be curious and I imagine you might be curious to know, too, as far as kind of the housing needs of the kind of people you'd be attracting with these incentives. I wonder if the people who end up, you know, buying upscale housing in other cities, if they are buying land on their own and, you know, kind of custom building their own homes outside of a, you know, gated community type situation or do they tend to live in gated communities? And again, I don't feel bad if you don't know the answer, but I'd be curious, yeah. >> I think our, from what we're here today, economic development and having the varieties of housing is important, but when we're attracting and recruiting business, housing, building communities, residential communities is not part of that conversation. I don't want to speak for Adam, but I'm pretty positive of that. I don't think we can give you any real information on what you're asking. >> Well, actually, thank you, and that actually, that's interesting to me to know, that was my guess. >> Yeah. >> And, but I didn't know that for certain, so that's interesting to know. And I just wanted to add, you know, not so much a question, but just to kind of responding to what Mr. Rivers said earlier, I would really love to see a meeting between council and economic development partnership at some point this year to kind of talk about these larger issues of goals and targets. Obviously, we already meet to look at these individual, you know, incentive packages that come before us, and what I would really like and the public would, I think, respond really well to would be to have opportunity for public comment at that meeting, you know, where members of the public could come and talk about, you know, what they would like to see, and so kind of a collective brainstorming, you know, council, EVP, and the public, I think, would be really beneficial for this year. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> So I'm going to change it up and not talk about housing. We have a lot of that to talk about later on, but -- so I'm just about the DIN radio questions about DIN radio, whoever that may be. >> That would be Dana. >> Okay. Well, as everyone knows, we were designated as a music-friendly city last year, I think, and so I see DIN radio here and I see a couple events over here where we have music, but I'm just wondering how you are capitalizing on that and marketing it, and as far as the DIN radio, how we can take advantage of that and help with the music designation. >> I am going to let Hank Dickinson handle this question. >> Okay. >> We're going to enter all of the mean-grained football and basketball games, which is a thought. DIN radio.com is not terrestrial radio. It's internet radio. So what we have done is tried to go out and visit with places like the Mesquite Public School District, which operates KEOM, 88.5, I believe, on your dial, to look at how they do programming through the hour. We've gone and visited with KXT and KERA, because all of these are similar in what we're doing, trying to use a lot of volunteers to create programming. So in the last year, what we really tried to do is to find what is DIN radio.com's goal. Well, it's to promote what's going on in town to visitors, but also to people that are here. So if we can use DIN radio.com to, once again, let people know about all the music and entertainment opportunities that are going on, a great case in point is when the North Texas Fair and Rodeo comes, we're doing live interviews with the artists on DIN radio.com to not only let people know who's here, but to get them to come back out to the show. We have a lot of opportunities to do more and more of that through the year. And right now, we're trying to really recruit people to come and work shifts as volunteers that understand something about radio, but also can help us embellish what's already going on in town. So that's the goal, is to use it as a tool to attract visitors, but to also engage those that are here in town with all the different things that are happening. Okay. Yeah. I just didn't know. I mean, as we have our own local radio station now, Kuzu, and I didn't know if there was any talks or anything between the two, but this is just Internet-driven. Kuzu is low power, but over the air, obviously, and you're familiar with that. Kuzu is going to be a very concentrated market and probably serving most of the downtown district, which is where most of the music venues are. So I think Kuzu's definitely got a niche. But the focus is a little bit different for DIN radio because we're really trying to engage people in what we have going on, and I think Kuzu's working quite a bit with the local music community and appealing to that group. Okay. Well, thanks for that separation. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Thank you very much. Any comments, questions? Right. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Thank you, counsel. Great presentation. Appreciate that. And we will sort of take you up on your invitation to schedule a joint meeting. I think that'd be helpful. Caroline, do I need to do anything? The next presentation is going to be about an hour, so let's just take about a five-minute break instead of getting right in the middle of it and then we'll take a break. Welcome back, everyone. It is 1237, and we are going to continue on with our work session items. The mayor had to step out for a moment, so he asked me to step in. We are missing some consultants for item B, so we're going to move on to work session item C, Receive a Report, Hold a Discussion, and Give Staff Direction Regarding Solid Waste Department's Residential and Commercial Recycling Operations. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. My name's Ethan Cox. I'm the Director of Solid Waste. I think my reputation must precede me because now I'm clearing the room before I ever start, which is kind of an interesting turn of events, so I appreciate the time that you're giving me today. I am going to follow my sword right out the gate. We do have a fairly dense presentation for you today, so I'm going to try to move through this pretty quickly. We're going to be talking about the recycling business case analysis, as we call it, which is essentially just an overview of our recycling program. There's been a lot of discussion in the news media. The recycling market's been upended, and so we feel like this is important for us to come back and give you kind of an update on where we stand relative to the market. So as we go through today, there are a few folks in the audience I want to introduce. Everyone, too. We have had some organizational changes. Mr. Eugene McKinney's here with us. He's our new collections manager, doing a lot of great work with our staff, trying to help us get more effective, more efficient with our collection operations. Brandy Neal, she's our Commercial Accounts Coordinator. She's playing a really pivotal role with us in terms of expanding recycling for commercial entities as well as helping us clean up some contamination issues out in the community. And then Tina Eck is our financial guru. As we go through these case analyses, we do like to give a little bit of an overview of the environmental impacts, the financial impacts, and then just how the operation's performing as a whole. So I may call on them if things get a little too hairy today. Purpose and objectives, we've gone through these with some of the other case analyses. The first one is the departmental objective, which for us is to reduce per capita waste disposal. We are a growing community, and we want to make sure we try to divert as much material away from the landfill as we possibly can. And the purpose of recycling extends beyond that. That's preserving natural resources and saving energy as well as preventing pollution. Most of that's associated with the sourcing of raw materials for new products. In terms of participants, these are the customers that we typically reach out to with recycling. You've got residential, commercial, and we do have some recycling drop-off sites that we manage as well. And operations on the City of Denton side, we have collections and landfill. We also have a partner material recovery facility that is a key player in how this process works. In terms of scope and definitions, I'm not going to spend a lot of time here, but I do want to hone in on two particular definitions. Materials recovery facility, I mentioned that's a key partner. That's essentially the facility that helps us sort, separate, and transport materials that are recyclable to market. As we run a single source, basically a co-mingled container in our community, they play a key role in helping us make sure that that stuff's ready for market. And then contamination is something we're going to spend a lot of time on today. And contamination happens in those containers in one of two ways. Number one is we put an item or material in our blue bin that isn't necessarily recyclable, that's not accepted by our program. It can also occur when you put a dirty item in there. So it could be that dirty peanut butter jar, it could be cardboard that's wet or has food waste on it. Those are the types of contamination you'll essentially see at the MRF if you see them drop a load. >> Councilman Briggs. >> Just to that point, on contamination, and I think we're going to talk about education too as a little bit of it, and a lot of people just don't know that if there's one really dirty food item in their bin that the whole truck could be contaminated, and that's a possibility. And I know that people who recycle truly want to recycle, and so just educating them on the potential of what that one item could do is pretty important. >> Absolutely. I'd agree with that. So as we talk about the market, there is a little bit of an insulation for us financially and also operationally from what some other cities are dealing with in the recycling market. The thing that's really helping us here is we do have Pratt Industries, our partner. We have a lease and processing agreement with them that started in 2012 and is set to expire in 2027. And so while a lot of cities out in the market are basically riding the wave of the market trying to negotiate contracts with haulers and MRFs when the market's bottomed out, we're fairly stable in terms of the prices we receive per ton, but we're also stable in terms of the materials that our program accepts. And so this here is just kind of a high-level list of the types of materials that are accepted at our MRF. What a lot of their cities are finding as they renegotiate is MRFs and even processors aren't accepting all these materials as recyclable anymore. What that does is they're seeing increasing costs and they're seeing the materials in their programs start to decrease, and it really kind of changes the cost-benefit equation for a lot of other cities, particularly small cities. Things also, we have a provision in our contract for that. Pratt may reject any load with greater than 15 percent contamination by volume. Pratt's a great partner with us. We work very closely with them. They will typically sort loads with an excess of 15 percent contamination simply because they need the material, but that is something that as markets contract, we have to keep an eye on. Lastly, I know council has asked a little bit about outside waste. Pratt is a regional facility. They accept recyclables from other cities, but they do pay us $5 per ton whenever they do so. I'm going to give everyone just kind of a high-level overview of where we sit in the value chain in terms of recycling. So kind of flowing left to right here, I'll give you a little bit of a workflow. So for recycling, we collect, like I mentioned earlier, residential, commercial, and then we have the recycling drop-offs. All of our trucks take these to the MRF, which is Pratt Industries. They sort and prepare that stuff on trucks, and then they transport it to get it ready for market. Pratt, as well, is kind of insulated from some of the market upheaval because they have a paper mill that they operate themselves. They're vertically integrated there, and so they actually transport directly to their own paper mill for paper and cardboard. If you go on one of our tours, we'll typically tell you from the time we pick it up in a blue bin, you can have that cardboard back in the DFW area within about two weeks and back on a shelf somewhere, so very efficient, very effective system that they're running. Pratt is somewhat exposed to the commodities market, however, with plastic, glass, and metals, and they utilize third-party partnerships themselves to try to get that stuff to market, and that's where they've seen some of the effects of the kind of the contraction of the recycling market. I'll talk a little bit more about the market effects and how that ripples back to us in just a moment. So as they sort through this material and they run into that contamination, the materials that are either non-programmed or dirty itself, that's treated as contamination that actually gets transported over to our landfill. So let's talk a little bit about how the global impact is starting to ripple back to us and the effect it's having on local recycling. So as I'm sure most everyone's aware, you read it in the newspapers, China had essentially a ban on recycled paper and plastics going into effect January 2018. They can say it's not a ban, but their contamination levels were basically restricted to like less than 1 percent. So no one in the U.S. is meeting those contamination standards, and so in effect it's a ban. So overnight demand globally for recycled materials drops 30 to 40 percent. Excess supply in the market, there's a lot of material that doesn't have a destination now, and commodity prices plummet. What's happened domestically is that the low prices mean that a lot of the processors aren't getting the same type of revenue that they would when they sell their materials. That forces them to make a decision, do I continue to lose money or do I start cutting expenses and trying to run a more efficient operation? The biggest thing that we've seen cut is basically excess material sorting and cleaning. So that cuts expense, but that then puts pressure on the MRFs and communities to say we've got to clean up our act, because if we don't, what we run the risk of is we're bringing materials to them that they can't process, either they reject the loads outright or we end up running them out of business because they're having to expend money on it. What we've seen with a lot of processors out there is they will actually blacklist haulers and MRFs from bringing material to them if they don't clean up their contamination. And so that's why as you look at the newspapers now you're seeing a lot of cities talk about wish cycling and making sure that what we put in the container is appropriate so we're not causing problems further on down the line. We'll talk a little bit more about contamination in just a moment as it relates to our customers. I do want to highlight just kind of the financial impact that the market change has had. So like I mentioned, we're under contract and so from a single stream perspective, again that's your commingle container there, we're locked in to where we're getting about $15 in terms of revenue per ton. Relative to what others are seeing in the market, other cities are paying anywhere from $25 to $90 a ton. It's no longer a revenue source, they're paying $25 to $90 a ton for MRF to accept their recycling. Tina was at a training event yesterday, I'm not going to name the city, but they were bragging that, hey we locked in $75 per ton that we're going to have to pay our MRF and everyone in the class felt like that was a really good deal and so relative to where others are, we are in a very, very good position with our relationship with Pratt. That being said, for our mixed paper and cardboard from the commercial standpoint, you can kind of see the dive in prices that we've seen year over year. Our hope at this stage is that the market firms up before our contract expires, so we've got about eight or nine years, I know the EPA and a lot of folks domestically are working to try to create a circular economy that replaces the impact that China had. What it means for us in terms of budget, from a financial standpoint, we've seen a decrease of about $170,000 in revenue year over year. For us, we have about a $30 million budget. Basically we just tighten our belts in some other areas and try to be more efficient is how we're dealing with it right now. Other cities that are not as fortunate, they are having to renegotiate with recyclers, they're seeing those materials accepted in the program go away and they're seeing cost escalate and so if you see cities kind of reevaluating the state of their program, that's kind of the pressure that they're facing. Over here on the right-hand side, I provide a pie chart that basically gives you a breakdown for our residential customers with two large carts. Out of $31.20, that's what it cost us to service that customer. Recycling collection runs about $7.20. The real benefit financially for recycling in the past is you don't have this disposal component that you do with refuse. So as the market, if it doesn't rebound, there may be a point at some point in the future that we have to look at and say we need to have a recycling fee kind of go into this component. Again, we're not there yet, but that is something that a lot of other cities are having to deal with. Obviously, like I said at the outset, the environmental considerations is really why you want to try to preserve recycling and to grow the program as much as you can. There are a number of tradeoffs that we have to factor in when we look at recycling. So like we mentioned at the outset, you're preserving natural resources and energy for the creation of new products, but what you're actually changing that out for is we also have to have raw materials for our collection trucks, our containers. We also have the energy used to run our equipment as well as the equipment at the Murph and transporting the recyclables. From pollution prevention, very similar there, you got pollution associated with raw materials, you're preventing that. You're also avoiding methane output from decomposition of paper and cardboard, and you're also saving some landfill airspace. So last year we saved about 16,000 cubic yards of airspace. The thing you have to be careful of is that you're not increasing emissions from your recycling fleet, that it basically outpaces that benefit, and also you have the emissions from all the various equipment and transportation of the recyclable materials. So I go through all that because there is a model through the EPA called the waste reduction model that you can plug some of these variables in and see are we having a net benefit or are we kind of breaking even here. And so what we've done is we've plugged in all the variables from our recycling program as well as the variables about how we operate our landfill and say are we having a net positive impact. To date, for last year's figures, we removed the equivalent of about 4,700 passenger vehicles off of the road, and we also, from an energy savings standpoint, eliminated or reduced or ran the equivalent of reducing about 874 households from energy consumption. So we are having a positive environmental benefit, and again, as you see how the program kind of moves and changes, this is something we'll kind of come back to and see, or we continue to have as much benefit as we feel like we need to. Another couple of ways that we look at how we're performing as a program, I'll walk through these kind of one by one, is so you got your residential and your commercial customer classes. When we look at adoption, what that means to us is that this customer has a city container. So from a residential standpoint, we bundle our rates together, waste, recycling, everyone that's a residential customer pays for recycling, so we say 100% of them have a recycling program. Commercial however is an open market and we don't have a mandatory recycling ordinance, and so right now we say 26.7% of our commercial and multi-family customers have a city of Denton container. Now when I say it's an open market, that's important because what we're finding is a lot of other businesses have other means of recycling. In some cases, they may be returning products directly back to distributors, things like that. In some cases, they may be recycling through some other means, bringing it to us at the landfill, taking it home to be recycled. We've seen a number of different creative ways that folks are going about that. >> Councilmember Boussard. >> Kind of a fine point, but you commented that commercial here is commercial and multi-family. I don't know if anybody here knows, I wish I did, what percentage of residential is actually multi-family? >> Well, for us, we define multi-family as commercial in terms of the rate class. >> Right. But, you know, it's not. I mean, I understand it is for some purposes, not for others, but like so if we're saying all of our single family has adopted, you know, what portion of the actual residential pie is that? I don't know that I need a number, but I thought if you had it, it would be interesting. >> Well, we'll have adoption figures for multi-family later. I don't think that answers your question directly, but that's something we can give back to the council. Participation is a little bit different from adoption. What we mean when we say participation is that I have a container, now I've actually set it out to be serviced. It doesn't necessarily mean the container is full or that it has the right materials in it, but it's out there for us to collect. So from a residential standpoint, we do an annual audit, basically go through with clickers and see who's setting containers out. About 67% of our recycling customers have set it out for collection in the last year. Commercial is 100% because commercial is predominantly dumpsters. Those are always out for collection. May not mean they're full, but 100% participation there. >> So on the little asterisk, this is based on September routes and then it says waste participation for the same is 81.9%. So does that mean there's significant people that just aren't putting their container out? >> They're not putting it out every week, and so you may have some folks that skip a week. So when we do this, we're looking at -- and part of this comes into participation is important because it helps us design our routes to be efficient. If we're running up and down every street and we design our recycling routes to be the same as our refuse routes, we're not being efficient, we're not being effective. Our recycling routes, because participation is slightly lower, need to be a little bit larger than our refuse routes. That way, we're not running as many trucks, we're not utilizing as many staff members. So yeah, you're exactly right. That's exactly what it means, and that's the type of thing operationally we try to do with that data. >> Okay. Well, seeing that 81.9% for waste participation puts that 67.3% a little bit in a better perspective because if you're thinking that waste participation is 100%, then the 67 looks a little bit lower. But when you look at those together, they're probably doing the same thing on the residential, not maybe putting it out as much if it's not full. >> I think if you say participation for recycling relative to waste participation, you're right around 82%. It's kind of funny how that works out, but that's why we wanted to bullet point this here is not everyone's going to set their container out every week. In addition, we do have quite a few rental properties in the city, and so in some cases there may not be either container out whenever we roll through and do a collection. Contamination, we are fairly high here. Contamination again, we're going to talk about in a moment, but residentially we're at 32.7% commercial. We're pretty close to 40. When we look at that, we're not that different from other cities. As a matter of fact, we've talked a little bit with Pratt, our Murph, and we're not great, but most of their participants aren't great either. So this is something that's being talked about nationwide is we really need to clean up our act and get the education out there and make sure that we're doing a good job and making the program successful. In terms of diversion, what we're looking at is net diversion. What that means is we take the deduction from contamination, and we are counting on diversion on only the stuff that we send to the processors to be recycled. So I'm going to dive into contamination a little bit deeper because I think this is really where we need the most improvement. I mentioned earlier raw materials, I'm going to give a little bit of education here for the folks that are listening, is oftentimes it's plastic stuff that's going into the container or something that looks like it ought to be recyclable, and it's not actually accepted by the program. There's a few great examples on this photo here is you've got some laundry hampers here. You've got a water jug here. These are all plastic materials, but they're not plastics one through seven. That means they're not accepted by our program. It doesn't mean they're not recyclable somewhere, and I think that's where we need to step up our efforts as an organization is let's provide folks some avenues that if they want to recycle this, let's get them there. What we would typically tell a citizen to ask us about this is reduce and reuse is your best friend, because once it gets in the container, we are limited by what we can recycle in the program. Some other common things that you see at the MRF, you got a lot of cabling, electrical wires, Christmas lights. They're the bane of any MRF's existence, anything that can get wrapped in the machinery. I think, Councilman Meltzer, we were on a tour and the MRF was shut down for two hours because they had Christmas lights caught up in some of the machinery there. You also see a lot of textiles, furniture, you got a toilet seat here. So all these may be recyclable somewhere, but not in our program, and I think that's the key point for our education that we've got to get out there. As Councilmember Briggs alluded to, the dirty materials, one bad actor can ruin it for an entire route. This is actually a cardboard container, should be cardboard only, some one either in this container or another container threw in a bag of food waste. So what happens with our trucks is it compresses all that together, that food waste busts open, and it can contaminate an entire load. That's one of those things when we talk about contamination and trying to get compliance, that's why we don't want to ruin the efforts of 99 folks for that one bad actor that either needs some education or they need to clean up their act. One of the things we've taken to doing, and this is where Brandy's played a really key role is contamination and then we started plotting average contamination on our routes through GIS. What we're using this to do is kind of target what we call the hot spots in the area to try to clean up the high contamination routes. So you'll see here, here's our color code, basically 0 to 15% is green. If you're searching for green on the maps, you're not going to find it because there's not any, unfortunately. Again, it doesn't mean that there's not folks that are doing a really nice job, it's just when you average it all together and put it in the truck and smash it up, it's greater than 15%. 