Mar 05, 2019 City Council on 2019-03-05 12:00 PM

Welcome, everybody, to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, March the 5th, 2019. It is 12 p.m. I apologize for the late start. We were late in adjourning our Audit and Finance Committee meeting, so again, my apologies. We're moving through our work session reports. Are there any citizen comments on consent agenda items? Request for clarification on agenda items? Any requests for clarification? Yes, Councilmember Armitage. I wanted just to pull item H, just to welcome our new city secretary, so she's here. Yes. I asked her if that would be okay. Great. Ahead of time. Any others? Oh, Councilman. Yes, Councilmember. Sit Mr. City Manager. Yeah, Mayor. Item E is going to be pulled from today's agenda? Yes. On the work sessions? I'm sorry, on the consent agenda. Okay. So we're not considering this at all? No. All right. Councilmember Briggs. Well, my question was about item E, so I'm okay, I guess. Okay, so you'll just have to hold that question in advance, too. Okay. I've just got a clarification on agenda item 5A. Sort of just to give the council colleagues sort of how I'm planning on doing this is just about the same as we do them all. We're going to have a staff presentation. We're going to bifurcate. We're going to have a staff presentation, so if there's councilmembers that need to make any decisions, they have an opportunity to do that. After the staff presentation, we're going to have public comment after the staff presentation. And then we're going to consider the early voting and Election Day voting on the university campus in part one. And so we're going to bifurcate that from the other option, too. So that just giving you a layout of the land so that if there's decisions or non-decisions, that's how we're going to move through that. Yes. For separating it, can we do the one that doesn't talk about the university first so that if that item can continue, then there shouldn't be a requirement for recusals? No, because we're going to election -- I don't know why the Election Day, the early voting location got on the resolution, but we're going to have to take that up as well. We're going to have to decide on an Election Day polling location for UNT and an Election Day location. So because we have two of those, I wanted to just knock those out first. And we may not need the second one. But because we've got to come back, circle back around, even if option two prevails, we still have to circle back around. So yes, councilmember Armitage. Yeah, so just trying to process and maybe I'm not understanding, so correct me if I'm wrong. So would it be possible then, though, to bifurcate it such that the -- that any non-UNT early or Election Day voting locations could be considered separately? I'm going to, I think, choose the order that I've specified. Yeah. We're just -- I mean, we're going to go with the UNT and then we're going to go with the non-UNT after that. If the UNT doesn't pass, we'll go to the non-UNT. And then you guys can come back in. Okay. If you make decisions. I mean, this is obviously each person's individual decision. It's not up to me. What is chosen is really up to the individual. And so -- and the reason, again, for doing the one first and then the other second, can you just reiterate that? That's because that's how I'm choosing to do it based upon -- there's not an early voting location in option two with the Methodist Center from what I've seen on staff presentation. There's not one available. So that's why I'm choosing that. Okay. I would prefer -- I would prefer it the other way along with Councilmember Briggs. Is this something that the -- This is the chair's discretion. The chair has discretion? Okay. All right. Thank you. You bet. Okay. We're going to move on to agenda items. Any other clarifications of agenda items? And Councilmember Hussbeth and Mayor Pro Tem are out. Let me just state that for the meeting. I expect Councilmember Hussbeth to join us here shortly, but I don't believe Councilmember Ryan will be here until the 630 meeting is what I understand. Or Mayor Pro Tem. All right. Work session reports 3A. Oh, 3C. I'm sorry. No, we're going to take 3C. Thank y'all for attending. All right. We're going to go skip down to agenda item C. There's been a request by management to do that just simply because all the other presentations are by, I think, Scott and Richard. So agenda item C is Receive Report. Whole discussion provides staff direction regarding the assessment of payment failures throughout the city of Denton. Good afternoon, Council, Mayor, Todd Estes, City Engineer. Last year, around this time of year, we actually came and addressed with you all pavement failures throughout the city on subdivisions that, particularly subdivisions, where concrete roads had been built. And then shortly thereafter, the roadways started to see failures to where the point where the the streets department actually had to go and replace either stretches of the road or concrete panels themselves. We were seeing a lot of that around utility trenches, but we were seeing some evidence that some other things might be happening. So we came to all and just asked for approval to go and get a contract to do a much more extensive geotechnical exploration or going underground and seeing what else might have attributed to those factors. So we did that over the last this last year. And you have in your backup, there's a link in the AIS that actually gets you to all of the boring logs, all of the as built drawings that we analyzed as we went out and then field visited every one of these locations. So there were 71 boring holes at 61 different locations. And the reason the numbers are not 71 and 71 is there were some streets where we saw multiple locations. So we considered that a location, but we might have taken two different test holes along that street. And just to remind you where we were kind of what started all this is last year when we talked about this, we had about six and a half lane miles that the streets department had fixed of premature failing roads. Now these roads were roadways that when the contractor built the road as part of a private development, a residential subdivision development, private developer led, the contractor built the roadway and was required by the city to maintain a two year warranty bond. So for two years after acceptance by the city of that roadway, the contractor would have been required to come and fix any of that pavement. Once we got outside that two year maintenance bond, then it becomes the city's. And what was happening is we were seeing these roads fail or show the evidence that figure just outside the warranty bond. Now we did catch a fair fair number of those inside the warranty bond and we got the contractors to fix those. But any of these others are the ones we were seeing just outside that was within the three to five or eight year mark. So concrete roads, we expect 30 years life when we're talking about that. That doesn't mean we're not maintaining it at some point, but we do expect with a concrete road to get somewhere around 20 years of life out of it before we have to really do anything to it, whether that's crack ceiling or fixing some spalling or rough spots in the road. I mean, we just don't expect to have to do anything to it. So today, last year at this time, we had spent about $4 million on concrete panel repairs. Right now we based on our analysis of what we spent last year. In addition, we're just under $5 million that we spent to try to keep pace with these subdivisions that were put in place under previous administration and in the past. These subdivisions are in these different zones here. These are the zones we went to investigate. Primarily, we see a lot of these failures on the south and southeast part of town where a lot of the newer residential subdivisions have been constructed over the last 20 years. But we're seeing evidence of that in other areas as well. So we broadened the scope of this investigation. Yes, I'm a councilmember. I'm a chair. Yes, ma'am. Question. Kind of a small point, but out of curiosity and probably others are wondering too, looking back, and I know you weren't there at the time, but in hindsight, do you think that that very short warranty period, you know, might have been some sort of red flag or is that pretty standard in the business? It's pretty standard in the construction industry, even on the municipal roadways, the roadways that we build. It's very hard to get a contractor to go beyond two years for a variety of reasons. If they have to maintain a warranty bond beyond two years, it becomes very, very expensive to them because in their mind they're starting to think when I'm bidding these things, what else is on the roadway that I have no control over? Trash trucks, emergency service vehicles, things that are going to start damaging the roadway through normal wear and tear. And at some point you draw the line. So the industry standard is 12 months to 24 months warranty upon acceptance of the facility. Thank you. And that's very interesting because I'm sure that I can't be the only one who is thinking, well, gosh, if they're supposed to last this long, why would we have agreed to a -- or people in the past have agreed to a warranty that short, but as you're saying, that's just the industry standard. So that in and of itself was not a sign that these failures would occur. And as you'll see, part of the recommendations that came out of this, part of what contributes to that is not having enough time on site for the inspectors to catch those methodologies not being applied correctly then and there. As we talked about last year with council, why we needed more inspectors in our group is they were only able to average 15 minutes a day per site to keep pace with the development that we have occurring. So in our inspector corps at the time, it was smaller than what we have today. And just to follow that up, just by stating the obvious, more inspectors cost more money in the short term saves a lot of money in the long term. Yes, the cost definitely goes up in the repairs as compared to taking care of it at the time of construction. Plus the frustration level to the community in general, you've got homes built three years, five years after the fact. They're dealing with us now coming out and tearing out what looks like a fairly brand new street and putting in, again, a fixed street as opposed to installing it correctly first and just dealing with the out of the norm kind of scenario that might come up somewhere down the road. So results from the study identified three primary modes of failure for the roadways. The primary and overall largest number of failures were in line with utility trenches, specifically over sewer lines, wastewater lines, sanitary shorelines. Those pipes for a variety of reasons tend to fail faster. Just like water, they typically are plastic pipe. They're a PVC, so they're a heavy duty, very strong plastic pipe. But unlike a water line where it's pressurized and it's pushing outward, it's a cavity that has very little in it. So if the roadway is not compacted well over the top of it, it's not going to retain itself. So compaction becomes a problem. It could lead to failure of the pipe. You've got to compact it well to make sure that it then supports the roadway. The roadway is just like a house. It has a foundation to maintain its structural integrity. One of the ironic pieces is that we found that in almost every case, the concrete that was actually put in place met the specification both of yesterday and today. So there was nothing wrong with the concrete or the steel that was placed on those roadways. It was purely an embedment issue. So one of the primary methods you see, and I've got multiple areas here where you see the types of utilities that might go underground, the sanitary sewer line, we go in a trench much like what you see down here in it. And a methodology that contractors like to use to kind of minimize the cost is they only keep a vertical trench for a very limited area. And then they do what's called benching. They start to slope out at a certain height so that it's a little easier for them to have a little bit more room to work around a variety of other issues, but it's also very hard to compact that type of embedment. You can as long as you're doing it right and you're doing it well. It's easier to compact if you go with a true vertical wall all the way up to the top the width of the compaction equipment. It's easier, but it's also a costlier venture to do that. So we have multiple issues that may have conveyed a problem to those scenarios and you can see in this little drawing down here on the bottom, when you bench, the trench tends to fail in this area. So what happens with this little dashed line here is that's how you would have seen most likely the soil underneath there would have settled to the point where there was nothing but a void underneath the road. So the concrete on the road then had to act like a bridge with nothing under it. So the roadway designed at the time would have held cars, any other vehicle perfectly as long as the earth was underneath it to support it, but as soon as it wasn't, it wasn't strong enough. So the current standards we have today basically act like that bridge if nobody wants to do the geotechnical testing. Other ways that this may have failed, in some cases we saw poor joint spacing. So when you lay out concrete streets, we pour them in squares. And that's where we tie those panels together that allows contraction and expansion of the concrete. So as it heats up and cools down, concrete's still basically a very hard fluid and it moves back and forth. And as they get too close to each other, it can cause it to crack in other ways. So you put these spaces in to make sure that you don't have that issue. If they get too big though, then I can have failures of other kinds. And that's what we're seeing here is poor joint spacing. So we have recommendations to take care of that down the road. So there are some streets in our city that have water under them or aquifers. Would this help with that from the street caving in or sinking? So geotechnical investigation always would. There are other measures that we would put in place to see what you could do with that. But that is a recommendation that came out of this report, is that you do the geotechnical testing and we do that on all public projects to make sure that if we identify those groundwater zones that we know how to deal with them. Okay. Thanks. Uh-oh. Scott's not going to be happy. So one of the other conditions that we had found -- Why is that? It was subgrade heaving. And we have a lot of clay soils in the area. So with clay soils, the more water it gets in it, it expands. And then when the water recedes, groundwater becomes an issue, it starts to contract. And what can happen is it starts to make the concrete push up or go under depending on what's going on underneath it. And with that being the case that we did see a few failures fell into that category, but nothing to the degree of these utility line failures. So study recommendations that we've already implemented. So we've got to increase time on site. We talked about before that that's the best possible way to make sure that these roads don't fail is to make sure that inspectors are there to provide the quality control they're supposed to. So in that avenue, council did approve last year for us to hire seven new inspectors. By the end of the month, we should have all of those inspectors' positions filled. That will allow us to hit more of these roadways in a timely manner. We've increased our pavement requirements from a design perspective. So if someone does not want to do the geotechnical investigation up front, then the standards we have in place are extremely conservative. They're designed to handle when that soil kind of washes away from underneath it and bridge over that area. Now, what you can do is, and we've told multiple developers as they've come through under this new design criteria manual, is you do the geotechnical investigation, show us your pavement design based on that study, and we'll be glad to let you use that in place of the other. Materials testing requirements. So that is the contractor's responsibility, signed and sealed by a geotechnical engineer or professional engineer, or geotechnical scientist or professional engineer for our inspectors to see those on a regular basis. So whenever they place dirt, they have to place it in certain levels and then compact it and test each one of those. We call them lifts. So they're going to put six to 12 inches of dirt down, compact it, test it, make sure it's stable, then move to the next. That was not always happening in the past. That is good practice. So that is what we're requiring today. And then we've got multiple other recommendations here that several of them we're already in the middle of doing. Some that came out that we're not but we are working towards is assessing all of the streets that have come in under subdivisions that were either constructed under the old criteria manuals or in this transition period any manuals or under any criteria before the 2019 manuals were adopted. So that's about 12 to 13 subdivisions. We'll be monitoring those subdivisions to make sure that we understand the breadth of what we end up having to take care of in the long term. Fully reconstruct any areas that are a problem. We are engaged in doing that. But we need a much more robust program that identifies those areas. I think Danny has spent a lot of time looking through this to the point where we feel like and you'll see in our budget amendment with numbers to or you'll see in our budget this coming year with numbers to support it, it's going to be somewhere on the order of a million to $2 million annually over the next five years to keep pace with the subdivisions that we've seen if they fail the way they could. But that's an annual process of us keeping tabs on every subdivision streets. Roughly 1,000 street segments. Is it 1,000? We would go into as we're rewriting our specifications we would also require prohibition on trench benching which we just talked about before where we would go with straight vertical walls that would limit the capacity for some of these failures. Various other quality control improvements where on site we have our own geotechnical firm. We could come and assess some of these trenches or compaction studies and do them on our own to double check, just spot check what they're already providing. So next steps, we recommend that we go forward in assessing the true limits of what it is we're really trying to get into. Danny's already engaged in that. We're going to establish the costs of what we think that would be and then we're going to build a program around that. Finally, we recommend that we utilize these results and take any comments, direction that council may give us and develop a much more robust program with funding recommendations going forward. Questions? Comments? Yes, Councilmember Briggs. So we're not going to increase the warranty period beyond the two years. So should all these recommendations increase the life of the roads that expectancy that we're seeing? We should see no more of the premature failures for as routinely as we're seeing them. You might see them on occasion, but it should be a very weird circumstance that that would occur. And on the roads that were built, because there were several before these new standards were in place, do we have a process where within that two year warranty period we're going to continue to inspect those to make sure that if something happens we catch it before the expiration? Yes, we're already doing that. And so what happens if we still have issues? So say, year four comes, even after we've done this, and there's still failures. I'm not saying there won't be failures, but it should be by doing these things here, which is fairly typical across the nation, these are not out of the norm, will minimize the total number of those failures. They can still happen, but it will ensure that we get to a point where it's a very, very small percentage of the roadways that we're actually dealing with. Okay. Just a follow up. So pretty much we should have been doing this for many, many years. Yes. In the past. And so that's probably why our roads are failing so quickly and have gotten so bad. Yes. Okay. It's definitely a contributing factor to that, yes. So although this is costing us quite a bit of money and we're going to be doing it the right way, eventually down the road it will save us on repairs. Correct. We'll put in place a much better maintenance program annually so that we just don't get to this point. Okay. Thank you. So I strongly support these recommended measures. It will make a huge difference. It's better engineering and the inspection, increased inspectors will be a safeguard to make sure that it's done right. My question, please let me know if this is outside of your area of expertise, which I know it's engineering, is if you think there's anything that can be done at the level of RFPs that request for proposals in selecting contractors that could at least, you know, do the maximum to ensure that our inspectors are not going to be having headaches every day and wishing they could just do the work themselves, you know what I mean? Is there a way to -- I'll just throw this out there, you know, when you're looking at the finalists to visit other cities where they've done work to get -- to solicit recommendations from the people who live there, you know, to have the inspectors go to those cities? Maybe none of these are good ideas, but I'm curious to know if you've considered any of this. So we do talk to other cities frequently just as a way of keeping tabs on what everybody else is doing and we'll absolutely bring that up the next time we're visiting with some of these cities. One of the things I would tell you is it's very difficult from a private development standpoint to have that level of control over the contractor the developer picks. Certainly over our projects, over the city's projects, we can. And that's something that we do look at when we're selecting vendors when we go build a roadway, a collector, a city facility, is we're going to look at their ability to do the work in the past. So are you suggesting that there are just certain industry standards for the way these kind of contracts are made? We have nothing to do with the contract between a private developer and his contractor unless there are city funds tied to it. And at that point, we might be able to, but it depends on the extent of what that is. And I think I would defer to the city attorney on those items. Okay. So you're talking about at the level of subcontractors, I guess, call them? No. What I'm hearing us talk about right now is these will be public streets, but they're being built by a private developer and his contractor. There are very few restrictions I'm aware of legally that we can place on them when they're hiring their contractor. What we can put are all kinds of restrictions and specifications on what we will accept. Yes, yes. Which is what we do. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. Council Member Duff? Yeah, my question is gated communities. Yes, sir. You know, because the way I understand it, the street itself is maintained by the HOA for the -- what about the infrastructure underneath the water lines, sewer lines and all of that. Who's responsible for those? It depends on the infrastructure itself. Some facilities that we have, there are private utilities and some of them, they're public. So if it's got public utilities, then we would require the same embedment and compaction that we would on any other public facility. If it's a private facility, say we put -- the city puts a water meter at the edge of the development and everything internal to the development is theirs. It's really the private community's responsibility to maintain that. Well, of course, Robson Ranch, it has city water, city sewage, et cetera. So the city is responsible for that infrastructure under the roads? Yes, sir. Okay. That's what I thought. I just wanted to clarify that. But if you have to go in and fix something like that, I mean, generally you had to tear the road up. Who fixes the road? City would. If we're doing repairs to the public utilities for an issue in, say, a water line or sewer line, then yes, we would replace that part of the roadway. Okay. Thank you. Just one thing, Mayor. We did have a question at the Bond Oversight Committee. There was some concern with whether the recent streets that have been built out of the 2012 and '14 bond packages were failing as well. They were concerned about that. I just wanted to give Todd the opportunity to clear up that we've been meeting these types of specifications. In fact, we've been building the streets very strong and a little bit differently than what had been in the subdivision criteria, but it's not been an issue with the streets that have been constructed in the last two bond packages. Correct. I understand. We'll make sure that the public was aware of that. Thank you, Billy. We'll go back to our regular agenda schedule, which is 3A. Well, we can't do anything yet because we just lost a quorum. [inaudible] We're back to a quorum. Yeah. We'll go ahead and call agenda items. I think I did for 3A. We report whole discussion, provide staff direction on the Denton Development Code update and draft zoning map. Before you all start your presentation, I just want to just take a couple of moments to make some comments. I'm aware of comments that have been made in the paper in an article last week and then at the planning and zoning special called meeting and in various emails about some concern about the process that we've had for the last eight months and some indication that people think that we've changed the entire process. So I'm just going to give a brief background. I've tried to flush it out at each meeting by asking a very simple question, but I'm going to go ahead and give a brief historical context so that we can have that. And we all understand that, especially my colleagues here. This process with the Denton code review committee started when, when did we, when did y'all have your first meeting? Do you recall? Last, last summer. May or June? It had to have been sometime in May because Councilmember Begarry, I think was on that committee. And so when she decided not to run, then that seat became vacant. And then I filled that seat and started attending those meetings in June of 2018. I think we have about 29 or 30 meetings since that time. So once I got on the committee and as we talked about the process that the committee decided in the very beginning, before I got on, it seemed that there was a, the process was to change the zoning map to reflect more accurately based upon the 2030 plan, as far as areas of the city that needed rezoning to match that zoning to the 2030 plan. Is that, is that correct? I think to some degree it was truly trying to look at the future land use map as well as our existing zoning categories. Right. But then there was some discussion about because we were compressing zoning classifications and we had to assign a zoning classification to the different current zonings that in some of those we saw that there was a, sometimes, not oftentimes, but several, a pretty substantial difference in what was zoned currently and what the new zoning classification could be based upon that paradigm in the beginning moving forward. Is that, was that a fair statement? So then we discussed why don't we try to make the zoning map as consistent using the classifications with the current zoning as we could given that there's going to be some changes, but they'd be mitigated. Because the process, the other way, or that this process in general is we send out a letter to every property owner in the city stating that there may be a zoning change on their property. Is that correct? That's correct. But there's no public hearing on specific parcel rezonings. There's no 200 or 500 foot notifications sent out to neighborhoods in that area of those specific, and it's a very different process than what we require of applicants seeking a rezoning right now under our current codes. Is that, is that right? That is correct. And this isn't an interrogation. I'm just trying to make sure. It's correct. Yeah, okay. I'm feeling the heat, but yes, sir, it is. No, no, no. No, it's not heat. I just want to make sure that we have a clear understanding of what's happened because of some comments that have been made from individuals who are part of the committee but attended the very first few meetings, I think, under this old paradigm but was not aware of the new paradigm. So then that's how we've moved forward over the last seven to eight months. And we have looked at specific properties, specific areas to say, hey, the impact might be minimal. So we felt comfortable with the committee and the committee decided on that direction. That wasn't, I mean, that wasn't a unilateral decision by staff or by one member. This was a discussion and deliberation we had at the committee level to move forward with that new paradigm. And there, we've looked at some issues and changes. But for the most part, that's what we've done with the plan to set the foundation for the zoning map, the new zoning map, and then as the city identifies certain areas that are ripe for a city rezoning to more closely align it to the future land use map and the 2030 plan, that they could work in collaboration with the property owners and go through the same similar process that every applicant has to for rezoning, that is, sending out the notices, 200, 500 feet, neighborhood meetings, and the public hearing, which we require of any rezoning applicant. Is that accurately reflects sort of what the plan is and how we address these issues of, well, we didn't fix this, we didn't fix that, what are we doing? Is that? >> I think for the most part, I think there might be one piece to that that I might want to add is Ron took the lead on updating and providing a draft zoning map. And in doing that, there were a number of parcels or areas that were changed or altered. And I think through the committee, that's when that came to light that some of those were not appropriate. So I think the conversation was really revolving around the fact of lack of notification, the lack of appropriateness to adjacent properties. And maybe an easiest example would be highway corridor that were, we just felt that that property was on the highway, it should be highway corridor. The committee corrected us in that thought process to say, well, not all of these because the residential abutting on one side of the interstate versus the other. And so I think it was not changing the draft zoning map or changing what's proposed as a draft zoning map as much as it was curtailing perhaps some of the work that staff had done earlier on that draft zoning map, if that helps. >> Okay, sure. That's fair enough. >> Just wanted to add to that, when we first started this update of the zoning map, we shared with the committee, and I think we shared with planning zoning commission, there were 16 factors that we look into. One was the future land use map. And I'll be clear that that was our guiding document. We also had to work with a new line of zoning district, so that list that you all are familiar with was another factor. We looked at existing conditions on site. There's a lot of things that we went into, but yes, you're right, Mayor. At first it was the residential, and we changed that. We went from a small amount of residential zoning district to a full set of zoning district that's consistent to what the current zoning map is. And as Scott mentioned, then we started looking at the nonresidential zoning district, and that's where we got to where we are today. And so just to add that there was a lot of work, but other factors, it wasn't just the future land use map. It was other things that we had to look into as well. >> Sure. I understand that. But point being that it might have started out on one track in the very beginning, and then we sort of shifted as we noticed some of maybe the unintended consequences that we were looking at as we were making some of these changes. So this isn't a criticism about anybody. I just wanted to be able to share my understanding of the process because it seems like there's been some comments that seem to reflect a different process. And I've been to most of the meetings. I hadn't attended them all, but most of them over the last eight months. So if I had misunderstood that, then I had misunderstood it for quite some time. Councilmember Briggs, you were part of that committee. Is there anything that we've said here that from your perspective is different or what your understanding has been about the process? >> I will just add that for me it was the key word is process. When the original plan came to us in the very beginning and we looked at the zoning map, there were some areas there that didn't quite fit as far as the committee was concerned when we were looking at the impact to the surrounding areas. And I remember the mayor made it quite clear as well as the other committee members that taking away the process that our residents and constituents are used to with the notification and coming and explaining how they feel about certain developments in their area would have been taken away. And for us that wasn't okay. So then that's when we started adding those different residential neighborhoods and trying to align the map a little bit more consistent with what was there. So that's my recollection of when that changed. And that was when we were down in the basement and Clarion was here. That's when the process changed. And that's what I remember. >> Great. So I just wanted to try to provide some historical context to your discussion today instead of just asking my one question that didn't have a whole lot of substantive facts surrounding it. So appreciate all the hard work that staff has done up to this point and will continue to do in this process because this is not the end of the process. This is really the beginning as we move into a different phase as we move through the process of approving our current plan. So thank you for your indulgence and thank you, colleagues, for indulging me in that regard. >> I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to be here today to discuss it. I would further like to say that it's just a reminder that this is a draft zoning map and a draft code and we're certainly trying to get that feedback and the public input. And the committee is charged with giving us that direction. We're working through that direction. And I think to piggyback on those statements as far as the changes that were made because staff hadn't evaluated the RD 5X. Ronald will speak to this a little later in the presentation. But the RD 5X was a placeholder zoning and we're assigning zoning to it. So we went through that process in the same way and looked at zoning what we thought might be most appropriate without factoring in that was prior to the committee's guidance. And we really didn't touch on that specific area. So as we made a wholesale change the Friday before last, that change also requires staff to do more due diligence, more research, and to come back and say, okay, so of that, that makes sense for a large portion of those, not all, and we're going to bring those forward and ultimately get the committee's recommendation on altering that again. And as we continue to alter through the process before we come to an adoption map, we want to make sure we have this as refined as we can make it. With that being said, I guess I want to speak to again that we think that in this there will be also opportunity for staff to bring city initiated rezonings of areas within the city so where we recognize that we have some areas that probably need something, we can truly go around and make certain that we're providing notification, have a public hearing process, even if it's more than one parcel like the traditional notification process works, we'll make certain that those areas that everyone's notified and that it's specific to their property. And I think and I appreciate that. The it seems like that the comments that have been made have been largely created by this decision in the last meeting to change RDX 5s to RRs and then to leave the multiple zoned parcels in place, but in that discussion of that meeting, that was what would would most closely align with the process and the procedure that we've applied throughout the eight months, understanding that we have the opportunity to come back and further refine it as we have with some certain parcels, even throughout this process. So we didn't apply any different approach than we've applied throughout the eight months or the over the 30 meetings. So I think that's where some of the confusion has been. But it wasn't the committee wasn't confused. I mean, maybe a couple people were surprised. But that's the same process that we've been that we've been using with the understanding that staff can go out, identify multiple properties that may be ripe for a city rezoning and can work with the property owners. Because if you're going to change somebody's zoning, I would think you would want to have a conversation with the property owners and with the community and go through the same normal process as anybody applying for rezoning. So I know some will disagree with that process. And that's okay. But that's what the committee over the eight months has been talking about. And so we're not changing course. At the end of the day, I guess is what I'm trying to say there's there's nothing that we've done to change the course of our time together over the last eight months. So that I appreciate you bringing that up specifically. Councilmember Briggs had a comment just on the comment on the RDX five. The RR was just to put this out here. It's the it's the less intense zoning with the less amount of density. So we were able to bring that into the city so that our ordinances would be applied with the less amount of density. And if they wanted to increase that, then the process would be triggered and they could come and change that zoning. That that's an accurate statement. In addition to that, and Ron will speak to some of this later, that in doing that, just because we were doing this at a wholesale level, we recognize that some of those properties may not conform to that zoning. So we'll be bringing back and saying, Okay, so we took it to the least. And so it requires it to be five acres, some of those parcels are not five acres. So as that's appropriate, then we'll say, Well, if there are 32,000 square feet, then we'll make those an R one and but it's, again, taking it to the least impactful zoning district that we can. And I think consistent with what you're speaking to Mayor is that I think that the council or the committee, excuse me, has been very diligent in making sure that we're taking care of those property owners that are adjacent to parcels and not to negatively impact them without due process. Yes. Okay. Just just real quick, just to add to that, the work that staff has done, we have kept. So when we talk about, it's not necessarily that we're stopping here, it's actually, it's a longer process. And it's going to, it's gonna take a different process to get there. But we're, the goal is still there. And that is to zone the city appropriately. But we're going to have to go through public hearings with property owners and property adjacent property owners. So again, just to state that the work that we've already completed so far, we are not forgetting, and we're going to continue using that information to get to where we need to be in the future. So right. Okay, good. I appreciate it. Thank you all so much for that clarification. I appreciate the indulgence to sort of flush that out to get some, some, I think facts that maybe have been left out of the discussion. So thank you. Well, great. And with that being said, I think what we'll do is we'll really just jump right into the zoning districts and get into that conversation. We were going to begin the program with talking about some of the outstanding items from last week, we have a citizen participation piece, but we're going to send an ISR out this Friday, and we'd rather have the council have an opportunity to review that before talking about it. So I think it makes the most sense. We'll just jump into the zoning districts and come back to those in the next meeting. So as we've talked about, the zoning map obviously is an important part of the code update. But in before we start with the zoning map, we really wanted to focus on the zoning districts. So if you don't mind, chapter three is what we're going to be focusing on. It contains the zoning districts, the purpose, and the dimensional requirements for each zoning districts. I think it's helpful to understand what those are so that when we look at the zoning map, we have a better understanding of what each zoning district is. So on page 114 is the first zoning districts. They are grouped by residential, mixed use, corridor, and non-residential districts. So the first one is the RR. I apologize, I don't have it in the screen, but in the backup or in the document itself, RR is described as a district intended to provide and maintain areas of rural use. The area applies to farming, forest, environmental, and scenic areas and are protected from incompatible development. So the RR is primarily your rural areas, your five acre minimum lot sizes, your estate lots. That's typically what you will see in an RR. Now there'll be some rural commercial activities associated with that zoning district, but RR is again our lowest intense zoning district and is applied along the periphery of the city. So that's what the RR is. Moving on to the next zoning district, and that is the R1. R1 is essentially an R1, which has a minimum lot area of 32,000 square feet. So not your estate lots, but less than an acre, but still a fairly large lot where you can have a large square foot home, but mainly residential. And it's described as a district intended to preserve the existing single family neighborhoods and to ensure new development that promotes conservation of scenic rural open spaces. So still very rural, but very low density. R2, which is our NR2, which is the two units per acre and its minimum size is 16,000 square feet. So a little smaller lot from 32, half of that lot. Again, R2 is described as intended to preserve our existing single family neighborhoods. R2 is intended to ensure that new development promotes walkability, access to parks and other amenities. Again, very residential in nature. R3 moving forward is currently our NR3 zoning district. Minimum lot size there is 10,000 square feet. So it's still a large lot, fairly sized home that can be placed on there. But again, between R2, it's smaller. Again, intended to preserve, again, our single family neighborhoods intended to ensure that new development, again, promotes walkability is used as a transition between the large lot residential neighborhoods and our medium lot residential neighborhoods. So it's kind of in the middle of the our districts. Yes. I just wanted to pause here for a moment while we're still in the low density. To comment that it's in these lower density areas that I have seen that our 50 and 200 foot notification policy really gets problematic. And I'm excited for the new, again, it's not a substitute for that, but a supplement notification policy. I think that these kinds of zoning areas that you're talking about that have a bigger lot size and lower density will really benefit by extended notification in these rural areas where there's nobody sometimes within or almost nobody within that bare minimum 50, 200 feet. So just wanted to comment that on that to say how these kinds of zoning classifications will benefit in other ways by the new code. Sure. Right. Okay. Again, R3 is a transition as we get closer to more denser zoning district. The next one is R4. Again, NR4. Just going to repeat, again, intended to accommodate now a variety of housing types, lots, designed again to be walkable neighborhoods, close to neighborhood servicing, retail, restaurants. Again, closer to town and not as large of a lot. So NR4's minimum lot size is 7,000 square feet. We jump from NR4 to, I'm sorry, R4 to R6. That is currently your NR6 zoning district. Minimum lot size here is 6,000. So just to note that all of these residential zoning districts, R6 is probably the most dense or intense with a minimum lot size of 6,000. Again, intended to accommodate a variety of housing type, encourage walkability. Again, this is leading into what we're going to be calling R7, which is a more intense zoning district. So that being said, R7 is a new zoning district that is being proposed and this zoning district will condense or compile four zoning districts that we currently have, four zoning districts, and that's the DR1, DR2, RCR1, and RCR2. And those will be transitioned into the R7. >> Councilmember Meltzer. >> I'm sorry, I haven't had an opportunity to read your responses to my pre-submitted questions, but maybe you can address them here. What protections are sacrificed in consolidating those? Are there some protections that are available to these currently existing zonings that are lost by putting them together? >> Sure, Councilmember Meltzer. We were asked that same question from the committee. We prepared a PowerPoint presentation and in my response I did attach a table, and I apologize, I won't have that in front of me, but it outlines where the DR1, DR2, RCR1, and RCR2, what is permitted within those zoning districts and what is going to be permitted in the R7. And we tried to match them evenly. Of course there's going to be ones that are going to be less impactful, but while others are going to be more impactful. We also researched the number of RCR1s, and honestly there weren't that many in the city. And that's the reason why we're consolidating these, is because there's not many of them in the city. RCR2, if you like, we can have our GIS analyst, Cody Yates, pull up where they are in the city, and you can see that there's not many examples of RCR1 or RCR2. We know we have a lot of DR1 and DR2, but that's another reason why. They're not as many, but that's the other reason why we're consolidating them. So, impactful-wise, it's going to be in the middle, and that's what we tried to do when we were looking at the list of uses as well as the dimensional standards. We wanted to make sure if the height was 40 here and it was 65 here, we're going to go like at 50. So there's a give and take. There has to be a give and take when you're considering consolidating four zoning districts into one. Without making you go through like the whole table, is there anything, what was maybe the most material, you know, kind of give up? I mean, I totally hear you that there aren't many instances of these, hence the reason to consolidate them, you know, just if people are concerned. What's the most material give up, you know? I think the biggest one is, and we talked about in the committee, is the density, probably. You know, DR1, and the uses, of course, right? Certain uses are permitted in the DR1 or the RCR2 versus the DR1, which are the two different furthers away. So probably the density, we're going from eight dwelling units per acre to a little bit more than 15 or so. So there's the difference in density. I'll tell you that. And then also the type of the number of uses that are permitted between the four zoning districts. >> Okay. >> Now, I appreciate if offline I would be interested in taking a look at that. >> Table. >> Our point they used to respond to the committee. >> Sure. >> And also in that, we're replacing density, but we're not using density anymore. >> Correct. >> So it's what can fit on the lot. But what's happened, though, with this consolidation, because there was concern with -- and I don't