15% to 30%, we do have some neighborhoods that are doing a really nice job here. And then you also have your high contaminators at the 45% and above, but by and large, we're about 30% to 45% on average residentially. Commercial, same thing there, you're in the 30% to 45% range for most of those. And then the 45% are up is where Brandy's been spending a little bit of her time. So what she and Public Outreach are doing is what we call targeted audits, and this is really focused on commercial right now, because that's where our contamination is the highest. They're doing targeted audits where they go out and lift the lid on these containers. And if there's greater than 10% contamination in there by volume, they do what we call an educational intervention. And it's kind of like what you see on TV with interventionally, it's about recycling, is we go in there, confront the property owner or manager, confront's probably a bad word, but educate them and say, "Hey, we've got a problem, if we looked in your container, here's what we're seeing." In a lot of cases, this is just an educational thing, is, "Oh, we thought that was acceptable." In some cases, we're having a hard time getting a response out of some of the business owners and property managers. So what I would say, based on our activities here, lifted about 115 lids. About half of those required an intervention. About half of those were responsive when we tried to do the intervention. In terms of those that have been responsive, you have some folks that are going to great links to try to clean up contamination. Some of them are being successful, some aren't. So I think this is a little bit of what you've seen with our recycle right campaign, trying to get the message out, and this is very similar to what we deliver to those folks whenever we do an intervention. So question about, so the recycle right campaign, if the biggest source of the contamination problem is wet items, food, liquid, spreading, obviously, there's the problem of just people putting inappropriate items in there. But if that's the biggest problem, then I wonder if the food, I'm looking, the one place where I see that addressed is kind of down on the bottom, don't put in food and liquids. Would that be more of the central message? And I realize there's so much you want to get in there, and it has to be on one piece of paper. You know, it's hard to say what folks' belief systems are in terms of what should and shouldn't go in there. I don't think there's ever really been any confusion about food waste going in a recycling bin. I think you do have some organics programs that are out there. Most of what we're seeing in terms of the intervention is, and I don't want to speak for you, Brandy, but those aren't necessarily, I didn't know better, it's more of our employees got lax and they put it in the wrong bin, as they didn't want to walk an extra 20 or 30 feet to put it in the waste receptacle. From a residential standpoint, I don't know that we have, that we can say that that's one of the biggest problems. I think from a commercial standpoint, it's a bigger problem because you have restaurants and food service places interspersed with folks that have recyclables. So I think when we go in and we try to do the education there, it is, you need to make sure you're paying attention to which container you're putting this into. So I think it's a good point. It's something that we can certainly prioritize in there. I think it's a bigger problem on the commercial side than it is on the residential side though. Thank you. Yep. So I want to share a few of the successes that we're having with our targeted audits. This is a shared container, to your point, about food waste on the square. This is essentially supposed to be a cardboard-only container. And what we found when we lifted the lid in November is there were bags and bags and bags of food waste. And so obviously, this translates in that picture I showed you earlier. As soon as it compresses, this whole load is a lost cause. So Brandy did a great job, intervened with some of the businesses that were using it. We circle back two weeks later and this is what we see, which is pristine. And so I think a good success there. One of the things I will say is when we see this reduction in waste, this is a container that's being lifted three times a week. We need to downsize the frequency that we're lifting because that's inefficient. And so all this stuff's kind of connected together as we go through both from an outreach and an operational standpoint. Yeah, well, just to that point, too, because we had some concerns and people saying, "Well, look, the recycling is overflowing, but if the bottom of it is filled with trash, then that would make a good reason why, then the recycling would be overflowing and onto the street." Absolutely. So you're not saying that we're going to not pick it up, we're just saying that now that what is actually appropriate is in there, there's more room and we shouldn't have that overflowing issue. One of the challenges with shared containers, especially on the square and in the higher traffic areas, is they're open to, they're not enclosed, they're not restricted. And so illegal dumping is a huge issue, not just on the square, but in a lot of places around the city. And so if we can get this stuff behind an enclosure, secure it, that knocks a lot of that down. We do have a solution for the square, which is kind of a unique situation because you have an event that happens, everyone floods that area and they eat up all the capacity. And so we'll be circling back with the Mew Street discussion in a few weeks to talk about our proposal there. I was just going to say, "Are we going underground?" We've seen presentations on that, all about my tongue for now. All right, so audits and education with some more successes. We have some multi-family properties out there doing a spectacular job. I mean, for my household, we clean out food containers and stuff, but I saw like a little honey jar in here that they cleaned out. That takes some effort. That's dedication. Clean down boxes, clean plastics, this is ideal. These two loads are great too. One of the things I'll point out from a contamination by volume, this load right here would actually probably be greater than 15% because you have this hard shell plastic back here. But again, this is one of those loads that Pratt would be glad to receive. It would just be a little bit less than ideal from a contamination standpoint. Some of the challenges we're seeing and talking to some of the property owners, we do have some multi-family properties that they're trying their best to clean it up and they're having a hard time, and so we're trying to assist with education for tenants. I'll walk you through a couple of these. So here on the left, you obviously have bags of waste. You have plastic bags, which are again problematic for the MRF, but you also have water on the bottom of this container. Someone left the lid open, and so what happens when cardboard or paper contacts that liquid, it creates contamination, and so this is not ideal, and so part of the education is, hey, make sure your lids are shut. Don't overload them. Don't leave them open to the elements. Here's what we're seeing with some of those properties or some of those containers that are open to the public, is this basically being treated as another trash container. It's not happening widespread, but it is happening enough that it's problematic. You also see some folks that clearly this is not an education issue. This is just an abuse issue. Folks throwing ashes in there, which should give us pause. You also have styrofoam, electronics, yard waste, and so some of these may be educational issues, but some of them may be one or two bad actors kind of ruining the efforts of others. So to this point, we really have tried to focus on kind of that education, that intervention. One of the things that we want to put forward to the council is there's only so much ground we can cover with staff lifting lids and doing audits, and one of the things that we see from our drivers is pictures like this, where our driver looks at that and says, this is blatant contamination. As soon as I lift this and dump it in my truck, I've contaminated the load. And we'll get a message like this that came through on the phone as, do you want me to pick this up? So one of the things that we have in our ordinance currently is basically states that it's unlawful for us to put anything that's not a recycled material in a recycling receptacle. Now that gives us some leeway in terms of doing fines or citations. What we have proposed to staff and what we've seen most effective in other cities is if someone made this mess, they need to be the ones responsible for cleaning it up. And so versus a fine that may be 30 or 45 days after the bad behaviors occurred, we'd much rather tag these containers with something that looks like this, say, hey, you've got some contamination here. Take some time, clean it up, and we'll be back to pick it up next week. To us, we feel like that has the most immediate impact, and it also provides that educational component. And after it happens a couple of times, we feel like the residents or the commercial entities will clean up their act themselves. And so we'd like that to be kind of our first foray into compliance. If we see that we still have some ground to cover, we'll circle back with council and propose some other solutions. I would love to see on there, and I don't know, maybe it's in fine print, a phone number on there or, you know, call if you have questions or if you'd like a, you know, tutorial or something to show because I think, I mean, we know what cardboard is, we know what these things are, but, you know, I would hate for someone to put all that effort and then end up making some silly mistake because they didn't have that one-on-one. To be clear, I mean, we're going to be trusting our driver's judgment. We have very capable folks out there in the field. They know blatant abuse versus someone made an honest mistake. I think honest mistakes, what we'd be inclined to do is tag it and go ahead and lift the container. There's something like this where you've got, obviously, stuff that's not program material. I think the blatant abuse is really what we're focused on here, but to that point, we will put some contact information and some educational resources on the sticker. Yeah, yeah, because what I see is shrubbery, which comes by in a different truck, right? It does, yes. I feel like I have some feedback on this microphone, but I would like to just put it out there that if we're saying on this that the pictures of what you should recycle are on your cart, that we do have correct pictures of recycling on the sides of carts because I know some of them are old and some of them are faded. If we're making them use that as a reference, that we just have those images updated. Certainly. I think we've gone through and replaced all the images or are we still in process with that, Eugene? We're still in process. Okay, yeah. Sometimes if you could just repeat that. Certainly. So I think we met with COE last year and also the council when Blue Ridge came out and that was one of the comments made then. So what we've done is we're basically pulling that in, going out strategically and placing those on there. Our goal is to have 100% of those replaced, at least to where it's visible. One of the other things that COE mentioned to us, not to steal your thunder, but it is kind of the coloring of our containers and making it more transparent that this is a recycling container and not a refuse container, that's something we've taken to heart and on the commercial side we're going to be taking a look at processes to make sure it's clear, not just from the signage but also the coloring and things of that nature. Last thing that I have today before wrapping up is essentially expanding the program. I know there's been some discussion both at council as well as out in the community about mandating recycling and so coming up to this point really what we've tried to do is what we call direct marketing efforts. So we've broken apart commercial and multifamily here to show you kind of adoption on two fronts. Like we mentioned with commercial, some customers may be using other means or providers so it's not necessarily, that 24.8% isn't necessarily indicative of the folks that are recycling out there. Multifamily, we're up to about 35%. What our staff has been doing is essentially targeting accounts that we feel like have the footprint as well as the waste profile to be effective recyclers. We're doing cold call site visits and then hopefully kind of closing the deal if you will to have them adopt recycling. It's not a one size fits all solution because some apartments have limited footprints, perhaps not all of their tenants want to recycle so we try to provide some thoughtful means of getting them on the program. What we're finding is about nine out of the 57 that we contacted and adopted, another nine were actually recycling through some other means so to date about 33% success rate on our direct marketing efforts. We mentioned the COE and the PUB that if we do want to kind of go down the path of mandatory recycling and mandating that by ordinance, we'd recommend having a separate case analysis where we dive into what's the capital investment, what's the operating expense associated with it, what could the effect be on contamination and is the market going to rebound on us. Some other considerations, I believe we sent an ISR to council the other day about footprint for just waste containers being out in the right of way and on sidewalks. Now we're going to be introducing another container to that. I'm not saying that's good, bad or otherwise. Those are just the types of considerations that we'd like to explore a little bit further before staff provides a recommendation on it. >> I appreciate the desire to give it a kind of deep dive, so to speak, but the request I would make is that we see the profile of what it would take to do it successfully. In other words, we know that there are places that are a little better than we are at least in contamination. We've talked about other cities. So I would say let's not look at a business case and say, but it would create a contamination risk, therefore have that be the reason not to do it, I'd say size up what it would take to scale it up using the tactics that would obviate the contamination risk and face whatever that business case is. >> We'll certainly factor that in. That's good feedback. >> Thanks. >> Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. >> Thank you, Mayor. >> I have a policy family that has voluntarily switched over. People who live in apartments get charged, it's a dollar and some odd for recycling that they can use the sites within town in the household chemical pickup. Do we adjust how much we're charging that complex to do the pickup or adjust the tenants in that complex on what they're billed because of that? >> I'm going to ask Tina to help me out with this one. She's kind of gone through our cost of service and rate design. >> We currently do not charge a per resident fee anymore for our multifamily properties. It is just billed only through our container service. >> So in terms of conclusions, recommendations from a staff perspective, we talked about kind of optimizing our container collection schedule. Last summer, Blue Ridge made a recommendation, consider it by weekly service. Looking at our participation, we don't think that that would be effective. We want to maintain weekly collections. That being said, we do need to resize our routes to make sure that we're being effective and efficient at the same time. From a contamination perspective, we want to continue the audits and education. We also want to make sure we're recognizing businesses and institutions through social media, through the city website, those folks that are doing it right and that are good examples for others. And then lastly, we do want to implement the compliance and enforcement efforts we discussed today. In terms of the increasing adoption participation, we do want to continue with the voluntary adoption and direct marketing efforts, educate new and existing participants and make sure we're celebrating when we do have those successes. That being said, we certainly can circle back with a more thorough analysis on the mandatory recycling ordinance. COE received the same presentation. There's a few things that they recommended above and beyond our recommendations. That is to also look at replacing some of the recycling containers in parks and public areas to reduce contamination, essentially restricting the type of material that can go in there. That's something we're working with parks on right now. Like I mentioned, we're going to be looking at the downturn area as well. In terms of the adoption participation, they did recommend that we do the mandatory recycling ordinance case analysis. And then there's some additional improvements or recommendations based on education outreach, as well as right sizing our carts and containers for over and under utilization. With that, I'm happy to field any questions or take any direction. Any questions? So I support the mandatory recycling for multi-family and commercial. I think that's a great idea. And I would hope, expect that that'll be coming forward to us at council at some point. And I would love to see, you had mentioned before that some commercial facilities actually do their own form of recycling, so they contract out with someone else on their own. It would be nice to have something in there where if they were doing that, then that would count for them. In other words, as long as they're recycling, if they've got their own operation, something like Walmart or something, if they have some corporation-wide program, that's fine, because they're recycling. It's okay, not with us. So I would love to see something like that. Can you scroll back a couple, yeah, I was wondering, or yeah, I guess that's fine. You can stick on that. And this might be a question that's more for the budget person, or you might be able to answer it yourself. I guess it doesn't really correspond with a particular slide, but have you given any thought to the possibility of offsetting the increased cost of recycling with charging at some level, to some capacity, to some extent for just non-recycling solid waste? I'm not saying across the board, but it would seem to me to make sense as at least something to consider, because if that becomes more expensive, then people will be more inclined to recycle those products that are recyclable instead of throwing them out. And again, I'm not saying let's just charge everybody up the wazoo for solid waste, but at some level, has that been considered? I do have a slide here, and basically this kind of goes through the annual cost for our collection programs and kind of looks at it from a tonnage basis. And so understand that we do charge for refuse right now. So folks do pay for not just the collection, but also disposal. All that's kind of lumped in there together. From a recycling standpoint, you're basically netting out any revenue you get for commodity sales. And so as costs continue to rise, what you'll see is your actual cost per ton on recycling, cost per user will actually start to increase. Again, we're not in that position right now, but what you're basically talking about is furthering subsidization of the program. So what you have here in terms of annual cost is this is the rate payer portion of the cost of the program, netting out any of your revenues that you get from any of those sources. So it's already happening. I think what you're saying is if prices stay the same, we're going to have to continue to kind of go down that path, and I think that's what a lot of other cities are faced with. Yeah, I'm thinking if it comes down that path and hopefully, if it comes to that, hopefully it won't. Hopefully the market because markets are variable and they're not entirely predictable. But if it does come to that, I would hate for people to feel that there's more of a cost for them as customers for recycling. I would rather them feel as far as distributing that cost. I'm sorry. I do think, you know, I think there's going to be a paradigm shift that the market doesn't recover on this, meaning that whereas there was revenue at some point, the costs do increase. And like I mentioned earlier with this slide right here, again, we're not there. Hopefully we're not going to have to go there in seven or eight years, but you may have to introduce this component to fully cost recover for the program. Council member Duff. Yeah, I think that, you know, the education and the signage and all of that, you know, that's going to help. But I don't think we ever get to where we want to go unless there are some consequences. And I'm not sure what those consequences are. But until you get consequences of not doing the recycling right, it's not going to happen. Council member Hudspeth. My ask is, I've not seen it, so I have a general understanding, just my own research, but my ask would be some sort of one pager that I don't know how many plastics there are, but of all the, I see your signage says one through seven, but for me, yes, I mean, you know, so been good about working with the city manager's office to one, incorporate the bag collection at the utility location, City Hall East. And then I noticed a lot of stores have that to try to capture that. But just an education piece that says, I don't know how many plastics there are, but here's the ones we accept, here's the ones we don't accept, there's some kind of visual for that, or at least helps me disseminate that information would come in handy. And then also, I'd love to see some sort of grading or just education piece as a consumer here to understand who's performing well. I know that gets a little tricky downtown-ish type thing, but such that we could publish who's doing well, who's not. Businesses, commercial entities, things like that. Right. Right. That would be helpful to then understand who needs a little love. And then lastly, I don't know that, I'm certain it's good to see that the data for mandatory or not, but I'll put forth it. And as you're preparing your marketing for who's doing well, I'll put forth Morrison Milling against anyone that makes that claim, because I don't know how many bins they have, maybe eight, nine, and they're down to one that they don't regularly use and they run 24 hours a day, three shifts. And that's not the city putting our thumb on them. That's just them doing the right thing internally. And I think that is what gets the highest yield, best result, which we're after, is if we can meet those individuals where they are and sell them on the value add internally, then they're voluntarily complying at a higher level than anyone would if we're mandating that. So I'm happy to see the data, but I also want to see the data compared to someone that's motivated because they have made leaps and bounds changes to their process. I mean, they're in that business every day, bags of flour, et cetera, et cetera, and one container that's dumped periodically is phenomenal. And they have their own goal to get to 100% recycled. So I just think that I'll put that test case up against any case that you find mandatory and see how that goes. Yeah. I will say this. We have some outstanding corporate citizens in the city of Denton. I think sharing those stories in addition to the data is really what our kind of recognition and kind of shedding a spotlight on them either through social media, the city website, whatever we can do. I think that winter's all the way around for that. Point well made. Thank you, Mayor. I think when this came before COE, we also discussed on that plastics one through seven somehow incorporating the recycling triangle on there so people understand if it doesn't have that stamp on there with the number in the middle so they know that it is recyclable, that it's not, that, you know, plastic toys are not recyclable. Yeah. No, absolutely. And I think that's something we've talked with public outreach and our staff about, and we definitely want to step up our efforts not just on the website, but, you know, kind of put it out there when you're planning to recycle someone, kind of have a cheat sheet with you in essence. So we're definitely working on that. You have a comment, Council Member Briggs? Yeah, just a quick one. Yeah. And then we'll go Briggs. Council Member Meltzer in the dorm. Yeah. Well, just to Council Member Hesped's comment, you are correct. Corporate responsibility is a big thing, and it's a big player now in the market, and there's a lot of businesses that want to do right. Morrison Milling, I think they also compost their food waste, so they're doing really great. But what we have talked about and what we're getting started is a green business program, which would do those things that you're talking about, which would reward those local businesses that are doing their best to, you know, be environmentally friendly, not just with recycling, but in other ways. So I look forward to that program getting out in our community. And then maybe you'll see lots of stickers on windows. Council Member Meltzer? Yeah. This is a little late in the game to ask, but I figured out a way to ask you the question I was after earlier that I think would be more readily answerable. Do you have a rough idea of like what's the tonnage for residential, overall tonnage, tonnage for multifamily, tonnage for commercial, just so we can kind of see how big are the pieces? We just now... Maybe you already showed it. No, that's okay. Okay. This was an additional slide here. So the one thing we don't have right now is breaking out commercial tonnage versus multifamily tonnage. The reason why is all those are collected by the same trucks. Okay. It would be fairly inefficient for us to split those. However, here's your recycling tonnage versus your refuse tonnage for residential. So you're running about one-fifth, in essence, and then your commercial refuse here is about $85,000, and there's commercial recycling about $2,800. So significant opportunities there for commercial obviously, and I think that's really the question on the table is how do we crack into that, understanding that not every situation is created the same. Yeah. Well, okay. But three times, more than three times as much sort of opportunity. Yes. Yeah. And just a little parting comment, I wish the numbers were a little bit bigger. They all look the same to me inside the little triangle, but nothing you can do about that. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. Let's see. So we've gotten a lot of letters about food waste asking for us to do more for food waste. I'm wondering, have you considered what effect increased food waste programming might have on, if any, on our contamination and recycling overall? We have looked at that. I think when we did the landfill permit discussion, we talked a little bit about airspace savings, and I don't recall that off the top of my head, but we did take a look at that, understanding that we do have a commercial food waste collection right now, and when we're talking about food waste, you basically parse out the types of food waste you're going to be accepting. So Councilmember Husspeth mentioned Morrison-Milling. We accept vegetative food waste, which there's this flower, is pre-consumer, and so we can accept that type of essentially food waste in our program. We have three or four other customers that do that. Expanding that out to residential, we are going to be probably talking a little bit about that when we talk about yard waste, because it's going to be very similar in terms of pre-consumer vegetative waste. One of the things we're concerned about when we look at that is we have an exceptional composting program right now. Contamination is a concern there, too, is you don't want to launch a program that's going to introduce problems that aren't there. We also need to take a look at capacity, is how much additional feedstock can they take into that program. So that's something we plan to circle back. I think our goal on that, from a residential and a commercial side, is start small. Let's see what we can do from a program and make sure that it's sustainable and then kind of build from there. >> Thank you. That would be great. And I would love to see at some future point a work session just on that issue, food waste. Thank you. >> Any other questions, comments? >> One last thing there. So in terms of the contamination, not lifting the contaminated loads that are blatant abuses, our plan on that is to get some communication out to residences within the next two to three weeks and then March 1 we plan to stop lifting the loads that are heavily contaminated. We'll do the similar thing on the commercial side because you do run into that with those commercial containers as well. I would expect you probably hear some questions or concerns from residences before you will commercial. So I just wanted to kind of put that in there. >> Okay. Great. Yes, Councilmember Husserl. >> Give me that time and again. >> March 1st. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> Appreciate it. We'll move on to our next agenda item, which is agenda item B. I think we skipped B. Is that correct? >> Yes. >> Yep. All right. Receive report. Hold discussion. We will move on to the next section on the Denton Development Code update and zoning code. >> Go ahead. >> Thank you. I was going to say good afternoon, Mayor and Council, but we'll just go ahead and say good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tem and Council. I'm very pleased to be here, excited to discuss some of the last of the series of the Denton Development Code, the update and the status as to where we are. We have been working very diligently since September of 2017. All through really it started in the spring and all through the summer of working with the development code review committee, which is a composite of three members of council and three members of P&Z. With that being said, throughout the summer into this year, we've had over 25 meetings, basically met every week for hours at a time to discuss a page turn at a very granular level of all of the items contained within the proposed development code, how it relates to our current status and where it is that we're looking to go to the future. So we covered the entirety of the development code several times and certainly support the work that was being done and how it was being done. Mayor Pro Tem, Ryan, as chair, I don't know if there's any words that you'd like to add. >> Well, I'd just like to say that it's a very good experience going through this whole thing, 500 and some pages. I think I only dog eared about 320 or so. So we did go at a very deep level on many of these things. We spent five hours just talking about how fences should be, because if you think about it, that's the one item that most every resident is going to get touched by is to have to go pull a fence permit. It was a very -- I believe our outside legal counsel said that they'd never seen anybody dig as deep into the code as what we did. So, again, it's very intertwined to the point that unless you read the whole thing, trying to pick up little bits and pieces is very difficult to realize why it's coming together the way it is. So I believe our final draft is coming -- or our draft is coming on the 15th, and I will say that even in -- like in today's presentation, some of the changes that we made at council level a couple weeks ago, the snapshot that's going to be up on the screen doesn't reflect that change. So it's a constantly changing document at this point, or it has had many changes that may not have made it through the drafting process yet. So just, again, we're trying to just look at this at an upper tier level at this point. Great. Thank you. And yes, to the point of the legal review, we were fortunate in the fact that our legal department contracted with outside counsel and hired a Texas land use expert. She's actually published and published Texas municipal law, a digest that's used throughout the state of Texas. She was -- you know, attended most all of the meetings along with inside counsel. That review is still ongoing, so she's going through and just reading it from a legal perspective, providing those comments to our legal department, and in turn, our legal department is reviewing to ensure that we're doing all of the steps that we need to do and that we're consistent with the Texas local government code and protecting counsel's interest as we go through the process. And I don't know that Brenda -- Brenda intended on being here today. Brenda McDonald is that expert, but so I just wanted to make sure that I did give her the accolades that she deserves because it's been an arduous process. We have -- through this, we've conducted any number of stakeholder meetings. We've offered up office hours. We've had one-on-one consultations, corresponded with our constituents, and to date, I'm certain that we're well over 50 meetings dealing with the specifics of the development code and where we're going. I will say that we know that we have at least 20-plus scheduled as of right now. We do anticipate getting the draft version of the document this Friday, and so we're going to make certain that we get in front of all of the stakeholder groups possible. Any of your neighborhood HOA, community organizations, our professional organizations, whether it be the architects, the engineers, the associated general contractors, the Texas Builders Association, anyone that we can get in front of and talk about what this looks like and how it works, the better the input and everything we have prior to looking for adoption, the better off that we'll be. So we certainly want to hear from the public and we want to hear from all of our stakeholders. We have scheduled work sessions to get a little bit more in detail on these topics. We have our consultant here, Clarion, which is going to give you an overview of really the concepts and the changes that we're talking about as it compares to today. Not looking for them to get into a great deal of detail. We have staff available to do that and have scheduled those work sessions so we anticipate spending the next couple of work sessions talking at a greater detail for two to three hours at a time or whatever it is that council feels necessary to get the level of comfort that they need as we go through this process. With that being said, I just want to clarify that we are ultimately going to have a separate discussion, really what we're not going to be talking about today is a number of items. While they are being crafted to be included and to be a comprehensive part of the development code, they do require more in-depth discussion and more detail from a policy level. So the tree and the landscape code, we've had over 13 meetings with the committee on the environment, city council, P and Z and we continue to work through that. That's been a living, breathing document for a number of years. We've had a hard push for the last 12 months to get that in order and it's also consolidating trees, landscape and environmentally sensitive areas so we have it together. So not to say that we won't have that as part of the development code. We just won't be discussing that in too great of detail today with Clarion's presentation but you as council will talk about the specifics to that individually. With that being said, in addition to that will be the downtown design standards. We're going to talk about group community home and residential treatment facilities. So it's just another element that requires us to look a little deeper rather than looking at that 10,000 foot view, we'll get into that as we go along. Another topic of conversation that we're not going to talk about today that we will be bringing forth to council is what's been known as SROs, dormitories, collegiate housing or student built, student purpose built housing and really it just requires a much greater focus than the comprehensiveness that we need to get into about the overall just policy decisions and code with the document that's being presented today. So we'll be talking about the citizen participation procedure and we've already done the parking regulation. So all of those will be separate and stand alone from what you might hear today. Rest assured that we're going to provide every