remember, I asked this question. DR1 currently, does it allow -- is it eight units per acre? Or is it allow no multifamily? DR1 currently. Because I know DR2 is about 12 to -- is about 30 units per acre, I think, or 16 units or something like that. I think DR1 -- okay. DR1 does not -- that's okay. DR1 does not allow multifamily is what was stated. So in this, we're saying, though, multifamily now has to have an SUP. Is that correct? >> Correct. >> So that's -- the give-up in that respect is sort of given back with this sort of extra scrutiny, if you will. >> Review. >> Yeah, different extra review in that regard. So that's one of them that I think was really part of the discussion during that. So yeah, whatever PowerPoint you need to provide, Councilman Meltzer, that's great. >> We can do that. And again, looking at the R7, it's on page -- the compiled list of dimensional standards is on page 128. If you refer to that, the last column there is R7. You can see that the minimum lot size is 4,000. Lot coverage maximum is 65%. So again, we try to look at -- yeah, looking at a way to balance out between the four zoning districts. And again, I can provide that PowerPoint presentation that we shared at the DCRC. And in the table, I believe it was forwarded to the full Council. That was in response to Councilman Meltzer's question. I provided that as well. Yes. So perfect. >> That's fast enough, if I already -- okay. So R7, in those areas, we're looking at zoning those where they're currently DR1, DR2, RCR1 and RCR2. And again, to the Council, if it's to your request, we can pull those up on the map. We're prepared to do that. If not, we can continue with the next zoning district. Questions? Anybody? Okay. All right. So we're going to go into now the mixed use districts. And I think this is an area that we should spend a little bit of time because I think it's important. The first one is MN, mixed use neighborhood. This zoning district is intended to provide the support compatibility between higher intensity mixed use districts, our zoning uses, and adjacent residential. So that's the transition. That's the area between potentially an R7 and maybe a higher intense zoning district such as an HC or an SC or even an MD mixed use downtown. This district has a vibrant environment for pedestrians, bicyclists, and includes a variety of densities of residential, has neighborhood retail servicing uses, and is sensitive to the natural as well as the context of the area. So that is MN. The minimum lot area for an MN zoning district is 2,500, a height of 65 feet. And I want to -- in the chart that was passed out by Scott, MN is your NRMU 12 and NRMU zoning districts. So essentially it's your -- it's our current mixed use districts. We're combining those two into one, and again, that's the MN. >> Okay. Council Member Briggs. >> And is that height of 65 feet consistent with the all two zoning? >> NRMU, yes. I believe the NRMU 12 was lower. I think it was 45 or 40 feet. So we went with the higher height on this one. That is a good question. And I want to mention that at the DCRC meeting that we had one of the recommendations or the suggestion was that in the MN zoning districts, just the MN zoning districts, if there was a proposed height of greater than I believe it was 40 feet, that between 40 and 65, that a specific use permit be required. So that would eliminate the concerns that you're going from NRMU 12, which is 40 feet, up to 65. Having that additional review provides that assurance that those properties would need a specific -- or those projects would need a specific use permit. So we will make sure that that's added as part of this table. >> Thank you. >> And some contextual history because the reason we created R7 was because the DR1s and 2s were included originally, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, either in the MNs. Were they in the MNs? >> I believe so. >> And there was a really big disparity of, you know, from a DR1 to an NRMU 12 or an NRMU. So that's why we tried to consolidate them to minimize that impact and create those additional categories. >> Good point. >> Okay. So the next one is the MD zoning district. Our mix use downtown. And this one, the purpose specifically reads as a district providing the allowance of a variety of uses that help the economic vitality of downtown Den, primarily our square area. The district allows for moderate to high density residential commercial entertainment and again is tailored to create a greater level of activity while still protecting the scale in strengthening the character of downtown. That being said, we discussed with the committee that any -- as that is currently directed or as currently proposed, the zoning of DCG and DCN would transfer into an MD zoning district. However, we also know that there are DCNs and DCG zonings along the highway along I-35. And it is staff's opinion, professional opinion that we should not zone those MD because again the MD is intended for the downtown area. So we're focusing downtown or MD and I can ask Cody to come up and illustrate this because I think it's important to know where we are proposing MD and those that are watching can see where that is proposed before we continue. So the area there in purple that Cody has shown on the screen is where MD will be or proposed to be zoned. Those properties along I-35 and outside the downtown will get a different zoning. So they won't necessarily follow the transition to MD but rather because again the purpose of MD is primarily for the downtown area. And can you just say a little bit about what will be the substantive differences besides the difference in name of those? So it depends on the location. So we're going to be a little bit more sensitive and careful in zoning those properties. So if I can ask Cody just to highlight those areas that are currently DCN and DCG and I'll illustrate where those are in the city because those will get, if it's along a highway, will probably get an HC, a highway corridor and we'll discuss that a little bit later, which is almost the same as an MD but allows for certain uses that are more accommodating or more relevant to a highway area where if there is DCG or DCN adjacent to a neighborhood, rather than put an MD along or adjacent to a neighborhood, it's probably going to get an MN or maybe an R7. So again, contextually where those are would get an appropriate zoning district. Yes, go ahead. And again, I realize you're about to get to the highway corridor later in the presentation but just because we're making that comparison, that point about the difference between the downtown classification. So would you say that just generally speaking, in comparison to the downtown zoning, on paper it looks very, there's a lot of overlap except it's not quite as restrictive because of the, that is on highway corridor compared to this downtown zoning that we're talking about now. We'll go into it. I think it's important to note that not only the dimensional standards is important to study but also the permitted or allowed uses is also important to study because it will determine what do you mean by impactful or not impactful. We were very careful in making sure that those zoning districts, as we understand the purpose to be, follow in line with the proposed allowed uses. So when we're saying HC, we're making sure that those uses along the highway fit the highway area, while those that are proposed in the neighborhoods, the R7 and the MN, are more suitable for the neighborhood area. So it will take a little bit of time to compare those, but generally we are assigning the downtown MD while the other areas that normally would have gotten an MD are going to get a different zoning district. I think Cody has identified those areas that are currently zone DCN or DCG. They are shown in green. So we feel that the MD is more, as we read the purpose, suitable for the downtown in that area that was shown earlier. Those that are shown here in green between the highway and downtown should have a zoning district that is more contextually compatible to what it is in the area as it exists today and not follow the MD zoning district. Does that make sense? I think I understand the question to be the MD downtown. How is that different than what we currently have? That wasn't my question, but it's a good question. Okay. I'm trying to understand the difference with the zoning. If you could just explain that for the people watching you. I know that we have a conversation coming up a little bit later about the specific area around the courthouse, but that's where we're talking about, about this area in purple. Right. The area that's shown in purple, the MD is very similar to the DCG. A little bit different from the DCN because DCN is downtown commercial neighborhood. DCG is downtown commercial general and looking at the dimensional standards, they're very similar as far as the maximum height is a hundred feet and that is the same for DCG and the MD. The minimum lock curvature, maximum lock curvature is the same in the DCG as the MD. So very similar in those regards, but again, as we discussed earlier, we'd have to study the uses and to see what's permitted in the DCG versus the MD. And again, that chart that I submitted has that comparison between the two zoning districts. So to answer your question, Councilman Briggs, very close, both the DCG and the MD. Okay. In height. In height and maximum lock coverage. I know we're talking about the maximum lock coverage now, but as we look at the dimensional standards that you see here on page 133, the DCG and the MD are very similar. Okay. Thank you. Council member Meltzer. Yeah, I'm just looking at the areas that you're designating as proposing for. I'm going to get the nomenclature wrong for the green DCG, right? That's currently the zoning district. Yeah. And it's, and you're saying MD sorry, correct me. What is the green? The green is currently either. What are you proposing the green to become? Just looking at the map I do the green, the green. Yes. There are going to be a variety of zoning district dependent on the context of the area and the location. Okay. So you're not, you're not proposing those are all treated the same. No, no, no. For highway HC, I don't know if Cody can pull up the, it's kind of hard to see. It's going to be a mixture of HC. So what were you trying, sorry to be a little dense, what were you trying to indicate by showing them all the same color? What was the point of that? I think, I think what it was is that if we were to follow just the table and make a straight transition, that would have been, that would have been MD. So we would have had mixed use downtown in all of those areas and staff is all the areas that are green. We are suggesting that we're going to look at those as far as the context of what's on the ground, that environment around those structures and what that should be zoned more appropriately. Okay. I'm tracking now. Thank you. Your patient explanation. Just to add another point to that, even though they're all, even though they're currently all DCG, there is a distinction in the code wall. It's not a necessarily district in itself. There is a boundary of what's defined as the central business district. It kind of gerrymanders through a variety of parcels that provides different, different standards than the regular DCG. And so that's really where that MD is pulling both within the central business district, but truly defining what the downtown is. So even though they're the same, they're not the same. And in those that are, and that's to add what Richard just stated, the area that you see in purple also resembles closely to what we're referring to as the downtown implementation area, the DTIP, as well as the TIF district. So it's really our core. And that's what is intended for the MD. Okay. Moving on to, unless there are any other questions, moving on to MR, which is mixed use regional. And this is the RCR, I'm sorry, RCCN and RCCD, our regional commercial center neighborhood, regional center commercial downtown. The MR is described as intended to provide a walkable urban center to augment the regional draw and increase the use or propose national retailers, employments in restaurants. Think of Razor Ranch. Think of the medical cities area. That's typically where it is currently regional draw and that's what we're going to continue. If you look at the chart that was passed out, the MR again is your RCCN and RCCD. Very, very, very high intense dense district that is very mixed use as well. Mix of uses. Okay. So moving on from mixed use districts, we're going to go into our corridor, zoning districts. And the first one is the suburban corridor. Suburban corridor. If we could, yeah, it'd be, I think, helpful if we got some of these up on the map to just sort of show where they are and just provide some context. Yeah, thank you. As Cody pulls up where those are proposed, suburban corridor is described as a zoning district intended to provide a moderate to a high intensity commercial uses, often with office, retail, and other high traffic uses along a major corridor. And when we, when we say corridor, suburban corridor, we're talking about University Drive, we're talking about Teasley, 377, even The Loop. Those are your suburban corridors. Again, very commercial oriented, very, you know, with hopefully some production and walkability, but intended to be more commercial. Everything up in blue is the suburban corridor. Those are currently, as Cody mentioned, and if you look at the chart, suburban corridor is primarily your CMG, commercial mixed use terminal, and CME, commercial mixed use employment. Those are the two zoning districts currently that will be transitioned into SC, commercial suburban corridor. Yeah, I thought I saw a hand. No? Okay. So if no other questions on suburban corridor, we'll go into the next zoning district, which is highway corridor, and Cody pulled those up, and these are primarily along I-35. I-35E, W, and to the north. Those currently shown in red are your highway corridor, and you can see, Councilman Meltzer, the area that was shown in green before, those that are close to the highway will be getting that HC because it fits in that context. Yes, Councilmember Meltzer. I know you've responded to this, and you've already provided me the answer, but I'm going to ask you anyway because I haven't read the answer. So we've got height restrictions for every one of these categories, but, you know, when I think about other cities, cities in general, you know, there's some area where you have really tall buildings, you know, whether you're talking about Plano or whatever, and I think highway corridor would be one of those areas where, you know, you wouldn't necessarily have, you know, a 100 foot height restriction. What is the reason for the limitation? And kind of relatedly, you know, where if not there, would there be, you know, very tall buildings permitted? Well, again, we try to stick with what was existing in our zoning district, and really RCR, I'm sorry, RCCD and our DCG, maximum height there is 100. Now, the industrial area, there is a height limit up to 140, but I think that was just an exception. I think, generally, we felt that 100 feet was the highest, and are you suggesting that there may be an area that may be higher? I don't know. There may well be a good reason. I'm just, you know, really just asking, just, you know, do we have a reason why we wouldn't want a 15 story building along the highway? I think sticking with, again, sticking with what we have today, but also understanding what our vision is for the city, we want to see, you know, those along the highway, and if that's the case, it is something that we should consider, if that's the council's, you know, preference. I'm not proposing one. I'm just, you know. 4HC. But currently, as we stand, staff does not have any areas that we would be looking to see a higher than 100 feet, but that doesn't mean that that can be something we can consider in the future. I don't want to be like, you know, just annoying about it, but just why or what's the thought process? I'm not necessarily taking a position. I'm just trying to understand, you know, I look at what cities have, and so what is our, what is staff's feeling about very tall buildings? You know, I know what the conclusion is, but what is the rationale? Is it a fire issue or? I think it could be appropriate. Quite honestly, we really haven't looked at it in this regard to suburban corridor until we, I'm sorry, to highway corridor. If you go back to the MD district and look at the maximum height, it currently is at 100, and this is, again, taken from the current code. You can go above 100 feet within the downtown provided you get an SUP and there's some view corridor studies that need to be done. Whether that same approach could be applied to highway commercial, I don't think would necessarily be an issue. I don't know that there would be so much of a view corridor problem with that, but certainly anything above 100 we can easily bring as, if someone wanted to do that as part of an SUP. Yeah, I don't know if anybody wants to, I'm really just trying to understand your kind of vision. I was just asking Scott, you know, the embassy suites, I think that's over 100, but that's part of an overlay, the razor range overlay. So in that context, you know, there was obviously some thought of that area being taller, and so the embassy suites is over 100. If we see that there are other areas in the city, we certainly can start there and then maybe identify what that high limit is for that particular area. But for now, we wanted to get as close to the existing zoning districts as we can, or as we should, at 100 feet. So you're just consolidating what already exists. And I'm certainly not proposing that for scripture normal, I'm just saying. Okay. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, and thank you, Councilmember Melter. I was wondering the same thing, and thank you for answering that. I, you know, as far as I'm concerned, and since this is what we're doing now, you know, having this conversation and getting input, I think it would be a good idea to be consistent and have an SUP for buildings over that height in the highway corridor. I, you know, unless there's some good argument against it that I can think of, I mean, if there's an SUP process for a more residential, you know, for a building over that height in a more residential area, then why not in the, you know, by the highway? Good comment. We'll certainly note that, and as Richard indicated earlier, in downtown, there is the possibility, if you want to go over 100 with an SUP, we can certainly do that for you. And that's why I'm saying, just for consistency, why not put that possibility with the highway corridor, you know, in other words, why be more restrictive by the highway than we are for building height? As long as there's an SUP where it goes through a process. Exactly, exactly. I would definitely want to keep the, or to make it an SUP, not to just make it automatic. Yeah, because if somebody wants to build over 100, if we don't have that opportunity, then we're stuck. Right. We got to come back and do a wholesale change, put a new, we got to amend the DDC instead of just having it as an option with an SUP with higher scrutiny. I don't see an issue with that. I think that's a great idea. The question I have, and y'all will be able to answer this later on, I'm sure, but so when you talk about 100 foot height without an SUP in the downtown area, of course, we're going to be talking about design stands. So when I'm thinking 100 feet in the downtown area, that's 8 to 10 stories if you got 10. I guess we're going to talk about that in the design criteria of the downtown, but we got to make sure that these two things talk well to each other, because I don't think you want a 100 foot building right behind, you know, one of the streets on the square. So we'll cover that, but we've got to make sure that we're not inconsistent here with what we're going to have further with design standards in the downtown. So that's, that just was something that came to my head as we're talking about this. Yes, and we won't specifically talk about that 100 feet with the design standards. So the design standards are going to be an overlay within the downtown district, so within the MD. With that being said, I don't know if we take, we've got existing buildings, i.e., the Wells Fargo building, which would be one of those candidates, or if we had somebody build over in the industrial rail portion, would we want them or allow them to build, you know, a 10, 15 story building where it seems would, where it could be very appropriate to have that? And I think the conversation is worth having. It wouldn't be part of the square. The square is going to be very limited to a small, concise area as an overlay. Within the downtown criteria. Within the MD. Within the MD. Not that it's getting addressed in our next agenda item. You're saying that in the zoning, in this code, the new DDC in the zoning map, that's where we would address to make sure that the downtown proper area is managed from a height perspective. That's not in the overlay that you're talking about for the design criteria, or it is? It is in the overlay for that area. Okay. Yes, Councilmember Meltzer. If you'll allow me to go backwards, I don't think of everything in advance, to where we're looking at the map where the downtown area was in purple. I'm just curious to see, you know, thinking ahead, yeah, you know, where we're going to be lifting the area south of the square out of the floodplain, and there's potentially a kind of rebirth or redefinition of downtown. How are we looking, you know, where does that area fall, right? That's outside of the purple. Yeah, right, there you go. The blue bit that just flashed. So how are we envisioning that from a zoning perspective? I hadn't really, you know, focused in on that in my preparation. Can you pull that purple area out where we can see the streets? Zoom in. Yeah, sorry, out in. The blue is the floodplain? Yes, that's the FEMA 26 floodplain. So, you know, if you don't mind pushing it up a little bit so we can see how far down that goes the other way. Yeah, let him sort of. I want to tell you, this individual is a guru of this map. I mean, y'all have not seen anything. I mean, this is, this is like another language. So once that's no longer floodplain, we envision that being primarily that. Yeah, the MN, the zoning is MN mixed use neighborhood, which is, again, mixed use height of 60, five with an SCP above 40, as we talked about, again, a lot of different mix of uses, compatibility measures to make sure that they're all compatible, but primarily still mean the downtown feel. Yeah, I mean, it may be a discussion for another day. It's unclear in my own mind whether you go to 10, 15 stories there or not. I think it's very appropriate today. I think if we need to get whatever it is that we need to get out to the public, I think it's useful to understand what the mindset might be. Yeah, the concern is the line of sight. In other words, if you have tall buildings that sort of close in the square, because you can see the square, the courthouse, I'm sorry, from Fort Worth Drive, as you're coming in, you can, it's sort of sitting on some of what of a hill. So you don't want to have that overshadowed. And where that starts and stops, I mean, certainly open to discussion. That's just sort of my basic thought. And that's what has been reflected from many comments that you don't want to wall it off. The purple, the purple is a hundred feet though. That's my point. So yes, well, it's, it's, you're saying, you're saying that, but you said there's an overlay that's that covers some part of the square proper. And I just don't know what that is. So that's why I'm saying we need to have these conversations sort of, if you're just talking, that's the only place where you can't put a hundred feet. That would be, that would be the only place that's, that's going to be a struggle. Go ahead. I do not. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we know how tall the the Wells Fargo, I think it's, it's, we get the information, but it's close to a hundred. That's an entirely different answer. Yeah. And real quick, DCG currently permits a hundred. So just, oh no, I understand. I understand. Yeah. And just remembering the conversation, my concern was that there was a lot of there's homes, single family homes around there too. And so part of my concern was that allowing them to be torn down and then built up over a hundred and what feet I have the concern to you of, of the height in this area. I feel like height is okay and somewhere else. I felt to make this comment, but in the draft code, there's actually some graphics, which I think helps illustrate the purpose in what is intended for those zoning districts. So you can see how the buildings are, are designed or not designed, but necessarily in scale and mass, how big they could be. So just to kind of give you some more additional information. Okay. So there's no other question on each. See, we'll move on to the non-residential zoning districts. And the first one there is Ron, we've been going for about an hour and 20, 30 minutes. Let's just take a little quick five minute break if we could. Yeah. Well, we did have barely a quorum before, so one of us couldn't leave. Welcome back to our meeting of the density council. We are currently on work session. Item three, eight. All right. Mayor, we got, we got four more. So just to kind of keep track for more zoning districts. I thought it was four more slides. Four more zoning districts. I'm kidding. Next one here under the non-residential districts is Geo, general office. Geo is a district intended to provide those locations for a variety of workplaces, complimentary uses that often are like your office parks, your research development type developments. This is where Geo would fall under. They are also areas that can accommodate development enterprises, startups, and opportunities for business innovation. Yes, go ahead. Same issue. Might we not want to enable the possibility of 10, 15 stories, you know, in areas like that for those kinds of purposes? Sure. And again, we are using the Geo as the ECC, the employment center commercial, as our starting to get us, that's our closest zoning district. I don't know if Cody has, are those all the Geos? Yes, this is all Geos. So those are all the Geos. So those are where we would have Geo. Of course, if there is direction from the council, we can certainly consider the SUP. Is that what you are referring to for a higher height? You know, that could be the mechanism. Just, you know, just precluding it as an option to the Mayor's earlier point. Like, you don't have to undo the whole code if something appealing like that comes up. Councilmember Briggs. Yeah, on 380, and I think the loop where that is, isn't that there's a neighborhood back there somewhere, right? Like a small neighborhood or am I on the east side of the loop? Okay. So if someone, okay, so going over 100 isn't there, I was seeing something different. Okay. Thank you. Go back to what the proposed zoning is. I think there was red there. And that was the Geo. Is that right? Okay. Well, which is represented here in this light blue. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's that's I wanted to make sure you understand because you're talking about the neighborhood and that's that Misty Wood, Chevy and all that that's north of that light blue at Virginia. Yeah, right, right there. Yeah. That's that neighborhood. And then the red is the is that the Geo? Yeah. And then there's a neighborhood directly across the street there. That's a pretty small close knit neighborhood right there. Right. Okay. So again, using the chart, we transitioned that into Geo because again, the existing zoning is ECC. Okay. So the height is 100 feet. That's currently what's being proposed. Yes. But that's what's current. Um, ECC. Okay. Thank you. Just so yes. The response was ECC was 100 feet. Yeah, just just just evolve. I mean, if you go back out to the the big view with the reds, uh, we're included areas to the south. Yeah, may not be appropriate for all areas. You know, right? Like that that area in the south east, you know, might be treated differently than one next to existing neighborhood. I don't mean to paint with an overly broad brush. Right. And again, just those are shown as Geo because of the zoning district of ECC as zone today. Geo. Any other questions on general office? Um, just think of one of the responses that we received was Geo. You're looking at the areas along. Um, I'm trying to think of play now areas that have, you know, office parks and, you know, that sort of thing. We'd like to see those areas with this zoning district is what the intent of this Geo. Okay. Um, next one is a light industrial light industrial is your ECI, ICE. And the reason why we combined this two zoning district is really there's not much difference between the two. Uh, ECI employment center, industrial, ICE, industrial center employment. So, um, the areas that has in front of you is where the L I would be, uh, is currently proposed. Uh, the L I is intended to provide locations for a variety of light industrial and employment uses such as light manufacturing, assembly, fabrication, warehousing and distribution, a wide range of commercial supporting uses. Um, it provides a variety of options for, for transportation. And again, L I provides the appropriate transition between the lower intense, um, intensity districts and the areas surrounding, which are higher in intensity. So you see that along I 35 L I is, is prominent on the west side of the city. And then you have allies throughout the years along the east eastern side of the city as well. Um, again, these are currently zoned ECI and ICE. So maximum height here is 75 feet. Yes. Council member Briggs. Just to note, if I recall, most of these are already built out, right? They're already in current use. Most of them, I would say most of them, but there are certain areas that, uh, are not, uh, but has, has the possibility of developing with light manufacturing and that's a good point. Uh, councilman Briggs, when we looked at the zoning, if it was along an area that was not developed and could be more commercial, you know, we would look at that as maybe as part of a city and each year rezoning. Maybe if it hasn't developed yet, maybe that's an opportunity for more buffering or more MN or commercial uses in those, in those certain areas. Okay. If there's no other questions on L I, we'll go on to H I, which is your heavy industrial and Cody will pull where those are, are proposed, uh, primarily along the I 35 west of I-35 where the airport is currently located. Den enterprise airport. H I is intended to provide locations for suitable development and operations, uh, for indoor and outdoor industrial distribution and manufacturing uses. Again, this is our highest intense zoning district. It is currently your ICG and those that are currently zoned ICG industrial center, um, general will be proposed to be H I and again shown on the map. Those are in red primarily by the airport. There's one south of I-35 and that's the ACME brick facility. Councilmember husband looking at three 80, um, would we not want to extend it to the west of three 80 where it kind of connects there? So you have the red that threw it, I guess that's yes. And so that white area in the, in the blue there, would we not want to, uh, include that? No, sir. To the right. Yes, sir. Right there. Just because that is that not sell one old campus that is, and it's currently zoned RCCD, which makes it M R right there. It had, there was a rezoning of that. It was prior to that. It was an R two. It was my understanding because of because of Selwyn school. And then we rezone that when a property owner, the property owner then wanted to develop that with a mixed use development with some office and residential and commercial along, uh, along university. So that receives that currently is RCCD. Okay. And so to transition looking at that, that would be an M R transition to yes. And so, okay, I'll look at the, I'll look at the side by side and see if there's what the, what the differences are and kind of going back to just trying to keep things as consistent as possible. That was another one of those that we just made the transition for the table rather than looking at the context of what's on the ground. Yeah. Well, but also we just rezone that correct. Literally like was less than a year ago or something or so correct. Why would we, why would we rezone it and then an applicant's request and then somehow change it, uh, unilaterally with the city. So that's, I think that's my concern is that they just asked for it and, um, they own it. So, well, I think they had a targeted reason for that mind stand that is no longer their target. And again, it's another, it's another one of those opportunities that they have to rezone. And if it makes sense for the city to do that, we can bring that as a separate, somebody comes back and wants heavy industry. We're trying to be consistent in the application of how we were doing these just transitions. Okay. Yeah. And that's on, that's on three 80. So do we want heavy industrial on three 80? Um, so that, that, yeah, no, we'll find out soon enough. The, the, the land's pending. So good. Well, then they'll come through the normal process like we do. Yeah. All right. Great. I just, just wanted to make a point and I think the mayor brought up a good point. That is that we, um, we are looking at the recently zoned properties in the city and we want to make sure that whatever was approved by council recently, we use a two year mark that we, um, try to match it as close as we can to what that zoning was approved on. So, so that we're, we're clear on that. Thanks. Appreciate that. Okay. Um, any questions on hi? If not, we're go to the last zoning district and this is a new zoning district. This is the public facilities, zoning district, and this is to, um, provide a zoning district for our governmental and institutional, um, areas that includes TW, uh, UNT, and of course county, federal, whatever governmental agencies that have large areas, uh, we will be proposing, or it is currently proposed to be a PF, a public facilities. And I'm just going to read the purpose real quick. Uh, the intent of this district is to provide adequate lands for public and quasi public community uses, um, including, but not limited to our schools, our community centers, hospitals, civic buildings, um, open space and other public related facilities. Yes, ma'am. Yes. And my, uh, questions, uh, ask you, shouldn't the, the, the height in public facilities, which are generally in and among, you know, some other kind of area, uh, be required to be compatible with the, with the surrounding areas rather than consistent with each other. You know what I'm saying? Right. And, and, and it does have, um, a hundred feet just for the record, a hundred feet proposed height maximum for a PF. Uh, but I also want to make mention that there are other development standards that would maybe lessen that height due to the, the location of, if it was adjacent to a residential zoning district, uh, they would have to comply with what's called a building height and transition areas, uh, requirements. There are setbacks, there are screening, uh, requirements. Um, all of those would play into any future development of those PFs. Uh, but we're looking at the airport, we're looking at the landfill, we're looking at water treatment facilities, we're looking at, um, you know, universities, we're looking at, um, recreational parks as well. So we wanted to find a happy medium, but of course there are provisions here that would hopefully get compatibility in place. So it has to be sort of graduated with respect to the immediate surroundings. Correct. That's the intent. Okay. Um, that is all our proposed zoning district and I want to just make sure that we understood it so when we look at the zoning map, we understood why it's on this and why we're going forward with, uh, this in this particular area. Does anybody have any questions on the zoning district or the zoning map or whichever? Yes. Would now be the, uh, and I'm asking you because you, um, I know you're seeing kind of what's ahead today and, and in future weeks, um, would, would now be the time, uh, to ask you to go into more detail on kind of taking a step by step through what distinguishes, um, uh, public buildings, uh, from the, uh, zoning restrictions in whatever general area, you know, in which these buildings are placed. Um, because I, I share, I share that, that, that same concern, uh, that, that we might be, you know, in certain cases making an exception for, for public buildings that, that might not fit with neighborhoods. Right. Um, we can, I can, I can reference a few sections of the code if you, if you want, we can jump to the development standards, which addresses, I believe, the concerns that you, you may have with regards to, um, it's called, it's called, yeah, it's section 6106 and that's on page 425, 426, 425. It provides the separation between the residential district and in APF or future public facility building. It provides that, uh, compatibility requirement. So, um, the chart, if you have it in front of you or the graph that's in front of you shows that you have to be a certain distance away from, uh, the property line if you want to go over a certain height. You have to match exactly what that height is, uh, adjacent to that, uh, residential district and as you get further away you're allowed to go higher. Uh, and so it gives you that, again, that compatibility that we're, what we're looking for. Okay. So, and, and I'm trying to think of some examples, you know, as far as existing, uh, public facilities. I mean, other than some of the universities, those are probably the ones that have the tallest buildings. I think as far as city-owned property, uh, I can't think of any right now off the top of my head that would. Well, so say, I mean, so you, you mentioned the landfill, right? You know, there's a concern, you know, and, and I'm concerned too about the, uh, the landfill height, you know, does that, now that's not a building. That's not a building, that would not be. Yeah. So what, so, and that's why I was curious because I hadn't even thought of the landfill for this until, but you had mentioned. Sure. Including the landfill, you mean buildings. Well, we're talking about just buildings, yeah. In the landfill. Okay. And there's a, there's a, there's a way to measure heights of buildings, but the landfill itself, that's a whole different. That's what I thought, yeah. Right. Um, but if you can go to my. I just wanted to also make reference to the other areas are existing PDs. We've got plan developments. Um, we've got existing master plan communities. Those are large areas of the city. Those are going to transition to PDs. If you look at your chart, it's the second one from the bottom. Um, PDs and MPCs will transition to what we're referring to as PDs, plan development. And we'll get into more of that. Uh, and I think we discussed it a little bit in sub chapter two, there will be an allowance, an option, a tool for developers, a property owners to request for PD if they choose to. And as you all know, a PD, for example, uh, is say it'll raise a ranch. You have an underlying zoning district or you have a zoning district, but you can build on it. You can, you know, you can adjust it accordingly and there is a way to make a project more, um, enhanced by using a PD, but also protecting the areas around it. So that's a tool that will be introduced as part of the new zoning district or the new development code. Uh, but we want to also address the existing PDs and the existing master plan communities. Those will be transitioned into what we're calling PDs. And I don't know if you'll have any questions related to that. Nope. And then the last one on my list here is the zoning changes that were approved with conditions. Um, we're going to be, we're calling that conditioned zoning and we're going to carry that forward because when we condition a zoning, it does not fit in any of those zoning districts as well as we should be because there's a limitation or there's a condition. We have to keep that because that is what was approved. For example, if there was a residential zoning district that was changed to in our four to in our six, for example, and there was a limitation on the density or the use, we have to keep that in place and we're carrying that forward as a conditional zoning. Similar to what we have in our zoning district map today, there is an overlay or there's a, an area that's marked in gray and it shows it as, uh, an overlay or a conditional zoning. We're going to carry that forward. So when someone is looking at a zoning map and they see this area that's, that's grayed out, they know that there is a condition associated with that particular parcel. Does that make sense? Okay. Just, just want to make sure that we cover all of the, the areas that are going to be changing and those are all of them, uh, that, um, we have. Uh, and I know, yeah, if you're going to cover this, you know, you can just tell me, uh, but I know a lot of people are interested in tiny homes and you've addressed it here in the code. I wonder if you wouldn't mind just taking a moment to say where tiny in which, uh, zoning, uh, districts tiny homes would be permitted. And, you know, just maybe just a very high level of that's a, that's a great segue. We're going to the next slide. That's the next, that's the next item check tomorrow. So if we're done with the zoning districts, the, the, um, the plan is to go into sub chapter five and we'll start discussing that. Uh, and we'll have more time at our next work session. So, uh, but as you mentioned, uh, councilman Meltzer, if you refer to, uh, chapter five and that begins on page one 97, there is a chart, um, actually on page two, a one where it identifies the list of uses that are, uh, available and identifies which zoning districts permitted by right, permitted by SUP, uh, permitted with you specific standards. And the first list is your residential uses in under residential household living is the tiny home development. So we are adding this use in the table. And as you can see under the chart, tiny home development is permitted in the RR, the R1 and that's primarily in your rural areas and really low density. And then it's also permitted in the MN, MD and MR zoning districts. And the reason why we chose those two distinct areas or zoning districts were, um, we'll start with the MN, MR and MD is we wanted them to be close to the urban center where there's accessibility to transit and close to other uses. And that's why you see them there. The other, the RR and the R1, we also wanted to allow them in the periphery of the city and in the areas that aren't not necessarily a residential neighborhood. So they could be located in the RR areas, you know, think about the periphery of the city. So tiny homes can be there too. So we're giving them two options, one more of a rural area and one more of an urban area. And so the answer to your question, Councilman Meltzer is that they're permitted in those five zoning districts. Councilman Armitage. I have a kind of similar question, but kind of on the flip side, can you explain, um, you know, what was the rationale behind kind of not permitting them in, and I'm looking at the same page, in R2, R3, R4, R6 and R7, and you don't have to tackle each of those individually, but, you know, why, why not have them with permit, you know, depending on or on, um, I mean, with that, the P plus, um, uh, you know, allowable in those kinds of neighborhoods where there's room and if it's deemed, uh, compatible. As, yeah, as I was, you know, trying to explain earlier, we, we wanted to provide them in areas that are not necessarily in a residential area, but I do see your point. If there is an area that is currently undeveloped and that can fit in there, um, that could possibly, but we wanted to make sure that the residential area was more, it was consistent, you know, with the other residential that's proposed under that zoning district. And so we, we kept those because they will be, of course, a different, um, layout. There'll be different traffic generated, you know, um, generated impact. So to be consistent with the R2 through R6 and R7, we wanted to make sure that they weren't going to be located in those particular areas. Yeah. So can, oh, sorry. Well, and I think many of those are going to be where it's a single parcel with multiple dwellings. So keep in mind, um, where R3 wouldn't permit that, R4, that we're not going to have a multifamily, um, you have to look at it in the same way, because it's going to be a singular parcel with multiple dwelling units on that parcel. So it wouldn't be consistent to put it in the middle of an R3, R4 neighborhood, um, that you have a multifamily. Now, could you say kind of on the flip side, because it's, to, to contrast that to multifamily, you know, some, any, um, uh, you know, a gated community, for instance, is a parcel of land with multiple homes on it, right? It's just, you've got different home size and different density. No. So can you explain that? So, so a gated community may have, they may own the road. So it's a private road. It isn't necessarily a city-owned street, but they're individual parcels and then there's an HOA. Got it. Okay. So because, because each parcel, so that's the key difference that because each lot, each, each parcel is distinct. Yes. Got it. Okay. And thank you. Thank you for, for clarifying it. So, um, you know, do you know, so off, off the top of your head, um, the, um, the area where, uh, there's the, um, uh, on, uh, you know, Nottingham, Colorado, um, where there's the, uh, uh, is it called Sheila Shiloh Farm? Where there, there was going to be at some point, I think around there, there's a community garden. I could find this out for myself, but it would take, but you would be able to do these much faster because you're more familiar with this, this map. So to take that area for, for instance, which is yes, exactly. Yeah. That's, that's right near me. Um, and that would seem to me just as somebody who lives in that area, to me, you know, that would seem to be compatible for, for tiny homes. So what's the, it looks like it's an N N. So I'm looking at, yeah, so which would mean that it is compatible for tiny homes under this. Correct. Then you met, yeah. Okay. So that's, so that's good. If I'm looking at the chart, you're looking at, yeah, be permitted with a use specific standards. Yes. Yes. Okay. Great. Yes. Good. Yeah, that's good. That's good. That's good. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So I've just put a list of significant additions or some significant uses. We don't have to go through all of them. Well, this is just an opportunity to hear from you all. If you've looked at, if you've done your homework, if you looked at the chart, if there are any uses that are missing, if there are any uses that you see are not appropriately approved, um, when I say approved, appropriately approved, if it requires a specific use permit, or do you think that it should not require a specific use permit, should be permitted by right? This is where we need your input. Uh, so we've got the list of chart or list of uses here. I'm happy to go through it with you or if you have a specific use that we want to discuss, we can do that. Yeah. So, and this is one that, you know, I had emailed about, um, in the past of you've gotten some answers that have kind of helped me better understand from this, uh, uh, you know, planning perspective. Um, but I saw some remaining questions about this and this is the, um, community home designation or the, you know, group, group home. Um, uh, so it now, uh, it's, uh, you know, I'm, I'm looking at the, on page, uh, was it page 201 where you've got all the, the uses. Um, so this is under group living. There's two different kinds of chapter house community home. And as I understand it, chapter house, that's like a frat for attorney or sorority house. Yep. So community home, um, it's listed under all these, you know, uh, residential in mixed use, um, uh, zoning, zonings, but, um, instead of just P it's, it's P plus meaning can view specific standards apply. Um, now I know that, you know, under the, uh, the, under the fair housing act, um, and in terms of just treatment, uh, a group homes are supposed to be treated as a single family home. Right. So how does, you know, if you could just speak, and I know that some of this I've covered in, in, in emails, but also just for the public, for the public record, if you could kind of talk about what this plus involves when it comes to, to group homes, you know, and, and how that is, um, how, how, how, how that, uh, is, um, compatible with fair housing practices. So before, before you talk, uh, I want our attorney to sort of give some commentary cause I don't want to be saying anything that is inaccurate or, uh, so if our attorney could give us some guidance on that, we've been taking a look at this issue in connection or in conjunction with both Richard and Scott on FHA and ADA as they may apply to certain types of, uh, uh, dwelling uses within the community. And it, you know, we understand how that process plays and stuff, but, but the rules are being written to apply equally. What, one of the things that we're proposing to do separately of this DDC is to bring forth a what's called a reasonable accommodation request ordinance because under, under the law under both ADA and FHA is endemic upon the proposed user of, of the use to come to the city and say, I have a recognized ADA use that's protected by the FHA. Then we review, have the opportunity to review it to determine, do we agree or not? And if we do, then we provide the accommodation, which would probably work most as we're discussing it as an exception to certain regulations within the new DDC, but it is something that we're cognizant. It's hard to write specific rules to apply with each type of, of community home and the type of treatment and uses that they're proposing in there. So we have to resort to a different way that other communities use, namely Austin. And so we're cognizant of that. We are working with that. We understand the law and so we will address those as they come forward. And we have with a particular use recently that, that has come forward and we, we are making an accommodation to bring before council just to let you know that we understand the concerns and we work, we understand the law and we're working to try to accommodate that on a case by case basis. And I think that was much more articulate than it would have been for me. I would have simplified that much more just to say that we're going to be bringing forth a text amendment for our current code and we're going to further clarify group homes. So we, we have someone that has made a request as city attorney had acknowledged, but we'll be bringing that forward under separate cover and we're also be modifying this table. So, okay. So, so, so this issue will come before us correct before council separately and we'll have a whole discussion about that. Correct. Okay, great. And just a question, a related question that, that, you know, there's an, an ordinance in our, in our codes about, that you can't have, I forget what the number is, you know, this many, this number of unrelated people living in the same house. I'm at, okay, you did that so fast. I can see four, yeah, four people, unrelated people in the same house. I'm hoping that that will be struck out in conjunction with all this or, and I'm not sure if that's a question for you or for legal because that plays into these kinds of issues too, or is that a discussion to have at a later time? That would also be covered under a reasonable combination ordinance. And you know, there's the, these types of the number of unrelated individuals that can live in, in a single family. Those are based on US Supreme court law and what is acceptable on there. They're usually to address other types of issues that the planners could probably explain better than I can when it comes to overcrowding, health, sanitation, building structure, you know, but again, with a group home, we understand that there may be more residents in there, but, but again, that would be something that we would analyze on a case by case basis as they come forward. So let me make sure I understand that. So what you're saying is instead of us, I mean, as council member Armarty suggested, striking the four unrelated people rule, which you'll have this council full of people by the time we do that to address student housing and those kinds of issues. There's a way that we can lawfully look at these on a case by case basis without making a sweeping change to our code. And that gives us, the law gives us an opportunity for accommodation without it having to be, to be applicable to people who don't need an accommodation. That is correct. All right. Thank you. Anything else? So I know we've been going at this for some time now. We are prepared to continue or we can continue this at our work session. We've actually made time so that we don't rush through this to go over this chart and we can certainly bring this back during our work session. That's what is scheduled under our agenda. Yes, council member Melcher. I said, you know, one small item for me notes that I know you've responded on, but that, you know, I don't know, it doesn't exactly fit in your flow, but just sort of before we abandoned the topic was the item on, uh, no, I wouldn't find it quickly. You probably know where it is. Page 150 something about ramps. Yes. Yeah. You know, I'm talking about, there's a, uh, expressed in the proposed language. There's a requirement that three months after, uh, you no longer need a ramp that you've got to take it down. I just didn't understand the purpose. Uh, not, not obvious why we'd have an issue with someone who wants to sort of stay accessible. And thirdly, um, you know, is that something that you might want to run through the committee, uh, you know, on persons with disabilities? Yeah, I did read that question, uh, council Melcher, sir. I think if it's outside of the right away and that it's not, um, a fire hazard, I don't think we should keep that. I'm, I'm actually proposing that we delete that second sentence under that requirement because if it's to serve someone in the future, it could, but, uh, if again, it's not within the right of way and it's not pose a fire hazard, I think it can remain there. I think there's two pieces to that, that we just have to keep in mind though, would be that of, of how it's constructed, whether it's temporary ramps or whether there's a permanent ramp. So I think the code was intended on temporary ramps where it is that if you're talking about a structure and then how it is that you're, you're working within the setback. So I think there's two elements to that. Um, to, to just follow up on Ron's point. Yeah. And I don't, you know, claim any expertise on those issues. I don't know if you do, but what do you, what is your thought about the idea of running it through the, uh, you know, the committee on persons with disabilities for their input? Okay. I guess my question would be, is this on private property? Yes. Then I don't even know why we're regulating it. It's quite honestly. I think the piece in that is in the setback. I think it's, you're able to encroach within the setback. Okay. So you're saying if it's within the setback. Correct. So if the house is built to the setback, allowing someone to have a ramp for an ADA accessibility need and then this provision in the code was to remove that ramp after it's not needed any longer. So I, if the person moves from that structure within three months that they should remove that, that temporary need, all it is, is to maintain and manage our setbacks and not allow people to build permanent structures into the setback. So what could happen then is somebody could, uh, if, if that were the case, they could, if they were got a four foot incursion into the setback, um, if it's not neat and that sounds like this is what one of those situations with the accommodation that we can, we are accommodating that because that's what somebody asked for. And if an owner wanted to remove the part in the setback, I mean, you're, I mean, the ramp slope is pretty shallow. I mean, it's, that's regulated. So when you're talking two or three feet out, um, I guess, I mean, I guess my, my question is what's the purpose of, of taking it through the committee when, uh, if you're saying do we want to leave the ramp, but if the ramp's not being used for ADA and it's a private property owner, I would say they can do what they want with it. They can leave it. They can remove it. Um, certainly not saying that we should require them to keep it. I wouldn't think. Um, so your concern is the setback. That's it. Correct. I think it's the reasonable accommodation for someone with accessibility. If they have an accessible need that our code would not allow them to encroach into the setback with the structure. So this provides the means for someone to put that element in. Yeah. And not being, not be in violation of the setback. Correct. And then it's a matter of keeping it there. So somebody could build a permanent, whatever it is, and then it just is there forever. Right. Yeah. Without, without a mere difference. Without a need. That's what you're saying. It's that there's no need for it. Correct. Uh, based upon whatever verification we all do on that. And what we commonly find is one person will not relate it to an accessibility issue. They'll say, well, they got to put their porch four foot out, why can't I put mine? Yeah. Okay. All right. Councilmember Armitage. So and does this apply to, so that this issue with the ramps, and thank you for bringing that up because that was called to my attention as well. Um, does this apply to commercial structures as well? Or is this just about residential? All uses. All uses. See, because that's my, so when it comes to commercial, um, ADA accessibility is universal, right? I mean, why would, why would any, no matter what the facility is, as long as they're going to be people, you know, using it, if you've already got a ramp, we should want to keep it there. Yeah. I think what I was saying is ADA requirements are part of commercial development in our code. Uh, I mean, depending on, I guess, what kind of use it is, I guess. I don't know. It may be total. So there's really never not going to be a need, but it sounds like what you're saying is new development would not have a ramp that's encroaching upon the setback because we try to figure out a way to do that. But the ones that are currently, there's always going to, they're going to need to have that to be in compliance with ADA on commercial properties. Is that my understanding? On commercial, that's, that's accurate. We were focusing on, it was the residential, I think. Yes, sure. Yeah. And actually, you know, this was clarifying that it's about the setback. If somebody wants to have a ramp on their property within the setback because they want to be accessible to people to visit them, you know, they can do that. Just, they're, they're susceptible to the same setback requirements as everyone else. So I get that. So commercial, so this does not apply to commercial. This remove it within the setback. Is that correct? I think it's, I think it applies to any, the difference is, is if it's, it's giving an, this is for an exception, authorized exception to setbacks and it just allows ramps, lifts, and access facilities where you may have the, you have for commercial, you have a required accessible means separate beyond this. So it's probably not likely this would be utilized in commercial, but however it applies to any. Okay. So that's what I, I think I had it backwards. What you're saying is this is an exception in the code. Right now we have a setback. You cannot violate the setback requirement. Correct. You can, if you have this need for a ramp or ADA accessibility, if that need goes away, then you have to revert to the setback line. Whereas if you have a commercial building that's in the, in the setback, my hunch is that need never goes away because by code. Correct. They have to have it. Correct. Is that my understanding? That is 100% accurate. Okay. All right. Yes, go ahead. Thank you. Thanks for, for, for clarifying that. And I just want to reiterate that I agree that this issue, not just the ramp issue, but development the new code in general, should it would be great for this to come before the, you know, disability committee meeting. I don't know if there's something already scheduled so that members of the committee could in advance kind of go through it because it happened to be a member of that committee that caught this issue and, you know, it hadn't jumped out at me because I still, you know, of all those, however many hundreds of pages, you know, I still can't say I have spent equal time on everyone. I'm still, every time I open it, it's like I'm looking at something new. But, and I've studied it closely, but I think that would be really helpful to just have them go through it and find what kind of issues jump out at them. And to be able to, for y'all to answer their questions. We welcome, we welcome that feedback. I mean, this is another reason what we're excited about that this is a more flexible code where you're not allowed to do that today. This code provides those means. So this is a much friendlier code, much user friendly, much more user friendly. Again, it's just trying to be reasonable that somebody just can't start building into a setback. There's a good reason for, for doing that. We're trying to make that accommodation. Yeah. So we welcome any of that feedback. Oh, yeah. I guess I'm, I'm looking, I guess I should probably be looking more at Todd, if that could be. Right. Thank you. Okay. Anything else? Nope. Any other questions? Comments? We're just, I'm sure we'll find this more new land uses shortly after we pass this. Well, we're, we, we plan on bringing, just to summarize, we'll bring this, this chart back at our next work session. We can also talk about the zoning map. We're, we're open to any discussion related to, again, the zoning districts and the allowed uses. Sure. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. All right. That it? Yeah. We're good. Okay. Fantastic. All right. Then we'll move on to agenda item two B and we'll start this and probably take a break in the middle, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction on the creation of the Denton square district with associated draft design standards, guidelines, procedures and review body. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Mayor, it might take just a minute to get the, the user switched around. I don't know if you want to take a break or take it out of the business. Say that one more time. I don't know if you want to take a break. Yeah, we'll go ahead and take a break when he gets it done. Sure. Yeah. Welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, March the 5th, 2019. It's about 2 42 p.m. We're moving on now to our agenda item to be received, report, hold discussion, give staff direction on the creation of the Denton square district with associated draft design standards and guidelines, procedures and review body. Good afternoon, Mayor, council. Thank you. This is Scott McDonald, director of development services. And we're here this afternoon to speak to you about our proposal for guidelines and standards for the downtown square, the Denton square. The purpose behind that was a charge from city council and it was to preserve the unique character of the square and council looked for a set of standards crafted to help guide those staff initially started with doing research. We researched through a variety of cities and looked at some of the best practices and tailored our model after those other communities. When we drafted the standards, we thought it was important to have flexible time tested concepts that would fit our community's needs. When we crafted these standards, we ultimately went out to seek stakeholder input. So when we did that, we went through and we started with the downtown business owners and property owners to just at least explore and research what their thoughts were on having a set of standards. And this really all stemmed from the fire that occurred at the mini mall in late 2017. When we presented these, we presented them to those stakeholders, the downtown task force, a variety of stakeholders, and we received unanimous support to move forward. They were interested in having flexible standards that were not overly burdensome, that did not create financial burden or create another bureaucratic process. They wanted something meaningful that was codified and that would be able for individuals to get a hold of, understand, and be easily applied as well as have a balanced appeal process. As we went through that process, we took our feedback, we revised the standards, we went back through those groups as well as this council, we looked at other cities best practices and tried to refine what it is that we had, we crafted revised documents, and we ultimately crafted a draft ordinance which is in our legal department still under review. We presented these revised documents to the Main Street Association, downtown business and property owners, the economic development partnership, downtown task force, we discussed it at several other outside organizations to include the Dallas AIA, Kiwanis, Rotary, etc. Again, we were received with ultimate support and that they wanted us to continue to move forward and again, they had concern with what that board or how this would be reviewed and to make sure that it was applicable for what we were attempting to achieve. So if I can point out where it is that we're speaking to on the standards, the standards are really relating to the square and we all know what the square is but we felt that it was important to include the Mews Streets or what we've dubbed the Mews Streets that are the streets immediately adjacent to the square. So Cartwrights is one of the easiest examples if you were to walk into Cartwrights, you can walk right out of the back of the building and we thought that you should have at least a consistent look and feel to the character of the square within that area. So we've got a map that outlines that, that you can see on the screen. The red is the square proper, so that's the term that we came up with, but the square district is all of that area that's shaded in gray so we can address the facades within that. We have two packets which, can you pass those out please one is understanding the district and it's important that that provides the intent and the general principles behind what we're trying to do and it's a framework which provides adaptive reuse of buildings, promotes the character. We were really looking for a flexible timeless design recognizing that the square is known as a historic, it also has some other characters, characteristics within there and we want to make sure that we have that architectural diversity that we allow for creativity, but yet we're still able to ensure the overall character of the square is protected. Okay, I have a question about that. So you said timeless design and then you also said that we understand the historic significance as far as the national registry district. I can't remember what it's actually called, the national registry district, is that what it's called? Yes. So those things seem somewhat in opposite to one another. In other words, when you say a timeless design means that, okay, we're not going to use sort of the historic development, the historic character of the square which we've tried to maintain up to this point. I mean I know there's been some buildings that have burned. So help me understand the compatibility of those two kind of seemingly inconsistent just so that I can understand. And maybe it was just a term that I'm reading too much into. I think if you look at the Sherman building, that's an example of a timeless design. So I don't know that you can pick the era in which that building was built. And so the intent of the square is to try to manage that. Unlike some of the other buildings on the square that may have a façade from the '60s or the '70s, it's very obvious as to what those are. So we're really going for where it is. It has a historic character, but yet it isn't necessarily historic to the point where that building is just locked into that it must retain the exact windows and the exact door and the exact configuration. The Sherman building would be a good indication of that timeless design. >> Okay. I don't know -- I can't remember the context of when -- of course there was a fire there. And that's when the Sherman building was rebuilt. I can't remember the time frame of that is in the '90s, I believe. >> And I think that's what I understood. >> So I don't know what we had in place at the time to govern the façade of that. I'm just trying to understand what you mean when you say timeless design because somebody could say something like oh, well, you have contemporary architecture, you have all kinds of -- so is that what we're talking about or is there some overarching governing kind of design criteria, not necessarily every window has to be the same size and in the same place, but that maintains the look of the square as we know it. I mean, so that's -- and that's a very generic question. It's a very broad question and very ambiguous, but that's what I'm trying to understand just so that as I listen to your presentation, I know the context of which it's being given. >> Just to kind of -- I think the term there, timeless, can also be referred to as historic character. I mean, again, what is historic? I mean, there's -- people have different definitions of historic, but I think if you think about it as a historic character, obviously there are some architecture there now that have changed over the years and is that what we want to preserve or is it further back? So I think it's very subjective, but I think what we're trying to do is provide some standards that get us back to what we often think about as historic character. >> Okay. That's sort of kind of a very different -- that's not a different answer than what Scott gave, but I understand that more so because what you said was there was some architecture there from the '60s and '70s that don't necessarily reflect -- that seemed to be out of place. And so what you're saying is we want to keep it to where it's within the place that we're defining -- we're trying to define as, okay, like if you're to say, uh, we want it to have sort of the same character and look of X period, then that means if somebody wants to come in and put in a full glass contemporary, you know -- I'm not criticizing that. I'm just saying it would look very different. So, okay. Councilmember Briggs, I think, had a question. >> We had just really a statement, too, from the original discussion and from my feelings on this was that it was supposed to get something or help us get something in place to preserve that historic character without the intent of the undue burden of the actual historical register requirements. So it was -- that's what my understanding was. And then when you say timeless design, it seems pretty vague and it can, you know, go over here or over here. So I would prefer it to say, you know, historic character because if that's the intent, then we need to just say what it is. >> So I'm not jumping on that phrase. I interpret that as one thing, so you might admit it as another. So that's the only reason I bring it up. And I think Councilmember Briggs is sort of reflecting the same kind of -- >> And I don't disagree with that and truly -- and really my next talking point is about historic preservation. But with that being said, we have buildings that have a look and a feel that match the character of the square, but they're not necessarily historic. So trying to temper that, that if you can't identify a time period, it's more that timeless. Where it is, we know what a modern building is. We know what a '70s building looks like. We know trying to remove that era, but yet historic in the character, the historic character of the square, most definitely. >> Okay. Councilmember Belzer? >> Kind of along the same lines, I think there is a historic character and you can ground it in the history of the square, which came about, you know, pretty much in a -- I think in a fairly narrow window of time. I know some things came later, but if you talk about the historic character, it would be something like around 1900 to 1910, something like that. And I just would disagree that -- is this the Sherman Building? Sorry, I don't know the name. >> It is. >> Yeah, I would disagree that I would characterize that as timeless. It looks like what it is, which is a building built in the '20s meant to relate to architectural elements of the earlier time. It's got the cupola or whatever you call it, the dome. It's got the detail on the cornice, the materials. So I don't think it's meant to be like sort of international style or something like that. It relates -- it has elements, and in fact, the pattern of the fenestration, the placement of the sort of awning area, all relate to that look of the sort of 1900 to 1910 history of the square. So just my two cents. >> Okay. Councilmember Armitage? >> Just kind of a different perspective throwing it out there. So I agree that, you know, timeless -- I mean, to me, timeless is one thing, but I see to different people it means different things, so you want to have in the intent and general principles something that is at least roughly means the same thing to everybody. So I think that just the idea of context-sensitive design alone might work because it's -- because the context is the square, you know, and the stuff that's already in the square is determining the context, and almost like, you know, I was thinking kind of hearing others talk and hearing of your example, almost like from a set theory perspective, you know, where you're looking at, you know, you've got these different elements that you can have shape, color, you know, these different historic characters, you know, say as long as you have two or three, you know, of these aspects in this set, right? It could be -- I'm not saying that this -- that we need to get that specific in the standards, but that's a way, for instance, you know, if you've got a bunch of buildings that are all red, you know, you've got one that's really modern and one that's, you know, really old-fashioned, but they're both red, so they kind of go together, or you've got -- so there are different ways, in other words, of being compatible outside of just historicity and trying to focus on, you know, a specific historic period. So I'm just throwing that out there, and, you know, maybe others don't agree, but for me, you know, that would be a way to kind of looking at it more that way to preserve what we like about the square and the character of the square without saying, you know, that the only new things that can come here have to be kind of cookie-cutter replicas or a kind of, you know, Epcot Center, you know, historic village of, you know, approach to some idea of some fantasy of what things were like in the past, you know. Thank you. I'm going to change into item B. Well, and again, and that's really some of the feedback that we'd like to get, and had some constituents that have expressed, you know, the importance of using the term historic. We had a section in historic, which we removed just because we're still working through some of that. But again, we want that sense of place. We're looking for these standards to just try to maintain what's there and give that feel. We also want to manage the materials that are being used so that we look at that and we say, well, brick is allowed and stone is allowed and trying to avoid the use of stucco or glass and again, trying to maintain that character and to maintain a sense of being pedestrian friendly. So where it is that we have the ability that people are going to use this in an urban setting and we know that people are going to walk and visit and go from business to business and ultimately help to increase business and property values. So we think that this tool is going to help to help do that. And if there's any opportunity to integrate art, we want to be able to do that as well. You know, what I think would be helpful too is if as we move through the agenda item, as we get into more, I don't know if it's specific, but specific design criteria and the what ifs, it's going to be a lot of what ifs. So we have a great example of a space where a building burned that's vacant. So as we look at this and we think of, okay, what would be allowed to go there? And then that will help us sort of frame this discussion and ground it in something that is real time and that is a possibility given that it is vacant and at some point something is going to go there. And if that's not possible to do it here, we can figure out a way to do it at some other work session. But just generally, okay, this means this so that if somebody wanted to build here, you could do X. I think that would be helpful. If we're going into that kind of specificity in the presentation, if not, don't worry about it. And I think we will be. I think it's just trying to give that. Again, I think the importance of the two documents that you have is one is really kind of giving you the overall intent and it gives you how it's being administered and then we're going to get a little bit into the details. And that kind of is the flow chart that you see on the screen currently is that really it takes a couple different paths, whether it's going to be a staff review or whether it's going to go to a board. And obviously we need to have some conversation on the board. And this may be appropriate time for that or may not. I think Councilmember Hutsbut had a comment or question. Yeah, I just have a running ask as I looked over this. So I read it out once. Using your last example. So you want to avoid stucco, right? Why is that? And that's just out of sheer ignorance to what design standards, why they're implemented, but at the heart of it, I want to understand that better to make sure that it's evenly applied, right? So if there's some base of knowledge that those preferences come from, that needs to be known so that if challenged, you go back to that primary document and say here's where we're coming from, now let's apply that to this scenario. Versus some nebulous we think or I just think it needs to be grounded somewhere to some primary document that says best practices are this. And I just think that's important because of the varied looks at it and people are going to challenge it and people are going to say, well, what about this? Because case in point, like it or love it, I don't think LSA looks out of place when you look at the square proper. But is it traditional? No. But I think they've done a good enough job blending in on the ground floor and et cetera. So I think it's easy on the eyes, it doesn't leap out at you. To me, I could be absolutely wrong, but to me it does not leap out at you, but it has its unique characters, the noise, the this or that that people get upset about. But just the eye test, it doesn't leap out at you. And so I just think there needs to be something that is the center that we can rely on point to, launch from, that then as challenges come, we source that and say, okay, well, let's apply this overlay if you will and make a decision. And I think somewhat in the standards we get into that, that we have more specifics to talk about the first floor versus second floor or second story. And then really how much of that facade is of what material and again, trying to mimic what exists on the square today, if that helps. Sure. So those standards are based on those standards we created as a staff as a city, we said, hey, these standards are what we would identify as primaries. I think that it was partially some of the standards that we had in place researching other cities and what other communities do. Okay. So best practices. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Council member Briggs. So stucco, I'm just curious, is the fine arts building not stucco? There are a number of buildings on the square, which are stucco. Okay. I mean, there are, there are stucco buildings. Right. And so we would allow them like so, or because for me that's historical and that's the historical character. So I'm confused why we would say we wouldn't allow that to go back on a building that has had it since. And so I'm just confused on, on that part of it. And I don't know the opera house. I think that might be, it's a smooth surface. I know it's not brick. So I just want to make sure that we're not making these. There, excuse me. There are any number of buildings that have stucco on it. And again, I think where it is, and when we get into the design standards, it'll be a little more clear, but let's, let's go to the example of that. We have a, we have a burned, we have a burned building. Um, and, and so someone could come in and build a fully stucco building with no glass and no primary entrance to the front. We have no standards to say you wouldn't do that today. You're allowed to use stucco on the facade and we have a number of elements that are, they're allowed for that. Um, but it's where and in the context of how that's used. So again, trying to, trying to manage a look and a feel and whether it's a timeless design or whether it is, if I say you can build Adobe there, you understand what that means. And, and so a place and a time, and we're trying to avoid some of that. Okay. So I'm going to recognize council member Armitage and let's, I don't even think we've gotten into the presentation yet. We've got another big presentation, I believe on the landscape and tree code and then we've got two closed sessions, even though it's three o'clock now, which gives us another three and a half hours. It's going to go real quick. So, uh, council member Armitage, just trying to give everybody a sense of time. Cause we want to try to get on the meetings on time. So I'm going to continue with this, with this stucco example also because it helps, um, you know, picking out this one example helps us to better understand just the general idea of, of, of this whole, this whole plan, um, to go back to, you know, council member Hutzpah's point about, you know, we want to be sure if we're saying you have to do this or, you know, or you can't do this. Why? Um, so what, uh, on, on the page five, um, of the facade material standards, it says that you can have, you can have, uh, you can have stucco above the first floor, but you can't have it on the first floor. Uh, so is that correct? So, so kind of, so what, what would be an answer as to that? What's, what's the rationale behind that? Well, it's going back, it's going back to best practices and not to say on existing buildings. We're speaking to new buildings because the traditional new, um, when we say the traditional buildings that were built in its era were, were brick, glass, and wood. And there was some stucco, but, but typically it wasn't on the first floor. And again, going back to best practices and other models, that's, that's what we came up with and, and happy to change that. If that's council's purview, um, and we want to allow stucco on the first floor, then we can allow stucco on the first floor. The best practices put it in, in such a context that it wasn't. Um, and, and there is an opportunity to be reviewed by whatever this board is to allow some other alternative material, um, to keep in mind. Okay. Yeah, then we'll, we'll let y'all go. Is it okay to let them sort of dive right in? Okay. Yeah. Just to add to that, even if you look at on that, in that same, uh, same document on page seven, I can't think of the restaurant on the square. Um, and that's a building I believe is stucco. Chestnut tree. Chestnut tree. I believe they do have a stucco application, but you see the difference of not having it on the first floor where you have all windows and have the store open as opposed to having it closed in. And that's really more of that intent and having it above, above the second floor, if that helps. Okay. Rock and roll. Now we're going to start. Okay. Now you're wanting me to go. I get it. No, no, it's not your fault. My fault for starting. That's all right. We'll get back on track. Okay. So just another part where we're back into the other document and I'll try to get out of that quite quickly. Um, really just talks about how we're, how a project would run. So if it's a minor alteration or general repair, um, it's really staff approval or a staff denial. So we want that to go through staff. So it doesn't have to go through any bureaucratic process. Um, and then we, we'd issue a certificate of design consistency, meaning that it meets the standards. If staff were to deny it, then it would go to a review board. The same thing with if we have demolition or a major alteration or new construction, that that would go before the design review board to make sure that it's consistent with the standards that we're going to get into. Um, and then the second piece to that is, is that that review board, um, if there's a denial to that review board, where that would go. And, and, um, again, the ordinance is in legal for review. My understanding with legal is, is that should go to the zoning board of adjustment. Um, and I, I don't know, um, not to say that it couldn't come before council just at, as it stands today, that's where our legal representation is. Um, the other question, and I think another important part to this was, is that the review board, um, when we went and we sought public feedback, our stakeholder feedback, which was, was somewhat diverse, um, we had an understanding and we presented to HLC in this, HLC felt that it was important that those come before them as well as, and the other stakeholder groups thought that it was important that it be to another board, not HLC. Um, for the mere fact that this is not historic and it doesn't live up to the same standards as historic and where it is that I think that the attempts to do this with the square to the past failed is because it was going to be too onerous, um, to be looked at it in purely a historical preservation state. Um, we're trying to encourage and, and have a set of standards so we can manage that. That, that was just the other feedback that we had heard and sought out. Um, and I think that, you know, where it is that we've proposed, um, a design review board is consistent with some other communities that are doing this. Um, and I think similar to what our city manager has experienced in another community. So where did the HLC want if we took this chart, they were saying they should be the review board. Correct. Correct. Okay. Okay. So if we get into the standards, the standards and guidelines, and I think that's some of the material that we started to get into, um, really are the, are the, are the grounds for where it is that we're, we would be denying us the certificate of design consistency. So they're the strategies for, for our purpose intent behind the square. Um, and you know, we want to make sure that the guidelines are there to help, um, people understand what we're trying to do, but it isn't necessarily, um, grounds for the denial, but the standards would be. And, and so we want to focus on what those standards are. Um, the key standards are really, if we talk about the orientation, um, no setback and that we have a building on the frontage, uh, we have another, well, I guess if I use the example of the Sherman building and I think there was a fire when that, when that was rebuilt, the, they left a gap. So we have a parking lot on the square. Now they've put some raw iron and, um, some plant material, but ultimately we have a gap in the square and, and you know, we have no standards to say that you can't continue to do that. These standards say that, that space must be occupied. Um, so when someone comes to develop that property that was known as the mini mall, that that property would have to be fully developed frontage, um, onto the public sidewalk and, and we'd have no gaps. Um, we have height minimums and maximums. And I think in the version that you have, you have, um, this went back and forth. So the bottom line is I believe that, um, we're looking at having a minimum, um, of no less than what the building is today. We're looking for a two story building and don't necessarily desire to have a three story building. Um, but again, the, the applicant would have the option of going before the board if in fact they were denied. Um, and then they have an appeal process from the board because the conversation took place on this of having a two story building, the downtown, the downtown owners, I think the downtown task force both brought up the fact, the new streets have a different elevation. So you could ultimately have a three story building in the back versus having a two story building in the front and really the focus of what these design standards are is that we try to manage or, or maintain what the character of the square looks like and what those building heights are and that we don't want a building built back less than what it is today. And we certainly want that facade, whether it's a single story or two story to give that same illusion that it does today. Council member Braves, did you have a question? Yeah. Does that like the three story, um, on the square proper, does that include like basement? Because if you're talking about basement, um, street level and then apartment, that makes sense for what's consistent there with some buildings. But if you're talking about going up three stories, just, um, next to a building that's stories, I don't, I don't think that that's no, no, it's, it isn't the intent. It really, we're trying to replicate what's there today. So somebody doesn't put a single story building that's, that's merely, um, 10 foot tall and they leave a gap or a tooth missing tooth. Um, we do have one three story building on the square today. They should be able to build that back to a three story if they lost it. Um, but certainly we're looking for a two story, not necessarily a three story. Right. But whatever's there, if something were lost, they could build it back to, to their original. Correct. Yes, just put a fine point on it to see if I'm tracking you. They can build it back to what it was and in fact they must. Right. Can't be less than, can't be more than. Uh, cannot be less than. Correct. And, and can't be more than. No. Um, no, it potentially could be. If you had a one story building that wouldn't preclude you from doing a two story building, as long as it meets, it's not going to create a problem. That's why it is that we're looking for a board to make sure that if somebody proposes to do that, that we have one story buildings that appear to be two story today and they're not. It's the facade that, that's the important component to that. And you want to leave that to a board rev and sort of say the facade needs to be what it was or? Well, yeah, I'm, I'm sorry. Not, I'm not being quick enough. Uh, you want to allow somebody who's got a one story building who loses it to be able to build to two. But, but not three. Correct. Okay. So, uh, and I think I got it and, and you could build to three only if you were three before. Correct. Okay. And, and the only difference to that would be back on the muse streets because the change in elevation, you may have a three story building in the back of the building or it's a two story building in the front. So, so how do we treat that? Is it that the muse building has got to, uh, not exceed the, the square facing building that it abuts? Well, going back to that first map, if you can go back, um, we had the square proper, we've defined in red, the boundary of the square proper. Um, and then the gray is the area of the square district. So we, we define that square proper difference so that we can say buildings facing on the square proper would be two stories where you will have an allowance for three story on that back, or something not less than what they have currently. You'll have an allowance for three story in the back, but you don't want it to be greater than what's in the front. Correct. Okay. So the topography that you can't exceed the, whatever your butt that's square facing? Um, correct. I, I think, I think I'm understanding you correctly. Okay. Try to be clear as possible. Um, we don't want a building that's, uh, abutting a square facing building to be higher than the square facing building it abuts. If it's two story in the front, you don't want three story in the back. Correct? No, we, we would allow, we would allow that by virtue of the topography goes down. So the elevation of the street is lower in the back than it is in the front. So you may very well have a three story building in the rear portion. Okay. That's you meant that. Excuse me if I wasn't clear. Um, okay. So we want, we want to make sure that the facades are visually interesting. We want to make sure that we have, um, walls that have some character to them rather than a flat. Um, you know, we want some articulation to those walls, um, similar to what we have today. We want to clear separation between first story and second story. Do you have a question? Yeah. So, um, on that point, so somebody brought up, um, in an email that I think we all got the interesting, uh, you know, point that a number of these buildings that are historic, you know, don't have, um, any kind of, you know, art articulation in terms of this change of, of material or a, um, uh, or, or, or, or like the, you know, I'm not sure what the term is for, but in addition to the difference in material, you've got the articulation in that upper right example where it's, it's, it is, it is closer to the, to the street project projection, whatever the official term is for that. Um, a number of these buildings just go, you know, or for instance, bricks all the way straight up. Um, I think for a number of them, because they're an awning, it feels like, you know, in a number of ways, the awning creates that sense of separation, but you take the awning away and you've got to just straight up break. And, and that's, and that's fine. It's whatever the means to do that, to create the flexibility rather than having a rigid standard saying that you must do A, B, it's A, B, C, D. They have a variety of options to get there and there are buildings on the square today that the only, the delineation is that awning. Okay. So the awning, okay. So maybe then, um, and I understand this is the beginning of that, of the process and you're going to get to the process slide later, you know, but, but I think, um, it would be nice to, to see that just having an awning, uh, isn't, is a way of, um, articulation. Yes. And then, and then specifically, yeah. And specifically within that. So the facade standards, the ground floor buildings must include a minimum of three elements of architectural relief at least every 25 linear feet. And the relief must include or may include it, but not limited to doors, changes in depth column or posts, windows awning, changing the materials. Um, and again, kind of getting into how you, how you separate that first floor from the second floor is just an architectural feature or it's a change in, in the materials. Okay. So, so these, so in other words, these, uh, these buildings that are straight up brick from, uh, existing buildings, top to bottom to top, um, we would find if we, if we broke them, broke it down, we could find, what, what did you say? Is it two, two out of three or three of these? I can give you, and they would have three, yeah, three of these factors. So the windows, right. And, uh, windows and an awning in there and, uh, uh, and, and, and, and a door. I mean, so, and then you've got it. Correct. The Texas building is, I think speaks to what you're saying as far as it's, it's brick from bottom to top. It's three stories, but you can distinctly tell the first floor from the upper two floors. Yeah. So there's a delineation by some of the windows, the architecture and an awning. Okay. Thanks. Um, so going back to that first floor and the importance of the first floor is that, that we expect those, uh, buildings to have glass, um, that it's clear glass. It's not opaque glass, not reflective glass, um, that it, that it's inviting and opening. And then, you know, we have lighting standards which prevent high intensity lamps, flashing lights, um, you know, and permit lights that accent awnings and roof lines. Yes. Council member. Would you agree with the comment that we don't want opaque glass, uh, on upper stories as well, you know, those other kinds of non-clear glass? Well, we didn't, we didn't necessarily hear that and we don't necessarily see that in best practices. So we're not opposed, uh, one way or the other. It was more in terms of that first floor being that way where it is the upper floors. If they have a tent or if they're opaque, it is less of a concern. Um, well, I, I for one, you know, share the view that, that, that standard on the square should apply in the upper stories as well. That's one. Duly noted. And I don't see any direct objection to that. So, so if there is, then that was supporting that. Yeah. Yeah. What I don't want to do is have silence be approval. I mean, if I want, uh, we, we need to make sure that you understand that if we're just being silent. So I'm just asking, if there's any objections to this, let's hear it now, uh, without it, without there being a clear, so we'd have a clear understanding. So, okay. Well, I was trying to wait because you know, and I appreciate that. So I'm going to give this this until four o'clock because the tree ordinance is coming up and it's going to take a while. So we're just going to, this is just giving them feedback. I think that's what's happened. We didn't give them much feedback. So that's why I have all these questions. So as far as my rule, don't worry about it. Just go ahead and your comments. Yep. So clear glass. So we're clear glass, top and bottom. Is that what we're saying? That, that's what I understand. That's what he had suggested. My concern with that is the sun and as much as you want it to be clear, it depends on where it is, right? So if the sun's beaming and they're going to pull the shade, you know, so net, net result is, uh, to have something like that, then you have a shade inside that, that zeros that out. So I'd like them to have the flexibility to adjust to their environment. And I don't, I don't think it prevents a shade as much as it is the type of glass. So we're addressing the glass itself, but is the glass so that people can see in, right? Isn't that it? So that you can get kind of a visual. I think that's the intent on the ground floor, but in the upper stories we were less concerned. But again, and I think the question, and I don't want to speak for councilman Melzer, but it's so far speak for me opaque glass or, or a reflective glass or a highly tinted glass is what he was opposed to. If it were a clear glass or a low E glass, doesn't preclude someone from putting in shades or blinds or something to that effect. No, I agree, but it's, it's to avoid having to have the shades tinted glass would suffice. And so you wouldn't have the shades down. So the individuals in could see out and there's stuff out that there's events out that you don't want. You know, we've all been there, right? You had a restaurant and someone walks by and they're looking at a window and staring at you while you're eating. That's less than great. You know, just my thought. Um, and we have similar situations on our square. Uh, so again, that's just me. Just, I don't, I don't see the value to me. The value would be able to see in the restaurant, see in the business, that sort of thing. That value is mitigated by pulling the shade. If the sun's bright versus allowing them to have tinted glass, so they don't have to pull the shade and it blocks the sun. So either way you're going to block the sun because it gets hot, there's utility issues, et cetera, et cetera. So it, to me, it's, it's not accomplishing its goal to have clear glass, to mandate clear glass and just have a shade that denigrates the clear glass. And that was related to the upper stories. If I may, I have no objection to people blocking the sun. Uh, it's an appearance, it's a hundred percent just an appearance thing. It's just, what do you think is context sensitive? Does it look right on the square? That's all. No, I have no opinion whatsoever about shades and all that sort of thing. It's just an appearance thing. For me, it's about being opaque or translucent. I mean, you want to make sure you have the translucent glass so that you can see through whether it's tinted or not, isn't really an issue. And low E glass actually has a tent and you can get different tents on it. So then you're, you know, you're reducing the sun and you're being environmentally aware as well with the glass that you put in, but you still have that translucent. So it's not, you know, like a, a solid, a solid wall. I guess I liken it to the windows here. You can turn the light on, turn the windows on or off, however you prefer. And then it makes it where you can't see in. If that were to stay like that constantly, it provides a very different aesthetic look from the outside. Whereas you can, like you said, tenant, you can do all these things. And I, and I agree, it's more of a, and it's an aesthetic appearance. Like if you looked at the, I can't read my glasses, the building right there, is that the Texas building? Yes. If those were all opaque in the sense of like, if they were bathrooms and you put in that frosted glass where you can't see in, if all those were of that kind of glass, it would have a very different look than what it, what it has right now. And I think that's really what, what we're talking about. I mean, I totally get what you're saying. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yes. Councilmember Armitage. Just to, to speak to that point about the, about the transparent glass and seeing in. I think that, you know, for me, walking in a vibrant downtown area where there are restaurants and, or like bookshop, and you can see in, and yes, there's kind of a voyeuristic quality to it, but you can see in and you see people laughing, having a good time. You see, you know, you can see who's in there. You know, to me that is, gives a sense of that, that there's a vibrant downtown. You see this, you know, in, in New York City, you know, sometimes they even place, and I realize we're not New York City, but, you know, they place certain people, seat certain people in a restaurant up to the front because they say, oh yeah, we want you to be seen, you know, cause people will come in there. And that's not, you know, we don't have that kind of culture there. But I'm saying that, that it's the kind of thing that the experience of a downtown that we pick up on, I think at more of a subconscious level. And you'd miss, I think people would miss some of that if we had, you know, too much opacity or even a, you know, translucence where you can quite fully see in. Again, you can always, you know, when the sun's too bright, lower the blind. I, I, I, I'll do a little more research and I can bring that back. I mean, ultimately is ground floor clear and opaque above. And, and so I'll, I'll get some more research. Yeah. Okay. Another piece of this is that, and we talk some about the materials and I'll try to run this a little, a little quicker, but again, we're trying to prohibit mirrored glass on, on that first floor, excessive use of any one material per se. And, and then we're really not wanting painting of unpainted brick. So if brick is not painted today, the standards would say that you cannot paint it tomorrow. Um, and, and the same with stone facades, uh, council member, uh, just I'm outside looking in, I presume, but I don't get that. I really don't understand. There's a lot of painted brick. I just don't understand that. And so I get, I, I, well, I'm not going to say I get it because I don't, but, uh, I'm not a designer either. I just don't understand the restrictions. We're trying to get someone to put the building back. Right. And so I think when you're, when you, matter of fact, the exact hole that we're going to feel at some point, the outside of the brick to the north is painted gray. Oh, you talking about the, you talking about, uh, loop de loop or whatever that place is. Well, I think, I think they had, they had to reconstruct that wall because that was an interior, that was not a exterior wall. And so when the, when the fire happened, they had to redo that. And so they, they probably just put that gray on there because they tore that whole wall down and rebuilt it. So they built a wood wall and then they built a block wall. So when that building goes back, that's going to be covered up because it will, they'll have another building wall covering that. That's probably just, and the intent behind that is, is really to preserve the historic character of, of, of the brick that exists. So, um, so many in the historic preservation community have a concern with painting the brick. It doesn't have the same character look or feel. And, and that's the intent behind it. There are painted buildings today. They can continue to paint those, um, but it's trying to manage those buildings that are not painted. And that's what we heard from the stakeholder groups. Yeah. I respect them. I'm just not, you know, and that includes the business owners. I'm not here, I guess. I don't, I don't understand, but it's okay. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and kind of some of the beauty and, and I, and I, and I understand that you don't agree. It was, it was surprising for us to hear largely from those diverse stakeholders that they agree. So getting both sides of that, that we had agreement on both sides of that, that the aisle, if you will, go ahead. Council member Meltzer. Yeah. And I just underscored to the extent that you care about preserving historic character. I think the, an issue is also that if you paint previously unpainted brick or stone and you ever want to go back, it's really difficult to do it without damaging it. I think that that's why it's if it's previously painted, you don't agree with that. Yeah, right. That's, that, that's kind of the issue, I think. Yeah. Okay. But you're saying that it's, it's existing brick. That if, if you're not saying that if, if building burns down or are you saying, like, let's say the hole that where the mini mall was, they build a building back there and they want to paint the new brick. They want to paint the new brick. It'll go through these design standards on this flow chart that you figured out because you said you can't paint existing brick. Is that my understanding? Correct. They can bring a design of what they're proposing to build and then that just comes before the board and they say, they say, yes, that works. Okay. All right. Okay. Yes. So how many of the issues we discuss, including the, including the brick, for instance, are already covered under the National Historic District preservation standards? You know what I mean? How, how much of this is, are we adding that's new and how much is redundant? It gets, it gets very complicated as to whether the building is or is not and then if it's contributing, if it is or is not. And, and so, for example, the, the mini mall and retaining that building, we had no, no ability to retain that building. So again, trying to create some standards to say what would be there. And again, I, I don't know that there are any standards that would prevent someone from building a hundred foot tall blue mirrored glass building in that location. So the, so the National Historic District, am I getting the terms right? They kind of, so downtown area has been designated as that. You know, my understanding was that that include, that that meant the area and not simply the existing buildings that were there at the time when that, or is that incorrect? I've seen a map at a previous council meeting, probably like three years ago. Not all that area, not all the buildings are part of the district. It's, and so planning has a map somewhere in their files that will show you exactly which buildings are covered and which are not currently. I think that's, I don't think anything has changed. So there's just, there's four buildings or five, I believe just only four or five buildings that are covered. I think Roman might give us some, some clarification on that. Thank you. There's no additional restrictions because we don't protect the National Register District locally. So these new, these, these, if this were to pass, we're adding, we're covering some of the district, but right now we do have a National Register District. It does include all the buildings on the square. It includes the courthouse and the buildings that face it. Not, not, not into the Meuse streets, but just those buildings. So the buildings that face it on all. Erin, what you might have seen is probably there's contributing and non-contributing and there are about 26 contributing buildings. There are, in this proposed square, there are about 70 buildings total. Okay. And that's with the map you saw. It's your, go ahead. Yeah. Okay. So thank you. Can I ask a follow up question for Roman? Okay. So there, so this means, so the buildings that face this, the courthouse on all sides of the courthouse, correct? Yes. Yeah. So, and so did those standards specify, for instance, that brick can't be painted? Well, you're, is it, there aren't, this is a National Register District, which we created as a city around 2000 and they, it didn't come with any standards. It doesn't come really with any rules. There are standards provided by the Park Service of how you treat such districts, but we don't apply those standards for our district yet today. We don't have the authority to apply that. Now, this could be, this document could have a line on the, we haven't, there's the historic preservation component or the page we had in this piece here is temporarily not in. Now, we could talk about what that one page says. It could say, for example, that contributing buildings in the National Register District, for example, we will apply those standards to them or that'll go to the HLC, just for those maybe, that might be a way to do it. And so we can, that's probably a whole nother work session conversation in and of itself. So that's certainly something we'll have to address at some point. But I think that's good information moving forward about just giving us a lay of the land of what the National Historic Registry District is, is not. So I appreciate that question. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for that. You have another question? Just for Robin. Okay, go ahead. Well, yeah, because we were talking in there. So the specific buildings that we were talking about earlier, they are actual on the registry, right? So The entire square is on the registry. The courthouse and the surrounding buildings are a nationally registered district. If you go to our website, you know, City of Denton Historic Preservation, and you go down, there's a gap for surveys. And if you go to the surveys there, there's a very, I encourage everyone to read it beautifully written history. And the term, Paul, that you were looking for is period of significance. So our square has a spirit specific period of significance. I think it's from like 1885 to 1949. And so you can't create a district unless you have enough buildings that contribute to that particular moment in history or those years in history, and we had enough buildings to create that. And so then the buildings, they're all the district, once you create one, then you sort of say, if you're really looking at it, you said, well, if there's a void in the district, or if there's a building that's non contributing, like Abbey Inn was kind of new cinder block construction or tilt wall, I'm not sure what it is. But a building like that, if you're in the district, it wouldn't be horrible if that went down to something else. But again, that's another question. Sorry. Yeah, I just about the process, because we got to talk a little bit later about a board creating a board, right? I'm not necessarily in favor of that. But I do know that there are certain structures on the square that go to HLC. And some don't. There's four and a half buildings that are local landmarks. That's what local landmarks. That's what I was trying to say. That was there are four of them. Okay, so if they were purchased with, I'm confused how they would apply to this design standards, would they be held differently? And so if something were to go, a change wanted to be made, those structures would still go to the age seems like they would have they would need an HLC approval, not not just a design standard. And we could cover that on that bit. Maybe they just get that one. So they don't have to get to Okay, yeah, so so let's let's my question. This is obviously an important discussion we need to have. But we could let's try to get a little bit further on the basic sort of overview and outline because we're going to have more conversation about this for sure. And if that would be helpful. Okay. So we talked some about entrance features, awnings, canopies, entrances, requiring awnings and canopies recessed entries are similar approved features. Awnings to the past, we have not secured right away permit. So we're going to work through a process. The second part of the right away ordinance for the city will include that encroachment. So we have awnings today that that encroach into the city's right of way. So we want to better manage that. So we'll require any of those buildings that are doing any alterations or new buildings would would have to secure that we want to have structure for fencing and pedestrian dining. So we have standards that permit sidewalk dining, again, with a right away permit. So we're managing how that's being done to make sure that we still have, you know, protection for pedestrians and access, and then a prohibition on fully fenced in so people can't block the sidewalk. So murals is another section of this. We've included a piece that is architectural and aesthetically compatible with the square not detracting or threatening. No murals on front facing unpainted brick or stone, no neon fluorescent or reflective paint. And that is on page 10 of the document. Yeah, Councilmember Hussbett has a brief, I disagree with the front facing mural, because it's all over the place anyway. It's anyway, I just disagree. So I hope there's enough consensus to to negate that requirement, but we'll see. So I have a question of clarification for you on that. When you say it's all over the place. I mean, I know about the one. Is it Andy's that just recently painted it? Where are the other ones on the front facing of the square? So I don't I don't know. So I do believe here chestnut, they have something paint, they have a sign or something painted on that green space now. Right, if from memory. Just a sign being different. Well, the gist of it is sign mural. So you're not distinguishing between those two know if you're saying paint on the on the facing the square is bad, then then you get in a subjective evaluation of Oh, well, that's her name. So if you get creative in how you spell your name, then that's not a mural, that's your name. But, you know, just that that splitting hairs to me, either it should be either it should be clean in the front, which I disagree, or you should be able to express whatever on the front of your building. And again, if if we're going to do that, then we need to go in one fix the fence because it's falling apart and to paint it all white. Okay, all right. So I I agree with that. I you know, as long as we have a rule about, you know, what kind of material about that say you can't paint brick because you can't be unpainted, then you know, I'm not comfortable with regulating how people are going to paint their paintable exteriors. And it's funny that to me that looks neon. You know, I don't know what counts as neon paint. But, and I'm not singling that out to say, shame on them for violating the new rule. I'm pointing that to say I think they it looks lovely. And but ultimately, you know, it's not necessarily my business, it's the property owner, you know, if they're, you know, complying with these rules that we have with historic preservation in mind about what you can cannot paint on. I think it's it's hard to distinguish between what's a sign a marker of this is what the space is and what is a mural, you know, and not everybody is going to like what the what the owner chooses. But I'm feel pretty strongly on that on that point. Well, and if Council remembers that you had you had a building that came before you and ultimately are waiting to see what happened with the downtown standards. So the standards and again, it kind of came through loud and clear from who we spoke with is that we we shouldn't have murals on the forward facing square, not to say that on the ends of buildings or others, and any of those would go through the design review board. So whatever the standards may look like so that there's a board approval for that, whether it's directly on the building or on some other application statement, I mean, I I'm completely not in favor of having loud. I mean, if if our intent is to reflect the period of significance, which Roman just said, which is for this area that has been designated, I don't I don't necessarily think we should have murals all over the front of the building with loud paint. And I understand that it's their business and their property. But generally, unless it's the name, maybe we could carve out a section where if you wanted to, you know, do your name in a certain way of the bill, you know, and then promote it that way. But I mean, just the full building bright neon colors, I mean, and that just goes back to our intent of what this is for. I'm I'm in agreement with the way that it's written, maybe with an exception of allowing, you know, if you want to be creative with your with your name on on a painted piece of painted wood and then put it up on the building, maybe. But I guess that would go through the the whole process right for what's allowed and what's not correct. And page 10 has a set of mural standards. And the first first in that is all new mural shall require approval of the design standards review board. So it goes before a board for anyone to do anything. And if it's on a separate panel, then it's going to protect the building that we're not going to damage the building and doing it. A mural must be compatible with the architectural and aesthetic components of the building on which it is installed, not attract from the character of the district and not be detrimental to the public health, safety or welfare. On facades fronting the square proper mules are not permitted on existing unpainted brick or stone surfaces. The use of reflective neon or fluorescent paint is prohibited. That's really the statement. Go ahead. Just an exception. So if somebody wanted to do artwork on their glass, like your temporary murals that wouldn't that wouldn't matter that they could do that because it's you could just wash your glass and it would come off and then you could do it. Okay, so that's fine. So what I would do is is sort of somebody's probably keeping a running kind of list of issues that seem to have some various feedback, some for some again. So let's keep a list of those so that as we get through sort of the first phase of this, we can come back and begin to address those particular ones more with more specificity instead of trying to figure it all out right now so that we can at least move through because I'm looking at your cart rights mural. And that's on the back. But if let's say somebody wanted to put that in the front, then you've got you've got all different you've got a sign. So somebody is going to have that would may go before review board and they look at it. So but let's just keep a running total or a running list of issues we got to come up with. Oh, yes, customer. Yeah, I mean, just as you're noting, I'm I'm on the side of four as written with a significant exception of the Hudson tower, which will be neon yellow, I understand. Yeah, okay. All right. Fantastic. Yes. Remember armature. What were the and I hate to make Roman come up here. So maybe if you don't want to, so maybe someone here will just remember the years of the the scope of the historic district. Because Councilman Nelson, you had first mentioned, you know, something that was much smaller. Yeah, something like 1910 to 20. But but it was, I was impressed by the wide scope is something like 18, you know, 45 to 1949 or something like that. Was that was that? Okay, but it sounded like to me like it ended mid century, you know, and I just want to point out, I was just kind of googling, you know, mid century, you know, 1949 American storefronts. And there's, you know, a lot of why I mean, and if that is the case, that it extends up that far. And that actually is makes for quite an eclectic in a good to me, this is a good thing and eclectic mix that would still count as historic. So I just want to put that out there when we're thinking about, you know, how important it is to be historic, the the scope that we're looking at. You got that? Okay, real quickly, because we're gonna we got about 10 more minutes on this on this. Our courthouse square is 19. I'm sorry, 1882 to 1949. 19. Okay, yeah. So I mean, that's, yes. So I just want to point out when we're talking about how important it is to be historic, that we're keeping in mind how wide that is, and how much variety and eclecticism is possible, even in a lot of what, again, 1949 architecture, it can feel can feel very contemporary and include things like front facing murals. That's nationwide. I think it's what is it for the period here in Denton, in this area, I don't think what we're talking about is to apply a nationwide standard of 18 something to 1945 because different portions are different geographical areas of our country. That would mean something very different. So yes, if that's if that's the range that we've seen in the at our square in that timeframe, I totally get it. But it sounds like you're trying. So correct me if I'm wrong. I'm interpreting what you're saying is whatever was available in the country during that time is here. And I think what we're trying to say is at least from what I've heard him say is that it's what was occurring in that time period in Denton in Denton on the square or in Denton in general. So I don't think it's Yeah, and just to just to respond to that, I was just describing a Google, you know, Google search I did where I didn't type in Denton, I just typed in American just to get a picture. But I do know that we have here some, you know, in terms of residential architecture, you know, some not a lot, but some, you know, really amazing, you know, mid century modern homes here in Denton, that are historic homes that don't necessarily blend in with the, you know, homes next to them in terms of the look, but they're also historic. So you're limiting it to the Denton area. Yes, yeah. So I agree. Okay. And that's our goal is to is to manage the squares the square exists and to try to keep that. Another component of this was signs that we will not allow internally lit cabinet sign signs, signs are ultimately not going to damage or hide architectural features. So most of the signs on the square comply with that already. I think they will only have one sign that does not. Okay, go ahead. And then ultimately, I think is just to kind of take you to the process of where we're at, which this was just an opportunity to provide an update to counsel get feedback, it sounds as if we'll be coming back to you for a little bit more feedback. So that we can get to a public hearings and adoption phase of this. I know there was a sense of urgency to get this completed and along with the other priorities we're working on it. So however it is, counsel would like us to proceed. We shall. Okay. Yes, sorry. I would just ask when you come back, if you could give us some of some type of ranking or visual as the stakeholders, where they had consensus, right? 100% consensus, 90% whatever it is, but just kind of give us a feel for how they came together on particular issues and because that matters, right? So if there if there's a lot of uniform consensus on a couple of these key issues, I want to be sensitive to that. And I want to kind of make sure I fold that into the deliberation, if that makes sense. It does and I think it's almost easier to go in reverse where we had a couple of issues I think that were a little bit more paramount, but largely they were very, very supportive of the entirety of the document. They were encouraged by it and wanted to proceed forward. Okay, yeah. Highlight wherever those there is there were those differences. Please. Yes, sir. Anybody else? Yes, Councilmember Briggs. So I would ask that the public hearings or you know, just an open house in the process so that when you come back, you have more more feedback from the public, maybe one or or maybe, you know, because I don't know what the public hearings mean. Is that just like P and Z? That would be P and Z and Council. Okay. And that would be the only time that the general public would get to where they were the general public allowed to come to any of these meetings or was it just specific stakeholders? We went to stakeholders and we've talked to some in some public meetings regarding it, so. Okay. Yes, in short answer. Nothing that was specific to talk about the design standards. Also, just a quick note here because we asked earlier the the courthouse that its highest is 130 feet. So at the top of the yeah, whatever that's called. Yeah. So does this does this address any way not demolishing any buildings? Because I know that's what this what created this and there was a lot of issues in the community or, you know, discussion in the community about not saving a facade or saving. Is that this document or is that another document that's coming to us? It's within this document as well. So the demolition and reconstruction and ultimately we focused on the reconstruction rather than the demolition and any of those major projects would have to go before the board. So the board the board would then be providing guidance. We do have a couple of options if we wanted to engage another board or HLC or whether we wanted a waiting period to try to convince someone to keep a building. So we have some other options that are available. And I think largely it kind of depends on council's direction on the board and what that board might look like. And I think that that's worthy of a conversation. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted to just kind of present my three biggest points. One being just what you said the issue of the board who's going to be on it. Obviously, you know, we don't have time to I think you'd mentioned four o'clock, right? Wanted to wrap this up. So for today. Yeah, for today. But clearly that's a key issue. And, you know, I want to make sure that the public broadly defined feels like they're getting to have a say in these standards for their own city. I also I would like to see, you know, the kind of these questions about or the question that I had earlier about, you know, how much is overlap with with the National Registry that we're talking about and thank you for answering those questions. I'd like to see, you know, mention in here of the National Registry and what it is and to what extent, you know, we're going to be compatible with national historic standards, you know, in other words, spelling out these connections instead of leaving people to wonder. So that's something that I would like to see. And I'd also like to kind of going back to this point about having about the public feeling like they're really involved in this process. I'm curious to know, you know, who in speaking to these stake stakeholders, this what kinds of groups to this the stakeholders comprise that you spoke to and forgive me if you mentioned this before to what kind of the downtown task force we actually contacted every property owner on the square. So the property owners and the business owners included all of those the down the chamber, excuse me, Main Street Association. We've talked about it at our public open houses and any opportunity that we have to talk about the square we have in those design standards. We've had it published on our website. Okay, yeah, great. So those are all groups that I would definitely expect would be included and that's good, you know, to make sure you get the property owners the downtown groups, I think having any and all, you know, local historic groups, the HLC, other, you know, I'm sure there are groups that I don't even know about, you know, local hot, you know, hobbyist groups, groups that I'm sure people who are in HLC and involved in historic preservation would be able to and we mentioned those earlier, AIA, we did go to HLC PNC. I mean, HLC. Okay, good. And sorry, sorry for not remembering. Okay, great. And so the opportunity for customers, pedestrians, you know, people who use the square but aren't, you know, property owners there or maybe not in a group in some sort of official group, the opportunity for them comes with the public hearing at the public hearing phase, in addition to, of course, giving input to counsel in our other open houses, anywhere that we can. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I would probably say as far as the public, some type of public forum, I think it would be good to have a public forum sort of like you do on some of the other things like we've had on the the rewrite of the DDC, you know, have one where we're really inviting the public that's not that doesn't have a direct interest tied to the square, because you we may get some some similar feedback and we may get some very dissimilar feedback than people who have, you know, a direct interest there. And it's not just we're not just designing it for the people who have a direct interest, we're designing it for the entire city. So I think it'd be good just to have some feedback. And if people come, that's great. And if they don't come, okay, you know, but we give them opportunity to do that. I think that would be helpful. And I guess, you know, this is a good example of when you bring things to us in the beginning, and if we're not quite sure what's happening, we don't give you much feedback, and you go off and you spend a lot of time doing something. And so then when you come back, we, we have a lot of these comments and questions, which I'm not sure how to correct that process. Because if we don't know what we're looking at, then it's hard to give feedback. So I'll just say that in no way, I know that you haven't taken any of these questions or any of this feedback is anything that's been seen as criticism or anything like that. And you guys have done a lot of work and laid a really strong foundation. And I think as we just continue to get a little bit more feedback, we're gonna have to make some policy decisions on some pretty important issues regarding these. And I think we've seen them percolate to the top. So it's going to take probably a couple more iterations. And so I'd rather get it done as best as we can, you know, as efficiently as we can, but to feel a need to, to move it. So I just wanted to say that because you've done a good job. I know sometimes we can ask a lot of questions, say things, but it's no reflection on you guys or your work. Councilmember, can I make a request? I know that four o'clock was when you wanted, but it might be helpful for them if council is in agreement to create this board or not, because if not, then they're gonna have to come up with another route. And so if we delay that even further, then it's just gonna delay this much needed. I don't even know what what the board I don't I don't know anything about the board other than it's a name. I mean, okay, and I'm happy to visit about that very briefly that that that we brought this before on the design standards review board. And what it was is to be seven qualified members. So that would be two members of the planning and zoning commission, one of the historic landmark commission and four other additional members of the four to shall I be a resident owner of a business or owner of property on the square of the remaining two members, one would be a general contractor, a licensed design professional, a certified planner, a Texas attorney or real estate developer with three years of experience. And then as ad hoc or ex officios, the director of development services and the chairman of the County Historical Commission. That's the staff recommendation and following other models. That help you any? Well, yes, but I feel like if we are in agreement on creating that, then they should know as they go out to the public to talk about it, or we're just going to delay the process longer. And I know that it might be a quick conversation if we just go around and say who's in favor of creating a new board and who's not. We'll start with you. I'm not really in favor of creating a new board and would like to see how and if this would work into one of our existing. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I'm leaning in that direction. Like, I need to understand more. I'm leaning in that direction. I'm thinking about our arts committee or at least having more, you know, artist representation on this board. So if I had to choose today, I would say no. I'd rather I'd like to see what the public would have to say about if there's going to be a new board, who should be on it or if the public thinks that that an existing board would suffice. But again, if I had to decide today, I would say no. Okay. Councilmember Duff. It seemed reasonable to me to have a board, but you know, so you can, you know, because I mean, you have the listed off of who's going to be on that board and you know, how's he going to determine how things are done? You know, it just makes sense to me to have a board. No no new boards. It should go through staff and then come to us because we're going to trump any board anyway. It's got to come through us ultimately. And so then it creates the same issue we had at Andy's where it's like, well, you have to adhere to that committee because they recommended it. And the answer is no, we don't. But then it's a source of consternation. So why would we do that to ourselves? It's just, hey, staff is great about reaching out to people. They don't, you know, they can go do it. And then if it needs to be revisited, then we get it on the agenda and do it. I'm sorry, I don't I don't really know yet. I'd have to hear more discussion about it. I just don't really know. Yeah. And I would agree with that. I mean, my I'm okay with some type of review board. I don't know if I want it to be an existing board. I don't know if I agree with the the composition of the board by staffs recommendation. And so that's what that's what really is my concern. It's not so much that I don't think there should be a board, whether it's a current board or a new one. So I think we're sort of back to where we were. And that is a little bit more discussion on that might be needed. I'll see how soon we can come back. I'll give the city manager and so soon we can come back to try to address some of these issues and keep this moving forward. Okay, you bet. All right, let's take a little bit five minutes and then we'll come back with the easiest part. tree code. It's not on. Okay, let me do that again. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Dent City Council. It is 420 p.m. We're on work session item 3d. Just to give you sort of some heads up, we've got two closed session items. So we're probably going to take this to about 515 520. And then we're going to break because we'll need to eat dinner and then also take up those closed session items. So we're obviously going to have more presentations following than just this one. So all right. So here's Oh, and, and I want us all to wish Richard a happy birthday today. So happy birthday, Richard. Thank you. I couldn't find my keys. There you go. There you go. I could say you're really getting old. Okay. All right, here we go. So just wanted to start this off. I know I've seen this slide a number of times, but just want to give a little bit of background on sort of how we how we approach this. If you recall, back in April, April and May of 2018, we had sort of a policy discussion on some items in drafting this in drafting this update. One being looking at a unified approach looking at incorporating the landscape code tree code really into one along with with the ESA regulations. Also making sure we comply with Texas local government code 212 905 in relation to tree preservation tree mitigation, limit clear cutting, increased preservation, require mitigation for trees removed, set the priorities towards preserving larger quality trees, promote a multi age forest, balance balance it with reasonable development and increase tree canopy citywide. In addition to that, we've done some some other outreach since we first had those policy meetings in addition to some of the last COE meetings. So once we once we got to a point where we felt like we had a draft that that we were starting to get closer on, we kind of took it out took it out to the streets. One of the first meetings we had was with the Denton, Denton County AG, the Master Gardeners, they gave some initial input on on the on the standards. We also presented at at a board meeting for Keep Denton Beautiful. We presented at the North Texas Urban Forestry Council conference a few weeks back. We had a meeting with the American Society of Landscape Architects Texas Dallas Fort Worth chapter that went out to all of all of the representatives from all the landscape architects within within the Metroplex. We also met with the actually twice now with the Denton Community Developers Alliance. The we did send these and had some communication with the Dallas Builders Association. We also discussed it at the at the DDC community workshops and then had some individual meetings with with interested folks as well as phone calls. And so we've we've tried to get this out in front of as many people as we can. Obviously, many of them had had competing interests. But again, we wanted to bring something that we thought kind of addressed it all and and and kind of met some somewhere in the middle. And so where are we today? While we had that outreach, there were a lot of meetings that a lot of meetings and drafts that went into into into getting to that point. In total, I think we had approximately 14 different work sessions and committee meetings. I think the last full council review, if you recall, was back in November, when we had presented a number a number of items along with along with the Parks Department. We once we once we initially put that draft out that the first full draft in about a month ago, February 1st, we had a lot of a lot of comment that came back. We did meet. We did meet with with DOE, we made some with the Committee on the Environment, made some additional adjustments, and we're set to go to planning and zoning for formal consideration on February 20th. As a result of a lot of the concerns from the development community, we kind of pulled that back. And at that time, it was, you know, how do we where do we proceed next? And at that point, the manager had recommended that both both we meet with the mayor and and Council member Briggs is the chair of the Committee on the Environment to kind of go through what those what those issues what those issues are. And I'm going to I'm going to speak to those. But that's sort of where we got where are we today, essentially. And so where where are we going? And so I wanted to and again, some of this some of these graphics I've had in previous previous slides. I know there's been a lot of discussion about even that that 30% and where did that come from? And more more of just a reminder, looking at at the current goal citywide is 30%. Currently, we're at just under 20 or 27.9. East to 35, we're at 33%. Looking at a goal of 40%. West of 35, we're currently at 16, with a goal of 20%. And again, so these are more into the landscape regulations. And so again, looking at this, both from a tree preservation perspective, but also from landscape requirements. So rather than in the past, we looked at them differently. Now they're now they're they're really looked at one in the same. Wanted to just provide a just just some basic numbers on and I know, Councilmember Meltzer has asked us a number of times on do we even can we even get to that if if we if we apply it citywide? Well, yes, if we get completely developed for fully developed. And so what we'd looked at was just based on the landscape requirements, the canopy coverage of the undeveloped land or underdeveloped land in the city. If that were to fully develop with the required tree canopy, it would bump the citywide citywide goal, I'm sorry, the citywide coverage to approximately 36%. And so I mean, plus or minus. So again, we're now close to that, to that 30% mark mark. And what that what that really accounts for is is approximately 13 trees an acre on those on those undeveloped parcels. And so what we thought was interesting is just trying to figure out where you know, where do we where do we come? How did we get to where we are today? And so it was interesting, we started just looking back at some old aerial photographs. Unfortunately, the city was much smaller, we don't we have some of them aren't aren't as great. But we we pick this area one because I think it represents pretty much everything. I mean, there's heavier commercial on university, you have some older parts to the south, but you have a lot of new development that took place primarily in the 70s. You have city a city park in there, as well as some ESA areas. And so in 1942, the tree canopy coverage in that area within the within the yellow line was approximately 6%. A lot of that has to do with with current ESA or the worst kind of streams that went through that area. We look at 2017. It's now at 33%. So interestingly enough, you know, we went kind of from the from more of a farming community to really developing and that development. Well, it brought others a lot of things that did bring a lot more tree canopy coverage than what we what we normally had. And I think you will continue to see that as we develop, particularly to the west. Okay, customer breaks. So how what's the difference between the the 33% and the 27? Is that because our boundaries have expanded the the six and the 33? Well, the current the citywide current is 27%. But in your date of 2017, it's 33% citywide. It's just the area 33% is just that I was just doing a comparison of the area. That's not a full citywide. That's just sort of a a section of the north sort of northwest. So just within that boundary, just within that boundary, yes. Okay. So some of the some of the changes that that have kind of what changed and why. And so what I wanted to do is is hopefully for the sake of ease, kind of follow the same steps that we went through back in November, and kind of hit on those on the same items applicability, tree type preservation credits and incentives and mitigation, and then kind of walk you through I'm not going to go back through the whole ordinance, but what changed with respect to those those items. applicability. Again, this this was from a lot of feedback that we had from both the development community and and some of the residents. We kept we deleted the language that talks about if you're marketing, if you're actively marketing the property, if you're if you