opportunity to be able to discuss those in greater detail and to get onto that path. Councilmember Armitage has a question. Yeah, I just had a question about the timing. Do you have an idea approximately when the group community home residential treatment facility discussion, when can we expect that in terms of month? I would venture to say that we'll be talking about it probably over the next 30 to 45 days. Okay, great, thanks. So and with that, I want to introduce Clarion and Associates. We have three guests here today. We have had them working with us for a number of years. They've done an excellent job of bringing a new view to what we're doing, a new set of lenses, looking at best practices, making sure that we're married with Texas local government code and that we really rethink all of what we're doing and they're going to present today really what that final draft is more going to look like and kind of give an overview of what that is. We're also going to talk about the adoption schedule. So it is a very vigorous schedule that we're looking for. It's intentional with a desire to maintain the momentum that we've been working so diligently with since the fall of 2017. It's a significant effort that's been put forth by this council and by the council committee and we just want to be certain that we can get this carried across the finish line with the work that's been put forward so far by this council and the team that we have. They'll talk about the project goals as well as just give that overall guidance as to what that looks like. With that being said, I don't know that there are any other questions for me and if not, I'd like to introduce the team from Clarion which is going to be Matt Goebel, Jim Sprung and Tariq-- [ Inaudible Remarks ] Fari, Wafai. Wafai, see? I knew I was going to mess that up, predetermined. Matt. >> All right. Thanks, Scott. [ Inaudible Remarks ] Mayor, council members, good to see you again. >> Good afternoon. >> Thank you for the opportunity to present. We have an updated version of the PowerPoint from the one that was in your packet so if I could just put that on the-- [ Inaudible Remarks ] Yeah. Oh, just right here. If I could just put that over here. It's not too different but it does have some reorganization of slides and a slightly cleaner flow. All right. So thank you all. This is a milestone for us. We're excited to be here. We appreciate all the work that you have done so far and we're excited to have a chance to talk about these issues with the broader council. So what I wanted to do is what Scott mentioned. First of all, I want to emphasize the schedule a little bit on the few slides at the beginning because we really do have an aggressive schedule moving forward. I want to make sure everyone understands kind of what the key steps will be and what the public-- options for public input will be over the next few weeks as we move forward. Then my colleagues and I are going to run through the draft which you don't have yet. You're going to have it starting Friday but we want to make sure you understand kind of the key elements that you will be seeing in the draft that comes out and then we'll have plenty of time to step back and talk about next steps again at the end. So to talk a little bit more about process, building on what Scott said, I just wanted to remind you all, if you haven't been kind of deep in the weeds of the drafting, it's good to remind you that we went through an incremental process where we rolled out the code in various stages and this happened over, you know, the last couple of years. We focused, first of all, on what we call module one which was the zoning districts and the land uses, then the administration and procedures, and then the development standards. On each one of these different kind of thematically related modules, we worked through a staff draft first and then we turned around a public draft. The DCRC has been heavily involved in each of these stages along the way and so that public draft that went out was then the subject of multiple meetings by the DCRC which was with the three members here as well as folks from the planning commission and so I wanted to just echo Scott's words. We have not seen the level of council input in this type of project before so I really appreciate the fact that you all were able to give so much time. It really does develop a greater sense of ownership by the community and the code so thank you very much for the time that you spent. That's where we've been. This is where we're going in terms of process. We will be turning around the draft code at the end of this week. We hustled. We tried to get it before this trip but we couldn't actually get it done. There was just too many last minute changes to make but you'll see it very soon. You'll see the consolidated draft and also the new draft zoning map coming out at the same time which you'll hear more about later in this presentation. That will then be the subject of more detailed work sessions that Scott referred to both by the planning commission and also by the city council. You can see the city council work sessions are scheduled for February 26th and March 5th. P and Z work sessions the 20th and the 27th. Again these will be opportunities for you all to dive into even greater detail if you would like on a lot of the topics that we'll be introducing and talking about today. Those will be managed by staff. We won't be here but we'll be working with the staff to develop the materials for those presentations. During that there's going to be an intensive period of review by the community and then you all will be getting comments to us to clear in by March 6th. Now what that means in practice is that really the comments on that new draft have to be done by the end of the month, by the end of February. So that means the staff will then have that weekend and a couple of days to turn around comments to us. So it's pretty quick. We will then turn around what we're calling the revised draft by March 15th. Ongoing opportunities for public outreach after that on that draft. Then we'll have a deadline for comments on that draft by March 22nd and then we'll turn around the adoption draft and the adoption version of the zoning map by March 29th, leaving you April for your final adoption hearings and I believe you already have those scheduled with the City Council work session April 9th, P and Z adoption hearing scheduled for April 10th and council adoption hearing scheduled for April 23rd. So it's an aggressive schedule, but we've been at this for many years now and we recognize that we have momentum and there's a push to get this done with the team that's in place in the current council. So we're going to get this done. Any questions about the schedule before I move forward? It is aggressive. No? Okay. All right. Let's move forward. All right. Let's get into the substance. If you've been at these meetings before, you'll have heard some of this, but we just feel like it's time for a refresher about why are we doing the project in the first place? What was it that Denton was trying to achieve with rewriting the DDC? And a lot of it started with the goals that are on this slide. First of all, you put a lot of community time and effort and resources into the Denton Plan 2030. You don't have the toolbox to implement that plan and this code is designed to give you that better toolbox. Review friendliness is a big theme that we'll talk about throughout this document. You currently have one of the more challenging and complex sets of development regulations that we have seen in Texas or around the country just in terms of document management and there were a lot of things that needed to be done to just clean it up. Tailored the development standards, I'll talk about that, and then modernized the review procedures. These were kind of the very high levels. Let me just dig a little bit more into the details. Like I said, you spent a lot of time on the Denton Plan. This is really the opportunity now to implement that plan with a brand new matching zoning map and zoning code that are married together and that will be a comprehensive reset button on development issues in Denton, which is an exciting opportunity for the city. Improve user friendliness. I mentioned this briefly, but it's worth dwelling here. This is a snapshot. These are all snapshots of a prior draft, so don't get too much into the details on the slides, but just in terms of concept, this is the table of contents over here on the left-hand side. Pretty straightforward tool. It's worth remembering that right now, the Denton development regulations are divided into multiple conflicting ordinances that, due to various decisions over the past ten plus years, have resulted in a really challenging document. This is a simple way of showing we have cleaned it all up. It's a one-stop shop for development rules in Denton that you don't have now. It's going to make economic development easier. It's going to make y'all's lives easier in terms of having a clearer set, a clearer rulebook of understanding what the rules are that apply. And then we've added a lot of bells and whistles. There's graphics and there's tables and there's a lot of illustrations of how the standards apply. It's all intended, again, to make your lives easier long-term in terms of how Denton develops in the future. Tailored development standards. You have a one-size-fits-all code right now. You have a code that really treats downtown Denton the same way that suburban neighborhoods or infill situations are treated in outlying parts of the community. These are just some screenshots that we pulled off Google Earth just to give you a high-level overview of Denton's got a lot of different place types. There's a lot of different types of areas that require distinct treatment in the new code moving forward. And so you're going to hear, especially from my colleagues when we talk about development standards and the districts, how we have developed something that is more tailored to Denton on the ground today and how you've got a more tailored set of solutions for different places in the community. So we're real excited about that. And then finally, modernize the development review procedures. These are screenshots just of the new summary table of procedures and there's a new common review procedure. This is all just intended to make the system more transparent. Again, it's worth stepping back to the very first days of this project. We talked with a lot of folks that develop in Denton or that want to develop here and we heard from a lot of them this is a challenging place to do business in large part because we don't understand what the rules are. This transparency and this predictability is an important kind of step forward to clarify how people do business in Denton and how you protect your neighborhoods and how you achieve the goals of the plan. So we're excited about these innovations. So that's real high-level stuff. Now we're going to walk through the document and actually a little bit more detail. We're going to walk through methodically chapter by chapter and tell you what the key issues are and the key things that we have incorporated based on your feedback and also the work that we have done with staff over the years. So I'm going to kick it off with the first couple of subchapters dealing with administration and then I'll turn it to my colleagues. General standards. This is the most exciting stuff. We lead off with the most exciting piece. It's the foundation of the code. It's the legal foundation. The authority to regulate zoning in Denton. The authority granted to local governments in Texas to regulate land use. Where does it apply? All those types of things. Some of the key changes. Improved organization. I can't emphasize this enough. All this stuff is very scattered in your current system and all the kind of foundation material is -- it's a mess in terms of your current system. We've cleaned all that up. We've done things like clean up your nonconformities process. Right now you've got a special exceptions procedure allowing nonconformities to expand and we've got a cleaner, simpler way of dealing with nonconformities that's more transparent that you all have spent a lot of time looking at. The enforcement provisions. There's a lot more specificity and clarity in the new code about what constitutes a violation of the DDC. What the procedure is when there is a violation alleged. What the penalties and the remedies are in cases of violation. All those things are more clearly spelled out than what you've got in your current code. New transition standards to move from the old code to the new code. This is the type of thing that clarifies, for example, something that was a violation of the old code is still a violation of the new code unless it complies with the new rules. Everything that kind of controls the leap from the old book to the new book. New DDC won't make legally established single family town home or duplexes nonconforming. This is a good example of policy discussions that were had by the DCRC that have been folded in to the new code. You all were very clear that the direction of this code should be that if you were legally established as a single family home, you're not going to be nonconforming just by adoption of this new document. Nonconforming site feature. Upgrade threshold. Nonconforming site feature, that's an attribute of a site, like the landscaping that's on a site or the exterior lighting or the parking that exists there. Those could potentially be nonconforming site features if they were legal when they were first established, but they're no longer going to comply with the standards of the new code. By upgrade thresholds, the code is more clear about when those nonconforming features need to come into compliance with the new code. I'm going to leave you with that teaser there. We're going to come back and talk about that later in the presentation when we get to development standards, but again, right now you have a variety of inconsistent rules about these nonconforming site features, and we're trying to give you a cleaner, more consistent way of dealing with all those things, so Jim is going to talk about that later in the presentation. So that's all the Chapter 1 stuff. It's sub-Chapter 1. It's the foundation. It's dry, but it's important. Two, how does the code actually work? Who administers the code and who actually makes the decisions in terms of proposed development activity? That's everything that's covered here in the administration and procedures sub-chapter. I mentioned earlier, you saw the screenshot, you've got a clear kind of summary graphic of who makes what decisions, you know, who hears, you know, what's the role of the P&Z? When do they make a recommendation, and then when does the council make a final decision? You've got a one-stop shop now that makes it more clear as to what those decisions are. I also gave you a graphic earlier of those common review procedures. It's very clear generally what the pathway is. Is there a pre-application conference? Who do you submit an application to? What is the staff's role? Does it go to the P&Z? All those things are very clearly kind of laid out with these common procedures. So there's some predictability to Denton's process. If I'm working in surrounding communities, I can take a look at the Denton code and have a general sense immediately of what to expect. We've cleaned up the site plan review procedure. We've got -- we've updated the thresholds, you know, for the major versus the minor projects when a big site plan is required versus a smaller site plan. There's a certificate of zoning compliance procedure. Basically this is just when you get to the end of a development project and you have a certificate -- you have a check that's saying, yes, I comply with the zoning rules. This is probably going to be integrated with the certificate of occupancy procedure. But this is an important new tool just to allow Denton to in a variety of circumstances say, yeah, you're in compliance with the zoning code. Clarified approval criteria for all application types. A lot of different types of applications in the current code, you know, temporary use permit or a site plan or rezoning. A lot of them don't have decision criteria clearly spelled out in the current code. And so for all of those, we've just done the work of walking through and making sure that you've got clear objective criteria moving forward. Updated plotting procedures to align with TLGC. That's obviously an important part of the code update. State law is always changing. We need to make sure that local subdivision plot rules are consistent with state law. A little bit more on this. Plan development. You do a lot of PDs in Denton and we have upgraded the procedure in some important ways. First of all, separate from the PD altogether, I think everything else that we've done in this code should make the need for PDs less. You shouldn't have to do as many negotiated solutions in Denton because you've got a better set of zoning districts, you've got a better set of development standards. So the PD is a tool to step outside the box and negotiate exceptions. But your basic box should be a lot better in this new code. That said, you're still going to need to do PDs in the future. Some plan developments. So we've simplified that review procedure. There is no more minimum development or project size for a PD. So you can do a big PD or a small. There's some new flexibility and relief procedures. >> Councilmember Melster has a question. >> Sure. >> This might not be the best time to ask, you'll tell me, but what would you say are the big categories of negotiated solutions that we're trying to sort of eliminate the need for negotiation for. I suppose how you feel about the amount of negotiation probably depends on which side of the negotiation you're on, right? So what are we trying to allow to move through that we might have paused on before? >> Great question. It could be a development that has a wider range of uses proposed, land uses than was allowed under the prior code. So people were just looking for more flexibility in the type of uses that they can provide. They might be looking to step outside the dimensional standards of the code. They might be looking to do greater building heights or just greater building sizes in some way or more density on a site. And the community would want to push back on that and say, well, if you want that flexibility, we need something in exchange. We need some type of benefit from that project, you know, affordable housing or open space or something. So those are the types of negotiations generally that you see for plan developments. I think we've tried to address those in other parts of the code by giving you a more refined use table, for example, that's trying to anticipate some of those broader mixes of uses that people want to do. We've given you this minor modification tool that I'll talk about in a minute, but that's a good way of giving people flexibility from dimensional standards without forcing them into the plan development box. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Let me jump ahead to this minor modification. It's my next slide. But it's an important tool that is intended to provide flexibility and relief. Right now you've got an ADP tool, this alternative development plan, that you use a lot. The issue with the ADP, as we heard from a lot of folks, is that it's just unpredictable and there's not a lot of good kind of consistency or transparency about when that's going to be approved or why, and it can be abused. This minor modification tool is intended to be a more disciplined way of doing kind of the same thing. It allows the final decision-making body to approve minor modifications or deviations from dimensional standards. So here's a snapshot of the table that's in the code, and you can see the final decision-maker, be it the staff or be it the council, whatever the decision is, has the ability to adjust certain standards to a set percentage like you see in the table here. So again, in the past, you might have needed to go through maybe an ADP but maybe a PUD if you wanted to see this type of flexibility. Now you've got that flexibility built into the underlying code, so you shouldn't have to go to those other tools. Councilmember Husspeth has a question. Thank you. I was trying to wait, but I just couldn't take it anymore, because I think it's a valid point. I think you're spot on, predictability, consistency, all those good things, all great things. The problem that I would ask, how do you fix or how do you envision that in practice when a body such as this doesn't follow the rules? So I don't have a concern about staff getting it right, and I don't have a concern about staff communicating to the applicant what they need to do. But then they have to come here on a Tuesday night and someone says, I'm aware of the structure, I just don't care. I just want you to either, one, touch on the fact that this is a volatile position and it is not predictable, and also articulate the concerns or the problems that that generates if we as a body don't comport to the rules that we establish. So I'm not saying that you have to answer that, I'm just saying anything that comes forward that doesn't acknowledge that fact, to me, is not pragmatic. I just think there's a practical application that at least from your position need to give your thoughts on what that does to all this hard work if people in our position don't adhere to the rules we implement. So no answer, just saying that needs to be factored in, or else you're ignoring a known problem. To me. I'm just saying that I see it a lot. Thank you. >> I think that's really a decision and an issue for the body to address, the council body. I think they're charged with giving us a code that -- so I can understand him. That's probably a question he can answer. >> But I do think he can speak to what that does to all the hard work if this body is not consistent. I think that is fair, not today, but in summary, to say get the feedback, give us your concerns, give us your thoughts, because if we don't get it back then, then that inconsistency will trigger XYZ. I think that's fair, not to chime in on the other things, but I think that what we do to the hard work that's been predicated is conserved. >> Okay. Appreciate that. Council Member Riggs. >> Just two brief responses to that. >> Sure. Council Member Riggs. Yeah, go ahead. >> Is that okay? Too briefly. It's a great point. And I'm generally going to not respond. I'm going to take you up on that, but I will say -- I will say, again, I'm a broken record on this, but your current code is so lacking in transparency and what the rules should be that it leaves the system rife for abuse. And it makes it very difficult to say what the right rules or what the right pathway should be for a particular project. What we're giving you here is a much more transparent pathway. So if there's a deviation from that pathway, it's going to be more readily apparent to a lot of different folks that are watchdogs for systems like this. And the other thing that I would say, and we'll talk about this at the end of the presentation, is that this is a living document. And you're going to need to monitor it. And you as this council and future councils will need to step back in six months and a year and two years and say, how are we performing? Where have the variances come in? Get staff reporting on where you've had to step outside the box. Because it's not going to be right immediately the first time. You're going to need to tweak it. But that will give you the opportunity to step back and say, have we been faithful to the intent that we set for ourselves at the beginning? So they're great points. >> And I just want to say, and I could be wrong and mistaken, but when we were going through this, it was my understanding that the minor modifications within this percentage could be made at a staff level which would simplify the process instead of going through all of the other processes if they were within this certain percentage. So it's not making the conversation or the process more complicated, it's making it more simple by allowing certain people to make these decisions within this percentage, right? At the staff level. >> I would tweak that just a little bit. Generally that's right. If the final decision maker ordinarily would be the director, the staff, they could make this decision on their own. But if the final decision maker is you all as the counsel or the PNZ, they ultimately are as the code is written, are charged with exercising this authority. They can take a recommendation from staff. There's a legal point there that you all can't delegate that authority under Texas state law. So you can get a recommendation from the director, but then you all would be ultimately making the decision. >> Well, then I thought it was the alternative development plan that would allow that on the staff level, the director level to make certain modifications. Is that not correct? That is correct. Okay. I just wanted to make sure because that's what I remember of the conversation, not that we were going to complicate the process and make it more and then confuse people bringing items to our attention. We're trying to meet multiple objectives here. I mean, we have to provide more clarity as to the type of deviations that the city will tolerate. But we also have to make sure that the decisions are made by the people that the state says should be making the decision. So we're focusing on that delegation of authority question. And that's why we're saying that the counsel would be the final decision maker on something that's subject to counsel decision. >> We'll just need to get staff clarification on that. >> I think I've beat this one. Does not allow -- there's a few things that you can't do with the minor modification tool. You can't change the land use chart. You can't deviate from the use specific standards, the sensitive area protections, things like that. So this is not a get out of jail free tool. There are still some guard rails on what you can use for this tool. That's really all I wanted to cover on the procedures. Actually, yeah, that's a good stopping point. Now let's switch gears. That is generally the procedural part of the code. Let's just pause there. Any other questions on procedures before we move into the district's discussion or the development standards? Any questions? >> Thank you all. I give it to my colleague Tarek Wafai. >> Good afternoon. Tarek Wafai with Clarion Associates. Nice to see you all again. And I get one of the most fundamental parts of a development code, the districts and uses. This is very fundamental to how development happens in Denton and anywhere. What can you do on your property? What can your neighbor do on their property? How big can it be? And what types of uses are appropriate in those buildings? So I'm going to cover those two topics and then Jim Spung is going to finish things off with the quality of development standards, things like landscaping and parking. So into the districts, we made a lot of changes. One of the key points and one of the biggest goals for the project was to implement your 2030 plan where you identified future land use designations. What types of activities should be happening generally in these areas throughout the city? And you identified centers and corridors, specific geographic locations that really have a different character and feel and different place types that are appropriate there. So taking that information and then looking back at your current lineup of zoning districts, it was very clear that there's a disconnect there. How can we possibly achieve what you said you want to be with the current lineup of zoning districts? So we did a lot of changes. We consolidated zoning districts that had a very similar purpose statement to them or similar uses allowed in them. Right now you have a lot of zoning districts dedicated to single family residential. We still carried forward a lot of single family residential zoning districts based on the lot sizes, based on how many dwelling units are you putting on those parcels. We have a new zoning district for even smaller lot residential development and this is really a national trend. This is something we're seeing that, okay, builders are getting creative. We know that people don't all want big houses on big lots. In fact, the market is pushing them in many cases to smaller single family detached products on smaller lots. So now there is a district for that. The R7 district, 4,500 square foot lots allows you still to own your piece of the pie and have your single family detached home, but in a smaller scale. So that could be applied to any property with a rezoning application after adoption of the code. A new public facilities district, things like water treatment facilities, gravel storage, things that matter to running a city and a government. There's a district for that now because those should be treated as different. They're essential services in many cases. The other big change I'd highlight is that we changed the master planned community, the MPC district and I know you've done some of those in the past and you've got big ones in the pipeline right now. We are changing that whole process to the PD zoning district. It would still be a negotiated development. This is mostly just change in nomenclature. We know that it's not going to fit within the parameters of the DDC that there's going to have to be a different process to do a PD. So what does that look like now? Here's the suite of new zoning districts that are proposed in the current draft, which you will see on Friday. You'll notice it's broken down into basic categories. You've got places where people live, the residential districts. You've got corridor districts along a suburban corridor that should be treated differently than businesses or residential along a highway corridor, different character. Non-residential like office, industrial, those public facilities, planned, I'll save the overlay districts. I'm going to go into a little more detail on that. And then what about the things that want to do, what about properties that want to do multiple things, mixed use? That's a major missing component of your current DDC. And it's not a one size fits all approach. We recognize that there are different contexts to mixed use. At the neighborhood scale, think of your commercial corner store in the middle of a neighborhood. Low intensity office use, the barbershop potentially, but mostly residential. Your downtown core around us right now, a lot of business happening there, but you still have some residential components. And then at the regional scale, more auto oriented, recognizing that mixed use doesn't always mean perfectly walkable from an urban design perspective. It means there's a place to do lots of different types of activities at the regional destination scale as well. So another change was to replace the density standards. Right now, if you're doing residential development in Denton, your zoning district applies a maximum density, but you also have setback controls and height controls and all of these other parameters that are really calculation challenges for both staff and the development community and all of you, the key decision makers. So we boiled that down into important standards instead of density to say how big is the lot? That's a clear determining factor for how many dwelling units you will be able to get in any given area. The building setbacks, how far do those buildings have to be from the street defines density. And I see you- >> Yeah, question, yes. >> What exactly is the benefit of minimum lot dimensions as compared with the density standard? And just to say a little more about that before you respond, why is that better than allowing a developer the flexibility to say cluster housing and allow more shared open space instead of enforcing a minimum lot size? >> Well the challenge lies when you have both. When you have both minimum lot size and a maximum density and they don't always align well together. And so it creates a perception that here's the density I can achieve, but that's not really the case. When you start to try to pencil out the projects because of all of the other development parameters which I list up here, you can't achieve those densities in many cases. Or in some cases, you would exceed those density requirements. So we think it's a more common practice to talk about density in the 2030 plan like you've done, but not talk about it when it relates to each individual zoning district. Clustering, that's later in the presentation when we get into subdivision, how are you dividing lots for new development in Denton? Clustering is now an option. That's one of the new standards that we've proposed to say, hey, you actually get more bang for your buck if you're willing to put those on smaller lots closer together preserving more of these sensitive areas around it. So we agree that that's a more efficient way of doing business. But for transparency purposes, we think this is a better approach than having density potentially conflicting with those other standards. Okay, I'm watching and listening. This next one on townhomes, not a big deal, but something that was absent from your current code, recognizing that if you're doing townhomes or any single family attached product, that you shouldn't have to comply with the side setbacks. Obviously, you're sharing a common wall. And so we took care of that. It's an easy fix, but it's a good change to make to recognize that not all building types should be treated the same. And so we've included that standard. A lot of your district standards now contain regulations for specific uses. They contain regulations for things like landscaping and procedures. We have reorganized those different types of regulations into their appropriate subchapters within the code. So again, just improving the user friendliness. The final bullet is the measurement standards and exceptions. We know that when you're talking about height and setbacks, that there will always be exceptions to those. What if I want to put a solar panel on top of my house? Can that extend beyond the maximum height? What if I am putting a small shed that's not even an accessory structure really in the rear yard? Does that have to meet the same level of setback that other primary buildings would have to do? So we've included an entire section at the end of the zoning district's chapter to talk about those measurements and exceptions. And to just be clear about how the city is measuring height and setbacks and all of those different measurement parameters. >> Let me just make a comment as we get into this. Because I think it's going to be important to share with the community that when this process first began, that the zoning map, the new zoning map reflected quite a few changes of zoning for current properties into the new zoning based upon the 2030 concept plan. But that the committee of the PNZ members and the council members really wanted to make sure that -- and we went through this almost parcel by parcel that we didn't avoid or sort of not provide an opportunity for communities who if something was -- I'm going to say up zoned, zoned differently that allowed for more uses in the original zoning map than what was there originally. We made sure we painstakingly went through to identify those to make sure that we made it reflect as closely as possible to the current zoning so that if somebody wanted to request that they could and it would still go through the normal zoning procedures of public hearing, notice of the sign, instead of sort of this wholesale kind of community wide notification that some people pay attention to and some don't until a sign shows up next door. So I think it's important to understand the approach that we took on the zoning map. And that was we want to preserve as much as possible each individual property owner's rights to say, hey, what's going here next door? If you want something that's more intense than what was there before, we have this normal procedure to go through and I think the committee will attest it and staff will attest it. We literally went through each section if not at some points parcel by parcel to ensure that that was preserved. So I think it's important that we just didn't go in and start changing all the zonings or many of the zonings to reflect something that may be a higher intensity use without providing an avenue for that specific individual property owner feedback that's part of our normal process of zoning. So I wanted to sort of lay that template on top. >> That's an excellent point, Mayor. Again, our contract includes giving you the tools that you can use in the future for Denton. So the fact that you spent that time, and we were there for one of those meetings where we looked at a lot of specific properties, that's a necessary part of getting this right. And you can stand behind that knowing that you had a credible process to review which districts are really appropriate and where are they appropriate. This is not a rezoning of Denton, it is giving you a toolbox to move forward with. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Good point. >> Yep. >> With the overlays, I kind of skipped over that earlier knowing that I had a separate slide on this. So you have several overlay districts now. To just bring them forward as is would not work. And one of those primary reasons is a lot of those overlay districts refer back to your current lineup of zoning districts. It will say things like the standards in this, in the Unicorn Lake as an example, the NRMU-12 standards shall apply except as modified herein. Well, we can't carry that language forward as an overlay. So instead, we went back to your current NRMU and pulled those exact standards into the new Unicorn Lake overlay district. So you still have a one-stop shop. If we didn't do that, you would be left with a similar problem to what you have now, which is referring back to older versions of the DDC to know what rules were in place at the time it was adopted. So we have brought a lot of those standards directly integrated into the new DDC. I'll talk about Razor Ranch on a separate slide. We've got a new approach for that. Historic districts, you spent a lot of time working on updating the historic preservation standards, how those historic districts should be treated. And so we pulled that newest ordinance into the new structure of the DDC. We did not make substantive edits to those past what you all worked on the last couple of years. Now, for Razor Ranch, we presented some options. How do we bring Razor Ranch, which ultimately is functioning like its own miniature zoning code? It's a huge development, lots of different development activities happening there. They have their own procedures. They have their own development quality standards. Their landscaping standards are better than your minimum landscaping standards for citywide. And so how do we treat that property? We presented some options, and we actually had a conversation with the landowner and with others with interest in Razor Ranch, and it was determined that the best approach would be to pull Razor Ranch out of the DDC entirely and let it stand alone as its own body of regulations. And so that is our current approach. You will see a reference in the draft that you see on Friday that says Razor Ranch, it'll still have a heading, see separate body of regulations. But really, what we didn't want to do was recreate the wheel in Razor Ranch. There's a lot of development underway. There's a lot of entitlements that are underway right now as well. We did not want to step in the middle of that. So best case scenario, pull that out of the DDC. Question on that. Is that implying that the Razor Ranch overlay as it currently stands is all-inclusive of regulations within the City of Dent, or if there's something that's not present in the new one that as you pull out, then it just defaults to what then the current code is? I don't think that's an exhaustive, covers every regulation that could ever occur. But if it does, that's great. But if it doesn't, we do have a fallback position, is that correct? That's correct. That's why we think it's really operating more like a planned development today anyhow and not really an overlay. So anything that's untouched will be covered by the DDC. Councilmember Briggs. And I just want to say that the committee did not, has not reviewed this. This is not something that has come through as far as just to transparency. So right, we're giving you a precursor to what you will see on Friday. The overlay districts were not included in earlier drafts, and we had been having discussions with staff, what do you want us to do with these? And we knew that one of the options could not be just carry them forward as is. So it took some time to unpack those details and get them into a presentable format, but we think it'll make sense to you all when you see that draft. So that is the district's portion. It's very well connected to the uses. I've talked about how we've divided the new suite of zoning districts and overlays, but what types of uses can you do within them? A lot of changes there too, many for just improving the user friendliness. We've got a new use table, for example, along the columns is the new line up of zoning districts and the rows make up the individual land uses. And the S tells you, well, that's a specific use permit that's required. That's a greater level of scrutiny if you want to do that use in that zoning district. If it's blank, that is a prohibited use in that zoning district. If it's a P, then it's permitted by right. There's nothing to talk about at a public hearing other than, yes, we allow this use. You'll see a lot of plus marks and when you review the draft, pay close attention to that. That means that a use specific standard applies to that use. So yes, it's permitted or maybe it requires a special use permit, but there's an additional level of detail that you need to be aware of. There are locational requirements, there are operational requirements, building design requirements in some cases. So it just points you to that and you can actually click on those links in the draft to take you directly to those standards. >> Yes, Council Member Armitage. >> This is more kind of a comment for any members of the public who would be watching than anyone else, but because I had inquired of staff about, I had a number of questions about what are the, what's contained in those pluses and I see the reference with numbers and the answer I got is that'll be available on the 15th? >> Correct. >> That's correct. Okay, yeah. So just in case anyone's wondering, why is nobody asking questions about, because it's a really big question, but that'll be available on the 15th and we'll have a number of meetings after this where we'll be able to get into the nitty gritty of all that. >> Okay. >> And yeah, I encourage you to get into the nitty gritty on the use table and the use standards as well. If you see something that seems out of place or we missed something or something that maybe was not discussed at the DCRC, then bring that up at those work sessions. I think that'll be a key component to its success. But I want to go back now. So the table of uses, that is a really helpful way, it's a one stop shop to see what's allowed in Denton. A lot of use types consolidated for simplicity, you don't need to say flower shop and bookshop and toy store, retail's retail, right? So we made a lot of headway in reducing the number of words in the document. A better format, we start with the table, following the table immediately and in the same order of the table are the use specific standards that might relate to those uses if they had a plus. And then we also address accessory and temporary uses. We did not touch gas well drilling. You all have spent enough time dealing with that and we were told don't touch it, you'll break it. So we did not touch it. And added some new square footage standards. This was a discussion that the DCRC had. How do we make the distinction between a single family home versus a tiny home? And how do we really better align these with the building code? And so that was the primary reason behind providing these minimum square footages for residential dwelling units. So I've shown you the table. Here's just some of the new use types that were introduced. You will see those throughout the table. For a couple of different buckets that you can place these into, some are just unique or important to Denton. Things like musician studios. Things like the travel plaza on your highway corridors. Things like the one we're not going to talk about, collegiate housing. These are important issues in Denton. Others are just national standards and trends that we think should have been included and they are not in your DDC today. And so we did a lot of those. Things like short term rentals. Things like ADUs, tiny homes. Many applicable to Denton. But again, those are national trends that we had a lot of ideas and discussions with your staff and your DCRC about. >> Yes, Councilmember Meltzer. >> Yeah, just I hope you don't mind a couple definitions. Curious what an amenity center is and what home occupation is. >> Good question. So amenity center. If I'm doing a development with largely residential, what is the place that serves that community? If I have a recreation center with a swimming pool or other kind of clubhouse type activities. Home occupations, and we're seeing a lot of these pop up. It's increasingly popular to work from the home. Whether I'm selling crafts and wares, whether I'm cutting people's hair, there are lots of different ways to conduct home occupations. But it's important to regulate them appropriately. So when you see the pluses, there's a lot of standards for home occupations to make sure that people can still live in peace while still allowing people to work out of the home. >> Thank you. >> Yes. So that was it before we move on to the quality standards, but I'm happy to field any more questions you might have on the districts and uses piece. >> I see no questions. >> Let's take a quick five minute break, because I think we took the last break at 1.30. This sounds like it might be a good time to take a break as far as the presentation. Let's take a five minute break. >> Welcome, everybody, back to this meeting of the Denton City Council, Tuesday, February 12, 2019. It is 2.37 p.m. We're working through our work session reports of our agenda, agenda item 3b. And so we'll resume, pick it up at this new presentation. >> All right. Thank you, Mayor, Council. My name is Jim Spung. I'm with Clearing Associates as well. And I'm going to roll into subchapter six on the development standards. And Matt has talked about the processes, the procedures for getting approvals, the criteria that you have to get. Talked about the districts and the uses, what can you do and where. And the development standards is the fun piece that talks about how good does it have to be. What's the quality standards? How much parking do you have to have, landscaping, drainage, all the features on the site that make the development work. So we've made quite a few improvements to this subchapter. First and foremost, like the other subchapters, we've consolidated all of the development standards into one place. Right now they're scattered throughout the EDC. And it makes it somewhat difficult to know what exactly you have to do on the property. So we've relocated all those standards here. Next, we've relocated the technical and design-related material to individual criteria manuals. And the council has seen a number of those over the past year. There's about four or five, the site plan, the site design criteria manual, stormwater drainage criteria manual. These manuals have very specific engineering-related information to say essentially a developer could give that to their engineer and say here are the water quality standards in Denton. This is the size pipes you need for the development. A lot of that material isn't really necessary in the development code. And it fits better in a criteria manual. Next, we've relocated all the procedures to subchapter two, which Matt talked about, how you get site plan approval, how you get subdivision approval. All those things were currently scattered throughout the EDC. We've moved all that stuff into subchapter two. And then the next couple of bullets are really what we're going to talk about today. We've integrated a more tailored approach that departs from the current one-size-fits-all model here in Denton. And a good example of that is the parking standards that we've talked about that before, where you have a minimum and a maximum, and they're the same anywhere you are in the city. So it makes it challenging to meet the parking. So we departed from that. We'll talk about that in a couple of slides. Next, we've increased flexibility by providing options and menu-based standards. Landscaping is an example of that. We'll talk about that in a couple of slides. And then lastly, we've improved the neighborhood compatibility standards. If you're developing next to a single-family neighborhood, what do you have to do differently than if you weren't developing next to a single-family neighborhood? So this is another important piece of the development standards, is the thresholds for when you have to comply with the standards. And Matt touched on this earlier in his slide, basically saying, "If I'm developing a property, what do I have to comply with if it's a redevelopment? If I'm putting an addition on the building, do I have to bring all the site features up to compliance with the new standards, and when don't I?" Currently, you can see that this example table from the current code, there's specific thresholds if you're expanding multi-family by 10 percent or 10 units, that triggers compliance with certain elements of the DDC. And you can see across the top there, it's not comprehensive. You have site planning, the traffic impact analysis, landscaping and tree canopy, parking lot landscaping, et cetera. It doesn't really address ESAs or drainage or all the elements of the development standards. So the new approach is to clarify what activities trigger compliance with the new code. So the first bullet there is any new development is required to comply with all the standards of the new code. If you're developing something new, you have to meet the new rules. The next two are new, not necessarily new, but they're clarifying what current practice is here in Denton. So there's two tiers of redevelopment. The first tier is what we'd consider a somewhat minor redevelopment. You're increasing the square footage by 1,000 square feet or between 25 and 50 percent of the existing building size. You're increasing the total number of dwelling units by the lesser of 10 dwelling units or between 10 and 50 percent. If you're expanding a parking area by six spaces or less than 50 percent. And then lastly, any change in use that would involve or require improvements on the site. So if you qualify under that first tier, you're not required to bring everything up to compliance on the site. The next tier for redevelopment is the same activities in the first tier, but that exceed 50 percent. So if you're adding on to your building, making it 75 percent larger, that may trigger you to bring everything on your site up to compliance with the new standards. And this is a table just illustrating how that might work. So on the left-hand side you see all the development standards sections for all the standards. The next column has the reference in the DDC of where you could find those standards. And then the next three columns are essentially the triggers. The check mark means that the entire site has to comply with those standards and the diamond would mean that the disturbed areas only would have to comply. So you can see here, if you fall under that tier one category, which is the lesser category, you might only have to comply with those standards for the disturbed areas on the site. So only the areas that you're performing construction. If you fall under that tier two category, the entire site might have to comply. And this table isn't finalized yet. Staff will need to spend some time with this and the council and the DCRC. But these are important because it determines, as a developer, how much do I have to do to get approval. So I have a question a couple of slides back on that big table. Is this new or is this what we currently do? This is the current standards. Okay, gotcha. And it's just a small screenshot. The table continues. Okay. And so just specifically, just as a question, when I look at non-residential expansion or multifamily expansion, which some of them are very de minimis, like it says if it's ten units or less, you have to have a non-residential expansion if you only expand by 500 feet or something. When it talks about a traffic impact analysis, is that like a full blown traffic impact analysis currently or is that because it just seems like that would be if you're doing a de minimis kind of expansion, why would you? But if this is what's current and is this changing or is this staying the same? No, I think it is changing and we could let staff answer, but to my understanding, the current traffic impact analysis is triggered by how many trips that project generates. So if you're generating more than a thousand trips per day, then it would require a higher level of traffic impact analysis. Okay, so it says yes based on total trips. Got you. I didn't. Sorry about that. I didn't quite understand that. Appreciate that. That's good clarification. Yep. No, we're good. So the traffic impact analysis standards have been relocated to the transportation criteria manual. Okay, fantastic. That was just, I wasn't trying to pull those out specifically, I just wanted to. So what I'm hearing is if you, based upon the couple slides forward on those triangles and those check marks that if you meet a certain, you don't go over some threshold, it's a minor expansion or something so you might have to, and it's still in flux, this isn't approved, but the diamond represents what you have to do on-site and the checks represent what you have to do off-site or to bring it up to compliance with those particular kind of components. Right, yeah, and all the improvements would be on the lot where the development is occurring and that particular example would fall under the access and circulation so this would be your drive entrances and things of that nature. Thank you. Any other questions on that before we move on? Any other questions on that? Yes, Council Member Hussie. And forgive me if I missed it, will there be some normalizing of terms? So you said you use a percentage so if it's 50% larger, is that living spaces, is that actual just developable space, what triggers that or how is that percentage calculated? Is there a standard across the entire document that says we're only referencing living spaces? How do you reconcile that? Yes, in this specific section, and obviously these bullets are summarized from what the text actually says, but the 50% for the dwelling units, for example, is if you have an existing project, multi-family project, and you're increasing the number of units on that site by 10 dwelling units or by 50% of what's currently there, then that would trigger that threshold. So these thresholds are based on comparing what's there today versus what they're going to do with the proposal. Great. Sure. And then I have an ask for a resource, and not that you have an answer today, but if you could help me out. So understanding when you were getting started, you're talking about tree buffers, fences, those type enhancements, if you will, or beautification, whatever that falls under. I just want to understand that better and communicate that back to people when I'm having that conversation, those value adds. And so is there a resource in your industry that you could point me to, or down the road, if you could bring forward, that would say this type of setback is more preferred? I just want to understand the norm, right? Because if we're saying this setback is this far and this lot size is this size is optimal, I just want to understand and go back and read that further. Just for people, like there may be people that have been in the business that understand that better, but for the lay person that has not developed a piece of property or haven't worked in that industry, what is a utopia piece of property? Just what does that lot looks like that the average person thinks, when I think single family home, I envision, you know, there's got to be some kind of study or some kind of way to bring people that don't live in that world up to speed. And so that's what I ask for when I see you next. Yeah, so if I could answer that, I'd probably be a millionaire because there's not really a -- it's difficult to answer because it's very context-based and every community is very different. And when TARC went over the districts, the lineup of new zone districts in the code, each of those districts has different setbacks and lot sizes and allows different types of land uses. So really the goal of the DDC is to provide a toolbox to allow really anything that could potentially happen, and then your zoning map would apply where those things are appropriate in the city. And that really covers the lot sizes and the setbacks and what's allowed and not allowed. And everywhere is different. Denton is very different than Berkeley or, you know, somewhere in Indiana. So it's very focused on the area. With regard to the site improvements, buffering and fences and things, again, it's similar to where it depends on the area you're in, but really it's focused on what's going to achieve the results that we want. If we want to buffer from this land use, what's the most effective buffer? And there's different answers. There's not really a one-size-fits-all there. If I may? Sure. I'm tracking with you, I guess, and again, not today, but maybe an email back and forth between then. I just want to understand. So, for example, you can't have a fence in front of your house, right? You can't have an eight-foot fence in front of your house. Why is that? Right? And so there's a methodology to those things. I want to, you know, for someone that comes and asks me, "Hey, my house faces a different direction. My neighbor had this fence. They made me take it down." I just want to understand that world better. And so, again, not today, but if you can give me a resource that I can go, you know, research better myself, then I would appreciate that. Yeah, and we can connect offline to discuss those. But there are different studies that weigh the pros and cons of different standards. And for the fencing, for example, I've heard a lot that it's a safety issue if you can't see the front of the home. You can't see personnel. You can't see the address on the building if there's a big fence. So things of that nature. But it's also just for the social element of being able to see your neighbors and communicate. So it's a complex thing, but we can talk. Yeah, I would just send him sort of a set of example questions, and probably that conversation take off from there. Yeah. Thanks. Yep. Thank you. Okay. So a few more bullets here on some summary changes from subchapter six. New landscaping and tree canopy standards. This is currently being prepared by staff as a package related to development impact areas, landscaping, and they'll share that with the council at a later date. New requirements for walls and fences. This is one thing that the DCRC spent a lot of time on, chain link fences and where are they allowed and kind of addressing these questions. So we folded in those changes, just really doing a gut check and saying, okay, does Denton care? What do we care about? What do we want to achieve? And the DCRC spent a lot of time discussing those issues and creating policy for those specific things. Again, going back to the parking, the land use table that Tarek showed that has all the land uses that are allowed in the city. Well, there's a similar parking table that has all of those land uses and what the minimum and maximum parking is for those specific land uses. The new maximum is 125% of the minimum. So if the minimum is 100 spaces, you can't build more than 125. So that gives them a little bit more flexibility to the development community to say, okay, I have to have at least this many. I probably want a little bit more, but I don't want to have too much parking. Lastly, there are new standards to encourage side and rear entry garages. There's a lot of aesthetic benefits of doing that as well as site access things. So there's new standards in here allowing a garage that's side or rear-facing to encroach into the front or rear setback accordingly. And then lastly, new open space requirements for residential subdivisions, which I believe is part of that landscape package that the staff has been preparing. So let's give you a couple examples. I talked about the buffering or the transition standards if you're developing next to a single family residence. This picture here is a bad example, so don't think that that's what we're hoping to do here in Denton. This big multi-family building next to a one-story single-family home, this is what we're trying to avoid. So new standards that we've incorporated into the draft is if you're developing within 50 feet of a single-family residential district, then the height of that building can't exceed what is allowed in that single-family district. So you can see here the letter A would be that 50-foot distance. And then once you're past 50 feet, between 50 and 100 feet, you can't exceed the residential district plus 15 feet. And then beyond that, you can just build whatever would be allowed in that district by right. So again, it's tailoring the standards to be friendly to the neighborhood, but also to allow the development community to maximize their development potential. And these numbers, 50 and 100, can change 25 feet or 75 or 200. Those are things that Denton can tailor based on their standards. Next are buffering standards. Again, these are example tables, and these may be updated with the new draft based on staff's work on the landscaping code, but essentially saying if you're developing a land use next to a different land use, what level of buffer is required? And here, for example, if you're developing an industrial use on the far left-hand column next to a single-family or detached or duplex, you're required to have a minimum of 50 points and a minimum width of 30 feet. On the table on the right-hand side is how you achieve those points. And again, this is one of the menu-based options to provide more flexibility and more options for people to say, "Okay, I need 50 points. I can do that any number of ways using this table." >> Okay, so I had asked staff a question about this table 6E, I have a follow-up question about it that I think you can answer. I had asked, just because looking at that, and again, we haven't seen yet the full or those of us who are not on the committee anyway have not seen the full draft that will be coming out on the 15th, but just looking at that table, I had asked why are fence buffer materials limited to solid wood and isn't that cost prohibitive? And I had heard in response, "Fences are not limited to only wood. Other materials are allowed in the land use type and where the fence is proposed to be located." So I was happy to hear that, and you had said before that, at least I think you said, that you mentioned that other kind of fencing will be allowed, but so can you explain why then in that table it only mentions that solid wood screening, that you only get points for the solid wood screening fence? >> Yeah, so the fencing standards generally in the city are different than the buffering standards. So if you're installing a fence for the purpose of creating a buffer, then the fences in that table would apply. So for example, if you're creating or developing a commercial use next to single family, you need 30 points minimum. And if you choose to do a solid wood screening fence that's six feet high, that will get you 10 points. If you do chain link, that will get you zero points because there's no buffer element there. That's not buffering the adjacent use. So the materials in the table on the right are only intended to achieve that level of buffer between two land uses, but that doesn't preclude you from installing a different type of fence. You would just have to get a different number of points somehow else. >> Got it. Okay. >> In some way. >> Okay. Okay. So it is true then that when used for a buffer, when fencing is used for a buffer, no matter what the, you know, land use type, it has to be to get points for it, it has to be solid wood or masonry wall or solid masonry wall. >> Yeah. Typically you want it to be opaque where you can't see through it and that it's providing a visual buffer as well as a noise buffer and other things. >> Yeah. Or you can have one of these botanical options. Okay. Thanks. >> Councilman Briggs. >> Yeah. I just wanted to kind of touch on that too. Part of the main discussion that we had in the committee was for residential homeowners so that they would have a choice. So we thought that it's best when you're talking about different uses that the buffer be as I guess as good as possible. But if you are a single family homeowner and you want to take out your wood fence in your backyard because you have a creek or open space to look at, then you can then in turn go back and put in whatever type of fence that you want on the property. So we had lots of discussions about that but a lot of it our discussions were about types of fencing and residential uses and single family homeowners not necessarily trying to change and minimize and lessen the buffer that a commercial use has to put up. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. That clarifies it. Does commercial include -- does that include multi-family? >> No. So multi-family is the one right above that. >> Okay. Good. Okay. Good. Thanks. >> Okay. So that's everything on subchapter six. There's a lot in that subchapter and we just touched on a few key highlights but are there any other questions on development standards before we move on to subdivisions? Okay. So subchapter seven is subdivisions, establishing the rules for how you divide land in the city. Again, we've reorganized that chapter. We've relocated the procedures to subchapter two. So actually how you get approval for a subdivision is in subchapter two. The design standards and the development standards are in subchapter seven. Similar to subchapter six, we've relocated the technical information of subdivision design to the criteria manuals, road design, things like that, how thick does the pavement have to be. That stuff's not really part of the development code. That can be in an engineering manual outside the DDC. We've revised and clarified the flag lot standards. So this is for a property that has a tiny little frontage on a lot that goes back and then opens up into a bigger lot. It looks like a flag. We've clarified standards saying how big that flag pole portion has to be depending on how many utilities you have coming from the public rideway back to the lot. We've introduced a new cluster subdivision tool, which I'll talk about in a couple of slides. We've revised the gated community standards to be more clear and comprehensive. And lastly, the civil construction plans are no longer required prior to final plan approval. And this is something that we've been talking to staff about. Right now, a developer would be required to have full civil engineered plans ready to go before the final plan is approved. And in most communities, that's -- it's backwards to where you want your final plan approved first, and then you can work out all the detailed engineering and design elements. Yes. >> Real quick question on these in general, probably fencing and some of these are more specific. But if there's a conflict between -- you know, we've got several homeowner associations here in our community. If there's a conflict between the new code or even the existing code and a set of CCRs or homeowner associations, which -- and this may be a question for legal. Which typical -- does our code supersede that? But my understanding is that -- or does our code supersede it? So if there's a restriction in a homeowner association for, let's say, fence types, but our code allows something that's not allowed in a set of HOA rules and regs, then our code is what is -- no, it's the other way around. Oh, you want to come up -- yeah, sorry. We didn't get to introduce you last time because you weren't here, but if you could go ahead and -- this is our illustrious expert. >> Yes. This is Brendan McDonald. We're delighted to have her helping us through this process. >> So the answer is if the HOA documents are more restrictive, the HOA itself can enforce those restrictions. The city's not involved in enforcing those restrictions. But if the city's ordinance is more restrictive, then that's the set of regulations that applies. >> Okay. Perfect answer. Thank you. Appreciate that. >> Okay, so this is just an example illustration of the cluster subdivision tool. So here you can see on the left is what the cluster would result in, smaller lots and a much more green space or preserved area. Those areas might be environmentally sensitive areas or important areas to the city. On the right-hand side is what a traditional subdivision might look like where you're consuming all of the land for lots. So the number of dwellings doesn't change, but how big the lots are and how much space is preserved does change. And as Matt and Tarq mentioned earlier, this cluster subdivision tool is great for the development community because for one, it lessens their overall cost of development. You can see they're building way less roadway and infrastructure on the clustered side. They're still getting the same number of lots and houses. And the city's getting a great benefit of preserving that open space or those sensitive areas in perpetuity. So one caveat there is to qualify for the cluster subdivision currently in the draft, you have to have at least five acres to make it worth preserving that land. And the incentive right now is that you can reduce lot sizes down to 2,500 square feet. So you can get a pretty small lot if you do this tool. They don't all have to be 2,500 square feet, but that's the minimum that you can go. So that's it for subdivisions. Not really a whole lot there that we wanted to touch on. Yes, go ahead. Councilman Meltzer. Would you mind saying just a little more about what the tool is? I see the differences. I get the result, but I don't understand what the tool is. Yeah. So the tool is essentially it's the same process as if you were doing a normal subdivision. But if, for example, on the right-hand side, if you were constrained by environmentally sensitive areas or big tree stands and you couldn't develop the property in a way that made sense to get the number of lots that you needed, you could consolidate those lots onto the front half of the lot. And the incentive is the base zoning may require you to have a 20,000 square foot lot, but obviously those won't fit based on the right-hand model. So this cluster subdivision allows you to reduce the lot size and the setbacks from what the base district would allow, if that makes sense. So essentially your 20,000 square foot zone lots could be reduced to accommodate the cluster. So the tool is kind of an automatic variance on the minimum lot size. Is that what you mean by the tool? Yeah. That's a way you could look at it, I guess. Yeah. Okay. I guess I'm close, but not exactly right. Yeah. I mean, it's just an alternative to what the baseline would be. So it's allowed by the code, it's not necessarily variance, but it achieves the same. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Council Member Romacher. So I'm curious about why the 2,500 lot size and not smaller, and why stopping it for the cluster? Yeah. 2,500 is pretty small for a lot size. So we feel like that's probably about as small as you want to be for a single family product. What about, and maybe there's something in the code that's coming on the 15th that answers the question. But what about tiny homes? I'm thinking about tiny homes. Yeah. So tiny homes is a new use in this new code. Right now it's proposed that those be approved as part of a PD development. So they wouldn't necessarily be subdivided lots, but it would be a plan development with its own specific set of standards. But we're still working with staff to see if we can narrow those down to have standards that the city is comfortable with to allow it as either a permitted use or a special use without having to go through the plan development process. Got it. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. And on these, because it is ESA. So if it did still encroach in some part of an ESA, then that alternative ESA process would still be triggered to go through planning and zoning on the cluster development. Right. Yeah. To my understanding, any development that would include an ESA would still have to follow the same provisions as any other project that would be part of an ESA. The difference here is that those areas wouldn't be disturbed as part of the development. And it's not always an ESA that you could do a cluster subdivision just to preserve land anywhere. It doesn't have to necessarily be sensitive. Any other questions on subdivisions? Yet on the cluster development, you still have within the subdivision regulations certain setbacks and things such as that that are going to be minimum as far as either for your sidewalks, your parking standards for your driveway. So it provides flexibility within a certain set of guidelines. Right. Yep. Okay. And then the last subchapter is the definitions. There's not really a whole lot to talk about there other than we've revised, introduced, and eliminated a lot of definitions. If you look in the draft, all the changes that we've discussed today are footnoted throughout the document. In the definitions as well, it says if a definition was revised from some previous version of a definition, if it's new or if it was not carried forward. And then also to clarify, all the use categories, subcategories, and use types that Tarek mentioned in the use table now have definitions that are clearly defined. So you'll know exactly when Denton says a tiny house development, you'll know exactly what that means based on how it's defined, the same with multifamily and other land uses. So that concludes our summary of the subchapters. I'm going to turn it back over to Matt, and he's going to talk about next steps and where we go from here. Thanks, Jim. If I could belabor this just a little bit more, I just wanted to add on one more point on cluster that I think I didn't hear Jim mention. It's not just an automatic variance from the minimum lot size. There's a tradeoff there. You also have to set aside a minimum amount of the total site area as open space, and that open space has to meet certain criteria in the code. So there's an exchange there. You are having to set aside and protect sensitive features. Appreciate that. Thank you for that clarification. So that's a lot of substance. We've given you a lot to chew on. Thank you all for your patience. We wanted to repeat this slide just now with that background just to remind you about the steps moving forward. Before we get back into the slide, just a little bit more about our next two days here, what we're doing in town. We are going to be meeting more with staff this afternoon to talk about those various other amendments that Scott mentioned earlier, landscaping and tree preservation, collegiate housing, et cetera. We're working to make sure that those are all effectively integrated into the draft as best possible, so we'll be doing that. Meeting tomorrow morning with the staff technical working group. Now, we've mentioned this a few times, but there is a large parallel effort going along with the DDC to repeal a lot of the things that are inconsistent with the new DDC and other parts of the code. That is an equally important exercise. It's very technical and dry, but we need to make sure that all those boxes are checked. So we'll be doing that tomorrow morning. Staff is doing the lion's share of the work on that. We'll be meeting tomorrow afternoon with the DCDA, the Developers Alliance, just to give -- we've been giving them periodic updates as we go through about what we're doing, and we're going to give them another briefing tomorrow. Planning commission tomorrow afternoon, same presentation that you're seeing here, and then the public tomorrow night to give them another opportunity to understand and see everything we're doing. We're going to use the same presentation for both of those, the public and the PNZ. So we have a lot of meetings, a full day tomorrow. Just to remind you about these important milestones coming up, the work sessions are intended to give you another opportunity to dig deep. There is a lot of material here, obviously, and so we've been talking with staff. It would be helpful -- it's not mandatory, but it would be helpful if you could be thinking about any questions you have before those work sessions. If you could get staff just a bulleted list of the things that you'd like to talk about or questions that you have a day or two before the work sessions, that would just help them prepare so that they can think about the particular things. Don't have to, but that would just be helpful for them in terms of preparing. Again, we're going to be setting a deadline probably by the end of the month or March 1st for all the comments on this draft that's coming out at the end of this week, for all the comments to get to Ron, to the staff by March 1st. Then he'll turn around and get them all to us by March 6th. We'll turn that revised document around to the community on the 15th. They're going to have an ongoing series of office hours and open houses, I think, that period between the 18th and the 21st. More detail on those as hours and times are available. Comment deadline on that document will be March 22nd. And then you'll see that final adoption draft on the 29th. That's where we strip out the footnotes. That's where we strip out the commentary. That's where it really starts to look like the actual document is going to look in final form. And then I mentioned earlier the dates that you've already got set for your adoption hearings. I wanted to throw up this other slide here because I've mentioned this briefly, but this is all the post-adoption stuff. This is my living code idea. There are things that happen after adoption. First of all, there is a lag period between the adoption date and the affected date of the new code. It's up to you all what that lag period is. I think the staff has been thinking about a period between three and six months, but that is still to be determined. That can probably be talked about at your work sessions. The lag period gives you an opportunity to do some important stuff. First of all, you need to finalize those repeal ordinances. That's where I mentioned all those other separate things that are being repealed. There's just a lot of nuts and bolts to crank through there, and that's something that can be cleaned up during that lag period. Finalize the zoning map. Do any final tweaks to that based on feedback from the public or property owners. Also a testing period. Also an opportunity for staff and us and you all to just step back and go through some sample projects and make sure that everyone understands, including the counter staff, how the new code is intended to work so they can explain it to the public when it goes live after that period. Longer term, after the affected date of the new code, we strongly encourage you all to track the effectiveness of the DDC. This is really important to monitor how it's doing. Keep track of how many applications are coming through that are considered major site plans versus minor. Did we get that threshold right or does it need to be adjusted? How many variance requests are coming through? If you're getting a lot of requests immediately for people to step outside the code for variances, that's a sign maybe we got something wrong and we need to look at modifying a standard that's leading to a lot of variance requests. Is it user friendly? We've seen some communities do simple surveys that they put on their website asking folks that have used the code, what do you think? Did you have any problems understanding the new document? Any sections that we should clean up? Any terms that should be defined? These are really important things to just monitor in the future just to make sure that it stays current and you don't fall into the hole of 30 years from now you've got a code that's completely out of whack and you need to do a comprehensive amendment again. Consider doing batch updates on a regular basis. We've worked in communities, Henderson, Nevada is a good example, they do code updates twice a year. They put them in a box and they consider them twice a year. They don't do kind of every council meeting, they don't have one or two code amendments come through. They have a regular process where they fold them together which allows them to see the cumulative kind of impact of those different amendments and how they relate to each other. So it's a really good strategy I think. I've said this before, living document. The DDC is really intended to provide policy direction to inform future updates to the code. So I think that's all I wanted to say on that slide. Any comments on the schedule or kind of questions about moving forward or the process here? Yes, Council Member Meltzer and then Council Member Armitage. I guess there are just two ways of presenting it that might be helpful in the discussion, both for us and for elements of the public. One is just whatever you can do to make it easy to sort of see the optometrist thing side by side. Better like this, better like that. What was the old, what was the new? Because you've got to kind of boil it a lot to really or comprehend a lot at once to understand what was old, what was new. And then kind of along the same lines, it helps orient me at the beginning if you say that this is about expressing the Denton 2030 plan because I think that's a great goal. But I wonder if it would be helpful even for the developer community to just clearly say here are kinds of things that in the current code you would have run into problems with before but that now you would have an easy glide path on. And staff has helpfully given a couple of examples in an informal staff report. But now that more detail has been worked through, there might be a more robust list. Those would be a couple of requests from me. Okay, Council Member Armitage. Okay, several things. One, I really love that idea of the, what do you call them, batch or code discussions. I think that's really important, once or twice a year. So I'd like us to consider doing that and to have the public input be part of that process. As for the public outreach period in March, now I know that the new notification process that council majority decided to kind of wait to put into this code so that will be decided around the same time. But I would love to see if possible for neighborhoods as imagined under that notification process be notified and invited to comment on the new code so we can look at these issues by neighborhood and see and have the neighborhoods come to us because they all have their different issues. Some of that will happen organically, but I think that the new way of conceiving of neighborhood notifications as imagined in that new plan would fit so nicely with getting public input in this. And third, I actually had a couple questions for the land use attorney about just kind of the process. So if that -- if you wouldn't mind -- thank you. Thanks for coming up there. >> My pleasure. >> Yeah, I was wondering if you could just say a little bit about, you know, as you worked on this, and you don't have to speak to if you don't want to, because that will be for another discussion, you're certainly welcome to, but the -- you know, what ordinances you're thinking about repealing, but, you know, to what extent did the Fair Housing Act law and kind of risk -- risk of noncompliance factor into, you know, the -- your input from a legal perspective into the new -- the new codes, because it seems to me that there's much less risk in this new envisioning, and I haven't even seen -- I won't even see until February 15th. So I was wondering if you could just speak to that broadly. >> Sure. So interestingly, Denton has used legal review differently than most other cities that I've done legal review on, which is I've been asked to participate in the committee process. And so I've been here most Fridays since probably last September with the committee. And we -- I address not only questions that I'm asked, but as I'm going through the draft, the review process, I will flag issues that I have seen, and I have not at this point seen fair housing issues that I think have not been addressed, but they have not been addressed directly. The way that they've been addressed indirectly is a desire to include different housing types as available options. And when you start talking about tiny homes and you start talking about, you know, that the trend in residential development is for smaller homes on smaller lots, those sort of intrinsically begin to address fair housing issues. They're getting away from 10,000 square foot lots with 2,500 square foot houses, which I think there are a lot of suburban cities in the Dallas/Fort Worth area that would have problems. But Denton already has such a variety of housing options, and this code and the conversation about this code has been specifically to increase that. Well, thank you, and thank you so much for your work on all this. Anything else? Nope. Okay. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. Just for clarification, because you said March 1st is when all the notes would come in, but we've got a March 5th work session, so it's just -- I'm taking it that you're talking about the DCRC will meet on the 1st, and so it'll be the notes from that, and then I'll also add the 5th in there to get into that -- the consolidated comments. That's a great point, Councilmember. We need to talk with staff and just confirm what our internal calendar is between the work sessions and that March 6th deadline. We've just been talking about the need for that March 6th is when everything comes to us, and they need time to package that, because that will include public comments as well as council comments, DCRC. Honestly, when we had the conversation, it hadn't -- I don't think we were realizing it was a March 5th meeting, so we need to factor that in. We might need to adjust that date by a couple -- we might need to push this to March 7th or 8th to reflect that meeting. If I could make one more comment on the calendar. Thinking about this from a fresh perspective and knowing there's some public folks watching and listening to this, when I look at this slide, it says public outreach there in one little box, March 18th through the 21st. That's the purpose of those few days. It's going to focus on public outreach, but really, public outreach is threaded throughout everything on this slide. There really should be a big yellow arrow down the bottom that just has public outreach throughout everything, because the public will be looking at the document that's posted on February 15th, and they'll have an opportunity to provide feedback as well that we get on the March 6th, so I don't want to imply for anyone watching that the public input is limited to this narrow window, because it really is much more broad than that. Member Hutzpeth. My comments, mainly for city manager. My preference would be if we -- for the PDF -- for the draft version for me, if it could be in PDF format with the hyperlinks that would then leak through the index throughout the document as well as the site, so if they reference another -- something outside of the site that's accessible by website, maybe Melissa and her crew can hyperlink that out so that I can kind of stay in the PDF and kind of manage that way, make notes, that sort of thing. So again, it's just -- if they can hyperlink the -- what is that -- table of contents and then also link the sites, if there's any external websites, that would be my preference. Please and thank you. Anybody else? Any more slides? No. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Great presentation overall. Thank you. Both of you. So of course we're going to be diving in as the days and weeks come, so look forward to that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. You bet. All right. We're going to move on to our next work session agenda item, which is probably the one that's going to be the most exciting. Receive report and hold discussion to give staff direction regarding ordinance governing the use of the City of Denton's right-of-ways for construction purposes and the processes and procedures implementing that. I'm going to go get my copy. I hope I can live up to the hype on that one. Man. Jim. Jim. Jim. Oh, you got it? I've got that expectation way to definitely have pre-TAM here to give this one. Afternoon, Mayor, Council, Todd Estes, City Engineer. Staff has been working over the last six months on a right-of-way ordinance. It encompasses multiple things that can be the use of the right-of-way. That's not what we're going to talk about today, because that has not been the primary focus of engineering. I can promise you that. We are talking about the construction elements. The construction elements are the right-of-way use ordinance as it exists today. You see on the left side there, this side right here. That's Chapter 25 addresses what you can and cannot do within the streets or the public right-of-way is a component of that, the way it was set up. The original code that we used to work through today was adopted in 1966 and has pretty well been left unchanged since 1966. I believe there's only one, maybe two provisions in there that's been updated, and I think the last one was in 1999. It had to do with how you allow police officers to be part of a parade in a funeral procession, so that's the last adjustment to how we deal with the right-of-way and construction. On the left, what you see is what's actually in Article 2 today of Chapter 25. It's very minimal. It talks about what you can and cannot do in the right-of-way, but beyond that, it doesn't really get into much of anything. It says, "City engineer can and will come and inspect certain items through the engineering department." It can tell you to stop, but that's about it, so please stop. Please continue. That's really about all we can do today. Most of the cities that have a comprehensive right-of-way ordinance, especially in regard to construction, looks very similar to what you see on the right. This is what staff has been working on for the last six months. As we go into a period of heavy construction on both the capital improvement side, for the city roadways, city water utilities, storm water improvements, and then the sheer volume of development that is coming in, plus you combine that with franchise utilities, Atmos Gas, as they start to revamp and upgrade their system. The various franchise utilities, as we call them, the small cell providers are coming into the fray of this as we all try to jockey for who's doing what work in the right-of-way. There need to be better controls about us making sure we know who's doing what, who's doing what when, and not getting in the way of each other, but also trying to maintain the actual safety of the right-of-way for the users of the right-of-way. So if you're driving a car, we don't want to overload you with too many things going on all at one time. How do we make sure we don't keep this so crowded that we're bumping each other's elbows? All of this comes into play as we start working through this item. So again, today, what we're talking about on the left is construction. So the barricades, heavy equipment out there potentially might have material stored in the right-of-way. So say there's a building going through construction or overhaul, you may see somebody storing material in the right-of-way. So what ends up happening? We would ask for a lane closure. Lane closures could be bicycle lanes, could be street, roadway lanes, it could actually be sidewalks as well. So we make sure the pedestrian is accounted for throughout this process as well. We are not talking about today the things on the right that are like street use or right-of-way use of tables and chairs for a restaurant or where you put a dumpster. That is not part of this discussion and what staff's proposing now. That will come as part of an overall right-of-way use ordinance, but right now we're just trying to get ahead of what all the sheer volume of construction, the CIPs continue to go out the door. How do we get ahead of that and make sure that we have a good process for permitting the work, staying on top of the work, making sure that we're all using the right-of-way in a safe and manageable way? Quick question. Tom? Yes, sir. On the actual, printed off the document. Yes, sir. So I've been reading through it, so I had questions at the beginning, but it sounds like you're covering something that, do you know about what pages, what you're talking about today is covered in the actual draft ordinance? I don't think we're starting at the beginning and going through it. No. We're not. On the construction side? Yes. It'd be Article 2. This will, what we're proposing going forward. Now, this is just what we're working on now to give you an update of where we are. Article 1, I believe in the current draft, and Larry can correct me where I go astray here. Article 1, where we have some proposed changes in there right now, that is primarily for the items that play a part in the construction aspect of Article 2. We're really focused on Article 2, which is construction on the right-of-way, repealing what's currently in Article 2, and then putting in a new Article 2 that looks more like the format that's been presented. Okay. All right. So then if I had questions prior to page 9, which is where Article 2 starts, just save those or send them or something, because that's not what we're discussing today. Absolutely. Absolutely. Please do. Okay. You bet. All right. Thank you. All right. So in the coming months, once we have addressed all the construction issues on this, then we would be coming back with those used items, and I would expect that my partner in crime, Scott MacDonald here, would be leading more of that discussion than me. So what are we dealing with in the right-of-way today? These are just some images of the things that a poor right-of-way ordinance does allow to happen, and this is what we're trying to prevent. So you can see these nice teeth marks here. Somebody had a backhoe out in the middle of the right-of-way. This was on Cedar Street, has recently been redone. You get the nice teeth marks sitting there, somebody has damaged the roadway. Today per our ordinance, all we can do is basically go out there and replace it and fix it and send somebody a bill and hope they'll pay for it. That's really what it does. So what we're trying to prevent are these issues here where you see a poor asphalt patch. There's a franchise utility who's dealing with something that's a problem. I don't know if our crews did it or anybody else. This ordinance applies to us, how we operate within the right-of-way just as much as it does anybody else. This is those same items we were talking about before where somebody's doing work to a building but they're off into the street, so we make sure that we, anytime somebody comes in for a permit, how do you account for pedestrian safety, bicycle