have an ag exemption, that now is is deleted. So it's just if you have an ag exemption, you're you're exempt. That's also in the local government code pretty much follows with what is in the current code today. Initially, we were following exactly the the language of the law in the local government code with respect to single family, where they were exempting. If you had a DBH of 10 inches or less, we now have in here with and this is again in the current code, any property which a single family or two family residential dwelling unit exists, they would be exempt from the from the tree preservation requirements. Yes. We had a conversation yesterday about this. And I wonder if you've given it given any more thought to clarifying that the intention is owner occupied. Well, you know, homesteaded single family and owner occupied to family in other words, not to create a loophole where somebody could, let's say take advantage of this exclusion by purchasing single family homes and taking the trees off and then do then filing to develop later, you know. Yeah. And I think we started looking at that even more. Going back between home owner occupied and and and not whether or not we just relate that to single family zoning. Because I think it would be hard. If we're going to exempt it, then we would still need we would have to require every I think homeowner then to submit a tree removal permit and then have to make a decision on whether or not their owner owner occupied or not. And so I think we're still needing to work to work through that, whether or not we just relate that to a single property that zone single family. Not sure I follow your logic there. If they're if they live there, it's owner occupied, right? Why? Why do you have a step in there about submitting a tree? And I think really the intent is development or redevelopment. So we're trying to take that focus on that that we recognize that there may be some of that on if if it's an existing single family dwelling, whether it's owner occupied or not, that they wish to take a tree down. But it's more in terms of if that property is to be developed or redeveloped, then they would have to they would have to comply with the ordinance. All right. So you want to think about it some more? Yes. I'll wait. Item three, this is already was referenced in the non protected tree. We just again put it in put it in in the applicability section again, just more of a belt and suspenders. Same with number four. Again, that was already included in non protected trees. But rather than having someone search through a definition, we just put it right in the applicability section. Number five, this is something we brought over from the existing code. If there's a and this was a comment we received from the development community and the more thought about it does make sense. If you're if you have to do some clear some understory or clear some trees in order to actually do a survey, you would be exempt from from mitigation under in in those circumstances. And then number six, just looking at the effective date of the subchapter, we're probably going to revise this. I know we've talked about as we move forward, getting closer to adoption or once these regulations go in place, running them almost on a on a almost on an interim basis, where for six months, you can either develop under under these standards or under the existing and so we'll have to modify six to work with legal to to to address that. Quick question back on number two. What's the current code on the single family or two family residential dwelling? What's the current code on that? Exactly what is exactly what's written is exactly what's in the current code. Exactly what's written where? I'm sorry. Okay. What's lined out or what is written there? What is written in bold is is word for word from the current code. Okay, so then the difference between that because you had up there is just so I can understand what the Texas local government code said. What there did they make a distinction between anything? What what what did what did they make a distinction? Their their distinction was existing single family and duplex lots with trees under 10 inches at DBH. Okay, but they didn't make a distinction between homestead or unoccupied or they have Yeah, they have a resident actually they have a residential and the way they classify residential includes both. Okay, alright. Getting into into tree type. This is probably the most discussed and and and debated item. We're down to four four tree types under the current code. We have seven different types. What we're looking at is again taking it down to four preservation based on two types and mitigation based on three types. And then we have heritage tree and quality tree those would be the two types that would require both preservation and mitigation. Secondary trees defined as boat arc hack barrier cottonwood six inches or greater would not have any minimum preservation, but there would be some mitigation and I'll get into the mitigation shortly after the slide has a question. Yeah, you can go back to that. So reduced designation from seven types to four types by that you mean the actual types of trees as in the kind of trees, right? There's the names of the kind of trees like hackberry, cottonwood, et cetera, maple. No, unfortunately, we had the way that the way the current code is drafted, you have you have secondary trees, large secondary trees, secondary tree stands, quality trees, quality tree stands and protected trees, which are heritage trees, you only have to mitigate on protected trees and large secondary. But if they're all within a tree stand, tree stand, and they're not secondary trees, they can all be counted as a quality tree stand, which means there's three trees together. As long as you have that, then there's no mitigation, which is probably the item that most gets probably abused, I would classify it as, because then you can clear cut your property, not have to mitigate. And as long as it's under the auspices of this quality tree stand, and it's been it's been misused in the past, even because you have so many different types, I think that's caused part of the issue in the past where staff has tried to just enforce the ordinance. What is it? What do you call it? And, and so I think by simplifying it, it just takes that it takes that guesswork. Okay, so this will actually so so this reduction in designation will actually help preserve more trees by minimizing the the the opportunity for what what you're talking about. Is that correct? Preserved, but also more more so mitigate mitigate for what you're removing. Okay, mitigate. Okay. Okay, got it. Because when I first saw that, I thought, Oh, no, we're protecting, you know, protecting fewer kinds of trees. But no, this is just about the way we categorize them, right? You can have, you can have what we're defining as a heritage tree. So if it's greater than it, so if you have cons 28 inches, if they're if they're as long as you're making meeting your minimum preservation within a quality tree stand, then you can remove all of the other trees and not have to mitigate under the current code, this removes that this removes that okay, good, good. And so this has the okay of the environment committee for okay, good, good. So yeah, so what this does is this puts this puts more of a I guess an incentive, if you will, to to preserve the large exact. Okay, thank you so much for explaining. Thanks. Mayor. Yeah, just can you go back just because it says that the secondary trees, they're that they don't need to be preserved. But as I recall from our conversation, if there is an area of land where there's not any of the heritage or quality trees, then the secondary trees would need to be counted as that 30%. They could be under under that alternative tree preservation plan. And I'll get to that one. I'll get to that. Okay, so but as of now, in, they could just clear cut the lot. No, they would, they're still required to preserve the 30% of the heritage and quality trees, but if there's not any heritage or quality trees on their lot, then whatever is if there's secondary, this was from our conversations, my understanding was that to apply the equity among landowners, that they would still have to comply with the 30% preservation so that someone who has quality trees on their lot isn't isn't treated differently than someone who has cotton woods and on their lot. So the preservation of what is actually on the land would would be preserved. That's from my understanding of the conversation. So please correct me if if I'm wrong, and maybe I misunderstood. I had it as as part of a as part of a slide. Yeah, they will see the intent in that. And also just on a note here that if there are secondary trees on the lot, as well as the heritage and quality if someone preserves 30% and they go over, then they can preserve those secondary trees for extra credit. Correct. Correct. And I have that built in. Yeah. Okay. I want to see that sort of discussion because I remember something along those lines on the preservation if there are no, which I'm not sure how many are going to have no quality trees, but but but that what we did is we adjusted the credits received in that regard, you know, because I know that preservation of the heritage and the quality trees received a certain credit because we were trying to and then the preservation of the mitigation of the secondary trees where there's quality and heritage on the on the lot to try to incentivize people to maintain those so they got less credits with the secondary trees that were preserved and trying to help them maintain it. So yeah, I recall something similar to that. So just want to get through the presentation. So I can maybe see if it jogs my memory a little bit. Landmark tree. This is something that that we currently don't have any in the city now. Again, it's at 100% preservation. I did want to make sure it's highlighted. Usually these would this would be something that would be designated by the property owner. That's why we have the 100% preservation in there. Are there are there are there criteria for a tree to be classified as that? There are there's you can either be a historic tree, which again, we don't we don't have have any. But that was we just brought that forward. And then in addition, there's there's the Texas Big Tree Registry. And and that's something that they have certain size. Okay, so these are very clear criteria. It's got to be a certain 50 inches or 30 inches in diameter or whatever. Correct. Correct. And then the non protected trees. There was really no changes to this. I just wanted to make sure that that it was just it was just clear. And then preservation, what we've what we've done from from the previous drafts is really just simplified the the rates and the multipliers. And so again, for the for the heritage and quality, it's a it's a 30% minimum preservation. And then your replacement rate for heritage is two and a half inches per one inch. And then for quality, two inches per one inch. What did what would also change was the mitigation for secondary trees. It's now at four inches per tree instead of inch. And that four inches is the equivalent of two replacement trees to two inch replacement trees. And is the two inches prescribed by state law? Correct. Two inches are prescribed within that within the local government code. We also built in some additional flexibility with respect to reducing the minimum preservation down to 20% provided that additional 10% is mitigated at a higher rate. You may recall you had that ability to take it down to 20 if there was a preserved habitat or conservation easement. That that all stayed the same. This is just something in addition that we added for those properties if they did want to go down to 20, then your your replacement rates essentially go up by a quarter quarter inch 2.75 or 2.25 depending whether it's a heritage or or quality trees. The other item that we we included was an alternative tree preservation plan. And this is where it has the language on on the secondary trees. What we're proposing or recommending is this be at a staff level and allow trees you can do this for in two instances. One allow trees with less than the minimum DBH to count towards protected trees. One if it would result in a greater number of post oak trees regardless of the DBH. So if there were four inch or three inch those can count. Or part B you're preserving by the preservation or or the mitigation would require a substantial burden. But if you're going to preserve a number of smaller smaller quality trees within either a buffer or front yard, then you're then you would be able to count those trees. What we looked at is if you end up removing a bunch of four inch trees to replace them with three inch trees, the likelihood of maintaining those three inch trees, if they're going to be within a dedicated buffer, the likelihood of them surviving is probably better that they're they're already already established. And so that that's that's the intent. That was the intent of B and so just to clarify. So DBH which refers to the diameter diameter at breast height, which is four and a half feet above of the ground. Correct. Okay. And then the second part of that is is to allow secondary trees to count towards the minimum required preservation instead of quality trees. And I guess I didn't I didn't I didn't put one way or the other if there weren't enough quality trees but but kind of just left it left it open in that in that regard if if that could be an option. I think that that should only be an option if there's not enough quality. I mean, because that that was the issue, right. So if I have a piece of property with all quality and heritage trees, that's not an issue preserving the 30%. But if I have if there's any quality or heritage trees, those should go towards the 30%. And if they have the rest secondary trees, they should be allowed to make up that 30% of the preservation. That that's what what I think. And if I'm is the alternative tree preservation plan is this staff? Is this done by the staff? Yeah, as proposed. It's yeah. Well, I mean, I'm okay. I think secondary trees should count towards the minimum preservation. But I don't like that it says instead of quality trees, it should say if not there if it should have a different wording there. Go ahead councilmember. So just to follow up on that. So the wording would be something like if there are no quality trees for enough. Okay. On the on the next item credits and incentives. The only thing that changed here initially we were doing a flat 50% reduction, we sort of rolled it back on the non residential to 40%. And so the 50% on residential, the 40% on non residential, these, these come right from the from the Texas Local Government Code. And so that's what that's what we're recommending that that rather than give anybody an increase, we'll just follow what what's established within that, within that section. And would you are you is there somewhere in the presentation where you talk about because credits and incentives, we've talked about it, but to really show how that flows into a whole kind of project. If you've got that, then that's fine. You got an example. Fantastic. Okay, yep. Right. And so in addition to that, sort of that that automatic write down, again, to to really gear this towards and incentivize preserving larger trees, there's additional credits that are granted three inches, so it's actually higher than what the mitigation rate is for preserving heritage trees. So for every inch that you actually preserve within that 30%, you get an additional credit for either the heritage at three to one, or quality at two to one. So I want to go back, because I just thought of this and I think it addresses Councilmember Briggs question because as I was thinking it's true. So if we go, you don't have to go back to the slide. But when you said you can do secondary trees instead of quality trees. I get that I think we can do that. But you're really not going to have a situation where you're not going to have enough quality trees to meet the 30% because isn't it the DBH of the quality trees. So you've got if you've got 20 trees out there, you only have to mitigate 30% of that that tree stand. So I don't know really, if there's ever going to, I mean, it would just be if you wanted to take down a tree because it wasn't conducive for what you wanted to do with it. So it's that 30% is a subset of the DBH inches that are there in the quality tree stand to begin with only on the heritage and quality. Yes, yes. Okay. All right. Does that make sense? And I think you reminded me because this, the secondary tree, the reason I was fighting for that so hard is when we were only talking about post oak. And then when we added the rest of the quality trees in with the DBH, then that kind of took care of took care of it. Right. Yeah, because post oaks remained as a as a hair, any post oak six inches or greater is still counted as a heritage tree. Okay. Yeah. So that's so you really wouldn't have if you've got any kind of quality trees, you're only having to take 30% of the DBH of those quality trees or heritage trees and then you get the credits or the so forth and so on. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I was thinking 30% of all of the DBH is of all the tree. That's where I've tried to get my head. It's just the DBH of those trees. Those two. Thank you. That's why surveys. Yes. And the other item that we have since added in was the ability to get additional credit for preserving secondary trees, even though you're not required. And so in order in order to get that, you would need to meet your minimum preservation of 30%. And so if you want it to sort of write down that that that mitigation amount, you can do so by planning or I'm sorry, by maintaining secondary trees, and then getting a half inch per inch. Okay, so we put it back to half inch. Yeah, when after I ran through all of the scenarios it because we looked at something smaller than that. Yeah. Okay. I see how it works. No, I'm kidding. I ran a lot. You did. And I will tell you, and just to give you a kudos to have kudos, you know, in the conversations that Councilmember Briggs and I've had with staff, I mean, they really went above and beyond to to find specific projects that they went through the analysis of what was there, what you know, under the current code, what was there now under the and very, very helpful, which I think we'll probably go through some of that later on. But thank you so much for that, because I know it's very time consuming, very time consuming. Yep. The other item getting into on the mitigation side. This is this is an item that is in the current code. It's been there for quite some time. There was just quite honestly, I don't even remember how I came across it. I think it was looking at at just the DDC update overall, in the procedure section, but there is a section on tree preservation relief, that if someone does feel that they're being unreasonably burdened, they have the ability to come to to City Council for relief. And so we incorporated that that reference within the within this code. I don't think anyone's ever done it. But again, it is it is there as an as an option. I think it's rather than it's kind of those those steps before. Yes, Councilmember armature is is and so is there something in state law that requires that? Not that I'm aware of the only time and maybe Aaron can if I'm if I'm going off off off base, typically, you'll see these as sort of a step. If someone makes a takings claim, but there's that ability to go to the body for relief. And I would just you know, my two cents, I don't know how others feel, I'd prefer not to have that in there as as an option. I don't okay. All right. So let me make sure I understand what what the option is that if they feel that they're unduly burdened, right? Go ahead. I'm sorry. And I'm sorry, there's there's it's really based on three factors. Okay. And so the first is whether there's a unique physical circumstance of the property. The second is whether the proposed design has minimized the loss of trees to the to the extent possible. And three, whether preservation and or mitigation unduly burdens the development of the property. Okay. I mean, because because my just to follow up, you know, to explain, uh, preservation and mitigation will always burden that, you know, the development of a property because it's it's, you know, asking more of them than just free reign. So I feel like I worry that, that this provides an opportunity, you know, for a developer to get around the tree code entirely. And I'm not thinking about who's on council now, but you know, just future future councils. Uh, I feel like there's risk here as far as a risk factor that this could open up, uh, the, uh, the gate to, you know, just people getting out of our, our, uh, ordinance that we put in place, I don't quite see the point of, of having this in there. Maybe, and maybe people in the committee can explain what the point was or where it's coming from besides just to, uh, developers. Well, it's currently in now in our ordinance and I don't know that it has been used, but there it's never been used, but there's an option there so that if somebody feels like, um, it's an undue burden on them, then they have an outlet to, um, state their case, which is an option that we would like to keep in here so that somebody feels like they have an outlet so that they don't, um, feel stuck. And so does that, so does that empower a council, a city council, to override, uh, any elements of the tree, of the preservation code if that council is convinced, convinced that it is, that it does unduly burden the development? That could certainly happen, but you know, it's not something that's used, especially when staff will make a recommendation that it is an unduly burdensome. And I think to your other point, any council can change this ordinance anytime they want, so I mean, it's, it's not as if that we can protect the tree code in perpetuity, but I think that the more objective that we can be, the more analysis there, it gives the council the ability to determine whether something's reasonable or logical and if there's a different way to get there. Part of where you're hearing the criticism about tree codes in this state are the fact that this process isn't in place, and it's so black and white that you, you have to do this or else, and I think this is one, it's a smart move on the city's part to do this because it at least allows you the ability to, to hear their rationale. And that's where a lot of the whiplash is coming right now in this tree litigation is there's no alternatives for a developer to seek. So, I don't know if the city attorney wants to add anything, but. I just want to say that what they've set up is something akin to a variance that the ZBA would provide, which is basically a deviation from whatever standard is there that may be impacting the ability to develop the property. Yeah. And that's kind of, that's what worries me. So, for instance, so, but I would say if, if there's, if there's no consensus to strike it all together, then at least that we put in kind of like how, I don't know, the gas well ordinance, you know, where there's a variance or, you know, a minimum, but, but at least we put in a minimum. I don't know what that would be, but to at least hold them to some standard. This doesn't have to be decided on now, but it worries me how this opens up the possibility of just kind of arbitrarily, you know, council, some future council arbitrarily making decisions. Go ahead, council member. We, we have that with the ESAs though, the alternative ESA. So it's the same type process and it allows that, that place to vent and somebody to present their case and council, I mean, I think you've even voted for one before. So, or I have, or not. So everybody can hear the situation and it provides an alternative. So it's not any different than, than that situation for me when, when I was looking at it. Okay. But thank you for explaining helping me, helping me understand that. Well, I mean, I'm okay with this because I think any council at any time can, I don't know if I'd use the word arbitrarily, but I mean, when you have seven people, I mean, you presume that everybody's being elected to, you know, look after the best interests of the city, but you've got a very high threshold. All are part of the provisions that may deprive the applicant of all economically viable use of the property based on the following factors. That's the standard for an inverse condemnation. If I'm, if I'm not, if I'm correct. So, and it's my understanding too, that before you can file for inverse condemnation, I may be getting this confused with something else that you have to exhaust all administrative remedies, I believe. So, and so this is, this is, so if you don't have this, then they can just walk straight to the courthouse and make their case at the courthouse with a jury or a judge. Whereas this gives the council an opportunity to say, you know, we don't agree with that. It deprives the person of all economically viable use of the property. So that's a pretty high threshold. That's a very high threshold. All. Not, you know, 20% or 80%, it's all. So I've read some case law on not this particular issue, but inverse condemnations and they're tough. And that, so thank you for explaining that because that's, that side of the argument helps me understand, you know, how this could be used actually to the city's, to the city's benefit. That was kind of my concern from the beginning. You know, how does this help us? I see now is it a pretty high mark as it applies to condemnation. So they're, they're going through the council instead of right to the courthouse anyway. Thank you. And that, that would not have occurred to me, but thank you for explaining that council member. Did you have comment on this? Yeah. And just in this process, if this were to come to council, would, would staff be recommending like an alternative at the same time? So there would be some sort of preservation. I mean, cause she was saying, well, is there some sort of minimum we could put in, but is that part of the process? It wouldn't just be, yes, you're totally exempt. It would be, okay, we understand this is the burden, but this should be okay with an, with an alternative preservation type. I mean, is that part of this process or, or no, I would envision it as unless they're saying it's a complete full loss that that's one. Otherwise I would think we'd get to some, we'd get to some level of yes, this is reasonably what we can, what we can do. And then, and then we would provide a recommendation. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Refund payment. Again, this isn't part of the, the code itself fees set in a, in a sort of a separate fee manual fee fee schedule, but we wanted to make sure we, we discussed it now. The current fee is, is 125. What we're proposing is, is 200. And I know this is a little different than I think at the first time we discussed it, it was at, at 317 an hour. So what we did is we looked at just some numbers that we had previously had for the cost per inch of planting, purchase planting and maintenance of the tree. And we ran those, there were two different numbers. If you recall at one point we ran, we were, we were referencing, I think in the, in the, in November when we had presented this, we were referencing the cost based on the Texas supplement to the guide for plant appraisal. And so when that number was first looked at, it came out to roughly $200 and 28 cents an inch. Looking at what our costs were, we were at 209.64. And so as we talked, we just set it at a flat, at a flat 200. I know in that, that 317 number, there was a cost associated with a meter tap for the irrigation, but it's, it's hard to, to put that, I mean that looking at what, what the actual costs were, $117 more or $100 a tree is a lot. And so I don't know if we would ever be challenged quite honestly on that. I don't know how we could justify a meter tap within that, within that cost. Right. And like you said, this is a proposed, it's a proposed fee ordinance. And so as we examine if trees get more expensive, if use gets more expensive, then it can be increased or decreased depending on every year as those fee ordinances come through council. Correct. We have the ability to, to look at that. Correct. Is this, you know, I know in the past we had, we've done cost of services analysis for our gas wells, for, you know, those kinds of things because you can't charge more than what, is this fall under that or is this different? No, it falls under the same theory. It's anything we're allowed, let me start off with the exception of our utility funds, which is a different analysis. Our general funding revenue accounts and all the services we provide under there, we're allowed to recover the cost of our staff time to process the application. And so that's the way we've done that. If we charge higher than what the actual cost of services to provide that, that service, we could be dinged with a illegal tax that's not authorized by the Texas constitution. So in the, in our current, what you've just, the slides that you've just presented. So let's take secondary trees. For instance, if you have to plant, you have to mitigate with a two inch tree for each tree you remove. Two, two inch. Correct. Two, two inch. For each tree? Two, two inch, four inches total. For each tree you remove? Correct. Each secondary tree. I didn't, I don't remember it. I thought you, I thought it was one to one. I thought if you, if you take down one tree, then it's, we, we, we, we change it after we ran, after we, after we went through the various scenarios. So this is after our last conversation. Correct. Correct. Ah, here we go again. I included it. No, I'm teasing. I'm kidding you. I'm kidding you. I'm kidding you. Okay. So that would mean that for each secondary tree that you remove, it's going to cost you $400 to mitigate it or to plant it, to mitigate it. If you're mitigating it, it's, it's, it's, so if you're not replanting, if you're not putting two, two inch trees in, you're having to pay $400 for, to the tree fund for each tree that's over, secondary trees is, it's over what inch? Six inches. Six inches. So every secondary tree that's over six inches, you have to replace it with two, two inch trees. Correct. Or pay. Or pay. Two, two inches. Okay. Okay. I thought that it was at one, at one point 289. Is that just a random number? That, that was a number I was using, the 286, and I think it was a, I don't really remember where that number came from. Um, I had it in, in, in something previous and I went back to numbers that we had and, and that, that's where that number, that's where these kind of the real, the real numbers came from. Okay. I think the 286 might have been like a 2017 number, then it increased in eight, I think the cost went up some. Sticking with, uh, with mitigation, um, this is, this is within the current code and it, it basically sets, um, how the tree fund is used. And so really this was a sort of reorganization of just enumerating each of those items rather than sort of bearing it in, in a paragraph. Um, but what we, what we did add was the ability to, to use the tree fund dollars, um, to conduct maintenance on conservation easements dedicated to, to the city in accordance with this, with this. And so that was really the only item that, that, um, that we recommended to change with respect to this. And then two and three that you see on this page, again, this is, this is, um, the existing, the existing language. And so that's really it for the changes. What I'll do is just sort of walk through, um, I won't get super, super deep into the numbers. And so I'll just run through, through this example. So what we did is we took, we took real, um, real, real projects that we have, um, and we try to look at, at, at projects on the east side of town that had, um, sort of more post oaks, more, more, more tree property. And then we also looked at, at a couple, or at one, um, on the west side, which is, um, primarily secondary trees and even, um, uh, non, non-protected trees. So, so under this example, um, they're required. And so I think it's important to, to look at this about what's also required under the current code. And so under the current code, 43, it's, there's 43 lots, it's essentially one street tree per lot. And so that's where that 43 number comes from. The 86, it's proposed. So in addition to the street tree, we're now, we're now recommending that a, uh, you also provide one, uh, tree per lot. And so you're, you're, you're essentially looking at two, two per, two per lot. So the street tree lot tree gets you that 86. Under the, under the local government code, for whatever, whatever tree that you're replacing, um, you have to get credit for what's being required. So if, if you're, if you're planting a tree, you have to give credit, um, towards, uh, towards your mitigation. Under the current code, it's, it's separate. So if you, if you're, you're required to mitigate, if you plant those trees, they don't count towards, towards meeting your landscaping. And so the number that you see seven, that's that, that's that difference. So it was, it was essentially 185 where you see in the lower right hand corner, those were your mitigation inches, um, from, from kind of running it through. And so in this example, they had a total of, um, uh, just over 3000 dbh, uh, 946 secondary and almost 2000, uh, heritage, um, heritage and quality. And so that 30% was based off of the heritage and quality, the 2005, if you see that number on the, kind of following it through the, through the column. And then, so your required preservation, 30% of that is 602 inches. And so the, so if you preserved, and the way we ran this example was if you'd preserve 75% heritage, 25% quality, it essentially almost nets you out. It, it brings your mitigation down to, to after you net down what's required at 86 subtracted from that 93 you see in parens, um, gives you the kind of that seven that's leftover. Um, and so you can either plant new trees, you can plant those seven, which would give you a total of 93 new trees, or you can pay into the tree fund of $2,600. So yeah, so you end up with, with really at the end of the day, I think most would probably plant. Um, we had even one gentleman that came in and looked at, in an older draft, um, or developer, I should say, they actually liked this code because they were getting, they were getting the credit, um, for, for what they were, for, for planting. Um, running it, running it the reverse, so running it at 25% uh, heritage, 75% quality, you see the difference. And so now you're, now your mitigation trees went from seven to 121. Again, that's because there was a greater value put on, um, put on the, the heritage tree. So I won't go through the full, the full numbers, but really it's either they, they plant the trees, pay, or a combination of, or a combination thereof. Actually want to go back to this because I wanted to point out, um, if you look at the, on the spreadsheet, I'm sure I have the right one, if you look at the sort of the, the spreadsheet that, that's copied in on, on the right hand side, if you look at the, uh, right above mitigation, uh, DBH total preserved, uh, credit, you'll see a line in there secondary. And so that's where you can get that additional credit if you preserve secondary trees. So they can't exceed, um, they can't exceed 50% of the quality tree. So because they're hitting the 30% mark, the quality tree is a preserved, um, 450 DBH. So under this, they, they can, they could have gone to 225, I just put it at 220. And so it gives you that, that idea of how that, how that additional credit works if they wanted to preserve secondary trees to try to write that, try to write that cost or, or mitigation down. I have a question about, um, preserving the secondary trees or just using the, the pres, the preserved trees in their landscape. Um, and I think this was brought up at, at a meeting from the developers that, um, these established trees don't need as much water. And so when you, um, put them in a, an area with baby trees that need extra water, they usually end up getting overwatered and get sick. And so are we, are we going to, um, require different irrigation, um, situations for, if they preserve, in a preservation area of established trees, would we still require them to use the same type of irrigation or is that, um, I mean, have we talked about that or thought about it? Because for me, I think that's also a bonus, a credit if we're not, um, requiring them to place irrigation in a conservation or a preserved area. The, the irrigation will be performed by an irrigation contractor. Um, they, they submit a plan and ultimately that irrigation will be in accordance with, um, whether it's a landscape architect or the irrigation contractor. So if there's a large established tree, they're not going to irrigate it and they'll irrigate the small one accordingly. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, we weren't requiring, uh, irrigation for, for preserved trees. Okay, good. Thank you. So we're about at our time. Um, so I know you might have a couple of minutes. Um, first, uh, just to check in. You know, I noticed that you didn't include my favorite slide. Uh, but, but, but, but, but it wasn't a math error so I can refer to it. Okay. So to me, the, uh, the key thing is I'm going to, you know, I can ask this question. I'll just say it, uh, is that, you know, I've challenged, uh, uh, these guys repeatedly, uh, to see if we applied this ordinance to the remaining zone land, what's the end result for den, what, what tree canopy results? Uh, and, uh, you know, they, they can kind of take it through the ins and outs, but primarily just through the requirement of landscape trees, it takes you to, you, you, you develop everything that's zoned to be developed and you end up at 30, as I recall, 36% tree count. Oh, there it is. 36% canopy. Okay. So the fact, the facts in there and that's without taking into account, uh, whatever additional mitigation, uh, might result through the tree fund. So, you know, I, I think that, that all in all is a great result, uh, that, you know, from an effort to try to increase preservation, uh, and at the same time, listen to the developer community. I can't say they love every bit of this, uh, but, you know, they, they've been, you know, heard and adjustments have been made too. So I think it's a pretty robust collaboration with a really, um, promising result for, for Denton in the long run. Yeah. So, you know, I'll just, so thank you everybody, you know, involved in this and it's definitely an improvement on what we had before. Um, I will say, you know, my, my main issue kind of still remains that, uh, you know, and I know that this is a concern for members of the committee as well. Um, or has been, uh, that uh, there's still the, the opportunity for developers to choose mitigation instead of preservation. Uh, so we end up with, you know, so we do require a certain percentage of tree canopy, but whether that canopy, you know, is going to be covered by, you know, uh, mitigate it by mitigation or preservation is pretty much up to the developer. Um, and, and so I, I have a problem with that, but I, but I will say on a, on a positive note that, um, we have, you know, the great potential, uh, for, to, to meet the goals of tree preservation in our new, um, uh, 10 minute parks, parks plan. Uh, that's a whole different issue, but it's, but I'm mentioning it now because it's related to this category of tree preservation where we'll be having a public park within a 10 minute walk of every residential neighborhood. You know, once we do that, uh, that will be preserving a lot of green space and a lot, and a lot of trees. Uh, so I'll just add that, you know, on a, on a positive note, that will really accomplish preservation. Okay. Any other questions, comments real quick? Yep. Just comment. Uh, you know, I think there's, there's a miss that, that, um, and I took a picture of it there just off north of, uh, I guess it'd be west of Carroll. There's a giant tree in front of someone's home that fell over, you know? And so I think that you have to plant new trees. I mean, I, and I don't know that anyone's arguing against that, but I think there's some, sometimes that fact gets discounted that it's a large tree, so it's going to be there forever. And that's just not the case. And I really enjoy the fact that I've, I've been able to see it firsthand, uh, at my dad's house because, uh, this body may or may not know the city exercised an easement on his property on his two acres and took a large tree to, to circumvent paying the cost to move a drainage ditch. And so I was there for that when this city said, Hey, that giant tree has to go to save some money, you know? And then, uh, they planted the new trees and it was, they were everywhere, but they were tiny. Uh, but fast forward 20 years later and, and he's better for it. It's an absolute win because there's no telling how long that tree was going to be, uh, alive and able to make it. But now you have increased his, his tree canopy on his two acres, 15, 20 fold at least, you know? And so the process works and, and, and as much as people beat down little trees and applaud big trees, big trees, tump over, you know, and it's just, you have to have, you have to have it. And so, uh, I just think oftentimes I hear people give that a bad rap to plant, plant in the small trees, but I can't just my own personal experience watching that, uh, the other way it works well. I appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. Uh, appreciate the comment. Appreciate it. Is that the end of your presentation? You'll bring back. Okay. I just wanted to make sure there was general consensus on, um, on sort of moving, moving forward with, with, with, uh, with these changes. I mean, yeah, we, we might have to address some of the ones that, but yeah, I think so. Unless I hear a bunch of objections and, uh, don't see any, don't see any objections to your comment. It's going to P and Z tomorrow. Okay. So, okay. It goes to P and Z tomorrow and it comes back to, to, to council on the 19th. So. Okay. Fantastic. I appreciate it. Uh, we were going to end our work sessions. We will now convene in closed session at five 17. We'll be considering the following items, deliberations regarding personnel matters under text of government code section five, five, one point Oh seven four. We're going to take a five minute break and then we can get dinner. Good evening everybody and welcome to this meeting of the Denton city council on March 5th, 2019. It is about six 31 PM. Uh, we do have a quorum, so I'll call this meeting to order and if you would for our first agenda item, please stand if you're able to pledge allegiance to the U S and Texas flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. I pledge allegiance to the city of Texas, one state under God, one indivisible. Okay. The first proclamation is with the Denton county master gardener association. So who is here representing them? Come down. We're going to let you introduce yourself and is there a spokesperson? Yes, you're the spokesperson. Okay. All right. Fantastic. Yeah, come on. If you're part of it. Fantastic. Well, tell us a little bit, uh, about the Denton county master garden association while we're here this evening. And first of all, I'm going to let everybody introduce themselves and we're going to start over here. I'm Carol Brantley, Marilyn Krauss, Joanne Spurgeon, Steve Spurgeon, Amy Gurley, Kate Gross, Debbie Ishii, Steve Simpson, Rhonda Love, Ray Roberts, Lisa Lebczak, Diane Sloan, Pat Edwards, Don Edwards, Lisa McAllen. All right. Tell us a little about what we're here for this evening. Well, Denton county, can you hear me? Okay. Denton county master gardeners are really excited about our 30th anniversary this year. We've been with Denton county. We have been educating Denton county residents for over 30 years. We started back when Bayless Selby or the Bayless Selby house when it was up on blocks at the Denton county youth fair. We hand out red buds every year to third graders. Uh, we are really excited about our anniversary and bringing back some of the old members and, and excited about our Denton city residents. We have over 300 members, um, and we're just excited about getting the proclamation and just a little bit of a note ahead of time. We are having a plant sale that everyone is allowed to come to at the annual plant sale at Trinity United Methodist church. And it's on May the 4th. And then the following weekend is our garden tour and we would love to see everybody out there. Well, there's not much passion in this group, as you can tell. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. It's my pleasure to read this. Uh, this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton. Whereas the members of the Denton county master garden association work diligently to educate and engage county residents in the implementation of research based horticulture and environmental practices that create sustainable gardens, landscapes and communities. And whereas an honor of the Denton county master garden association upon the celebration of their 30 years of service to the people of Denton county. Thank you so much for that. And whereas these members initially received over 80 hours of advanced horticultural training, as well as an additional 12 hours every year thereafter to remain up to date in horticultural research and practices in order to assure the citizens of Denton county receive the most relevant information and guidance. Whereas the association executes over 40 projects each year, contributing over 24,000 volunteer hours in 2018. That's, that's a lot for a total value to Denton county of over a half a million dollars. These projects, yes, these projects include no passion, no passion, no passion. Uh, these projects include not only public presentations and demonstrations, but also hands on work with children, senior citizens and elementary school teachers. And whereas the association touches the future through its training of elementary school teachers in its award winning science with attitude SWAT program training of junior master gardener leaders, the Denton children's garden, the Denton county youth fair and distribution of over 3000 tree seedlings annually through annually, excuse me, through the elementary schools of Denton ISD. And whereas the association supports our senior citizens through the gardens of Fair Oaks independent living center and the good Samaritan village. And whereas the association has had a lasting impact on Denton county through improved horticultural practices. Now, therefore I, Chris Watts, mayor of the city of Denton, Texas do hereby urge all citizens to show their appreciation to the members of the Denton county master garden association and to support their many fine programs. And thank you for all the work that you do, especially at the county park up here on Keller Boulevard and just your education to help us actually just have a much more beautiful community. Thank you so much for that. Okay. The next one is international women's day. Women's day. If you could come down. That's all right. That's good. Yeah. Come on down. Yeah. Anybody else? Okay. Let you introduce yourselves and then who's going to tell us a little bit about international women's day. Okay. Rondelove. Janine Murphy. Misty Gold. Carol Sofe. Jennifer Lane. Dorothy Kuhn. Elizabeth Deardorff. Okay. Well, international women's day really began in the late 1800s in Russia, but it moved to other parts of the world, the US, England and really worldwide after that. And it's always been on March the 8th and it's to celebrate women's contributions to the world economically, politically, domestically, in the labor force, you name it, everywhere that women exist. This one day was set aside to celebrate them. Later women's history month came along and that's March. So the entire month is devoted to understanding the history of women. And a number of us decided, you can look at the demographic too. I find it interesting. We decided that it was time for Denton to recognize international women's day. And three years ago we held our first event. And today we've going to be honored by the mayor's proclamation. And if any of you women out there want to join us, we have a Facebook page. Denton international women's day 2019. Log on and sign up. And get involved with us. We'd appreciate it. Thank you. Actually on Friday, this coming Friday, International Women's Day, from 430 to 6, we're going to hold an event at Steve's Wine Bar. And our theme is going to be, in keeping with the international theme, is going to be engaging young women in seeking political office. We're going to have a speaker from the special group at TWU and our city council members who are women have been invited, as have the candidates who are currently running. Great. Thank you. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton, whereas International Women's Day is a global day celebrating the historical, cultural, and political achievements of women. It is also a day of action in support of taking action against gender inequality around the world. And whereas the city of Denton is blessed with women in all walks of life, adding to the vibrancy and strength of our community, and whereas the city of Denton strives to create a safe and progressive community for women, and whereas women's achievements deserve to be celebrated, and whereas the city of Denton supports the 2019 theme for International Women's Day, that a gender-balanced world is a better world. Now, therefore, I, Chris Watts, mayor of the city of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim March the 8th, 2019, as International Women's Day in the city of Denton, and encourage all Denton residents to recognize the contributions of generations of women who have served our communities, states, and nations. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Okay, if Marion McDuff and Robbie Reed could come forward, please. And this will be a proclamation for Dr. Betty Meyers' Day of Service. So I would like, Robbie, for you just to take a few moments to tell us about Dr. Meyers, and because we're celebrating her life here today. I'm not used to standing in front of a crowd and holding a microphone, but, and some of you, my name is Robbie Reed, but some of you in the room might know me as reed@twu.edu, because that's what Dr. Meyers' email address was. I cannot say enough about that beautiful soul, and I'll get emotional about it. I'm sorry, but she was a remarkable lady. I never saw her have a bad day, and I know that probably she did, but she never let anybody know that. There wasn't a person in the room that she didn't think was worthwhile and had something good about them. She always sought that out and tried to help them continue to grow that part of their life, but there wasn't anything she wouldn't do for you, and as you know, she was on, I mean, I kind of laughed because I knew many people on many boards because of Dr. Meyers, although I don't even live in Denton. So she had service to everyone in this community, and I was quoted on the TW webpage as saying she touched lives that she didn't even know and that did not know her. So if you don't know about Dr. Meyers, I'm sure there are things online that you can read about her right now and in the paper, and just ask somebody. Her neighbor is here, Mary, and he took such good care of her and watched over her for so many years, and I do appreciate that, and I appreciate everything he did for her, and for Mary Ann, and the Edwards at TWU, we all cared for her very deeply. Thank you. I just want to say thank you for Robbie for coming and being with me. We've shared many years at TWU together. We're both retired now. One of those things that we shared was our love for Betty Meyers, but although many of you all knew her as a community leader, a community servant, a stateswoman, certainly that described her a mayor, I knew her as my adopted mother, and she, in my early 20s, when my mother passed away after a long illness, she said, "Oh, Mary Ann, how are you doing?" It was one day on campus. We just happened to see each other. I think I was delivering mail, as we did, and I said, "Well, I'm doing okay. My mother's passed away." She said, "Honey Bunny, Honey Bunny," as she called you when she loved you, she said, "Honey Bunny, don't worry about a thing because I'm your mother now." I think she'd say tonight, and Chris, we could say tonight, Mayor, that she's a mother to all of us in this room, and so may her spirit live on. Thank you. Yes, absolutely. Well, before I read this, I just want to share just a couple of words. I met Dr. Meyers probably about 10 or 12 years ago. It was at an HSNT fundraiser, and from that moment on, we were just the best of friends. She was always positive, always smiling, cared deeply for her community and for the people in this community and those that she didn't even know. She served this town and her university with integrity, with heart and soul. Her spirit will live on in this community by all the many lives that she has touched. I just want to thank the two of you for sharing her with us and for taking care of her and loving her and just letting her be who she is. Thank you all so much for that. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton. Whereas on Tuesday, February the 19th, 2019, the Denton community learned of the passing of Dr. Betty Meyers, an icon of education and service whose legacy has positively and meaningfully impacted numerous generations of residents and students over the course of her lifetime. And whereas Dr. Meyers pursued a lifelong commitment to education, serving on the faculty of Texas Woman's University for 54 years, retiring in 2015 as the Canaro, how do you say that? Is that right? Canaro, sorry, professor of kinesiology. As an educator, Dr. Meyers is best remembered as patient and generous and an educator who deeply, who cared deeply, excuse me, for the welfare and success of each and every student. And whereas Dr. Meyers set a compelling example as a humanitarian through her participation in leadership roles with numerous nonprofit organizations, such as the Family Resource Center, the Denton City County Day School, Flow Healthcare Foundation, the Cross Timbers Girl Scout Council, the Denton MHMR Center, Kiwanis International, United Way of Denton County, and the Denton Parks Foundation to name a few. And whereas those who, and those with the honor of knowing her will remember Dr. Meyers as a generous servant, a compassionate soul, and a legendary figure who inspired many to serve their community. In recognition of Dr. Meyers' ability to effortlessly elevate those around her towards service to others, the United Way established the Dr. Betty Meyers Humanitarian Award given to those who best exemplify her selfless spirit. And whereas in remembrance of Dr. Meyers as a model leader and servant to the public, the Denton community is encouraged to follow in her footsteps by joining with local nonprofit organizations and engaging in a day of service to continue her legacy. Now, therefore, I, Chris Watts, Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim March the 5th, 2019 as Dr. Betty Meyers' Day of Service in the City of Denton and urge all citizens to recognize and honor the many contributions of Dr. Betty Meyers to her community and the spirit of service that she embodied. it. We will now move on to agenda item 3, which is presentation from the members of the public. The Denton City Council has adopted rules of procedure, including a code of conduct that applies to citizens as well as council members. These rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum. Here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizen reports. Citizens will have four minutes to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes to give an open mic report. There will be an electronic bell when time has expired. If the remarks are not concluded by that time, the citizen will be asked to stop speaking. If the citizen does not cease and a second request is made, the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chamber. Citizens are asked not to approach the dais. If a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council, please let the city secretary know in advance. For scheduled citizen reports, the council may initiate discussion or questions following each citizen report. For non-scheduled open mic citizen reports, the council may listen to citizens speak. However, because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance, the Texas Open Meetings Act limits any deliberation or decision by the council to a proposal to place the item on a future agenda, a statement of factual policy, or a recitation of existing policy. Citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member. Please refrain from making abusive, personal, impertinent, profane, or slanderous remarks. Anyone who violates this council rule of procedure may be immediately removed from the council chamber. Thank you in advance. Copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary. All right. Our first speaker is, you're going to have to forgive me on this one, Rhea Pulukangara. Is that correct? Is Rhea here? If you want to come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. And I apologize if I mispronounced that. My name is Rhea Pulukangara. And your address, please? Oh, that's it. And your time will begin. Go ahead. Hello, mayor and council members. My name is Rhea Pulukangara. I'm in eighth grade at McMath Middle School. And I'm a member of the Denton Teen Council. Today, we have several teen council members attending this meeting, as we are excited for the opportunity to learn from all of you. This year, our teen council has been very active within our community. And we are looking forward to an upcoming event that the teen council has organized and planned all aspects of. This event is called the Battle of the Bands and will take place on March 29. During this event, we will be raising money to donate to the Children's Advocate Center in efforts to help many children in need. Thank you, council members, for your support in our program. Thank you. Council member Armitter, you have a question or comment for the speaker? Yes. Well, I have a comment. I won't embarrass you too much. Just have to say this. Rhea happens to be the daughter of my best and oldest friend here in Denton. I had no idea she was speaking tonight until I saw it on the agenda. But I just want to thank you and the rest of your teen council. Are you sitting with your teen council up here? So hi. Thank you all. We're keeping the seats warm for you up here. But you guys are the future. Ever since I've known you, you wanted to be the president of the United States. So I'm not going to let you forget that. Anyway, thank you so much. Council member Briggs. I just want to say thank you for coming and speaking to us about the Battle of the Bands and thank the teen council for being here tonight. Well, and I have a comment. When was the Battle of the Bands event? Do you know what date? March 29th. March the 29th. I attended this last year. I think it was their first one last year. And first of all, it was set to be outside in Quaker Town Park, but it rained. So within I think a day or a half a day, they moved it all into the Civic Center. And it is amazing the talent that we have in this community and our young people with their music. So I would encourage everyone to come out and see them. They put on a great program. There's music for all kinds of tastes. And it's just amazing the talent that we have. So thank you so much for reminding us of that. Thank you very much. You bet. The next speaker is Greg Ward regarding lack of progress on Teasley Lane in front of hot Geyer High School. Is Mr. Ward here? One more call. Mr. Ward, are you here? Okay. All right. Okay. Then we'll move on to agenda item 3C, which is the additional citizens' reports, which we affectionately call open mic. And the speaker has four minutes and due to the posting, council is prohibited from having interaction just to avoid violations of the Texas Open Meetings Act. So our first open mic speaker is Nolan Adams. Is Mr. Adams here? Okay. Thank you, sir. If you'll come down and state your name and address, and then your time will begin. My name is Nolan Adams. I'm a resident of the city of Carrollton, so I'm not a constituent. I'd like to withhold my address if possible, given privacy concerns. I'm speaking to you today about an email that was sent to Mr. Duff's constituents. I'd like to read a little bit of that email if I may. Do the residents of the city of Denton want the city council to be elected by UNT students? The students will only be here for a matter of four years. So by separating the residents of the city of Denton and UNT students, what you're doing is creating a clear division. You're drawing a line. You're saying that they are not residents. We are. I'm a resident of the city of Carrollton, and I consider myself a resident of the city of Denton. I love this city. This is where both of my parents earned their PhDs. This is where they fell in love. This is where my wife and I intend to move once we sell our houses in Carrollton. So to think that just because I go to UNT, I don't have the same appreciation, love, and care for this city is ridiculous. To think that just because I'm from Carrollton and a student, I shouldn't have the ease of being able to walk across my university and vote at a polling booth is ridiculous. To sit here and think that you're not violating the 26th Amendment by creating that clear division between students and UNT residents or UNT, excuse me, the city of Denton residents is also ridiculous. The Supreme Court has decided many, many times in the favor of students who are interested in petitioning the cities and universities that they live in for the right to vote. Time and time again, the Supreme Court has sided with the students that they do have the right to vote, that they do have the right to not have the convenience of voting limited by the city council. Guys, it blows my mind that we're actually having this argument. I came here today, I skipped class first off, which is something I never do. I drove here all the way from Carrollton to speak because that's how upsetting this is. At a time where division and partisanship have completely torn apart the ideals of democracy, we're sitting here arguing over polling booths? What? Right now, every single one of you should be loving the fact that students, that young people, that the people who won't replace your seats, like Ms. Armentor said, want to freaking vote in a local election. Texas has some of the worst voter turnout, especially in local elections in the entire United States. You guys should be thrilled. You guys should be asking other organizations and entities, "Where do you want to polling booth, guys?" Is cost the issue? If it is, I'm sure that we can raise the money. I'm sure you can ask the Student Government Association of UNT, "Hey, do you want to volunteer? Let's get you guys registered to be election judges." That saves some money. If it's not money, that's the issue. And it's Mr. Duff being concerned that UNT students will vote him out. We're going to anyway, and I'll be driving them, as well as many others. And for my professor and the other hundreds of students that are watching on Branicus right now, at home, because they couldn't make it, every single one of your votes will depend, will create our decisions come next election. Thank you. All right. The next speaker is Ed Soph. Ed Soph? Yes, you're up. If you'll state your name and address, your time will begin. Good evening. My name is Ed Soph. I live at 1620 Victoria Drive in Den. State Senator Judith Zafferini, who's from District 21 in Laredo, recently introduced Senate Bill 1156. This is legislation that will protect school children by not allowing the drilling of new oil or gas wells within 1,500 feet of the property line of a child care facility, a private school, or a primary or secondary public school. As you know, health studies continue to confirm that the smaller the setback distances from well operations, the greater the health and safety hazards to those in proximity. This is a very important bill for the future safety of Denton school children. The Cole Hunter Ranch development as proposed will have six elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school. The developers proposed that schools, quote, "be set back 500 feet from gas pads." Well, that's 1,000 feet less protection than that proposed by Senator Zafferini's bill. And while the developers state that the number of gas pads in the development, 33, cannot be increased, they fail to mention the prospect of drilling new wells or refracking old ones on those existing pad sites. Let us not forget the nightmare of fracking in the vintage neighborhood or the well blowout near the airport. Let us not forget the well explosion and fire in the Westgate neighborhood. Denton's new high school on North Bonnie Bray will be built in an area where drilling has occurred and where wells exist. Senator Zafferini's bill will prevent future lapses in precaution such as the three gas wells, which are 250 feet from the property of Geyer High School. Our school children's health and safety cannot continue to be compromised, so I ask you to please pass a resolution supporting Senator Zafferini's legislation, Senate Bill 1156. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. So. Moving forward, if we could keep some of the clapping and oooing and awing, just to give respect to the speakers, it's sort of in violation of our rules. I'm not going to be, you know, onerous about it, but if you could just help us, because we want to move through this orderly. We've got a lot of cards on the issue of the voting poll location, so that will help us move through it much faster. So I appreciate your cooperation in that. Moving on to Agenda Item 4, Consent Agenda. Do we have -- what's that? Somehow I'm not showing anybody -- yes, yes, but I'm just looking for a motion for the Consent Agenda, which it doesn't look like our voting -- oh, Council Member Briggs. I make a motion to approve all items but F, which we will be pulling out. All right. Is that correct for the City Secretary? Welcoming. Sure. Council Member Armitage. I second. All right. So we have a motion for the Consent Agenda item. All of them except Item F, which will be then taken up as an item for clarification. Item E was pulled. So Item E was pulled. Yes, go ahead, Council Member Briggs. So I remake a motion to approve all the items except for F and E, which will come back some day later. And I re-second that. All right. Thank you. So we have a motion to second for Agenda Item 4. E has been pulled, according to the motion, and F has been pulled for an individual presentation or recognition. So let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-0. We'll now take Agenda Item F, which is as a motion -- as an agenda item for individual consideration, consider approval of a resolution of the City Council of the City of Denton confirming the appointment of Rosa Rios by the City Manager as the City Secretary and providing an effective update. Council Member Briggs? I make a motion to approve. All right. Council Member Hussbeth? Second. Is she here? Is she here? Yeah. Okay. We have a motion to second. Rosa, if you could just stand and introduce the community to our new City Secretary. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Armitter? Council Member Briggs, you made a motion, and Council Member Hussbeth seconded it. Did you want to make a comment? Oh, yes. Yeah, I just wanted to welcome Rosa myself and to thank you for your service to this city. It's going to be a hard job. It's going to involve a lot of work. I hope you love your engagement with our awesome public, and we'll try to behave here on council. Let me know if I'm not behaving. Thank you. Okay. So we have a motion and a second. Can we vote on the board or do they need to read? We can't? Okay. Motion carries 6-0. Moving on to items for individual consideration. Agenda item A, consider approval of a resolution both authorizing early voting locations and establishing Election Day polling locations for the City of Denton Council election to be held on May 4th, 2019, and providing an effective date. Before presentation, I talked about in the council meeting how this was going to be handled. I don't know how council members will handle this moving forward, so we're going to move forward with the presentation and give at least enough break if something needs to happen. But other than that, we're just going to move forward. You bet. Council Member Armitage. So I had wanted to make a motion, but I saw that Council Member Meltzer also has a motion. Okay. Do you have a motion up on the screen? Go ahead. I'm willing to make the motion after the presentation, or I wouldn't mind saying a few words now since I know this is kind of on people's minds, including fellow council members. I've lost a lot of sleep over this, and I just want to share a little bit of my thinking with my colleagues and the public. The citizens have a right to expect me to vote unless there's a darn good reason not to. We have an ethics ordinance to try to prevent unethical behavior or the appearance of it. It's kind of a new experimental design, and we're seeing the flaws in it as we take it around the track. But here's some facts. I have no financial interest in a polling place. UNT has no financial interest in a polling place. The city's arrangement is with the county, not UNT. The ordinance was never intended to prevent council members from voting on polling locations. I'll trust the process. I asked for and got an advisory opinion, and I've considered it very seriously. But in the end, the advisory opinion is just that, an advisory opinion. It's not binding. I've also sought advice from a number of respected attorneys in town from across the political spectrum who I thank. They all agree this idea that a council member shouldn't vote on a polling place is ridiculous, but they're all over the map on what I should do. So I have a choice to make, and you all have a choice to make. I'm speaking to my colleagues and the public. If you feel I'm behaving unethically, you can make a complaint. That's the process. Right now, I'm going to serve my constituents by deliberating and voting for voting. Okay. All right. Council Member Armitage. Yes. So I was actually going to make a motion about the ordering of the way we vote, but I guess I could do that after the staff report. Okay. I've got a speech too, but I'll save that for later. I'll save that for later. Okay. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Rachel Wood, Chief of Staff, and the purpose of tonight's presentation is to continue the conversation we've had over the past several weeks regarding polling locations for the spring 2019 municipal election. As a quick reminder, election day for the municipal elections is May 4th, 2019. Early voting will take place April 22nd through 27th and April 29th through 30th. The city's traditionally had at least one polling location per city council district. The four main polling locations include District 1 MLK Recreation Center, District 2 North Branch Library, District 3 North Lakes Recreation Center, and District 4 Deena Recreation Center. A bit of new news since my previous presentation on February 5th is that DISD will not conduct an election this May, so the City of Denton will bear the full cost of all polling locations for the May 2019 election. During the January 7th work session on polling locations, the city council provided general consensus to staff that there should be at least two polling locations per district. So using the same polling locations identified for the 2018 elections, staff was able to confirm all but one's availability for the May 2019 election. So the only location used in 2018 that is not available in May 2019 was Ryan High School. So DISD Annex, which is very close to Ryan High School, is the alternate facility identified. At the February 5th city council meeting, staff was given direction to identify potential polling locations on or near the UNT campus. Below are the facilities that staff researched. Of the facilities researched, only the Denton Wesley Foundation and UNT Greek Life Center were available for election day to serve as a polling location, and only the UNT Greek Life Center was available to serve as both an early voting polling location as well as an election day polling location. The county has indicated its willingness to have the three following facilities serve as early voting locations. These include UNT Greek Life Center, Denton Civic Center, and the Denton County Elections Administration Office. Staffs presented two options for city council to consider via resolution this evening. Option one would be to authorize two polling locations per city council district on election day and agree to the three early voting polling locations described in slide five. Option two is very similar to option one with the addition of a third polling location in city council district three. As a quick reminder to the city council, March 13th is the deadline for determination of polling locations and this is the last regularly scheduled meeting of the city council, so we do need to have a decision if possible this evening in order to meet that deadline from Denton County. Councilmember Armitage? Okay, so I have a question for staff and a motion. I could do, I guess the motion would take precedence, and that is, and this is just a point of procedure and order. Earlier in the work session today, Mayor had mentioned that you wanted to discuss the UNT voting locations first, and then to discuss the non-UNT voting locations, and I believe Councilmember Briggs had asked, and I had seconded that. I don't remember if Councilmember Meltzer or anybody else had spoken on that. I, too, would like to see the non-UNT voting location discussed first, so I wanted to make a motion that we discuss the non-UNT voting location before the UNT voting location. I don't know how that affects staff, you know, the staff presentation. I take it we would just hear the staff presentation and then, afterwards, the order would take place, right? You're talking about the order of the discussion? Right. Yeah, so anyway, so that's what I move, and I can reiterate if that wasn't clear. A couple of questions of clarification, if you don't mind. So what you're asking is for the, I think it was the Methodist Student Center? Wesleyan? The Wesley Center. To be discussed now, excluding the UNT early voting location in that presentation. In other words, those two, the UNT voting same day, or election day, and then the UNT early voting be taken up after the discussion of the Wesleyan Student Center. Is that correct? Can you repeat that again? Just want to make sure I understood. Sure. What you're, what I think you're asking, so if I'm incorrect, let me know, is that you want to put the discussion first, the first discussion you want to have is the option two of selecting the Wesleyan Student Center as an election day polling location. Yes. Now the concern, or it's not a problem, but the, for some reason, on the resolutions, the two resolutions, the UNT early voting is included, which I'm not sure how that happened, because that seems to be an option that the council can consider. So I just want to clarify that we won't be discussing that. In other words, if that's not going to be part of that discussion, and we're not going to be considering that, and that's taken off of that resolution so we can discuss it independently, which is, then I don't have a problem doing that. Yeah. Is that what you're saying? Yes, I wanted to make a motion on that as a possibility, and I can, I'll just explain why. You know, that way, because so the Wesley Center is a location that is not owned by UNT, so it doesn't apply to the decision of that ethics committee, but it is essentially on campus, right? So it would serve the same purpose as a campus polling location. So I'm happy with that, because I believe that that serves the purpose of an on-campus polling location, and I would support that. If that doesn't pass, I want to have the opportunity to, and I think Councilmember Meltzer worded it really well, to proceed forward and deliberate on a matter on which the ethics subcommittee has decided that Councilmember Meltzer and I have a conflict of interest. I want to have the right to make that decision in that order, and that's why I'm requesting that, so that I can have the opportunity to, if the Wesley Center doesn't pass, to vote on the UNT election day location, as well as the early voting day or UNT location, which is in both options and which it seemed to me from our first work session on this issue seemed to be pretty universally approved, or we seem to have some sort of consensus on that issue. So just for clarification, you do not want to be a part of the discussion on the Wesleyan Student Center, the early voting location, poll location on the university campus. That would not be part of that passage. I do, I want to have the opportunity to vote on the Wesley Center separately, right, and first. Are you saying the resolution, what is that, resolution, is that exhibit two or three? Two. Okay, so the resolution has the opportunity to add the Wesleyan Student Center as an election day polling location. In the body of the resolution is the UNT early voting location polling place as well. So are you saying you want that, you want to vote on that being left in, in that resolution? So what I would like, if that can be separated out from that resolution, which I had originally thought it was going to be, then I would like that to happen. If that can happen, if that's too late, I will go ahead and vote on it anyway, because I feel so strongly about that. So when you say if it can be separated out, do you mean if, okay, well... Both in the order, and thank you for asking these questions, they're good and appropriate questions, both in terms of the order in which we vote and in the resolution itself. Well, it doesn't matter to me, honestly. I just want to make sure that Council Member Meltzer has already said that basically he's going to deliberate and vote. He's read all the advisory opinions. He's gotten his input. So he's made that conscious choice to do that, and that's fine. So I guess what I'm saying is if you stay and vote in that, in that early voting location is on there, which is fine too, that's certainly your option, then in essence, you're, sounds like you're saying you're sort of taking the same kind of approach as Council Member Meltzer. Well, yes, yes. But if the early voting location is taken out of the resolution, then that wouldn't apply, correct? Yes, but that would happen at the motion, at the motion level. Somebody's going to make a motion. Council Member Meltzer's already asked for a motion, so I'm going to recognize him when we get to that place. So it's going to be up to him to include it or to not include it, and it's going to be up to someone who will second that. So I think that will sort of be happening in real time. Okay, excellent. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much for clarifying, and thank you. Okay, Council Member Duff, did you have a comment? Yes. Question? Yes. Yes. I'm good with the, you know, the voting location both early and on May the 2nd at UNT, but I also think we absolutely need to have both of them in ropes and wrench. Let's keep this fair. Okay. All right. Well, we'll deal with that procedurally as we move forward. So I'm going to move forward as if both of you are just going to be deliberating because those are your, that's up to you as choices, so I'm not going to try to figure out what you're doing. We're moving forward and the votes will stand for themselves because I have some comments that I want to make as well. So if we could just continue the staff presentation. So, honestly, based upon y'all's comments, I don't know why we need to take them out of order unless, because you were willing to, if Council Member Meltzer does not remove that, you're willing to vote on it. So I don't know why we just don't go ahead and take up the polling locations at UNT and early voting and move forward in that regard. And it was just for me, I just wanted to throw that out there as out of respect to the committee decision, which I personally don't agree with, but I respect the process. And so I would rather be compliant with the process than non-compliant. So I wanted to allow myself the opportunity to vote how I wanted and be compliant, but if that is not possible, then I will be non-compliant with that advice, which again is just advice, which would enable any member of the public to file an ethics complaint against me for voting on student voting. I'll give you the choice. I mean, we'll handle it any way you want to. So if you want to go ahead and move through with the two voting locations at UNT, we'll do that. If you want to move the other one up front, we'll do that. I mean, I'm fine just moving through. I wanted to throw that out there. I'm looking at faces. People aren't jumping to comment and second the motion. So I will just move. I'm fine just moving through if that's what I'm proposing is too complicated. Well, no, I don't think I don't really even know if it needs to be a motion. You're just simply asking for an accommodation and I'm saying I'm certainly willing to do that. I'm letting it be your choice. So if you want to do it that way, we'll do it that way. Yeah. How do I guess I'll I'll wait and see. I see there are two others who want to speak. So maybe they'll influence my decision. Okay. Council member Briggs. Yes. As you know, earlier in the work session, I mentioned separating it out. So I am on board. However, this council is willing to do that. I'm willing to take them separate so that those decisions can be made separately. Okay. Council member Meltzer. Yeah, I just want to point out for the benefit of the public. The way it was originally laid out to us was that there were two options, each of which had embedded in it the the early voting locations, three early voting locations, which included the Greek Life Center. And then the difference between the two was whether to add a third third location on election day. So it was kind of baked in that there would have been Greek Life Center the way it was originally set. Now that actually I mean, just to let you know how I felt about that, I think that was actually appropriate because because the in the work session that it happened that the mayor wasn't present, but you know, the direction that was given by individual council members suggested that there was consensus for that. And that that would have taken away sort of the awkwardness of having to, you know, act at variance with the with the Board of Ethics advisory opinion. You know, had we gone directly to one of those options with a non UNT location. Now, you know, when we spoke earlier, Mr. Mayor, you made it clear that you didn't feel that that was settled business and that we ought to have a vote on that. So, you know, given that I made the statement I did, and I, you know, I had to make a choice and I'm all in, I'll go with whatever, you know, kind of whatever we want to do. Although I'll express an opinion that I think, you know, dealing with the advisory opinion aside, if you favor having a polling location near the center of district three for early voting, as well as on election day, where there's a very high concentration of registered voters, I think it makes it a little simpler if it's, even though it may not be the best location, but if it's the same location. So that that's why, you know, advisory opinion aside, I think, you know, if you allow me to move first, I'd move for early voting and election day voting at Greek Life Center, just because it's the only option we have that puts them in the same location. Well, and Council Member Duff, let me respond to that if I could. And I appreciate those comments. The reason why I shared that agenda and how it was going to be laid out is because there was an advisory opinion issued about potential conflicts of interest in voting. I have no idea until now what you decided to do and what you were going to do. So I wasn't going to put either one of you in jeopardy unknowingly and unintentionally to be doing something that might go against the advisory opinion, because I had no idea and I don't really need to know what you guys are doing, because that's really your own personal decision. So that was really the only basis for that, given at least the facts, because that advisory opinion was not present at the time of that work session where that direction was given. So that's basically the reason for that. Council Member Duff. Well, I think we need to put that aside. I think both of you should be able to vote and not be in jeopardy. At this point, I don't think that's really something that you need to worry about. I'll support you. Okay? But I do ask that if we vote for another location at the university, that we also include ropes and ranch on both of them. And I will make a motion to add it if we need to do that. Okay. All right. Council Member Armitage. Okay. And by the way, I want to say to the public, pardon the messiness and awkwardness of this. This is because of Texas Open Meetings Act, which is a good thing. We can't plan all this out in advance, so we have to kind of stumble and trip. And it's for the benefit of the public that we haven't worked this all out in advance privately, even though it would be much quicker if we did. So this is actually a good thing. So I want to say I have, considering what Council Member Meltzer mentioned about the consistency of having the, or the advantage of the consistency of having early voting and election day voting in the same location, Greek Life Center, versus having only early voting at the Greek Life Center and election day voting at the Wesley Center, another location. So I'm weighing the pros and cons of consistency for the public's sake versus the, you know, the disadvantage to me personally of risking, you know, triggering someone filing an ethics complaint against me. And when I think about it that way, then it's pretty much a no-brainer that I would go with the consistency for the public's sake, you know, over my own, you know, triggering an ethics complaint. If someone wants to file one against me, that's fine. So that's how important voting is. So I think you make a good case. I will say, so even though the ropes and ranch voting is not on the agenda, or at least hasn't been added, I will say, you know, I have said earlier, and I will stick to it, that any community in our city that feels that they need more voting access, I support that. If there's a need, I haven't gotten any emails about it, but if there's a need, then I support that. So I'll be consistent in that. I think it's a no-brainer. And I felt that way from the beginning. I just want to say I very much appreciate Council Member Duff's comments. And I think historically, ropes and ranch voters are spirited voters. And I have no objection whatsoever to providing a polling place for that very important part of District 3. I don't know if, in fact, it's sort of vetted to the point where we can say so tonight and communicate it, and it can be done. But if so, then I have no objection to that whatsoever. Okay. Then what we're going to do is we're just going to move Council Member Duff. So let me ask the city attorney. So this is posted for early voting locations. It doesn't say that it's limited to any of the ones that are per the resolution. So if there's a desire to add an early voting location out at ropes and ranch, that's certainly doable. We're still within the deadline if that gets passed tonight, today, and then people can vet whatever they need to do in that regard. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. All right. Okay. So we're going to go ahead and you've really made your presentation. All right. So the question for the public, we've got about 30 cards. So I'm going to start calling the cards. I think it's pretty clear how this is going to go, but you guys came here and you're going to get a chance to speak. So I'm going to start calling names. And when I call your name, if you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. And what I'm going to do is call the first card, and then I'm going to call the person who will be next after that person. So the first person is Victory. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Oh boy. And when they start laughing already, I'm in big trouble. I'm sorry. If you'll just state your name and address, your time will begin. Hi. My name is Victory Wabufo. My address is 1413 Maple Street, Denton, Texas, 76203. Good evening. I'm a second semester sophomore studying human development and family sciences at UNT. I'm in support of having a polling booth on campus because the students, not all of us, have cars to get to off-campus polling locations. In allowing for a campus polling booth, the voices of the students will be heard, and our rights to vote can be exercised more efficiently. There are many more students in support of having polling booths on campus, but they could not be here tonight. I hope that you take our requests into consideration when voting. Thank you so much. Thank you. Any questions? All right. Thank you. I forgot to state the next person that was up. I'm sorry. Matt Farmer. If Matt is here, please come down. And then the next person after that, I think it is Nolan Adams. Bless you. Bless you. Hello. My name is Matt Farmer. I live at 2042 Scripture Street. I just want to say that I am in support of the UNT polling location for UNT students and for everybody else in the district that would want to use it. As we know, the people that go to school at UNT are people that oftentimes work here. They live here. They spend money here. They contribute to our art scene here. So it is important that they get to vote here as well. They're just as much a part of the community as anybody else. And another thing on top of that, the 76201 zip code area in the district is the most densely populated area of that district. It's also the medium household income for that area is lower than any other part of the district. So a lot of the people in that area that aren't even students still would benefit from having a polling location in the area because a lot of people don't have cars. A lot of people walk to work and walk to school or wherever they need to go or rely on public transportation. So it would benefit many people in the district and not just students. We also, me and several friends of mine have gone out for the past couple of weeks on the weekends registering voters, informing people of the upcoming election and telling them about this decision being made tonight. So a lot of people weren't able to come out, but do also express their support in this polling location. We have these little cards. Several people here. Look at so many of them. All these people live in the district and around the UNT area. This little card just says, "I support a polling location on or around the UNT campus to allow and encourage everyone to participate in our municipal elections. I strongly urge our city council to consider this initiative for wider voter accessibility." So if you guys want to take a look at these as well, you can do that. I will have them and I can give them to you. Okay. That's all I have to say. If you have any questions, let me know. Council Member Briggs. Yeah, I was wondering if you could give those to the city secretary or if you want to keep those for your record or you want to give them to us for our record. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. Thank you. More questions. Thank you, Mr. Farmer. Nolan Adams, come down, state your name and address. Your time will begin. Hi, guys. Thanks for letting me speak again. If you could, when you speak, speak a little bit closer to the microphone, if you wouldn't mind. Thank you. Thank you for letting me speak again. I appreciate it. As you can surely tell, I like to talk. My name is Nolan Adams. I forgot to introduce myself earlier, but I'm a student as well as a community leader in the city of Carrollton. I formed a movement that expressed the resistance and opposition to the city's agreement with ICE. And after packing city council with about 300 people and keeping councilmen and women there until about two o'clock in the morning, they ended up deciding against the agreement and voted to opt out. These sort of movements, the grassroots, are exactly what that gentleman was speaking about earlier. I see Councilman Duff is laughing. I think that's rather disrespectful conduct for a councilman. Now, gentlemen like the man who spoke before me are exactly the kind of people that will fill this place until two o'clock in the morning. That's the passion, that's the respect, that's the love that you see from students that they have for their city. This is love and respect and passion that Mr. Duff seems to be scowling at. So I'm glad that he's decided to leave this city, because I think that we can all be a little bit more professional than that. That's not appreciation, that's not love. When we look at putting both voting locations at Robson Ranch, they're dedicated voters, like the mayor said. They're passionate voters. They'll drive, assuming that they have cars because they're in Robson Ranch, they'll drive to any polling location. They have that luxury. Let's put it in the zip code that the gentleman referenced earlier, where not everyone has the luxury and available time to do so. If you want to split them up, sure, we'll compromise. But what we're talking about here is inspiring votes. We're not talking about convenience, necessarily. We're talking about inspiring the upcoming generation of voters. If they see those signs, those handouts, talking about local elections, perhaps they'll develop interest in local elections and begin to vote. It's simple, guys. It's democracy in its purest form. That's what I love about local government. It's nonpartisan, supposedly, and it's purely, purely passion. Love for one city, love for one's community. It's not tainted by all of the things that have destroyed our federal government. It's your community, y'all. Let everyone vote. All right. The next speaker is Richard Gladden. And then after Mr. Gladden, it will be, I believe, Welton King, the fifth. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and other members of the council. As I assume y'all know, I did kind of take an interest in this and filed kind of a legal opinion about the ethics thing. I'm not here to talk about that now. I want to relate to you that as of last fall, it was 40 years ago when I came to Denton from Fort Worth to study music. I was 17 at the time. And at that time, more so than now, students were made to feel like second-class citizens in this community. I don't know that people necessarily dislike students, but a lot of the older members of the community felt like students were kind of leeches, that we didn't have property to have property tax assessments on, and that we were kind of more or less getting a free ride. What concerns me is after I did submit to you my legal opinion about the ethics issue, is I was provided with, do we have a way of illuminating a document, please? Yeah, if you'll put it right there on that square, where those little things define that display. Yes, right there. We can put that up on the screen, please. Okay. This is a post made by my councilman. I'm from District 3. My address again is 1822 West Oak. This is a post that was transmitted by Councilman Duff to his constituents out there in Robson Ranch, which is also part of District 3. You'll note the last sentence. Councilman Duff thinks it's a question, a rhetorical question. Do the residents of the City of Denton want the City Denton Council to be elected by UNT students? The students typically will only be in Denton for four years. I could say the same thing about the elderly individuals down there in Robson Ranch. They may not be here, some of them in four years, but the last thing I would ever suggest is that citizens at Robson Ranch shouldn't be entitled to vote just like anybody else. And I certainly condemn an expression by a member of this council to try to relegate college students in this town and give them second class rights where they don't even have the right to vote. And that's his preference. I move that he be censured, that he apologize to the students of UNT, and that he recuse himself voluntarily from this vote tonight. Thank you. Thank you. All right, the next speaker. I'm sorry, could we submit this into the record? City Secretary, thank you. Can we wait until after the public input? Thank you. Welton King, the fifth. King will come down. And next up will be Mr. Ken Gold. Good evening. My name is Welton King. I'm a student at UNT studying finance, and I make my own video games. I'm sorry, you do what? I didn't catch the last part. I make my own video games. Okay, all right. There are over 35,000 students that attend the University of North Texas, students who are over encumbered by a heavy class schedule, many of which without cars. But nevertheless, there are students who have the right to vote. And we should facilitate that process as much as we can. Come election time, polling places should be where the people are. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Ken Gold, Council Member Husbeth, I'm sorry, Council Member Husbeth. So for the record, what's the name? If someone wanted to look up one of your games, what would they look? Thank you for that question. My company name is Kawai Sun Games. Thank you. Cool. Kawai Sun Games. Spell that. K-A-W-A-I-I-S-U-N, space games. Thank you. Of course. Thank you, sir. Council Member Meltzer. I just want to point out to anyone who wants to speak that that's a flexible deal there. Yeah, yeah. We're height indifferent. Yes. You can put it wherever you are. I'm sorry, I'm a giant. Yes, that helps. Thank you. Appreciate it. Mr. Ken Gold, and then Caesar, is it Maldreza or something? Yeah, okay. All right. Good. Sorry. Mayor and members of the council, my name is Ken Gold. I live at 2512 Natchez Trace here in town. I'll be very brief. Sounds like you got a long list of speakers. I think third polling place in district three is a very good thing. Whether it's the Wesley Center or the Greek Center, I don't really care. I just think it looks like you've got a consensus for the early voting at that place. That's good. That's better than half a loaf right there. But I think you ought to go ahead and get the whole loaf. Thanks. Thank you. And Caesar, if you'll come down, state your name and address. Your time will begin. And then Jordan Villarreal will be next up. Hello. Can you hear me very well? We can hear you. Thank you. My name is Caesar, and I live at Maple Street, Denton, Texas, 76201 in Clark Hall, which is on campus. Well, basically, just to put it simply, we need a polling place on campus, or very close to it, so that students can participate with their community. This campus has been here for years. Throughout the years, we've contributed to the local scene around here. We love this town. It's just amazing. It's my first year here, but it's a really good place. And we also, as students, we like to participate in our community. We do volunteer work around here, and it's just we want to work for our community. And our teachers, our professors, they've instilled in us a bunch of knowledge so that we can bring this to our community and better serve them. So with that in mind, we want to be able to raise our voices to all of you and bring what we've learned to the table here. And the most effective way to do that is by allowing us to vote and just have a better say in everything that goes on in Denton. I mean, look at how many young people have shown up here. It's just, to me, it's really inspiring to see that we've all decided to come out here in the middle of a school week when it's the midterms. And yeah, we all got a bunch of stuff on our plates, but we came here because this is something we believe in. And so many adults have given us the gift of knowledge to help our community the best we can. So please, I implore you to put a polling place on campus so that we can continue to serve Denton. Thank you. Thank you very much. Jordan? And then, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Councilmember Armitage had a question, I'm sorry, or a comment. Sorry about that. Come on down. Sorry for the calisthenics. Yeah, so I just wanted to ask, and no pressure not representing anyone but yourself, you know, when you found out that there was a controversy about, you know, whether or not there could be a voting location on campus, what was your reaction? I thought it was a no-brainer to let students vote to have more of a say in our community, because we love this place. And to me, it just seemed obvious to have people who love Denton vote to improve, to reform, to just do everything we can to serve our community. It's all just something out of passion and love for the city. Thank you. Thank you. Jordan? And then Shane Warren will be the next speaker. Jordan Villarreal, 707 Bernard Street, Denton, Texas, 76201. I'd like to start off by thanking Mayor Watts and the entire council for their hard work in ensuring all Dentonites have the ability to participate in municipal elections. I'd also like to thank Councilman Duff for surprising me and coming out in favor of this motion. I appreciate it. And all three District 3 candidates have also come out in support of voting locations at UNT. And for that, I thank them and commend them. As a recent graduate of UNT, a District 3 resident, and a strong proponent of voter rights, education, and access, I hold the issue of accessible polling locations close to heart. Whether the community is rural, a community of color, folks with disabilities, or in this case, students, it's up to us to fight for our neglected neighbors and fellow citizens and give them a reasonable path towards an equitable democracy. Specifically, it is in the interest of all of us as civically engaged Dentonites to bring more of our city into the fold. UNT is a vital component of Denton, and its students helped craft the city culture many of us fell in love with on arrival. UNT students attend classes in Denton, rent Denton apartments and houses, use Denton roads, sidewalks, and public transportation, and purchase items and services all throughout the city. However, a large number of students are living on their own for the first time in a new city they call home. Many lack access to a car in the nearest early voting location and Election Day polling location are miles from campus with no reasonable way to get there without a vehicle. It is imperative that we as a citizenry welcome in our fellow Dentonites when it open arms and give them a genuine path towards civic involvement. We cannot simultaneously reap the benefits from having them as a university here in our city while also denying them an apt form to participate in municipal governance. Thank you. Jordan Villarreal. Thank you, Jordan. Shane Warren and then Christopher Yaclan. Can I put this up here before? Sure. They should be able to pick it up. Is that right? Yeah, just leave it there and if we could have overhead, there you go. All right. My name is Shane Warren and I'm from 1716 Eagle Drive, unit 325A. So last time I came before this council, I made a joke about getting my toe ripped out the day before and having to walk while I was a four on the pain scale. How are you feeling? Better. Wind's closed up. But something that I didn't talk about was my experience walking to this very building while I was taking a generous job shadowing offer from the Denton City staff. I walked here two times. I was held up at a pedestrian crossing, not a pedestrian crossing, a intersection that you have to cross to get here. First on Carroll, then on McKinney Street for 10 minutes. I was almost late and I was worried about it. And that was before I had a toe injury. If I had had a toe injury, I wouldn't have been able to, I'm not sure if I would have been able to make it at all. I can't imagine what students with broken legs or other such disabilities might have to face if they have to go all the way to the civic center or elsewhere. I also want to state, like for the record, I think most students consider the Wesley Foundation to be like de facto on campus anyway. So approving that would essentially be the same thing as an on-campus polling location. The Greek Life Center I'm less sure about, I know I do, but I can't speak for all students. But the right to vote outweighs any political calculations, it outweighs any dumb petty controversy about who's a transient and who isn't, or anything like that. This should be a fairly non-controversial thing. I'm surprised it hasn't been codified in some kind of ordinance after over a century of having a college institution in the city. You have a contiguous community in the most densely populated area in town. We deserve the right to vote. I can see that this thing went off, but the point here is out of 276 voters, another barrier to participation, after 276 votes on this Twitter poll, 92% wanted a polling location on campus. Imagine how many people would have showed up here if they felt they had a personal connection with their District 3 representative, their mayor, and the rest of the council members. Imagine if you got to engage directly with your council member after voting for them and talk about how dangerous it is to cross the university courtyard with no crosswalk any time of day, especially at dark, or how potholes beginning the moment you go off a UNT is detrimental to a lot of our commuter students, or noise ordinances that prevent students who are trying to make their way in the music scene from reaping the benefits of that. These are all concerns I've heard, and a lot of students don't connect it to the city council, but it could be connected, and that's our job as students who are already engaged to get them to come here and understand that connection. What I'm asking council members to do is what I'd respectfully say is y'all's job, or your job, I don't want to be impolite or whatever, but just give us the basic logistical support we need, which is a polling location within walking distance, to get students to come out and vote and be a part of the civic life in Netton. Thank you. Thank you. Christopher, and then Asia Youngs, is it Bailey? I'm sorry if I mispronounced that. Hello, my name is Chris Inclan. I'm a student at UNT. My address is 1413 Mabel Street. Also the civic engagement chair for the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, and one thing that I've taken into consideration when running is to get more people out to vote, especially within the student community and within Denton itself. And I think one thing that the council should take into consideration is that there's 38,000 students at UNT, and a lot of them rely on financial aid, so they don't necessarily have the luxury of owning a vehicle or having their own form of transportation. And so having a polling location within walking distance would give them an avenue to be involved in civic engagement. And I think that this is very important, because if you don't have a voting location within walking distance, a lot of students would not be so inclined to vote, because they see it as it's too out of the way of their normal location. And I think that if you do not have a voting location within UNT, it disenfranchises the voting rights of students who contribute to the community, pay sales taxes, and are so integral to the fabric of this community. I would like to thank you for your time, and I just hope you take this in consideration. Councilmember Armitage. So I just wanted to comment. So you're a member of the AEPI fraternity? Yes. Yeah. I thank you for mentioning that, because I think this is just a great example of how reality contradicts stereotypes. People have this idea that college students, and especially members of fraternities, they're just in college to party. Anyway, you can probably film the blank, but what I'm seeing is students who will come all the way out just because they want to vote, and they're in school because they want to learn, and both of these things are just basic human rights. So anyway, I'm really sorry. I cry easily, but thank you. Thank you very much. And you represent your frat and the school really well. Thanks. Thank you. We've been going for about an hour and a half. Let's take about a five-minute break, and we'll pick up with the public comment at that time. Okay. Welcome, everybody, back to this meeting of the Dent City Council. It is 8.04 on March the 5th, 2018 -- or '19, excuse me. Wow. We are in agenda item 5A in the public comment portion. The last speaker, or the speaker up, is it -- it's either Agia Bailey or Assia Bailey. So I'm sorry. Is that person here? Asia. Asia Youngs Bailey? I apologize. I apologize. Yeah, if you'll state your name and address, your time will begin. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Asia Youngs Bailey. I reside at 1451 Center Place Drive, Denton, Texas, 76205. I am here today to state that I support having a polling place on campus, not only because a lot of students do not have the opportunity and the funds to have a vehicle or a form of transportation. So I do believe that that is important. And also, I would like to mention for the record that there are a lot of students who stay here for over four years, whether that's for the master's program or because they are what we call a super senior, who are students who are here for five-plus years. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any questions? Thank you. Next speaker is Jennifer Lane. And then up after that will be Zane. Montlaw. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you, Jane. Okay. Hi, everybody. I'm Jennifer Lane, 1526 Willowwood Street, Denton, Texas. I sent you all a letter today because I had some statistics that answered one of the questions that Councilmember Briggs asked during an early work session about the number of registered voters in these precincts. The PDF that I sent you is all the precincts in the county. And the data is current as of yesterday. There are 181 precincts listed in the county. Only 172 have actual voters. We have nine precincts in the county that have no voters. So I'm not sure what that's about. But the average number of voters per precinct in Denton County, for precincts with voters, is 2,875. That's a rough division. And a wonderful friend named Mike Yeager obtained this material and did this division. Anyway, if you divide by the 172, the number of voters by the 172 precincts that have voters, you get 2,875. Precinct 4045, which is one of the two precincts in question, has 4,316 voters. And that makes them 1,441 voters above the average. When you combine 4045 with the adjacent precinct, 4039, you have a substantial concentration of potential voters who should not be made to go far afield in order to cast a ballot. I wanted to just read that into the record as well as sending it to you by email. But also, it just so happens, I'm not sure I really believe in this sort of thing, but if I did, I'd say it was an omen. I ran into Stephen Briers, who's one of my personal favorite people in the city of Denton. He's one of our unhoused residents. And he happened to just say when I ran into him, "If I don't vote early, I've got to walk all the way to North Lakes Rec Center. That's really far." He's a District 3 voter who is not a student. He's a resident in District 3 in the central part of town who is also affected and would be helped by having a more local poll. And also, I wanted to mention that I think perhaps the cost, I understand why there might be an inflation of the cost of these polls, the suggested cost of a poll per day, just to be on the safe side. But in 2018, the report was, at least the report was, that on your website is that it was $6,000 for four additional polls. So it's a little bit of a stretch to have it be $3,800 for one. Maybe. Maybe. Unless there's been some prices that have gone up for voting equipment or people's wages. I hope so. I hope that it's gone way up for the county board of elections people's wages and that that's the reason for the difference. So I hope you arrive at the best possible decision for all these great students who have come here tonight and all of their friends. And in the end, I think it will have been a really great democratic exercise to get where we're going. Thank you very much. Council Member Armitage. So I actually had a question for staff based on an issue that you raised. And I don't know if the appropriate time for her to answer, I don't see Rachel here, would be now. And that is regarding the cost of the of the polling locations. And I was waiting for somebody to bring that up. It's my understanding that and so you had mentioned that because there's not a DISD election going on this May, that they're not going that the burden will be the expense will be the cities. But as I understand it, at least when it comes to the issue that people are talking about today, the UNT polling location, UNT would be donating this location for free. And it was my understanding that the expenses involved of the volunteers, election workers, equipment, etc. I was under the impression that that came from the county elections office, not from ISD. Now that said, this the answer doesn't affect my my decision either way. Because I want voting, but I just wanted to be clear on this topic. So maybe you could help. Which is just that my husband served as an election clerk in a place it pays $12 an hour. So when people do you know, quasi volunteer, it is required that they be paid, but it is very small. Yeah, thank you. Okay, before before you because if it's, I guess my concern is we've got several cards. Yes, I think she could if she could wait until after the public comment. Yeah, that can wait. Okay, thank you. Thanks for raising that issue. You bet. Zane, you're up next. Thank you. And then Daniel Ojo. Okay, hi. I'm Zane Mottlaw. I live at 1905 Westchester Lane, Denton, Texas 76201. My closest friends were deputy registrars. We had a huge party at my house where we registered everyone we could and had so much fun. We use any spare minute we could to talk to people about how important voting is and how their voice matters. We were passionate as heck. So let me take a moment to describe the people we are and the people that we registered. We are students at a university of 38,000 people. We are a community that contributes to economic growth of the city, the art and music community, and so many things that make Denton, Denton. We work in your favorite restaurants and bars. We babysit your kids. We are Uber drivers. We deliver your pizza. We work in your law offices, doctor offices, and some of us are your cart girls at Robeson Ranch. So anyways, I followed up with the people that we registered. A staggering amount of these people did not vote. A lot of people cited access to transportation as a reason and people have already spoken and will speak about this, so I will refrain from doing so. But there's a lesser talked about issue that needs to be addressed. Students at UNT are victims of time poverty. We work full-time, go to school full-time. Some of us have families of our own to attend to. Some of us has religious or community obligations. As much as we would truly love to be able to, we don't have time to spare to leave class, walk a mile to wherever we were able to find parking, drive to Robeson Ranch or the city center, wait in line, and then get to our next obligation. If we had a polling location on campus, voter turnout would increase and we would be better represented in matters that affect us. This is an argument. There is an argument against students having a polling location that refers to our temporary residence in Denton, and that may be true on an individual level. As some students graduate and some move on to other cities, but as a community, we really do leave a lasting legacy and contribute to the culture of Denton. As individuals, we may only be here for four years, but this university has been here for 129 years and we will likely continue to be here for the foreseeable future. To deny a group of 38,000 citizens immediate access to a polling location, is to deny us access to representation in a city that we love, and we would really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really appreciate it if you could make it a little easier to participate in local government. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be George Ferry, and after that will be Emily Meisner. I hear a giant. Can you hear me? Did I break it? Okay, be careful if you're tall. My name is George Ferry. I live at 2932 Stockton Street. Good evening, Mayor, Council. I full-heartedly believe that UNT needs a polling location on their university. I want to talk again about TWU one more time. It is a university in our city that has 12,000 to 15,000 students. During early voting, and it has happened every year, when it conflicts with the Arts and Jazz Fest, you are closing down the Saturday. The opportunity to vote on Saturday is closed. That's 12 hours of early voting that is denied to the students that could walk to that campus. Instead of they have to walk 35 minutes one way to the MLK Rec Center, the nearest polling location for them. I would urge you to look at statistics. Look at Pecan Creek Elementary and the voter turnout they had. It's less than 100 votes, and it's at the most southeastern most point of our city. It touches Corinth, basically, and it's in a dense neighborhood filled with cars, and very few multi-family dwellings exist there. I would just say moving forward, it would behoove us all to look at the data of every single polling site we're paying to have here and see if they're actually working. Are people showing up to them? How can we better serve our city, which continues to grow and change demographically with heavy dense populations? Consider making Denton Civic Center a permanent location and a day of voting location. It's all about access. We're all here to talk about access. So who's accessing what, when, and how can we can reconfigure that so that when we spend this money, we spend it wisely. Thank you. Thank you. Deb Armitage has a question or comment. Thank you. Yeah, just a comment. Thank you. It's just a comment, although you're welcome to comment on my comment. And that is, I just wanted to let you know, you know, I have in previous work sessions stated that I think we should have, we should be able to actually use the Jazz Fest and the confluence of so many people there at that time, members of the public, to have some sort of voting at and around Jazz Fest and the Civic Center at that time, instead of seeing it as a detriment to voting. That's a voting opportunity. You've got lots of people there. So I also support a polling location at TWU. And I hope that, you know, in the future, we can really keep our minds open as a legislative and representative body to not seeing polling locations as something that's finite. You know, we can only have this number, but just finding out where's the need and putting those polling locations there. So thank you for raising those issues. Yes, thank you so much. And just to comment on your comment real quick. So in Arts and Jazz, they actually use that front room, that conference room, to have their kids exhibition for the county. I've actually reached out to Arts and Jazz Fest to speak about this whole polling location conversation. And I wouldn't want to take away from that. I would say if we are going to continue with this being the general norm for Civic Center being shut down on a Saturday, provide busing. Have busing set up and have a location where people can get picked up from Civic Center and be taken to the nearest poll and returned free of charge. That way we're making up for that difference and that lack of access. Thanks. All right, Emily Meisner. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I did. I'm sorry. I've got so many cards. State your name and address. I apologize. Please forgive me, Dan. Good evening. My name is Daniel Ojo. My address is 911 North Texas Boulevard 76201. I'm a current student at UNT studying political science and criminal justice. As an aspiring politician, I feel as though it is important for there to be a polling location within Colesbrook University's campus. As we may know historically, voter turnout over of people 18 to 24 has been typically low. However, in recent midterm elections, we've broken precedence since about 1916. This behavior should be encouraged among young people because we are the future of this community and this nation. I believe that inaccessibility to these polls should not be what deters students from fulfilling their civic duty. Thank you. Thank you. I apologize for I put your card in the spoken pile accidentally. Thank you. Council member Armitage has a question. Oh, yeah. So this is a did you know question. And there's no right or wrong answer. But did you know, you know, speaking of the ages, did you know that in the 1970s, there was a ruling against the against the county against Stanton County for voter discrimination against UNT students specifically and young people specifically under the age of 21. Were you aware of that? I was not. So but you don't seem all that surprised. No, I'm not. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you. Okay, back to my normal process, Emily Meisner. And then Queen J. J. Montgomery will be next. Emily Meisner 1700 Cordero Court, Denton 76210. Thank you for having us to speak tonight. It's lovely to talk to you all before midnight. And I'm excited to see all these all these students here, who are out to support the civic engagement that they'd like to see. So as a voter registrar and a nonpartisan voting rights advocate, I'm definitely for well, I was gonna be for option two, but now it seems like that might change again. So I'm just for voting, and for whatever needs to be added to facilitate voting accommodation to everyone so that nobody has to walk two hours any which way. And then in addition to all of this, I'd like to say that, you know, there's a proposed House Bill 375. I haven't heard that mentioned tonight. In this discussion, I think it would be so cool if Denton were ahead of this proposed bill, the bill that would propose on site voting location for any university having 10,000 students or more. It would be really cool if we just did it on our own out of our own accord without being, you know, told to or asked to. So we could be a precedent, we could set a precedent here. So let's do that. Thank you. Thank you. Queen Jane Montgomery, come down and state your name and address. And then up next will be Katherine Lustgarten. Good evening, everyone here. I'm Queen Jane and the address is 201 Inman. And I wanted to speak on behalf of the students. And I wanted to speak on behalf of the disabled and the underserved. I'm a legal advocate. And I wanted to just express that I had been summoned to be here tonight. So I really want to reach out to Mr. Hutspeth, and also Mr. Duff, that I'm happy to that you had decided to go ahead and vote towards this, but I hadn't heard anything from Mr. Hutspeth. And I am nonpartisan on any type of like if anyone is a Republican or Democrat, I'm the queen. So I don't care. I love everyone. I just really want you guys to look at the logistics of everything when you make decisions. And I would like for for definitely the students have that opportunity to walk. But those who do have cars of no parking is an issue on campus for that location at Greek life. Somebody made that known to me. But still, I don't think that I don't think you guys should disregard that location for sure. And the other location I saw that it was not available. It was the Wesley location. But I hope that hopefully we can get that together. But I really would like if if we could all come together for the the students. And because they do contribute financially to Denton. And and that's most important, honestly, is the financial financial distress that they have to do in order to be a citizen here in Denton. And if everybody can just understand their their plight, and how they want to be able to be massively involved with y'all and everything that you have going on and any kind of decisions y'all make, I am not going to hold you. I'm tired. And I really wanted to be here tonight on behalf of the students. Once again, the ball is in your court. And I definitely trust everybody. So thank you so much. Thank you, Catherine. And then up next will be Katrina. Is it flash forth? Sorry. I'm not doing very well tonight. I apologize. Good evening. My name is Dr. Catherine Lusdarten. My address is 11809 Sutherland Drive Denton 76207. I'm speaking in favor of having a polling location on election day at the UNT campus. I have three reasons for that. I'm a Rogues and Rants resident. I have the luxury of time. I have the luxury of owning having my own transportation. I believe strongly that our Democratic Republic works best when all eligible voters are able to cast their vote and that we should facilitate that. So I have three specific points that I'd like to make. One is the concept that the students represent a transient population. That just rankles me when I hear that. Any given individual student may eventually come and eventually go. But as a population group, that one student or thousands of students that leave are going to be replaced by another one or thousands of students, it makes sense to me that that population have a, as a group, have a perspective on life in Denton. They have opinions. They have concerns. And so as a population, they need to have a voice in city government and the best way for them to have that voice and to know that they are being represented on city council is to be able to vote in that election. Number two, I've encountered so many Dentonites. I've only lived here three years, but so perhaps I'm a transient as well, but I do plan to stay. I've encountered so many Dentonites who say I came to Denton to go to college, but I have stayed. Those folks are business owners. Those folks are volunteers in civic and community organizations. Those folks are outstanding parents. Those folks are perhaps city employees. Gosh, some of them even run for election to city council. So it's incomprehensible to me that we would not want to encourage those students to participate in our process and I'm running out of time. So the third point is that the students come here not only as an education to enroll in coursework, but they're learning about life. They're learning about what it means to be an active participant in civic government and we ought to be embracing them and holding out a hand of welcome, encouraging them, facilitating their ability to vote. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs, I believe has a comment or question. Actually two things. One statement and then one question. So to your point, I came here probably around 20 years ago to go to school. I'm a UNT alumni. So I did go to school, graduated and I stayed. So that fits into the category that you just mentioned. So you heard earlier that there may be a need for a early voting in a polling location out at Robeson where you live. Would that be something as a resident that you would request that you feel is needed in your community? We've been blessed to have a polling location at Robeson Ranch and it's a wonderful convenience. In fact, once when I was a poll worker, they wanted to assign me somewhere. I don't remember where and I said, "Please could you assign me to the Robeson Ranch polling place? I can just practically hop out of my pajamas and go at 6 a.m. to work." So yes, it's a wonderful convenience and whenever I hear that we do have a polling location at Robeson Ranch, I really enjoy that. If it means, however, that it excludes a less capable population from an easy ability to vote, then no, I'm against it. So if it's a choice, would you like to have one at Robeson Ranch? Would you like to put one at UNT? My vote is put it at UNT where the folks need it. Thank you. Council Member Armitage. I just want to say that the good news is that it's not a choice. It's not a choice and to me that would be like a parent deciding between their two children. You can only have one, right? It's not a choice. So I hope that we never have to make voting decisions like that. We're certainly not framed that way today. So thank you for your for your words are very moving and helpful. Thanks. Thank you. Appreciate that. Katrina and then we've got Marshall Williams. Hi, Katrina Flaxpart. I live at 1111 Eagle Drive, Denton 76201. So thank you, first of all, for letting us speak today. I don't like public speaking, but this is a very important issue to me, voter accessibility. Any effort to make voting accessible for anyone, I fully support. I live in District 3. I am someone who came here for college and I'm going on 10 years of being here. I graduated and I stayed. So I kind of I don't think it's, I guess the comments from my current council member about students being here for four years and, you know, should they vote? Well, I'm an example of someone who stayed and I vote and I think everyone should have that opportunity. And I hope that you all will support this initiative. And that's all I really wanted to say. Thank you for letting me speak. Thank you. Marshall Williams, state your name and address and your time will begin. My name is Marshall Williams. I live at 1721 Teasley Lane. So I'm just here to address the council, basically encouraging voter access. I've lived in Denton all my life. I was about six, went to school here, grew up a Denton native. Throughout my entire life, UNT students have been here and they've been a fundamental part of the community. They work everywhere. They're a part of everyday life, yet they're disconnected. They don't get to get involved in the community. We don't present opportunities to them. We make it hard for them to get to polling places because we don't have any near them. These people don't have cars. Lots of people already touched on these issues. But as a result of all of this, we don't have youth representation in this town of any sort. As a district three, for the most part, is split up of two neighborhoods for the most part, Robson Ranch and UNT. It seems kind of silly that we would have in this big district a polling place at the retirement village nine miles southwest of town, but not one on the university campus at the dead center of town. It seems a little strange to me. I would just like to encourage that we get people the ability to vote and they will fill in. Because right now, most UNT students could, even if they are registered, vote. I think the numbers that we've gotten so far are only going to be for voters who are registered here in the city of Denton. But college students can still be registered back in their home campuses. We want these people to stay in town. We want Denton to continue to grow. We want to retain them. Getting them involved in the community is a good way to start doing that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Those are all the blue cards. The white cards are people who are not wishing to speak, but I will read their indication on their support or opposition. Gina Murphy in support. Rhonda Love in support. Misty Gold in support. Alex Lockhart in support. Suzanne Romer in support. Sam Cook in support. Angelica Fraga is in support. Ed Carroll-Soph in support. Strongly support. Patricia Edwards in support. Don Edward in support. And Tamsen Price is in support. All right. Council Member Meltzer. Since we had a bit of an opportunity to talk and sort ourselves out before, I'd like to offer to withdraw my motion to motion and give my council member, Council Member Duff, an opportunity to move. I think it'll be outstanding healing gestures. I think we're on the same page. And so I'd leave it to you. All right. Council Member Meltzer. I hope you'll second it. So I move for early voting at all three of the locations that are approved by the county and for election and as well as a fourth location at Robeson Ranch. So far I addressed early voting. Now on election day, I move for the eight locations that we had previously plus a location at the Greek Life Center as well as the location at Robeson Ranch. All right. Council Member Duff. I second. Council Member Romer in turn. It's a friendly amendment. Is there anyone be willing to add in a TWU location? I certainly would support that in the spirit of also supporting the new the proposed Senate bill. Is there one that's, you know, sort of feasible identified? I don't think it's been vetted. No, because we haven't vetted it. But Robeson, to be clear, so Robeson has been vetted because we've done that in the past. Right. Okay. So TWU next year? Okay. You're next. Yep. Yep. Okay. Council Member Husbeth. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of quick comments. First, I think one of the speakers was accurate. I have not. Well, I'll take that back. I try to be careful about what I say early out of respect for those that come spend time with us here. I think it's to their detriment and it's disrespectful to announce a decision before hearing from everyone that spends their time here on Tuesdays with us. So I'm very careful about that. I'm very guarded about that because I want to be open to any comment that may trigger a thought and may trigger a change in decision. So it's very important that I not disenfranchise anyone before they hear from everyone and all the blue cards. Very important to me. That being said, I would encourage everyone here to not get swept up in social media conversations and I'll direct you to, because there's a lot being said that it's not steeped in fact, and so I'll direct you to NT Daily's article March 1st and you'll see a quote in there from me that says, "Yes, I support a location at UNT." That was dated March 1st. So well on record, well in advance, but you won't see that in the normal circles because I guess that doesn't fit the narrative. But it's well documented by an uninterested party that talked to me early on and it's a college paper. It's right there printed. So I'll direct you to that. You can read the quotes for yourself and make your own judgments, but that was March 1st. Then I'll say I'm glad we're going the direction we're going because for those to advocate for the Wesley Center is very disheartening. That should never have been a consideration because they're not ADA compliant in their restrooms. And so for my colleagues and for those out in the public that would advocate for that place where able-bodied people could go to the restroom inside and disabled people, they were advocating for a porta potty, is absolutely disrespectful. And it's painful because we're trying to be better in that regard and that's a step back to advocate to bifurcate who can go to what restroom. That just sends a terrible message and so it's regrettable that that was even an option. I'm grateful for the great Greek Center and our gravitation that direction. And so just wanted to clear up a few of those things and share my thought process on announcing votes early because I think that disenfranchises people and I don't think that's right to do. So thank you. Thank you. I'll just make a couple of comments. Everybody knows my mantra is I trust the process. Unfortunately this process got derailed. The process was followed. You had a council member who had some concerns. That concern was placed to the proper committee. That committee made a decision following the process and immediately people were attacked personally. The legal letter we received from you Mr. Gladden really politicized this whole issue as well. And that's unfortunate because I think the basic argument, the basic premise is that people need to be allowed to vote. We need to find a way to get them to vote. That's been my frustration about this whole process. That you know who's been left out of this conversation? TWU has been left out of this conversation. There was a talk, there was a couple of comments made in the beginning but there hasn't been any to the very fact that when we get down to the question about TWU it hasn't been vetted because council really didn't say hey what about TWU? Council member Armature mentioned it the first meeting. Might have mentioned it the second one but there wasn't the activity and the passion to do that. And then my concern is well what about the rest of the citizens? We got 135,000 people here and I'm sure some of those people don't have cars. I'm sure that some of those people have to walk a long way and I'm sure some of those people may not be able to walk very well. So I don't have any problem with putting a polling location at the University of North Texas. What I do have a problem with is we became selective. We didn't look at the community holistically so I fully expect moving forward from this place we will do just that. We will look at the community holistically and we will look at the data. I was sent data in the mayoral election for the two precincts that are being considered on election day voting. 