safety, vehicular safety, and general safety to the public? Yes, I'm sorry, Councilmember Briggs. And as of right now, it's my understanding that these types of machines can be parked on the street or in parking places and there's not a permit required. We do ask them for a permit, but again, it's ask for a permit. There's not really anything we can come back to unless there's physical damage to the roadway, which is hard to quantify unless you see the roadway start to sink in underneath it. So what did we do to get to where we are with the current draft? So we believe in going and looking at other cities that seem to be doing things well. We looked at a whole host of different cities that have right-of-way ordinances and we said, you know, which of these do we really like the language on? This was a conglomeration of Scott and Development Services. This is legal working with the Engineering CIP group as well, trying to figure out where do we go from there, then we reined it in to about five other cities where we really as a group liked the language and then what do we pull from there to develop our own? So you can see the cities that we were talking about here. I call this our NASCAR slide. It's all the logos all over the place. So what are we doing today? We're just giving you briefly an update on what we're working on and what's coming. So Article 1, you'll see it's termed use of right-of-way in two different places, partly Article 1 and Article 4. We're still working through what those really are. So we're still using the existing framework, what we have on the books, to come back and say, all right, well, how can I start with that, utilize those pieces because I still need to hammer those issues out and we are working on those, but I need to get to the crux of the matter, which is construction and then the small cell. So small cell items, we took October, I think it was September, October, Larry, you can correct me on the dates, of 2017, brought that forward to council. We adopted that ordinance, then last year we did an update to it. This just puts all of our right-of-way items, which you can use the right-of-way for, in one consolidated place. So you're not looking throughout the code of ordinances for small cell, for electric utilities, whatever. They're all in one place. And then Article 4 seems like a redundant repeat of Article 1. As we go through this process, we will have this refined. Permits required. So any construction within the right-of-way would require a permit. So that's tearing up a sidewalk to replace a sidewalk, tapping a water line, anything that's going on, whether it's our contractor doing a new roadway, still going to require a permit of some kind so that we know where they are, who it is, who to get a hold of at any given time and make sure that we operate it safely. Any right-of-way use that is construction-related. So like we talked about, here's a great example. There's high wires over the roadway. You've got somebody sitting off into the roadway. They need to do that to do the work, but they still need to have a traffic control plan. They need to have permitted it. We need to know who it is, how long they intend to be there, all those rules of the game we need to know. You're going to abide by those within the right-of-way. What would be in that permit requirement? So over on the right, you've got, we engineers love drawings. So that's a typical, what we would call the manual, so it's the manual and uniform traffic control devices. Thank you for your time here to make sure I got it right. So the MUTCD, we always say it really fast, but what that really means, it's a big book of all those safety signs and all the ways that you can safely work a construction zone for whatever you're doing. At a minimum, we would want to see that. It may be broader, more detailed than that, but you need to address that issue. You need to submit a set of construction plans so we know what it is you intend to do within the right-of-way. Register within the city so we know who to contact, who's actually doing the work, just so we know what that is, submit an application that has all those items with it, whatever fees and then proof of bonds and insurance. That's a complete package that allows us to then have the right people review what you've submitted and permit you to do the work within the right-of-way. Those are not very clear items currently. Just on the fees, is that something you looked at when you looked at the other cities, just to compare? We did, and that's actually in another slide here, and those fees are just a starting place. We're still working on what those will be, but yes, that is another slide here. A big word says penalties, but that's a function of this, just so that you can kind of see when you are asking for a permit, various cities have different ways of accounting for it, but really you're talking about, one, what's it cost just to get that set of plans or that application reviewed to make sure we can effectively work that same place in the right-of-way than any kinds of potential other fees that might be incurred based on what you're doing. Penalties, it's the ugly word, but it's the reality. If you're doing work in the right-of-way, up to $500 a day is where most everybody lands. If it's not a public health safety or welfare issue, if you're blocking off the roadway and you're doing it not in accordance with your traffic control plan or otherwise it could be up to $2,000 a day, a lot more impacts put on that just from the standpoint that if I can't get a fire truck to somebody, that's a problem. Most cities are pretty uniform across the board on that. We're not suggesting going anywhere but the same place. So when you say penalties, is that if they're in the right-of-way without authorization? Without authorization, operating outside their permit. Okay. So it's something that they're doing, it's a penalty? Yes. Okay. It's just not a fee for that? No. Got you. It's just not a penalty. Fees are something else entirely. Thank you. Yes, Council Member Tritz? So to that, will there be inspections or is it complaint-driven or how do you? There will be inspections but inspections are always tempered by how many sites can we get to in a day. So as soon as we get other complaints, any city staff member would be encouraged to let us know, let the inspections department know there's an issue out here. We can immediately get out there and that allows cities, the appropriate city staff to then handle the scenario. So it would be both complaint-driven and... Yes. We could get those things through Engage Denton to go look at as well. Right. Okay. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. We have a kind of a coordinator within the city that's going to look at what the city's already shut down and what the contractor is trying to shut down so we don't get detoured into a detour of a detour. That's a big part of this component right now. The way these applications get submitted, it runs through whoever seems to get it at the time. There's not a real clear process for that. This allows us to establish that process so that when you submit your traffic permit or you see your permit, submit your permit, it's going to go through traffic engineering so they can have a look at all the things within the city operating at the same time, how does that impact maybe signal timing? Maybe your detour route doesn't work because there's several other things coming in and we need to make sure that those things all work together. Council Member Huxley. Thank you. Todd, I understand, thank you for the explanation, kind of implementation. I would ask that staff look at a tell, some kind of it's a green sign that says they've been through the process, you know, other than because the only other way that the layperson drives by and sees that they have not permitted maybe is either one, you know, this process or two, there's no signage and maybe that triggers something, but if there's an obvious tell that says there's a green sign, almost like a planning and zoning type sign, the four by three or whatever, in front of them that says and it's, you know, again, I would suggest just color coded, you know, hey, if you see something going on and there's not this green sign in front of it, let us know. Maybe even I know for erosion control permits, stormwater pollution prevention plans, you have to post that on a job site if it's required, I mean, you could even have that posted in a hospital place. Yes, yes, so I think that way, if I'm, sometimes they're driving by and they don't see whatever that signage is, then they know, hey, there's a miss, something a miss here and it motivates compliance because it's obvious if you're not in compliance. So schedule as we move forward towards adoption of a right of way use ordinance in regard to construction was be pending on any feedback in this work session today, we would incorporate that in and then we would intend to follow very much the same schedule you just saw with the DDC. So through March, we'll be reaching out to some of our local development groups, some of our local consulting groups and make sure that they get a chance to comment on what we're proposing to do. And we incorporate those and then come back to council with where we ended up. Once we put all those comments together, we would anticipate coming back to council for adoption of the ordinance in April as a member. I would love for this to come before the residents with disabilities committee. I think that would be really appropriate and it would forget exactly when their meeting is but sometime in March so that would work within the timeline. If this could come before them for their input, I think that would be really beneficial. >> Okay. >> Councilmember Bries? >> Back on to the permit requirements, I just keep having questions because of the one situation that was downtown, but with the permit, will there be a date like we are going to be here for this many days and then if they're not, will they get a warning or who decides how long they're going to be there? Is that the person asking? >> Yes. They permit their application would request the days they actually anticipate both working and then how long do they anticipate if there's a lane closure, do they anticipate the closure? >> Okay. If there's provision where based on a certain timeline, that would actually have to come to council if it's over an extended period of time where that would have to be recommended for approval. >> Will there be some leeway in there for individuals who if it's of course outside work but weather delays or something that they couldn't make that so then they could go back without having to come through the process or pay a penalty so there would be some of that in there. >> Yes, there's provision in there to allow that to occur. >> For what? Okay. Because we are in Texas. >> Yes. Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> I believe the last slide after that one was just a recommendation to move forward. >> Yes. So I would certainly encourage council to read the portions that we're going to be going over and if you have any questions, because that's the devil's -- I mean, the details there. I'll send you those questions that I have on article 1 which wasn't the topic of this discussion. Any other questions, comments on this? All right. Seeing none, we will -- I think that concludes our work session portion of our council meeting at least up to this point. So we will now convene the closed session, go into closed session at 3.43 p.m. You will consider the following items, consultation with attorneys under Texas government code section 551.071 and deliberations regarding personnel matters under Texas government code section -- excuse me -- under Texas government code section 551.074. >> Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on February 12, 2019. It is 4/27. We have concluded our work session reports. So now we will convene in an open meeting to consider the following items, special open meeting to consider the following items and we do have a quorum so we'll call this meeting to order. The first is our consent agenda. So we have a motion to approve the consent agenda items except pulling agenda item J for individual consideration. >> Second. >> All in favor of the consent agenda items except for agenda item J, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Carries unanimously. We will now consider agenda item J, which is considered an option of the ordinance of the City of Denton authorizing the city manager to execute and deliver a first amendment to lease of city property between the City of Denton and VOW 221 East Hickory LLC correcting the lease name and confirming the remaining terms of the agreement and providing an effective date. Councilmember Armitage, you pulled that. Did you want a staff presentation or you just wanted to pull it? >> No. I was just going to vote no. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Hussbett. >> Move approval. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> I just want clarification on this item that because I did seek question that this is just one changing the name, that there's no other terms or no other parties being added to this. It's not extending the lease. It's not changing the terms of the lease. So I just wanted to get that clarification out there. It's just the one party. >> Deanna Cote, in real estate, and you're correct, there are no other terms being changed to the lease. >> Okay. So I do have a question. Because it has been the wrong name on the lease for so long, what -- can we -- do we know why or what has happened? >> Yes, the property is in the process of being sold from the current property owner to a new entity, and this item came across as -- through our search that we did not have an appropriate lease with the appropriately named LLC. There had been an error up front with that. So I would not sign off on the transfer of the assignment until it came to council. So that's what happened. >> So with that, if the property is sold, would this transfer to the new owners, is that the lease would transfer then to the new ownership or would that have to come? >> Yes. It's essentially cleaning up the terminology of the first initial LLC. It would facilitate the assignment, but I thought it was important to do that publicly. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. We had a motion by I believe councilmember Hutspeth for agenda item 1J or 4J. 4J. Mayor Pro Tem. >> I'll second. >> All right. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 4J, all please signify by your right hand if you're voting for approval. I didn't say that very well. And all opposed by like sign. So the motion carries 4-2. We'll now move on to our items for individual -- 5-2, I'm sorry. Sorry. Yes. My math is off. 5-2. Thank you, Mr. City Attorney. Agenda items 2A, consider approval of a resolution of the City of Denton, Texas supporting legislation to create the coal ranch improvement district and providing an effective date. I'm going to go ahead and call B as well since they're basically identical except for different names. >> Yes, sir. >> Go ahead. >> If you could also call item D as well. >> D. >> D as in dog. >> All right. All three related. >> Okay. So agenda item 2B is consider approval of a resolution of the City of Denton supporting legislation to create the Hunter Ranch improvement district number 1 of Denton County, Texas. And agenda item D is consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas authorizing the mayor to execute an escrow agreement regarding reimbursement of city expenses related to municipal improvement districts and providing the effective date. >> Okay. Well, thank you, Mayor and Councilman Bryan Langley, Deputy City Manager. I wanted to continue our discussion on coal and Hunter Ranch as we've been talking over the last couple of weeks about these particular developments. We worked very closely with the developers and our legal council to come up with the resolutions of support that we talked about last week as well as the escrow agreement. I'll go through very briefly and touch on the key aspects of those agreements. I also want to take a moment to introduce Bryan Karloch with Hillwood, OC Vest with Stratford Land. They're also here in case you have any questions of the applicant as we kind of go through them. So just in terms of background, as we've been discussing with you, these are large tracks of land. There are actually two owners of the land, Coal Ranch and Hunter Ranch, are each about 3,000 acres. So in total, over 6,000 acres of land on the western side of the city. In 2018, the partners for both of these developments got together and were looking to coordinate a development, a large development, over 6,000 acres. They're asking the city to consider a municipal management district, an MMD, to levy a tax, which would reimburse them then for the cost of the infrastructure and improvements that need to be made on the site for their development. Again, we've had a couple of different work sessions with the council on January 15th and then last week on February 5th. The council has been asked to consider a resolution that would support the creation of the MMD and this would go to the state legislature as a bill. The bill would then progress through the legislature and conceivably be approved for adoption in the summer, signed by the governor. And following the passage of that, then we would be looking at entering into an operating agreement, a consent ordinance to approve the actual formation of the MMD and an agreement with the developer as well. And I'll show you a graphic here in a moment that shows you how that would work. The approval of the resolution for items A and B on your agenda provides the city's consent for the legislation, but it does not give specific consent for the creation of the MMD. As we've talked about with you in the past, that would come later in the process as we would look at what all terms need to go in the operating agreement, the developer agreement that we've talked about. The city would also reserve the right to impose conditions on the MMD and the district through three documents. Again, the consent ordinance, the operating agreement, and the developer agreement. So all the discussions we've had about what are the design guidelines, what are the gas well setbacks, affordable housing, the various different issues that have come up in our discussion, those are still on the table and are things that can be considered as we go through the process. Here's a graphic just to show you a little bit about the process and the different documents that would be required. Again, today we're asking the council to consider that resolution of support for the legislation. The legislation would then be filed and once it was approved by the legislature, or if it's approved by the legislature, then again we would have a city consent ordinance on the right, which would have the restriction on the purposes of the bonds, how the district is going to be established. We would also then have an operating agreement, which would have a tax rate limitation that we've talked about with you is 55 cents, but it could have other restrictions as well as determined through our negotiations over the next few months, and we'd also have the developer agreement. All of this would be done, has to be done before December of 2020. That's the sunset date that's being put in the legislation that's going to the Texas legislature. So these are all things that would happen over the next few months as we get ready for that date. Again, there are two 6,000 acre development in total. It's meant to be master plan together, but there's two separate owners, Cole Ranch and Hunter Ranch. And so because of that, there are two separate items that we're asking you to consider. Item A is for the Cole Ranch Improvement District number one of Denton County, and item B on your agenda is for the Hunter Ranch Improvement District number one of Denton County as well. Again, the bill itself that's in the language is virtually identical except for the name and the description of the property, but they're closely related. Here is the process that we'll go through again is that we've been talking to you about. This is the same graphic I showed you last week, but we'll have the vote today on the resolution of support. And then we'll begin working with the developer on the operating agreements, the development agreements as well. We're going to be working on the fiscal impact analysis that we've mentioned to you as well to see exactly what all the costs are, what's required for the development, what's the infrastructure that's required offsite, the regional infrastructure that we've talked about, and the infrastructure actually on the site itself. And then following all of those discussions, we'll bring back to you votes on the consent ordinance and the approval of the operating agreement and the development agreement, and the way we're thinking about these is these would all be approved on the same day when we brought all three agreements back to you at one time so you could see them all together. So Brian, could you repeat those three sort of, you call them agreements, one is the operating agreement, the other is the consent ordinance, and what's the third one? The developer agreement. So that would be specific with each developer, include the design guidelines, whatever type of restrictions or elements that we wanted to have for affordable housing, gas well sites, the setbacks, the electric service that we've talked about as an example with DME if we wanted to make that a requirement, for opportunities if they had a service by DME that we could make that a requirement, they used them. Those are just some of the ideas that we've talked about. So those are the first two items on your agenda, item A and B. Item D on your agenda, the escrow agreement is to have an agreement with each developer. They would put up $50,000 in total, so $25,000 each, to pay for our legal costs, to review all these different agreements, and also to pay for the fiscal impact analysis using an outside firm to prepare that fiscal impact analysis and bring that back to you. That's just initial estimate of the cost. There may be costs in it above that. So if we spend $40,000 of that $50,000, the escrow agreement would require them to have another $50,000 that would be deposited in to help us finalize that. So there may be a few iterations of the escrow agreement as we work through the process and bring you various different drafts of the agreements over the next few months. So that's my presentation. Be happy to try to answer any questions that you may have. Again, the developers are here as well. I know we've talked about this at length over the last couple of meetings, but we'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have. We do have a couple of cards, and white cards indicate "do not wish to speak," but it's from Kim McKibbin, 1306 West Hickory, excuse me. It's for agenda item 2A and 2B, and both of the cards are identical. Do not wish to speak in opposition, no, no, and no. So I wanted to make sure I reflected that. All right. I'm going to go with Councilmember Husspeth and then Councilmember Briggs. So, Brian, I just wanted to highlight that point, that there's -- so it's -- this step is to go into -- to discuss the details, and the -- I'm going to say applicants will front the cost, and then if we meet or exceed those, then that is -- that upfront provision is replenished, if you will. Right. I think this expresses some desire to proceed with the development, that you think there's merit in having further discussions, it allows the bill to get filed and have support behind that bill. But all those detailed discussions about what exactly that you want to be in the development, all the different design guidelines, restrictions, those are all still future discussions that you can have, and you can still decide at some point in the future that if you don't feel like you're comfortable with the development, that you don't -- you're not required to consent to create it. You still have that option in the future. This just allows the legislation to get filed and start that process. Understood. Okay. Council Member Briggs. Is the sunset December 20 date on the legislation that's being filed? Yes. Because it's not on -- It's part of the bill in December 2020. Okay. And because it's not in our resolution, should it be part of that, or is that just included in -- Well, the way -- Because it says the legislation -- We can certainly, I suppose, add it as a clause in the resolution, but we've included the legislation as an exhibit, and it mentioned that we're in support of the legislation, provided that it doesn't substantially change from what's included as that attachment. So that's the way we've linked them together. And is the -- Go ahead. I'm sorry. Is the legislation divided up into two pieces, or is it just one? It would be two separate bills that would go for each separate tribe. Okay. And do we have -- I think it was asked of us to make sure that we have consent or documentation that the land owners for which own the land are in favor of this legislation as well? Do we have any of that on file? I would defer that probably to Stratford Land and Hillwood. I would suspect the answer is yes, but I'm sure we can ask them to answer that if you 'd like. Can those -- okay, can -- Do you want to address that? I'll ask OC and -- Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is OC Vest. My partner with Stratford Land in Dallas, Texas. The coal ranch is owned by a partnership called the SLF II Coal Property Partnership. And Stratford Land -- Stratford Land SLF, Stratford Land Fund II is a partner and the general partner of that partnership. Well, of the people, though, that own the property, because there's a lot of individual players, I'm just curious about everyone's buy-in and okay with this process. Is that something that has to be done to get this legislation created? Yes. As the general partner of the entity that owns the property, we are representing that we have the authority to file the legislation. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Brian, can you flip back to slide 5? Yes, sir. Because they'll want to create sub-districts as well once the main district is done, so on that middle one, MMD legislation, obviously consent is -- if we don't agree to the other three, we're not giving consent -- powers and duty, Board of Directors and Governance and the defining of the area -- outside of sunset clause, everything up there is subject to change, possibly could, it's all negotiable even in that area, is it not? There is. We've added -- there's some language in the legislation which is tied to law about what's allowed and the options that are going to be available in this particular MMD, but most things, as you pointed out, through the different operating agreements, the development agreement, they're subject to change as we kind of look at the deal as it goes forward. Okay. And that's been kind of the intent of drafting the legislation is to try to put as much as we could into the operating agreements at some point, because we simply haven't had enough time to really kind of think through all those different elements and have those conversations with council. Right. So until the third party actually comes back with a report to us, we can't really examine that 55. And if that's the maximum that we're thinking it's going to be, but that's not even in the legislation, is it? That's right. That would be an operating agreement term. Could go down, could go up, could go any which way. Yes, sir, that's the intent is to do the fiscal impact analysis to understand what are the actual costs, what's required to pay off those costs, and what are our options that we have. I think we will break down that 55 cent for the council on regional infrastructure, internal infrastructure and amenities, and kind of let you have that debate from there. Okay. That way you have that information, you can determine what areas are you flexible on, what areas are important to you, but right now you don't really have that data. And so in all actuality, it's because of the fact that the state legislature meets once every two years, and timing wise, they need this now before we've had time to do that negotiation and look at those in deeper. Yes, sir. In deeper thought. Yes. Okay. Here, I'll find it. So I've got a couple of questions. And just to let everybody know, you know, we got the resolution and the draft language for the legislation this weekend and was reviewing it this weekend, so I have some questions about it. Okay. So we might have to call upon, you know, either the council for the developer or- We have our legal counsel as well. Or someone's counsel here as well. So I'm looking for, in the local government code, Chapter 375, that there is a requirement, and I'm looking here on, if somebody could direct me to the requirement that we have to create, that we have to pass a resolution. I'm looking at the creation of the district with the petition. The petition does not necessarily require that, but I know it's in here somewhere. So just look for that, just so that I can put my eyeballs on it to know that this is required by the current Chapter 375 of the Texas Local Government Code, because consent is used in very different ways throughout this whole discussion. One is consent to the creation of the district, and then the local government code talks about consent to issue bonds, and in the resolution and in the corresponding legislation on the resolution, sometimes I wonder if these are all the same consent. So I'm just going to sort of go through this so I can understand if that's okay. So that first question just, it doesn't have to be answered right now, but I just want to make sure that I- And if I can, we've got Mac Ryan Wong. Okay. He had to answer that question? I hope so. And Greg Shaker, as well, is our blind counselor. Mayor and Councilman Mac Ryan Wong with the City Attorney's Office. I think what you're referring to is in Section 009A, it refers there to the conditions that must be met before this district is authorized to- That's 375-009A? No, it's not, sir. It's actually in this bill that's being proposed. Oh. This bill uses 375 as the underlying statute that governs, but it has some provisions in addition to 375, the control, so what it has in Section A of 009 says the city must adopt an ordinance or resolution consenting to the creation of the district and the land in the district, and the district and the city must negotiate and execute a mutually approved and accepted operating agreement providing for the general description of the project. That all must be done before the district may exercise any of its powers under the- What page is that on? It's on page five. In the resolution? Yes. I'm on the Hunter resolution and on page five. Okay, yes. All right, so then, okay, so then this language here is, where is it reflected in the requirements of 375? 375 has a requirement that you have to consent before the issuance of bonds. It's 375-207, I believe. That is not the same, this isn't the same resolution or consent that we're talking about, is that correct? Correct. So is this something that we're adding specifically to this legislation that's not a requirement within local government code, Chapter 375? Yes, sir. This is the precondition that we've told the council that we would put in here, that to require the operating agreement as well as the city's consent ordinance before the district exercises any powers, before they are authorized to even go down that process to issue bonds. All right, so then when I look at 207 of 375-207, let me get to it. I'm just trying to understand that, make sure I understand. Are you in 375 or in the- I'm in 375, where it says Municipal Approval Section 375.207 says a district must obtain the approval of the governing body of the municipality in which it is located for bond issuances for improvement and plans and specifications of the improvement project financed by the issue before the bonds may be issued. So that approval is not the approval that we're talking about in Section 39.009A? That's correct. All right. So it's a separate thing. It is a separate thing, yes. It's one that we're creating that we're not required to create. I mean, we're saying we want this as additional protection. That's right. All right. Okay. So fantastic because that was a question I had. So I want to go then just with the resolution itself on page 2 because I think it emphasizes this and it emphasizes what we've been talking about. In Section 3 of the resolution itself, it states expressly the passage of this resolution does not constitute the city-specific consent to the creation of the district as required by the Constitution and general laws of the state of Texas, and the city specifically reserves the right to consent to the district and impose consent conditions on the district. So when it says that the city must consent according to the Constitution and general laws of the state of Texas, that's really what I'm really trying to figure out. That's a general statement, but if the Constitution requires us to consent and the general laws, are you talking about the laws of 375? As well as this bill, sir, yes, 375 as well as this bill are going to require it because this will become a statute. This will become the law of the state that will require us to do that. So I would like to see maybe some detailed language stating that, that I put in here including but not limited to Chapter 375 of the Texas Local Government Code requirements so that we all understand that this level of consent that we're adding is basically being created in the legislation that we're proposing, and then it's going to have to conform with all the others. That's something that could be added. And I guess when it says in the city specifically reserves the right to consent, that means it reserves the right not to consent. Absolutely. Okay. All right. So then in, and this goes to the homeowner question, I think, in Chapter 375 under the petition of the Local Government Code of Section, what is that, the petition, Section .022, where it talks about a petition has to be submitted to even get this thing rolling. And it says the petition must be signed by the owners of a majority of the assessed value of the real property in the proposed district according to the most recent certified county property tax rules. So there is a requirement that property owners, not 100%, but that have a majority of the assessed value have to sign a petition asking for this. Is that correct? Correct, sir. Correct. Okay. All right. I just want to make sure with council that they're understanding as well that the petition would have to be provided by the property owners. All right. Fantastic. And then on page that now we're back into the legislation that's attached to the resolution. On page, because I want to just, I just want to make sure that we address this specifically. I'm going to, I hate to say on the record because we're always on the record unless we're in closed session and we still may be. So in section 39.009 says the consent of the municipality is required. So except as provided in subsection C, which subsection C is simply the board shall have the powers necessary, convenient or desirable to negotiate and execute a mutually approved and accepted operating agreement. In other words, if you're going to have a discussion with somebody, then you have the power to discuss it. But other than that, before the district may exercise any powers under this chapter, this legislation, this chapter that is attached to the resolution, the city must adopt an ordinance or resolution. I would probably think an ordinance. So here are the three things consenting to the creation of the district and to the inclusion of the land in the district. That's just creating the district must and the district and the district and the city must negotiate and execute a mutually approved and accepted operating agreement, providing any general description of the improvement projects that may be financed by the district, the terms and conditions for financing those improvements, project terms and conditions for the operating of the district. Now that's a little different than the agreement up here because here the MMD operating agreement, which is what I'm assuming that what I just read is referring to, that sort of gives as a description including tax rate limitation, 55 cents, limitation on economic development tools, financing reporting, et cetera, et cetera. Those seem like sort of general kind of things that we want to either include or exclude like we don't want them to annex land. We could put that in that operating agreement. But for specific projects like, okay, this is the water well, I mean, this is the waterline, this is the sewer line, this is the major arterial road, this is whatever infrastructure that's going to be required. That seems to indicate that that's part of which says general description of the improvement projects that may be financed by the district. That seems like it's part of this operating agreement when it seems like the discussion has been that may be part of the developer agreement. So I'm trying to understand what is included in which one. Well, that's to be negotiated. But I would certainly anticipate aspects of both of those being in both the agreements. Certainly the district is going to take on some obligations for the infrastructure. That's why it's being created. So certainly that is part of it will be in the operating agreement to the extent that the district is involved in that part of it and financing those developer may be involved as well. They may be dedicating some land or property, there's different things that they will be involved with as well. So when it gets negotiated, I would anticipate those would be part of both agreements. Okay, so the developer agreement is not mentioned in the legislation as far as a cent or agreement. What's the rationale behind that? Well, the rationale is that that is going to be a component of we'll have our operating agreement, the project development agreement as well, and the consent. That consent ordinance won't be approved by the council unless that is in place. So it's not explicitly stated here, but the thought process is we won't get to that point unless we have a developer or an operating agreement, we won't get to the consent ordinance as well. Those are all going to be hand in hand. We're going to have to have all three to go forward at the same time. Sure. So what I think would be helpful if it's appropriate, and I'll certainly rely upon some input from them, is we've got two of those agreements in the legislation. We have to consent and we have to have an agreement on the operating agreement as it's defined in the legislation. So it would be helpful if we're going to have to eventually agree to all three of these, that that third requirement be in the legislation, but I'll let them address that because that might be something different than what y'all probably discussed in the past. On D of 39.009, it seems that that might be redundant, and there's nothing wrong with backup redundancy, but up in A it says before the district may be created, the city must adopt an ordinance or resolution consenting to the creation of the district and the inclusion of the land and district. D just repeats that, so we can leave it in there unless there's something I'm missing. I think this is the subsequent addition of land. Initially, there's going to be the inclusion of land within the district. D is going to speak to that future, right, if they want to acquire more property and add it to the district, this is addressing that type of scenario. Okay. That's a good point. So are the same requirements for an agreement for additional land, the consent, the operating agreement, and the developer agreement, are we going to have three different agreements for each MMD that is going to be created? Not necessarily. The way it's drafted is there's either a jointer to the existing operating agreement, that that new area would come in under that existing operating agreement, or there might be a separate agreement if we wanted to do something else, but there would be an agreement with that additional property. They would either be part of that original agreement or there would be a new agreement. Okay. So if I'm looking at this conceptually, and I'm sorry to take up so much time, but I want to make sure I understand this, I mean, this is important. So in the beginning, we'll have this sort of overarching umbrella consent operating agreement and developer agreement for the MMD. But that MMD can be split up into, I say it's a municipal management district, but there'll be separate municipal management districts, whatever we agree to, four per property, seven per large tract. That's all up for discussion. So if we're requiring to give consent for additional lands or exclusion of land, does that mean that's in addition to what was not originally contemplated in the original MMD? Like the 6,000 acres? Yes. Yeah. Got you. Two different concepts. One's adding new land. Okay. All right. One is subdividing the existing land. Got you. Okay. All right. All right. Let me make sure I've got -- Okay. So in section 39.106 of the legislation attached to the resolution, where it says approval by the city. The district must obtain the approval of the city for plans and specs of projects, et cetera. Plans and specs of improvement projects related to use of land owned by the city. It may be an administrative process that does not involve the city's governing body unless approval of the governing body of the city is required by federal, state, or local ordinance or regulation. I really have a question about that. I don't know if I like that there's an administrative process that can occur, so I need to understand what was contemplated in that regard. I mean, my goal would just be to just say you've got to have city approval and that it can't be an administrative process. So is there -- Am I looking at that wrong? Not necessarily. I think most of this, if not all of this, will be part of the operating agreement and the developer project agreement. That's where all of this will be drawn up as far as who's going to do what, where they're going to build their stuff. I think what they're just more speaking to it here is when they come in to actually build that, what's that approval process look like? And I think this allows for them to go through the same process that any other developer would as far as if they want to build a road, is that an administrative approval where they have the city engineer review and approve it or they need to come to council for that? I think the project agreement is going to control all that process. Okay. I'll reserve my ride on that one. On C, it says so prior to the issuance of bonds, the district must provide to the city and that's, they've done the work, the infrastructure is put in, they're asking, the district's asking for the issuance of the bonds to reimburse the eligible costs on the project. So prior to the issuance of those bonds, the district must provide the city authorizing the bond to certify that it is in compliance, and we talked about this last time, with the terms and conditions of the city's consent ordinance or resolution and the operating agreement, which are the two up there. But we also think it, I would think they'd have to certify that it adheres to the developer agreement as well. Correct. Okay. So I would like to see if that gets in there somewhere. And so, and this is another important one because we talked about this earlier before. District bonds may be issued in the amount not to exceed 10% of the assessed valuation of the property in the district. So is that, that's some legalese and so I'm making sure that practically speaking I understand what that says. Is that saying that before bonds can be issued for a bond amount, that there has to be ten times the assessed value of the issuance of those bonds that are certified by the developer when they give us this. They must provide this certification that we want to issue $10 million worth of bonds. There has to be at least $100 million of assessed value that is associated with either that MMD, that project that -- is that -- Yeah, that's my understanding and I would defer to the developer I see nods over there as well. I just don't know about in that amount not to exceed 10%, I mean, does that mean that can it be less than that? I mean, I would like to think that it would have to be at least that. And I don't think that says that. That just says not to exceed. That's more of a ceiling instead of a floor. And I would -- because that's what has been shared in the past. Right. And I'm reading it doesn't exceed 10% of the assessed value. So they can't go above that amount on the bonds. Right. So the bonds could go up to 10% of the assessed value. Of the assessed value. They cannot exceed that 10%. Right. But could they -- if you had $5 million worth of bonds and you had $25 million of assessed value, could you issue those bonds? I don't believe that's correct. No, I don't think you could. Are you getting something different? We're getting different heads over there. Okay. If somebody could -- yeah, whoever wants to come and answer that question just so I have an understanding. Hello, everybody. I'm Ryan Nesmith. I'm with Baird. So what that really means, the 10%, it's the direct debt ratio. So again, 10 times the amount of value on the ground to the principal amount of bonds that are going to be issued. So in your scenario, if you're going to issue $5 million in bonds on $25 million in value, that would be a 20% direct debt ratio, which would be double the 10% limit that we're discussing. So the flip side of that is let's say you wanted to issue -- Say that one more time. If I'm issuing $5 million worth of bonds. $5 million in bonds, principal amount, and you've got $25 million in value on the property that you're wanting to sell the bonds against, that would be a 20% direct debt ratio, meaning that you have 20% of the value now in principal amount of bonds. Okay, no. Never mind. I've got it. I've got it. No, no, no. We've talked about not that y'all agreed to it, but what we discussed was, and I remember we had that discussion that the bonds wouldn't be issued unless there was 10 times the amount. That is -- Yeah, what we're talking about is very different. The flip, it's inverse. So it works the same way with the 10% versus 10 times. So they just inverted the ratio. So if you had -- let's say you had $150 million in value on the ground and you wanted to sell $10 million in bonds, well, now you'd have a 15 to 1 ratio in value to bonds, but your direct debt ratio would now be 6.7%. Yeah. So it would be -- I think I would rather just reflect what our understanding is of that you've got to have a certain amount of assessed value ratio associated with the bonds. Because I mean, I get your math, but that's not how we sort of talked it. So however y'all want to figure that out, I mean -- It is saying the same thing, but I understand your confusion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I mean, I see what you're saying. Okay. Okay. And then it says if the city determines the district is not in compliance with the terms and conditions of the city consent ordinance or resolution and the operating agreement and the developer agreement, if the city objects the district must obtain consent of the governing body of the city which consent may not be unreasonably withheld. Now that's a very interesting term of art. So what I'm seeing that is if the city has 30 days to review this certification, if the city determines whoever makes those decisions, that the district is not in compliance with the terms and conditions of the consent, the developer agreement, and/or the operating agreement. If the city objects the district must obtain the consent of the governing body of the city which consent may not be unreasonably withheld. There's got to be something else in the middle there. If we're objecting, I guess that means that they have an opportunity to either cure what they believe are objections that are correct or what? Or the bonds are an issue. So how does this unreasonably withheld standard, where does that come into play? Is that if there's a dispute that therefore you're going to litigate over what is unreasonably withheld? Is that really what that's there for? It's negotiated language. Going back to the last meeting where the developer was looking for some assurance that if they meet certain criteria that they will be able to get the bonds. They wanted to take out the wholly discretionary authority of the council to say yes or no to bonds midway through a project. So this is negotiated language to address that concern is basically that good faith standard that was talked about at the last meeting, if the city in good faith is saying there's a problem, we don't think that they're meeting the requirements of the operating agreement, at that point we can object and until that objection gets figured out, they're not going to be able to issue those bonds. And I do get the 10% thing as I do my math. Who's the math guy? Does that mean you're okay with the language? So what I'm hearing is if you want to issue $10 million worth of bonds, you've got to have $100 million worth of assessed value. This says you can't issue bonds that exceed more than 10% of your $100 million, which is $10 million. Okay, gotcha, okay, I think that's -- I think that's it for those. So primarily it seems like I would ask to see if we can come to some type of agreement that the developer agreement be somewhere in the legislation as well as part of those three components and also then those additions to just the -- where is it? Chapter page where it just talks about what laws, you know, including but not limited to 375, I forgot which section that was on. Well, yeah, that's -- yeah, that's on page five, I think, or no. Y'all know where it is. I can't find it right off the top of my head. So what I'm hearing then is there's four opportunities if somehow we're not all coming to the meeting of the minds that council has, this council, future councils in the beginning. The beginning, you're consenting to an ordinance to create the district and the land, include the land. You're consenting to the MMD operating agreement. You're having to consent to the developer agreement. But also in your first issuance of bonds, you're having to consent to the issuance of those bonds to ensure that they meet the criteria of the ratio to assessed value plus that they're in compliance with these. Now, that's a separate consent from these three that I'm seeing up here. Is that my understanding? And that's true for each bond issuance. For each bond issuance? Correct. All right. So it's not a -- I thought I read somewhere that if you do some of these that subsequent bond issuances, you don't have to get that. But you're saying that has to happen, so that's been added in this resolution through conversation that according to the template, 375 local government code, that's not a requirement. We're adding that requirement. It has a different standard, yes. But this is a different standard from 375. Okay. Right. Good. Okay. Okay. That's helpful. I appreciate it. Sorry it took so long, but I wanted to make sure I walked through that and that I'm comfortable with it. And so I guess as far as the changes requested, not sure really how y'all want to handle that, but I don't think they're substantive changes. I think they're more changes of clarification, and that would be what I would ask for on both of the -- because they're the same. Well, we could certainly -- if that was the will of the council, we could certainly try to move forward. If you wanted to pass the resolutions tonight with that direction to staff, we could try to implement that. The other way is if you'd like to see the final language, we can go back, draft that, and bring this back to you on the 26th. Okay. All right. Okay. Anybody else open for discussion? Councilmember Meltzer. I think we pretty much know where people stand based on the work sessions. Yes. You know, I'll just share information that's kind of coming together in my mind, which is that in addition to the 40 SMOT gas wells that are identified on there now, that there's permitted gas wells up to something like 120 or 125, as I recall, and at the -- tell me if I mistake. I'm also hearing in other conversations that, you know, where we need to do more commercial and industrial for our tax base, that we're maxing out the area that's so far set aside over there. So I continue to view favorably the idea of the regional infrastructure part that I think could help with the commercial industrial, and I think parts of that land we've kind of learned in this process would be outstanding for preservation, kind of natural preservation, and parts, you know, might be outstanding for expansion of commercial industrial, but kind of not so well suited, really, to housing in my view. So, you know, I'm going to be voting no. No surprise there, but that's some of my thinking. Great. Councilmember Riggs. Thank you. Yes, I am going to be voting no as well on all three of these items, but I really appreciate that the items have been separated for the first time in the discussion, which allows you to see that they're about 3,000 acres apiece, which really isn't that much. Robeson was 2,700, and they did it without any government help or taxing the homeowners, which I appreciate. I thought was really good. So I did a little bit of research and learned a lot about MMDs, and I am not in favor. I think an MMD is a debt issuing, tax-loving, problematic additional layer of government, and I am really nervous about this process, and that's all I'm going to say. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah. So I, too, have been pretty clear and vocal about how against this I am, and I just want to say if there are any of my colleagues having second thoughts, you can always vote no. I think that this sets a bad precedent, and I would encourage people not to forget in this whole discussion that we are agreeing to have a discussion about creating a new environmental entity that, yes, has limited powers, but those limited powers include taxation, and that's a very significant power, and, again, I think we shouldn't even be having this discussion. Councilmember Duff. To your point about the MMD, you're incorrect about Robeson Ranch because within the HOA, there is an amenity fee, which is basically doing the same thing that the MMD is doing. Okay. I have a few other comments, too. What I'm looking at is the overall long-term future for Denton. You know, if you start with Hillwood to bare ground and create an alliance, they realized attracting major companies would require having a place for the people to live, so they built subdivisions. You know, Hunter Ranch is not their first rodeo. They've been doing this. The Hunter Coal will help attract other companies with high-paying jobs, and we need the high-paying jobs. The development is the avenue to pursue that goal. I realize that many people love the way Denton is, but this is not going to change the city of Denton. It's going to be an addition. You know, in 30 years, I'm not going to be here, but I truly hope that I will be here in 10 years and be able to proudly say I was on the Denton City Council and voted for the development of Hunter Coal Ranch. I can ask some other comments when I want to. Okay. All right. Anybody else? Mayor Pro Tem? Well, I just want to remind everybody, this is a vote to have further discussion is really what it amounts to. It's not that we're approving the district at this time. There's a lot of negotiating. I somewhat agree with Councilmember Meltzer that regional, I'm fine with, but when you get deeper in, that's when we need to see the numbers and work a little deeper. We may not come up with an agreement, but without this, we can't move forward, period. Councilmember Heisman? Yeah. I'll echo that, that the city taxpayers, those that we represent, are insulated from upfront costs to understand the project and outline those details. And there's an extended amount of time to negotiate those details, and there's no fixed number associated with the denial, so you're denying something that you've not researched, that you don't understand where the sewer lines end, where they start. You're not factoring in the fact that we're subsidizing Roberson Ranch's sewer right now, trying to fix that. I mean, there's a lot of things that are advantaged by at least understanding where we are as we move forward, as we're evaluating the other city buildings, one exit from this property. So it's right where we're talking about. I think the other thing that's interesting to me is this body approves bonds for infrastructure costs. So we're saying, as a city, we can't afford to put in infrastructure without taking on debt, but you, Mr. Developer, Mrs. Developer, you operate in a different universe where you can't acknowledge that reality that infrastructure costs are significant, that those costs, we couldn't even put a restroom in at the splash park because of the cost of being so elevated. So as a city, we can't put in a restroom, we have to go with a temporary restroom at a park because of the infrastructure cost, but somehow, we're supposed to run, the developers supposed to run a line from we don't know where yet to this place and then front the cost. So we're putting more, I want to hold the city at a higher standard than we hold those that we're responsible for. So if this body's deciding that we're out of the bond business and we're going to start cash paying for everything, then I'm all for that, but absent that, I think it's fair to have this conversation to understand the details and then at that point, over that extended amount of time, be able to negotiate some of those ads and some of the things that would benefit our city and understand where the, nothing we've seen touches on where the municipal buildings will go. So there'll be new police stations, there'll be fire, potentially, we have a lot of fire out there already, but there's recreation centers, we have a park, 200 acres. So I think there's a lot to be learned here regardless of how this ends, but I absolutely think staff's time, city manager's time, the applicant's time over a number of years warrants us at least giving them an opportunity to make their presentation and to explain the details of what they have in mind. And I'll just close with this, Alliance Texas just announced another giant corporation coming to that airport. Alliance Texas has one of the lowest tax rates in the region. And so when you're talking about benefiting homeowners and taking the pressure off rooftops, they're doing it now, the exact same company, and we're busing people there to go work. So DCTA has a bus route that goes to Alliance to put people to work because we won't do it. And so that to me is perplexing. We're paying a bus to go to an area where we could do the same thing and people could live here and work here. That sounds like a really good idea versus busing them to another city where they can go eat lunch someplace else and spend those dollars in another city. But I'm biased, I like Denton. But anyway, thank you. Thank you. I think we all like Denton. Yes, sir. Well, I mean, this is fairly simple for me, I mean, I appreciate the robust discussion. Oh, go ahead. Well, I just have some questions about the bonds. Okay. Well, I mean, because I know that there's two ways that if it does get created, if we do agree on all the agreements, and the there's two ways to dissolve the MMD, and it's by a super majority of council, or the homeowners, they 75% of the homeowners, I think, petition to dissolve. And then, can you explain to me what happens to the debt or the bonds? How does that affect all the residents and the taxpayers of Denton? My understanding, and I'll ask legal counsel correct me if I get off on the wrong track here. But if the city council decides to dissolve the district, the city would have to absorb those debts. Is that correct? So that's what would happen in that scenario. In the other scenario, I think the debts would have to be paid before it to be dissolved by the district itself. So the council would retain the right to decide if they wanted to make that a city debt. In the other case, all those debts would have to be paid before it can be dissolved. Hopefully that answers your question. And there was something that happened in Providence Village about dissolving something like this, do you? I don't know the case on Providence. Providence was not an incorporated city at the time it was created, it was a municipal utility district, which is a little bit different. I mean, it's sort of the same animal, but here it's within the city, and he's right. Under dissolution of the MMD, limitation on dissolution by the board, a district may not be dissolved by its board if the district has any outstanding bond indebtedness until that bond indebtedness has been repaid or defeased in accordance with the order or resolution authorizing the issuance of the bonds. He is correct on the municipality, the governing body of a municipality in which a district is wholly located by a vote of not less than two-thirds of its membership may adopt an ordinance dissolving the district. On the adoption of the ordinance, the district is dissolved in accordance with section 43.075, the municipality succeeds to the property and assets of the district and assumes all bonds, debts, obligations, and liabilities of the district. Yes. And I have another question about the infrastructure, because there's going to be a lot of infrastructure so we hear, and what we're doing now in our city is replacing old infrastructure and we are having to issue bonds and create lots of debt to do that. So how does it work on a development like this who already has so much debt created on it if before that is paid off, we have to, we need to go in and start making improvements. How does that work? So the improvements will be constructed, those will be then dedicated to the city and they'll be our city assets and we'll have to maintain them, but the city will also be collecting in addition to the MMD tax, we'll also be collecting taxes just for the normal city operations to fund that cost and so that's part of that fiscal impact analysis is to make sure that those dollars that we're going to receive from that development are going to pay its cost to maintain those roads, to maintain those water lines, sewer lines, those kinds of things. That's one of the things we'll look at. They had had a preliminary calculation I think they showed you last time of what they thought that cost of service was, that $250,000 level home and what excess revenues they thought they'd have. We'll take a deep dive into that, make sure that we understand those numbers and that we feel like with the taxes that are going to come in and the fees that it will pay for those costs. So that's the purpose of that analysis to make sure that happens. We want to make sure that's correct. That's the idea. Well, I appreciate my colleague's indulgence, I wanted to go over that specifically because I wanted to number one, make sure that I understood all the different options that were available to the city, what the resolution is doing and what it is not doing. And also, what I like about this system that we have is that even those who vote against it today to basically foreclose discussion will be front and center at the table when we have discussion attempting to, as should, to advocate for those interests. So what a great system we have that we're able to do that. So I'm comfortable with it with the changes that I've requested. I think with the 10% cap on bonds to assessed value, all I know is there's a tremendous amount of discussion that will begin and it may be that we get short into the process and realize we're way too far off, or we get short into the process and realize, hey, we may be able to strike something here, even with some of the objections that have been posted here and there may be some solutions to some of those. So this is going to be a great exercise and a great opportunity for the community to hear how that goes. So let's not lose sight of one thing, and this was a question that one of the council members posed to staff, talking about if this were all created in one day, is it a subsidy? Is it this? Is it that? It's $14 million is what the proposal is. We've got to start with $14 billion, what did I say, $14 billion. So that's -- and that's this impact analysis from what I understand you're saying is what is the revenue to the city based on something of that proposal, and then what are the costs of services to the city? I mean, honestly, if anybody in this room or watching thinks that somehow we're only thinking -- it's a little short-sighted because we're here to make sure that this is a win-win for everybody. So I'm okay that we're simply asking that this conversation to continue. We have, from what I've seen, two or three opportunities or more to change course and direction if we need to and if we desire to. So I think the taxpayers in the city is very well protected in this, and I appreciate just everybody being willing to have the conversation, even those who are opposed to it, because I know you will be involved in the conversation. So I look forward to that moving forward. Any other comments? We're going to vote on these separately. Mayor, I know Mack has been working very diligently to try to draft some of the language to address your point, and it might be good to have him read that into the record just to make sure we're all clear on the changes that we'll have. So Mack, I'll ask you to come up and address that, maybe finalizing one last. And if not, we can maybe go on to another agenda item and come back if we need time. Take a short break. Yeah, let's take a five-minute break, give everybody a chance to sort of commensurate, and so we're not doing anything on the fly. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is 537. It's February the 12th, 2019. We're going to go ahead and move on down to our agenda item. We've still got agenda items A, B, and D that we've called, and there's some consulting and some collaboration going on, so we'll circle back around to those. We'll go ahead and take our agenda item C, which is consideration of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, a homely and municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with James Archipatrick. Architect, please let the record reflect that Councilmember Briggs has recused herself, and we have a short presentation. Good evening, Mayor, Members of the Council, Mario Canazares, Assistant City Manager. We are here this evening to ask your approval for a contract for consultation service for design service of Fire Station No. 8, but before I go into the details of the contract, I would like to invite Chief Hedges to come up, just give a little background as to why we're here, a little bit about the history of Fire Station No. 8, our newest fire station that we're going to be working on. Yes. Very quick. Because this would have typically been on consent, except because of the recusal that was required. That's correct. Go ahead. That's correct. Go ahead. Good afternoon. Good evening. I'm sorry, Mayor and Councilmembers, let me give you just a quick background on this. Station 8, in 2013, Fire Department completed some statistical analysis and data over future growth, and we looked at all our facilities, and we re-identified areas in the southeast portion of the city that was outside our acceptable response zones on timing. So we started putting ahead the plan. In 2015, we actually requested a distribution study from ISO, Insurance Service Offices. They identified this area in the southeast portion of the city, specifically around the Colorado Brinker area, as the primary - I'm sorry, let me go to the next slide - would be the optimum site to actually expand our services in the future. So what you have on this slide is land acquisition that was purchased in 2017, and it was purchased from HCA Corporate, which is a parent company in Medical City Denim. What you see is a little bit over five acres, a little misleading. The majority of that is flip-lane, so what we have is approximately an acre and a quarter that's actually developable, and what we're planning is to design a station that will fit a smaller scope than you've seen in the past as well. Along with this, at the same time, in 2017, we went ahead and tried to advance our EMS services. Okay, brief. I'm sorry. Let me go back. Brief a little bit. I'm just trying to clear my throat. We did go ahead and put in an additional ambulance service at Medical City Denim. They're in a modular building. It was a lease agreement with Medical City Denim and Ebeck Development. So we currently have an ambulance for this district. Let me go to the next slide and just show you. This is really just a map, kind of highlight of where our districts are. You'll see eight down there on the interstate. This will, when completed in 2020, will be only our second station that is really situated on the interstate corridor, which is very important to us. That really is all my presentation on the background to kind of keep it short. If anybody has any questions on history, I'm here to answer those. If not, I'll pass it over to you. Super sorry, but can we go back to the map, please? I don't know how far along we are, et cetera. I don't think it materially changes anything, but if it were me, I really would like to see one of two things. Either one, save that for rainy day and move to the parking lot of Med Park to use some of that, or two, if we're there, I really would like to see the cost to somehow navigate across the rail to those apartments and to that area to give it some relief. Because there's only one way out of those apartments and everything and that's on brinker. I think that's going to be, I mean, if we have a fire station there that can't go straight to those apartments and you got to take the long way, that to me, I'd rather invest the money to one, give those people another out and two, give it a direct answer. So I don't know that it changes anything in their evaluation, maybe ask a new question, but those are my two answers. Okay. Good. Thank you. To answer that question, yes, sir. We actually did a full study of this area and we worked with HCA Corp, they own the majority of this land. We looked at closer facilities to the interstate and this is kind of what we landed on just based on price point, honestly. In regards to the apartment complex, there is alternate route out that was required by fire code. It is a gravel road at this point, but out the east side of that complex, you'll drive by and see. Gravel road with about 100 signs that says do not park. I don't know as far as the final build out on Mayhill, I know at one point there was a bridge proposed over the road tracks. This station would have access that back way into that facility. Okay. Any other questions for the chief? Yes. Councilmember Melcher. Forgive me if you already indicated, but the red is the 5.9 acres? Correct. Yes, sir. Okay. And roughly what's the acre and a quarter that's buildable with a portion of it? See the mouse. By the way, it cuts right up here and then it kind of goes back. All this through here is flood plain easement. Gotcha. Thank you. Okay. Great. Okay. So, again, a few slides that I have is really more about the process of selecting the architect. So working with purchasing, we issued an RFQ request for qualifications back last October. Of those RFQs, seven proposals were submitted. Staff, as part of the interview panel, interviewed two finalists, and at the end of the day, Kirkpatrick Architectural Studios was the lone finalist that's being recommended today. As you've seen here, they have been our partner for the last number of fire stations. They've designed the last five stations that we've been working with, and so we've had very good success. They've been a great partner with us. Staff has been real pleased. Facility staff, along with the fire department staff, have been very, very pleased with the quality of work that Kirkpatrick has provided them. As far as their original fee, the original fee came in at $534,000, and with our facilities management staff working with them, negotiated to feed down to $410,907. A lot of the negotiating factors of being able to reduce the fee was a result of their past experience with the city, and the fact that they were able to utilize a lot of the same design elements as far as whether it was mechanical, plumbing, some of those aspects of it. So they were able to literally just almost plug and play, per se, as far as future stations. So we were able to identify some savings through that process. The overall just kind of give you a history on some of the design fees from the past stations. The top one there is station number eight that we're talking about today. The station will be approximately just under 8,600 square feet, and you can see the history there of the past stations that they've worked towards in their design fees as far as the percentages of the fees that are being contemplated. This is the schedule. So if this gets approved today, we'll be working full-on with the team to get this completed by 1st of May with the design, along with construction bed opening in early to mid-August. Come to council with a recommendation by mid-September. We can get started about a month later once we get the notice of proceed if council approves the contract, and then get the project completed by mid-to-late August 2020, and we'll be fully operational by that time. Okay. With that, I'll answer any questions you may have. Any questions? Chair would entertain a motion. Action. Move approval. I have a motion. The council member, Melser. I do have a question. I don't know if I really heard a response to the question Council Member Hudfeth raised. If it might be too late to do a different property, but is there a response about how to service the area, you know, that the express concern about, you know, like, how do we overcome that issue? Through our review, we looked at the entire area, and the very far southeast portion of our city was really our most underserved, so the Lakeview Preserve area. Currently, we have Fire Station 6, which is over a six to seven minute response. So the majority of that call volume since this medicate has went in service is still going to the south. So I wouldn't say we're too far down the road, but every indication said this is the most optimum site, even based on the ISO survey that we requested from the outside agency as far as this location, access to 35 to the southern border, and you still have your eastern route as well. So I hope that clarified some. Sure. Yeah. No, I need to drive. He I know there's a gate to the to the I just got to drive it as a short answer. There's there's a gate there that there's a Mayhill Road that there's a gate there. You go to the other side of the apartment complex to the north. There's a gate there. I still don't know that I'm fully comfortable with that pathing there, but I'm just going to drive it and then come back with questions. Great. Councilmember Arbiter. Yeah, I would like to know kind of what what the and I support the new station, but I'd like to know how the what did you say is a gravel road or correct at this point is just a fire exit. Yeah, you know how what the timing is and not and how if that were improved that that is to reach the the parts of part calendar that we're talking about to reach that that apartment complex in that that area. If that were some a different surface that were different surface, would that affect the timing? You know those kind of issues so and so anyway, can we if we could have a you know some sort of a staff report on that on this issue. We'll bring this back as part of the the overall design as well and we will look at it again. We will also take a look at what it would cost to upgrade that gravel road to asphalt to ensure that we've got a surface that can support the weight of the trucks and that we don't have to worry about. I know sometimes on options we go through development processes. If you don't have two points of access, you have to sprinkler buildings, which everything in the apartment complex is sprinkler. So that addresses more of the fireside, but I think maybe what Councilman Husband you're talking more on the EMS, which is same percent what we do this area currently as far as engine response is being serviced by station two, which is on McKinney Street as well. So obviously when the station opens, it would have engine it would be closer as well. But I do like to remind you that is the DCTA track and those rails I know personally, they're not closed for more than, you know, 60 seconds or so at a time. So it's not like a normal freight train. You could be down for significant okay. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem, did you? Did somebody? Yeah, I made the motion. I made the motion. I have a motion. Did you have a second? We have a second from Councilmember Armitage. All in favor of agenda item 2C, signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign carries unanimously well 6-0 if someone could thank you, Mayor. Yes. Thank you. All right. We'll move on to agenda item E, which is considered adoption of an ordinance approving a settlement agreement and release between the City of Denton and Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation an American biosource. I'm assuming this is a good presentation. So Mayor, Members of Council, I do not have a presentation for you this evening, but I can entertain some questions on the agreement. As the Council may recall, we've had several discussions regarding solid waste relationship with the tenant American biosource. That lease basically expired at the end of December. So what you have before you this evening is a very small extension on that lease to allow them time to vacate the property and set up operations in any location. All right. Any questions on this agenda item? Any action by Council? Mayor Pro Tem? Move approval. Councilmember Armitage? Second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 2E. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign, carried unanimously 7-0. Agenda item 2F, consider a motion to reconsider the February 5th, 2019 denial of an ordinance for a specific use permit to allow for multifamily residence as part of a mixed use development on approximately 31 acre site. Is that, you just want me to sort of, since I've asked for that to be placed on the agenda. As I said, you know, we do have Haley Zygurski who can give the council an overview of what the item that you all are asking and asked to reconsider tonight. If you'd like that presentation, she can certainly do it. If not. Anybody need a presentation on that? Yeah. Because I asked for this to be put on the agenda. And last time that happened was during the Mayor Pro Tem discussion. And I did not make a motion at that time because I was unaware that the practice that we've had was not really one is a violation of our charter per se because of just being. So I'm going to make the motion to reconsider. I'm going to give you the rationale for that. The developer sent us all, I believe an email, I don't know if you saw it or not, just taking responsibility for some things that he probably could have done better. And also there were a lot of questions and concerns raised by council. No specific resolutions or solutions were proffered in that email. And so I thought it was only fair to give him an opportunity to address the council concerns. And if and in no way is that guarantee that it would be a different result should we move forward with a vote on that again. So this is only a motion to reconsider. And if it passes, then that item will come back to us at some at some point with either no changes or additional changes and then the council will be able to vote on that. So I make that motion. And correct me if I'm wrong. Anyone. The motion is to come from somebody on the presiding side, but the second can come from anyone on anyone on the council. That's correct. Okay. I'll second it. And I'll say it doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, this just means that it's going to come back before us. It doesn't mean that it's going to change. I think there was some hesitation that night where some of us kind of thought about postpone, but didn't get it out because we were it was more of a there's certain things that we didn't necessarily like and we did for me personally, I didn't know quite how I wanted to craft a motion to to make those amendments in there. So with that, I'll second this motion to reconsider. Okay. We have a motion to second all in favor of agenda item to F we signify by raising your right hand. Oh, oh, yes. Question. Okay. What is the timeframe that it would come back as it stood, right? That's that's my question. So if you all choose to reconsider this item, we could notice it in time for the April second council meeting. No, no, no. If if if the denial stood, at some point, they could bring it back. Yeah. What is that time? There is a one year time period unless there is a substantial change to the proposal. Okay. Thank you. And so if I may, sure, so that that's my understanding. It's coming back. Right. And so they're not just gonna say the land's gonna stay undeveloped, you know, so in that instance, in that in that in that look at it, it's, I think they have to afford them an opportunity to come back sooner than later, rework, address concerns. I do want to encourage that because I think that's important to to for people to be responsible, responsive and to reward that. Okay. So we have a motion. Who seconded it? I seconded you. You're the one. I made the motion. Okay. Yeah, there you go. It's late. It's not even late. Okay. All in favor agenda item to F, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Motion carries five to two agenda item G consider nominations of appointments to city boards and commissions. Do we have any nominations for boards and commissions, any nominations for boards and commissions? Okay. If somebody could, could you state who you're nominating for just so we can get it on? Just Jean Greenlaw, Jean Greenlaw for which for which which library for the library board Jean Councilmember Duff is nominating green Jean Greenlaw for the library. That's correct. All right. Any other? Yes. Councilmember and I believe that for your nomination, it needs it. I think there was a Tiffany Thompson, right for the animal board. nomination. Well, just that the that was you said next week, I'll have one. So I'm just asking if that was Oh, no, I didn't. I didn't have I think I need to verify if it has to be somebody that used to have to be someone from the police department. So I need to because we've changed that I think I need to verify if there's some kind of limitation on that. So yes, I will do that. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. So we have one nomination so far. Councilmember Armitage. So I just wanted to say, I've got somebody who wants to be on the Traffic Safety Commission. You just get a couple things in order, but I'm not slacking on that. Anyway, sure. All right. So the only nomination we have is for Jean Greenlaw for the Library Board. Do we need a I guess we need a motion and second on that or Councilmember Briggs, a motion to approve Councilmember Meltzer, second, second. We have a motion and second to nominate Jean Greenlaw to the Library Board. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. This is unanimously. Now we will circle back around, see that the parties have returned. We're going to go through this real quickly on the changes. So somebody give us a briefing. We're going to go to agenda item 2A and B. Do I need to recall those again? Yes. Okay. I'm going to call all three of them again. Agenda item 2A, consider approval of a resolution of the City of Denton, Texas supporting legislation to create the coal ranch improvement district number one. Agenda item 2B, consider approval of a resolution of the City of Denton, Texas supporting legislation to create the Hunter Ranch improvement district number one of Denton County, Texas. And 2D, consider adoption of an ordinance of the City Council of Denton, Texas authorizing the mayor to execute an extra agreement regarding reimbursement of city expenses related to municipal improvement districts and providing an effective debt. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate the council's indulgence as we tried to work through the details on that. We have some conceptual language that we want to talk to you about, not specific redline changes to the different bills that are there. We need some more time to do that, but conceptually I think we could work through what we've heard from the council and the changes that we make, and then we can decide if you're ready to move forward that way or if you want us to bring that back on the 26th. Sure. No, I think it's better to do that than to try to, you know. Okay. Mac has some of that information and he can walk you through it. Do we want to do that now or do you want to send in a staff report or, I mean, when you say conceptually? I think it would be fairly quick. Okay. Sure. Mayor and council. I think conceptually just want to be clear that this is, if it is a motion on this that these be understood that these will be part of the final resolution and bill. And just speaking to these generally and Mayor, just want to make sure we're on the same page as far as the terms that we're going to be revised. So the resolution itself in section three of the resolution will be revised to include not just the constitution and general laws of Texas, but local government code 375, the legislation that's attached to this resolution as exhibit a, as well as any other general laws of the state. Yes. Okay. And then as far as the project agreement being included in the bill itself, that the project agreement will be added to section 009A as a condition of the city consent, as well as section 106C to require certification of compliance with the project agreement in order for the bonds to be issued. Okay. All right. So those are conceptual. Can we put that language back at our, at our next council meeting? Well, no, I think what's being proposed is that those would be included and we would put that language into these bills upon a motion to include that language. Okay. All right. Comment on that. So I'm not really understanding what you're saying. So we include it. So if there was a motion to include these concepts, we would add them to the bill. And that would be part of your motion to approve it, to include those concepts. We would add the language then to the bill before it goes down to the legislature. Okay, what I'm struggling with is your word concept. So if you're, if you could say, so what you're saying is, I want to be specific about it. So what you're saying is in the resolution, section three, if you could just read me what you think. So you don't have it actually written out yet. This we do. Section three is written out. If you could, if you could read that as you, we want it to be in the resolution for, if it's approved. Yes. Section three of this resolution does not constitute the city's specific consent to the creation of the district as required by law, including, but not limited to the constitution, local government code 375, legislation attached here to as exhibit a and the general laws of the state of Texas. And then it continues on and the city specifically reserves the right. Okay. But then the only other two changes are adding the development agreement to section 39.09 of the attached legislation. Do you have, do you have the language of where that would appear and how that would read? I do not. Um, that's what we do not have. That's conceptually where we are still at. We do not have the exact language, but it would read as a condition of the city's consent to, in section eight, in section eight and the same in 106. Okay. Yes. Then what I want, what I want to do is, um, we will, I think we can move forward, but before, uh, we, um, I want to make sure that that language is correct when it's actually drafted so that when it's drafted, if you could send out a copy of that to all council members noting the specific language and the changes so that there is an issue, we can come back and do whatever process we need to do to correct that. Sounds great. All right. Um, so is that, that's sort of the direction we're heading. So if you're wanting to make a motion or a second and or approve or not approve, it's based upon the discussion we've just had. Mayor Pro Tem. I'll move approval of item two a with the additional language as described. Okay. Council member Duff. I'll second. All right. We have a motion and a second for agenda item two a with the amendments that were enumerated both literally and conceptually from the podium. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Motion carries four to three agenda item, then two B. I'll move approval agenda item two B with the additional language. Council member Duff. Second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item two B, which will incorporate the identical language that was represented from the day from the podium for agenda item two way to a will be incorporated into agenda item to be all in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Motion carries four to three. Moving then on to agenda item two D. We've had a presentation on that so the chair would entertain action on agenda item two D. Council member Duff. I move, move approval. Pro Tem. Second. And so that's for agenda item two D. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Motion carries four to three. I believe that brings us to our concluding items, concluding items. Council member Briggs. So I just want to start by with the reminder of the joint meeting that was brought up earlier today with the economic development board, which should be an easy one for me to attend. Okay and then I appreciated the staff report and the information on the yellow light pilot study that was very interesting and informative. And I would like to see if we could possibly extend that program to another intersection so that we kind of compare data and see if it has the same effect on the reduced violations. And I also would like to see in another report I guess before that the accident data in comparison to before the yellow light and after the yellow light for the intersection that we had the red light, the pilot on. I should have asked for that in the original request, but I didn't, so just kind of an additional layer of information on that. Okay. Thank you. Yes, Council member Melter. We hear constantly about the debt in 2030 plan. It's the basis for the development code 2030. We hear about it in every case that comes before us on zoning. It's referenced. But it's been a while. And I think a lot of people probably aren't aware of even what went into it or really what's in it. And I would suggest that it would be useful possibly for Council, almost certainly for the general public, to have a work session just efficiently on what the goals and key principles of the debt in 2030 plan were and what the intention of it was in terms of the output, what the big segments of debt were intended to be, kind of what the vision was. And just one tiny bit more on that. I had a town hall last night and I get the very strong impression that at least some part of our constituency is kind of feeling like development shock, like there's just so much happening and that there's not confidence that it's part of a plan. And I think it would help everyone to see to what extent we are or aren't on part of a plan. Okay. Great. Thank you, sir. Councilmember Armitage? Yes. Three things. One, I want to thank staff, I think it was Rachel Wood, for answering a question about rules of procedure for speaking more than once on a public hearing item. And apparently it's within the purview of the city council to amend the rules of procedure to revise public comment requirements for public hearings such that somebody could speak more than once on a public hearing item. So I would like to propose that. We have a discussion on that. I can't imagine it would take long, so maybe you might want to bundle it with some other things, but some way for that to lead to a vote. Maybe to have that bundled however staff sees fit. Number two, our citizens' committees, we've got a lot of these citizens' committees, and I heard some complaints that the term citizen committees, it privileges people who hold citizenship in the sense of having the paperwork. And of course, we're promoting, you know, we don't mean that necessarily. We mean citizenship in the sense of public service. So I just like some consideration of the possibility of changing it to something like residents' committees, civilians' committees, because I don't think that we're talking about what paperwork you have, so some people, you know, just feel excluded by that concept. And then finally, I would like to have some sort of protocol whereby every time we vote on an LLC, limited liability corporation, that we be provided with three pieces of information regarding that LLC. Number one, how long has this LLC been in business? And number two, has the City of Denton done any business or transactions with this LLC in the past, how many and when? And number three, who are the investors, partners, or shareholders in this LLC? I think that those are things that everybody would like to know, public council staff. And anyway, if it's not agreed, this would be good protocol, then I'll just ask it every time. But I think it's good information for us all to have. That's it. Thanks. Okay. Anybody else? Council Member Hussbett? Yeah, a few things. I just want to, I had a good conversation with Jeff from the embassy suite hotel, and I thought it was interesting, the effect, the financial convention, I think it's T3 they had where one of the companies bought, rented out Barley Board, I mean, just really significant impacts to our city. And I just think that's fantastic. And if you go to their hotel in their kind of brochures for meals, et cetera, they list some of the local bars, that sort of thing. So just a great team player for our city. And so I appreciate what they do. And then I'll remind everyone that Andy Bees has a grand opening Friday. That's the ribbon cutting at four, and then I think it's 11 to five Saturday, they're having all day kind of grand opening things. So I'd invite those that have not been to go. It's a fantastic place. And then lastly, I just ask everyone to shop local for Valentine's Day this week. You know, Queenies has a special slots, lots of great things happening here where you can invest your one to two to $300 in, you know, district one has a lot of great places to if that's what you're looking for. But there's other districts to just in case. Thanks. Fantastic. All right. Yes, Councilmember Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor. I'd like a report from legal and this may follow up with some discussion with the council on regarding the motions to reconsider and how it's currently worded. What changes we can make in regards to it currently says the next scheduled meeting. Would that include a Monday luncheon, which cuts back or 24 hour period further, do we have the ability to put it on the next Tuesday meeting as opposed to the next scheduled meeting? And also how that 72 hour posting period affects that as far as if someone were to decide over the weekend that they wanted to change it to make that motion. Is it too late because you have to have it on the post it for that or is that something that can be asked for at a future point? Anybody else? Fantastic. All right. We'll stand adjourned at 610.