111 people voted and that's early voting and also election day voting. That's not about I mean out of 4,000 so okay it may need to be there but I'm just really disappointed in how this process wound up. We got to the right decision I think but I'm really disappointed at how this process wound up to the point where we had committee members who resigned in protest because of situations. That's unfortunate. I appreciate all you young people coming down here. I will say this though I get I get a little confused when I hear that there's a lack of access via transportation to polling locations and I get confused on that because the city of Denton pays $14 million a year to the DCTA. The city of Denton has spent I don't know how many tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousand dollars to put in bike lanes and pedestrian paths to try to get people from the UNT campus to downtown not just for voting but to enjoy the downtown nightlife and I didn't know quite frankly not some of you may not know this either. I didn't know to about four months ago as I was reviewing the UNT contract with the Denton County Transportation Authority that UNT students get to ride city of Denton buses for free. All you got to do is show your ID all right because that's part of the UNT contract with DCTA. We have a bus stop right across from the Civic Center literally across from City Hall so if you're not using that system that you're basically paying for in your transportation fees that are assessed in your tuition please become familiar with that because you can ride any bus whether it's a North Texas sponsored bus that picks students up literally from their apartments and takes them to campus and then allows them to transfer to different city buses within the city. So when I hear about convenience and transportation in some ways UNT students have a benefit that not very many if any citizens have in this community and that is to ride the public transportation system in this community for free. So I'm going to be voting for this motion. I've been very very frustrated at how this has gone. I'm frustrated about things that have been posted from everybody's side. I've been frustrated about the politicization of this process because it shouldn't be because there's nobody in this room that says people shouldn't vote and they should have an access to vote but what I also want everybody understand that goes for everybody in this city everybody in this city. So I'll be supporting this and I hope Mr. City Manager that we will start this process before the final hour before a month before we're supposed to do this so that we can make sure that we do a global assessment of the needs in our community and the needs of our citizens in our community all of them to ensure that we have adequate polling locations both early and election day to give people the best opportunity to vote in this city. We have a motion and a second council member Armitter. Yeah so I just want to say I'm actually I'm really pleased with how this process turned out and I want to say why not just the result but the process itself. We had somebody you know we had multiple discussions, we had public input, we had somebody raise an ethics concern, we had somebody else ask the ethics panel, we had an opinion come out, we had the public express their opinions on social media and elsewhere about that opinion which they have the right to do and that's an important part of the democratic process and I'm really grateful for social media. Yes there's bad stuff on there too, there's bad stuff everywhere and including you know some some of us have terrible thoughts right but it's still good that we think so I think it's important that we that the public is communicating about this. I think it's important that people feel passionate about it and on on all sides. I'm thrilled that people are out here, I'm thrilled people are talking about how much they love living in Denton and not just young people. We've had you know people of all ages speak and come out in support of this so I just want to say and it's been a difficult and and many times uncomfortable I think for all of us process but that's what democracy is, democracy is messy and I think that this is a really good example what we just saw happen that you've got you know a democratic process even when you've got an ordinance that's not quite perfect and you know nobody feeling that every step along the way is quite perfect, we still got democracy in action so I'm pleased with what I've been seeing including everybody talking about this on social media I think that's just great. Okay thank you we have a motion in the second I want to make sure I understand what the motion is the motion is to add the eight polling places as recommended by staff in the original and then to add two additional early voting locations which is the Greek Life Center at the University of North Texas and then a early voting location out at Robeson Ranch and then also to put election day voting location at the Greek Life Center and then also at Robeson Ranch is that correct? Yes that's right yeah and I think I forgot to mention that and it goes without saying that the analysis of you know our voting demographics will be across all districts that we're going to look at every district one through four and give it the same scrutiny. All right we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please. Motion carries six zero we'll move on to our next agenda item which is agenda item five b consider nominations appointments to the city boards commissions and committees animal shelter advisory committee etc. Do we have I think I have a nomination for the animal shelter advisory committee which is Tiffany Thompson. We'll give it a couple seconds to let people clear out who want to who want to go. Yeah Tiffany Thompson to the animal shelter advisory committee. Oh okay so yes well I was just trying to give some out in the out in the galley to if they want to leave we'll just do it. All right so we have a council member Briggs do we have any more nominations besides the one that I just put forward? There's three on the sheet on the sheet too yeah so this one is all right. All right council member Husspeth. Second. All right we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please. I didn't actually say I make a motion. Oh I'm sorry. But I don't know if that I need to do that or not. You do yes well we'll retake that I'm sorry council member Briggs I thought you did I apologize. Okay I'd like to make a motion to approve the nominations. Thank you council member Husspeth. Second. We'll try this again let's vote on the board please. Is six zero. Moving on to public hearings I believe public hearing agenda item 6a has been moved to March the 19th is that correct? Yes. Okay all right we'll go on to 6b hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton Texas affecting the change in the neighbor in the zoning district and use classification from neighborhood residential NR4 to NRMU. I will go ahead and open the public hearing. Thank you mayor members of council give me a few seconds here to pull up a presentation. Mayor member of council member staff this is a item for a rezoning of a property located here just north of Robertson east of Skinner Road. It is a rezoning to go from NR4 to NRMU and the genesis for this rezoning request was from an application for a restaurant use that was denied because of the use not being permitted in the zoning of NR4. The area that we're talking about is this area here outlined in yellow which is approximately 0.82 acres again generally located north of Robertson approximately 300 feet east of Skinner Street. Before the zoning of the property to NR4 it was zoned SF7 and SF7 back then did not permit restaurants. There was a request at the time around 1996 that the property allow for a restaurant. The applicant at the time was given the option either to rezone or seek a variance through zoning board of adjustment. The applicant chose to go through a zoning board of adjustment and unfortunately was not granted the restaurant but was given the use of a catering establishment which has been the use since 1996. In 2002 with the rezoning of the city the property was zoned NR4 and again NR4 does not permit restaurants so the use continued as a catering establishment. Recently last year the applicant again it stated earlier September 2018 the applicant requested a CEO was denied this between December and January staff has worked with the applicant and discussed what options they had and again the option that was given to them was a zoning change request to NRMU which does permit restaurants. As far as looking at the area and analyzing the area staff considered a number of things existing conditions on the ground the future then development code update in the future zoning map and looking at the area you see here the area again is generally in this area here the restaurant would be home to here and with parking but we're looking at a zoning case of NRMU. The area is primarily residential surrounding the area but however this particular subject site is more or less non-residential we've got the Fred Moore Learning Center to the south we've got some zoning of NRMU already in the general area here just east of Skinner and South Robertson you have the railroad to one side the drainage channel to north so in staff's analysis we felt that the NRMU would be an appropriate zoning district for this particular area so we can so the consideration we followed the development code there are two criteria for approval the first one is does it conform with the future land use element and the future land use identified this area identifies this area as low density however it also talks about providing walkable accessible routes to amenities such as neighborhood servicing uses retail restaurants and so that was also factored in staff's decision we also looked at would the zoning require and would be able to facilitate the provision of public facilities or requirements and public convenience and the site is already served with water wastewater it also has basic utilities serving the area we don't and the city staff does not feel that it would be a negative impact to the public infrastructure if this was to be rezoned NRMU also there are other considerations to look into with regards to a zoning that does not match the future land use map and we considered the following factors and all of those responses and analysis is included in the staff analysis for your for your review in the backup notices was sent out were sent out that is 18 certified mailings were sent to property owners within 200 feet approximately 84 were sent out to neighbors within 500 feet as of this evening we have not received any responses either in favor in opposition or neutral there was a sign posted and there was no neighborhood meeting held with that staff recommends approval of the zoning change request the planning zoning commission held a public hearing and also recommended approval seven zero the applicant is present the property owner is also present and i'll be happy to answer any question at this time councilmember briggs thank you yeah i watched this item on planning and zoning when it came to planning and zoning and there were a few commissioners the one that sits in the seat that had some concerns about upzoning so much in that one area and i i kind of share the same concerns i should just say for the record i'm not concerned about it being a restaurant i am completely in favor of it being um what its intended use is for i do have my some concerns and i just want you to calm calm them calm my nerves a little bit um because that when you were looking at this you talked about the draft zoning map and the future land use map and we had a long conversation about that earlier about how we decided to take those upzonings off so that the neighborhoods could have um the process the people around can have the process and i guess this is what that is i mean they they went through the the process but if we um so i just kind of wanted to put that there because we did decide not to do that correct on the the draft zoning map correct that's been taken off now correct that's that's we're working through uh making sure that we get as close to the existing zoning map as possible and that any um any future city initiative rezoning would come later and each individual property yeah if they wanted to do that right this this would be an example of that if this was something that we wanted to have you know not not the particular property but at the area we were looking at to zoning nrmu it would go through the process uh notifying the property owners and the adjacent property owners adjacent properties a few of my concerns um so you can calm them now sure um some of pnz members mentioned an overlay that would kind of help limit that or keep the um the use as the use as intended um so if the way that it is the way that it's just passed in our um in you um what is the height on that say say say the owner decided just to sell the land sure um after the zoning and not that that would happen i'm just doing some hypotheticals here just to to see um what what could go there in that in that spot and how tall would whatever that would be be sure the uh the height maximum is 65 feet uh the uses permitted there are um multi-family and other neighborhood mixed use commercial uses um there is a list i can run through that list but mainly it would allow for more commercial uses uh then then you would see in an nr4 okay and just just to note again um reason why there was no overlay proposed by staff but was discussed by the planning zoning commission was we didn't see uh any concerns again the location as you see here is uh sort of bounded by a number of different um uh areas the drainage the skinner street the railroad and then fred moore uh learning center um we we did not hear from the public as far as any concerns but we do understand what was discussed at the planning zoning commission that the potential could be there and they had the opportunity but as you saw they they went back and forth and ended up recommending approval with no overlay or no conditions mayor may i so so my yeah so staff recommending this is so if any of those other um uses multi-family or any other um things went into this that would be okay with the staff recommendation so i'm just trying to make sure that that is still um an overall approval correct there there was no regardless of what this restaurant or right they would be able to develop under whatever the zoning district permits um as part of nrmu okay council member armature okay um so going back to the the notification issue so as you mentioned so there was the sign and there were no responses received in uh in opposition or in favor and i have staff is recommending in favor anyway pnz recommending in favor anyway um but i just wanted to note that you know to point out to the public and that is as you know there were was a petition circulated by the uh by the business owner of clara's kitchen and and they received i believe several hundred and uh uh signatures of support to that petition and the applicant can speak to that or maybe you can if you know the number i would i would rather have the option to speak to that but but so they did um you know collect petitions on their own and uh it's you know sometimes that's more uh powerful than a little sign a little sign on the lawn even though that is our process um i wanted to say also in response to you you know the uh important issue that council member briggs uh brought up um i uh support well i strongly support this uh zoning change i've been um you know really uh uh vocal about that for quite some time now um i i also support an overlay uh on the uh on the property to keep it as a restaurant but only if and here's the but you know but only if um that's something uh that the applicant supports too i don't want to impose something and the applicant that they don't want so i leave that to the applicant uh to uh to decide because it's their choice and the reason is to um you know to to safeguard uh that that historic location which has been a restaurant uh serving southeast denton since uh segregation days um where it was the only place where uh black people in denton could eat um and uh you know they've been through so much as you've shown and as far as um misrecognition through through zoning whatever you want to call it um and have have still remained a restaurant even though um for so long the city didn't recognize them as such uh i see you know the um uh the you know uh possibility of gentrification of this area and i i do think you know for that reason to protect this this historic location to safeguard against gentrification to me it seems an overlay would be the best help me understand what you just said in the sense of i thought i heard you say that you would like an overlay uh or you support an overlay that restricts it to the current use which is the restaurant but that doesn't allow for all these other uses that may be something that is incompatible with the neighbor like multifamily or some of those other uses but then you said but only if the applicant agrees with that is that is that what i'm understanding yeah okay all right thank you um okay uh could you go back to the the land use map again please sure that that's the zoning did you refer to as well that's it yeah okay so that's the zoning map so that's correct the red the this is this is existing right this is proposed or requested and the red that's to the left of it is what is that that's nrmu but what is that what's the use there um i i know that the to the south was a gas station or something to the effect but it no longer exists it's currently vacant and then to the uh to the north um i don't know the exact use but i believe it has some commercial use to it so could you then pull up again i'm sorry the the uses that are allowed under the nrmu sure or do you have them i have it here sure is it just that so this is residential so you can see that um multifamily would be permitted with a specific use permit so i stand corrected multifamily would be permitted with a specific use permit looking at commercial uses you're looking at bed and breakfast there are others the drive-through facility would be permitted with a specific use permit you've got a i'm sorry could you could you flip the page back i was looking at the wrong table could you go back to the resident the first page sure yeah i was looking at okay so the permitted is agriculture dwelling above business live work units and then an sup is multifamily and then attached so dormitory with an sup fraternity or sorority home with an sup groups homes with an sup okay all right if you go to the hotel by right correct drive-through facility sup okay and the l the l14 limitations i don't need to go into those but there's some type of limitation the uh the score footage maximum i believe is is either 5 000 or 10 000 okay 10 000 square feet okay yeah so i want to go back to council member briggs's question to you if you'll pull up the zoning map again so of all those uses listed staff is okay with a hotel being there any one of those uses that were available you would you would support that we have um sorry let go there yeah hello wow look at that um we we were looking at this as a larger area um not just particular this site but if we if we were looking at this area um no there would be um the area basically the area okay south of the drainage channel skinner sort of that little yeah this bounded by those roads and the okay and the fred moore now okay be honest you know hotel a 65 foot hotel probably would not be something but i mean considering that this is neighborhood mixed use uh we we were um we're okay with the other uses and and the the other dimensional standards that would go with the nrmu okay all right uh council member melzer yeah i just want to say i think that's a very sensible suggestion i think that that's really what's intended is to permit the restaurant that's there to be a restaurant you know without opening up like a whole can of worms that we didn't anticipate oh no no i i don't disagree with that but um i think what i heard was and and it's okay i'm not questioning the the statement but um there was the comment there was the suggestion of an overlay but then if uh if the applicant didn't want the overlay then that sounds like that would be withdrawn yeah okay so it's really yeah so i'm speaking in support of just the idea of uh of excluding the uses other than restaurant within an nrmu although i uh i don't know if the applicant's actually here and they'll be able to speak to that okay all right any other questions for staff all right i have opened the public hearing and so is the applicant here if if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin uh okay sorry sorry miss bradley i didn't see your card i apologize my name is tammy bradley and i reside at 729 alexander okay uh council member armature would you like to pose your question i mean you'd you'd yes um no i'll say that for uh or i'll let you say what you had to say just kind of introduce your um your whole however you wanted to address us for me the question of the overlay is a uh kind of small point that would come at the end oh so yeah unless you want unless or okay okay how about this i will say this could you please sorry it's been a long day um could you uh could you please tell us about the history of of clara's kitchen and kind of present uh present to us um uh your uh story and then at the end if you feel like it you don't have to decide just now um uh you know if if you know whether or not you'd prefer uh an overlay or not and there are arguments for or against you don't have to do again you don't have to decide on that um and please and i'm going to say and i'll just say this we have no chance to talk to talk about it but um i'm i mean when i say however you the applicant whatever you the applicant wants goes so um i'm you know at your service okay thank you i do want to start off with um stating uh reading a letter from martin luther king it states for years now i have heard the word wait it rings in the ear of every negro with piercing familiarity this weight has almost meant never we must come to see with one of our distinguished jurists that just as too long delayed is just as denied with that the history of 511 robertson is the history of denton's african american community after quaker town this area it starts in the 1930s it was recognized way after by denton but the actual location started in the 1930s after denton's thriving middle class quaker town community an african american business district was displaced by a kkk influenced a city government and forced to pick up the pieces and rebuild the other side of the tracks this exodus which gained while dentonites a lovely park deprived black dentonites not only of their homes but also of their businesses including restaurants cafes as described on denton history dot net the damage of the black community was long lasting by talking with a lot of elderly and a lot of people in southeast denton this is something that needs to be brought back this is something that has been longing to be brought back to southeast denton because it was taken away when it should have been there in the beginning 511 robertson was part of a slow rebuilding as late as 2019 that property has yet to be recognized by the city of denton for what it is now and has always been since segregation times when it was most when it was most accounts the only restaurant in town black folks were allowed to patronize it so denton southeast denton the whole denton county had one restaurant to go to and that was at 511 robertson it wasn't just denton it was the entire denton county so to have that to be the only place to go to yes it's a it means a lot to everyone not just southeast dent it means a lot to everyone so to keep it there and keep it open as a restaurant to be able to you know give a give a home feeling to have somewhere where you can go to and be able to bring your kids and like my grandparents used to come here you may be you'll be able to bring your kids here one day this it has history a lot of history it was never physically burnt down but was instead held back by the obstacles of segregation in discriminatory zoning for decades this pattern and practices of discriminatory zoning consistently refused to recognize the family restaurant for what it is and still is labeling it instead as a residence with catering condemned to operate illegally as an open secret like a prohibition error speak easy or brothel when it's always been a restaurant sorry oh you're good being the owner of clara's kitchen i tammy bradley believe the time of waiting for justice and recognition is over i started a petition to plead for the co and zoning change with the co-owner of which is manuel gooden and received over 550 community online signatures and actual signatures in the location in support of the zone zoning justice we're seeking today is for clara's kitchen at five eleven robertson to say the wait is over it's been too long and now the wait is over but yes we have pulled it up in research to all the way back into the 1930s where this was a restaurant we have actually talked with quite a few people who the stools that are in the location are the actual stools that was there from the beginning so are we asking you all to vote for this to be zoned as commercial to where it can be a restaurant yes we are good okay councilmember briggs i believe has a question thank you for that story and we it's a horrible past that we have here and councilmember briggs could you get a little closer to the mic i'm sorry yes yes thank you um i'm saying it's a horrible past that we have here in our city and um my questions earlier weren't about your restaurant in the zoning it was it was more about the the surrounding area and the compatibility which is what we do for every item that comes up to to council and so from what i can hear from your passion and your story is that there's no intention of selling this property that this property is going to remain a restaurant and by all accounts seems to be five eleven robertson should be have a historical marker or or something i mean it's it's very historical and meaningful to our city and to the community um so i just wanted to to just put that to just say that thank you and to actually speak on that we have actually spoken with roman so after it is zoned commercially should it be um to have it marked as a historical landmark fantastic thank you councilmember milster yeah i was going to suggest that too you're way ahead of us um i'm just curious miss bradley is the building itself more or less intact as it was you know from the 1930s or yes it has some changes but more or less it's still intact from the early beginnings do you mind if i know sure okay i'll ask the question that came up before uh would it be a hindrance to you or a difficulty if the zoning explicitly permitted a restaurant but didn't permit you know all the other commercial uses that would ordinarily go with nrmu right um no it wouldn't but i would say that you never know later on down the line even though it is a restaurant that you may want to have it as a bed and bath but still have the restaurant you know in the the front so with every other location being as an nrmu on that block my question would be to you why wouldn't that location be one as well i mean really just the question is whether these other uh uses are compatible with the neighborhood or not but i don't know the answer all right any other questions any further comments no okay thank you very much appreciate it thank you for your time uh the next speaker is george fairy please good evening again my name is george fairy 2932 stockton street good evening mayor and council um i was asked by tammy whenever i reached out about zoning issue they asked me to come to the planning and zoning meeting which i did and i spoke at so one thing i'll say about this overlay is with the way the ddc is going the dent development code how it will be codified around april we should be weary about if this is already going into nrmu putting an overlay on that would then put an extra restriction on this specific space in this use so i would be weary of putting an overlay on that because then they'd have to come back to you and go through this process again once nrmu is put on here in the dvc thank you councilor barmiter so oh don't so i don't know actually it's more really a question for staff than um than anything else so thank you um so is that so is that true that it that for an overlay so council could not if the app and and by the way it sounds like the point is mute because it sounds like so the the applicant would like the opportunity to um uh you know to be able to say you know expand it in a into a bed and breakfast or whatever other use at some point which in which case i totally support it in and um uh you know withdraw my preference for an overlay because i want what what what the applicant wants for this property but just out of curiosity is that true that the council couldn't um you know do an overlay if it's amended by ordinance friendly amendment yeah if it's amended by ordnances passed require an overlay it can only be amended by another ordinance okay okay yes and that would involve the you know going through the whole the process and fees and all that okay okay okay all right next speaker is jennifer lane jennifer lane 1526 willowwood denton texas i'm very much in support of clara's kitchen and i was happy to be here on the night of the pnz meeting i'm thrilled to hear that the possibility of a historic designation is coming into play because that will really help and it will um loosen the process for them rather than as mr fairy pointed out rather than having to wait rather than have an overlay and then maybe have to come back they will have perhaps a safer um future ahead of them in terms of doing what they like and the owner as well i would like to take a few of my minutes here however to draw your attention to a kind of comparison that led to my my mind just sort of the background of this situation and how this situation came to be and what i consider to have been somewhat of a berating tone regarding the buses in terms of addressing the students i thought that was really unfortunate when really the outcome is a happy one and i also wanted to make sure that you understood that the um when to when the potential of knocking the council from seven to five was in the offing and then we have an absence um that we were looking at uh all sorts of different ways to try to figure out how to avoid the conflict with unt and the wesley center having been used in november as recently as in as in november um this seemed to be a good solution the you know if there is a need for an ada additional approach to their restrooms then of course you know there's a solution to that so that seemed a bit of a faux outrage when the place had been used for a poll in november and then finally i think it's still possible if you guys act quickly to get your city staff together with the board of elections and see if you can't find a suitable space in the precincts affected right by around twu in time for this election on election day if you move quickly i think you could do it in time and add it as an amendment that's my thought and i think this relates to the background of the sarah's kitchen situation because when you when you disenfranchise and you do it over and over and over and over for decades and then get up and berate the very people that you are um you know they're in this situation it just brings comparisons to mind thank you mr raymond raymond redmond do you want us to display that on the camera okay all right yeah if we could have the overhead please thank you good evening uh mayor and members of the council my name is raymond redmond i live at 724 more street in denton this is my grandparents restaurant i grew up here as a kid and i learned the family restaurant business and for the most part it the footprint of the building has remained the same over um the years of growing up here we've accumulated some properties around the building uh we've always had the vision of expanding the property and um as you know the restaurant business as well as other businesses over the years have changed the trends have changed and the small uh restaurant here at the bottom that's the way the look of the building was when my grandparents had it uh the one at the picture at the top was the picture from the 1980s and we've done some remodeling to it to to uh get it modernized and up to date and up to uh code for um health permits for a restaurant and i will tell you that it has been um zoned or not zoned excuse me everything but the zoning for a restaurant commercial restaurant it has um the health department it has the grease trap and the venta hood and the fire suppression and all that cost quite a bit of money uh for a restaurant but the footprint is basically the same as when my grandparents were here and the trends have changed and so we've always wanted or the vision was is to add to the restaurant and make it uh something that would be uh inviting for the community as well as others to come in and embrace um the restaurant that has always been there my father that's in here in the audience his his mom and dad they were the ones that originally started it and i've always wanted to keep it going and get others to um enjoy that particular uh building as well we have a tenant that has not been able to open up and since i've been involved with this building we've always had the opportunity to have it open but here recently i think ever since there's been like a shift in management with the city or what have you they don't know the history of the site and they see the zoning as nr4 that they have been denied and they've not been able to open up and that has been very heartbreaking uh for myself and my family uh not to mention you know the cost involved with not being able to open up you know there's a lot of rolling up your sleeves in a restaurant and so there's probably not very many people that want to do that so we're asking that um the city council go along with the planning zoning and the community to go ahead and zone this nr4 not nr4 but nrmu so they can get the commercial use that uh has always been intended for and uh i just would like to ask that um and just say thank you to all the ones that have come out from the community in support of this and uh my grandparents and those that are not here and um that could have been here or not here just we want the support from the city council to move forward with it and if there's any questions also at the planning and zoning rod had mentioned that there was m mn and his phone it's not but um the the definition of what mn or the future use of where are y'all going to it embodied exactly what my grandparents were wanting to do at that location and that is neighborhood services and that's all i'm asking and we've always had to deal with some type of restriction except when it comes to paying and that's all we're asking it's a fair opportunity just like everyone else to be creative that's what we want with this site is to be creative going forward we're not trying to do anything out of character we live here and we and we want it to be something that everyone can be proud of including myself so we just ask that y'all support it just like planning zoning in the community thank you we have several questions uh mr edmund so council member armature so first i want to say um thank you for speaking uh i i really feel that your grandparents are here with us in the room i feel it and so it's a it's it's it's really an incredible feeling and thank you for speaking to that um i want uh just to just to mention um in uh to to uh back up what you were just saying um about the vision for for clara's as a place that serves the neighborhood in a number of different ways um you know i'm not sure if you're aware that the way i i came um to be aware of clara's kitchen and met uh at the uh tammy and in manual uh was i was uh uh driving a giving a ride uh to a member of the community who is uh unhoused and it was on thanksgiving um and my husband was home cooking and i was just trying to help out in the community and uh he said can you bring me to clara's kitchen and i said where's that and he showed me he had a flyer um and it said free thanksgiving meal and i looked at it and i was like that looks like darthie's where darthie's kitchen used to be well sure enough it is where darthie's kitchen used to be so i brought him there i mean it was like it um it was was really a magical um kind of feeling i'll never forget it there there there were all kinds of people there eating and kids playing and uh it was really a joyous atmosphere and i you know met manuel and tammy right away and i happen to mention oh i'm on city council and uh oh let me tell you about city council let me tell you about our uh permitting troubles that's how i think that was thanks and i'll never forget that day because it was thanksgiving and last year thanksgiving day um anyway so i got that was my first experience um with clara's kitchen was how they served the community um i wanted to add a friendly amendment uh to this motion there's there's no motion that's been made yet so if you yeah okay okay well okay well i will say i will say this then um i will be um requesting that the fees um that uh that have been paid and that whatever fees are forthcoming for the zoning process that they be waived not as a gift because but just for equity's sake to make some sort of reparations you know for uh really modest reparations actually for uh uh all all that that this property has has been through and the time and money lost um because of the miszoning of the past so thank you council member melzer yeah it's late just real quick uh curious you showed vegetable patch do you actually grow vegetables for this restaurant awesome and uh what's the most popular item on the menu i mean that's okay don't struggle i'll have to go try them all all right thanks council member briggs hey so we just met the other night for the first time so pops carter yeah pops carter it's nice to see you again um thank you for speaking and uh coming out and um council member mutzler took my question i saw the garden and um local food production is something that we're advocating for in our city and so i i thought that was pretty interesting to see the picture and wanted to know a bit more are you planning to start the garden and and source directly from from that to your restaurant we did oh yeah i used to run the barbecue mr redmond if you could maybe yeah so we can hear uh broadcast i'm sorry for interrupting just to answer that question um we used to have a barbecue restaurant there in early 2000s and i stopped probably around 2007 um i don't know if y'all probably not here at that time but greg mitchell was the city head building official at the time he gave us a letter that i couldn't find that said that we could continue to allow our commercial use through an sup as long as we kept the property if it you know restaurants you know people get wore out as they run the business so it the leadership or the management comes and goes is ebbs and flows and so in the business and so if we had left it for lease we were able to continue that commercial use but as the city staff has probably changed they don't know that history and so they've become a little bit more harder as far as with the zoning and so that's why the city staff came up with the nrmu to give us that uh commercial use and um also to go back to your question we did use that farm to table kind of concept of in our menu so that's what did you do we did do that council member hudspeth thank you mayor so uh first i want to i want to thank you for your service those that don't know raymond served in the same capacity so i appreciate you uh being on council and all you've done uh i appreciate uh mr redmond as well for what he's done for the community um and i just want to touch on a couple of things uh first to to pick up where you left off i think it is important sunday when i was at church i bumped into the guy that uh used to run dorothy's kitchen which was that same kind of farm to table concept and he spoke glowingly about his relationship with uh mr redmond and asked how he could help in this process and that he intended to reach out so anytime you have a business relationship that leaves that type of impression you know that's noteworthy and it was unprompted he just said hey you know um just want to share some stuff with you so i thought that was uh fantastic and then um i agree i think if you look at the map and just to share some some insight when you look at fredmore school on the south side of robertson it's it's elevated so even if you went in with a 65 story building on the other side it almost lines up to be even just because of the typography of the land and really the they they uh if if uh you're playing monopoly he and his dad have that whole side of the street you'd have to pay them 200 each stop but for that house in the middle so so i think uh there's some synergies there that kind of make it line up to make sense you know when you're talking about future use future growth and and what the neighborhood is going to to look like i think those things are are compelling as well to uh support staff's findings and so and and to that end i want to i want to thank uh staff for their uh diligence in this and i i want to thank you uh mr redmond for your patience as we discussed i mean it's it's it's a tough gig dealing with us up here man it's it's i admire i admire hey this guy here so what you do i admire it's amazing so i i appreciate you hanging in there i i hope um i look forward to this being done and you're getting getting us out of your hair and then you can have that covering to do whatever kind of um you you want to do there i mean it's you've earned that right so thank you i just have a comment um mr redmond i've known a little bit about this issue just sort of on the fringe as i've talked with staff and and i certainly want to thank staff for i know it's been a difficult situation but i know staff has also been really committed to try and figure out how to solve this problem but i think stories are very important and i think the stories between you and mrs bradley as far as the history and just your eloquence here in speaking about the creativity of the site and the legacy of your family for this site um i really appreciate that i think it uh it helps me see um the potentials it helps me get out of my mode of looking at things very myopically uh as far as planning and development and understanding that there's there's people behind this and there's people who want to be creative and help the community just like in some of the things that i do so thank you so much for sharing that and thank you for sharing the history of this because i think it's very impactful and it's something that certainly needs to be known so i really do appreciate it thank you sir you bet okay uh this is a public hearing so anybody else wishing to speak uh come down and uh feel free to come down state your name and address and your time will begin anybody wishing to speak no movement okay we will now close the public hearing council member husbeth move approval council member armator um so i wanted to make a motion sorry to make a friendly amendment um to uh wait motion needs to be seconded first council member armator yeah yeah yeah so um you can second it uh and then you can also ask for a friendly amendment or or somebody else can second and you can ask okay yes i have second well no i second sorry i second it okay and so we have a motion in a second and and i would like to make a friendly amendment uh to that motion uh that the fees uh that have been paid be reimbursed and that whatever future fees for this request and the co get waived as well for the reasons i stated earlier okay council member husbeth you would have to accept that friendly amendment is is that not is it erin is that doable all right i i heard the reasons for waiving the fees and i mean i guess we the fees are for our cost of service of the staff's cost of service and process in the applications to reimburse that staff time typically when you all start waiving fees when you run into the illegal gift prohibition of the texas constitution the the way to to address that in in which has been successful in some court opinions and throughout the state is to come up with a that you're trying to satisfy some great public purpose or public purpose in trying to waive the fees and this is some of our ordinances the in-kind contributions we have takes on that kind of a character and so i i guess if the council was willing to go in that in that direction they'd have to come up with what is the public purpose that the this council is trying to address to support the waiver of fees and it's something that has some findings that this council has to come forward with and and and as support for the record going forward and so i i guess in essence if you're going to go in that direction you'll need to make findings as to what public purpose you are trying to satisfy council member armature oh yeah so i i wanted to state um that uh this issue this is something that i had asked about in advance of staff of the city manager um and so i was wondering if and i understand it's council's decision um but you know rather than trusting my own memory you're wondering if the city manager or or ron would kind of want to talk to speak to your sense of kind of our uh discussion on this on this topic i think the the public purpose that i was willing to talk to the city attorney about is it was clear in the 2014 letter that uh mr redmond provided staff at the time had no authority to provide that kind of um relief to in essence overruling the board of adjustment and you know they have spent they have basically lost you know lost a lot of time and money as a result of what i would consider poor advice at that time with a staff member overruling a board of adjustment i just don't feel like we had that authority which is why i pushed this rezoning and in order to protect their rights moving forward and that was sort of the rationale um if you believe that that's acceptable and and based on that there's a fact that i was unaware of i would find that a sufficient um a sufficient uh finding to support a public purpose to waive the fees and thank you mr city manager and mr city attorney thank you council member husbeth okay so then if we could let's just take the time to nail down a not to exceed or at least a number i i'm not okay with a blank check because that's just not right but i i i respect the i'm happy to to take the friendly amendment it just has to have a not to exceed i mean everything we have has a not to exceed it it's got to be some based in something i think ron can give you that number sure the uh the rezoning requests um costs 900 and then the co application is 90 so 990 would be the amount that uh would be incurred if the zoning were to be passed and a co application were to be submitted yes yes go ahead okay so i would amend my uh motion to move move approval in addition and add to that uh that uh we that we allocate a not to exceed amount of one thousand two hundred dollars to cover fees and uh costs associated with um uh making amends for employees bad direction all right all right uh council member armature that's a little bit more specificity in your than your friendly amendment is that acceptable to you um maybe i i want to have an opportunity to ask the uh uh the the applicant and the property owner uh if that figure uh sounds right to them okay okay yes if somebody um this this isn't part of the public hearing but it's a question that's been posed by council uh to one of the applicants so certainly come down and speak to that um for the zoning the price was 900 but when we applied for the co we actually had to pay 600 because we did actually apply for the co and had to pay the fees and with the inspections and everything else and with the co it came out to be like 600 dollars and is can staff verify that is that correct i'm not familiar with the other cause i just know that the cost for co is 90 dollars and if there were additional uh cost for inspections and other things uh that seems about right yeah so if if um we could just you know factor in you know get get actual concrete proof of what was spent on the co and the inspection and i i think we'd be comfortable recommending the cost of the approval i i would i would not recommend the cost of the inspection simply because that's a fee every business owner in this community has to pay regardless of their financial situation so even even if it was a situation in which they were an ongoing business that fee would have to be paid so certainly the cost of going through the process we can definitely support i fully think that the the staff is could have cleared that up several years ago but i want to be careful about inspection fees and that sort of thing when we don't waive that for any other business the community the costs are going through the process absolutely okay great and that makes sense uh because it's it uh it is something that every restaurant would have to do at any time so that that makes sense thank you very much to staff and the applicant cammy so the amendment that or the renewed motion okay i'm gonna make sure we're procedurally we're sound we had a motion we had a second we had a friendly amendment that was rejected by the movement the movement proffered a new motion where the amendment was to reimburse fees in the amount not to exceed 990 dollars as evidenced by remuneration for a past advice by a city employee that that seemed to be incorrect which created the expenditure of these fees at a later date is that a good summation of that yes yeah if we could make sure that is that a good summation of your is that no i was i was at 1200 but then i don't know what oh i'm sorry you're right you're absolutely right i'm sorry after that yeah so i don't know where we are number wise i want to we're at we're at um i think when you said 1200 you were sort of adding uh the testimony from staff was 900 for the zoning process fee and then 90 dollars for say cofee and then you said 1200 she wanted to get a more clear number to make sure that that would cover it well when we got a testimony from the applicant that it was about 1500 dollars but 600 of that was for inspections the city manager said he's he he struggles with the 600 so it sounds like mr city manager you're saying that the 900 and the 90 is something that you you think is acceptable and reasonable given the the facts a few years back is that my understanding yeah and i think too because i don't have a complete accounting here of all the fees but i think a way that we could handle this is providing staff the authority to rebate back the all costs of going through the co process the the rezoning process and what am i missing ron is it just that's those are the only ones so far giving us the authority to rebate those back would be fine but any health inspections anything like that or something that would be constant for every um business in the community i think we need to be careful there okay so i'm going to put it back in council member of husband's court as far as you you didn't accept the friendly amendment as it was stated so you wanted to modify your motion and that's okay to do yes he would be with he's in essence withdrawing and making a new motion correct okay yes i'll withdraw the previous motion make a new motion i move approval of this item and i add a stipulation that staff have the authority to rebate the cost to the rebate the cost of the applicant of the co cost or rebate the the co cost and the cost of the rezoning process right okay and so we have a motion and i second that okay all right uh so we have a motion and a second anybody else wishing to speak i don't see anybody we've got a couple that are on the queue but they i think are old uh speakers uh do we need to read all right we're going to go ahead and vote on the board based upon the last motion and second and so oh there we go a motion carries six oh uh let's take about a five minute break five ten minute break welcome everybody back to this meeting of the dent city council on march 5th 2019 it is 9 56 p.m we'll get out of here by 10 o'clock uh we our next uh our next meeting is our next presentation is a agenda item c uh hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas approving an alternative environmentally sensitive area plan for approximately 45 acres of land generally located on south side of ryan road thank you mayor members of council uh this item is for as stated in the introduction an alternative environmental sensitive area an alternative e.s.a it's for a property uh shown here on this slide that's outlined in yellow it's about approximately 45 acres the intent is to develop this area with single-family residential dwelling units um and to in order to do that there are a number of e.s.a environmental sensitive areas one being a riparian stream buffer that the applicant is proposing to cross with a residential street proposed residential street um this being an environmental sensitive area i'm gonna ask christy upton uh to make the rest of the presentation and i'll be back to wrap it up with the uh the notification and recommendations yeah i guess do do we know uh okay all right because i know she's environmentally sensitive areas are very important to her so i just wanted to make sure that uh she hears that but we're gonna we're not stop the presentation we're gonna keep moving yeah great bye oh okay okay all right okay thank you christy upton uh environmental compliance coordinator and i will be presenting the rest of this technical information about this uh environmentally sensitive area so to start with uh there was a field assessment um with the project number isa 1812 and with that it was found that there was an unnamed tributary it's an ephemeral stream and there's a riparian buffer that um covers the ephemeral stream traverses the upper northwest corner and that would be the greenish area in this section it's a hundred foot riparian buffer and it was rated in fair condition using the city of dentons rapid stream assessment tool and then there's a second riparian buffer that was found it's long was called fletcher branch tributary number four it's an intermittent stream that bisects that northern part of the property the more bluish one and it's a hundred foot riparian buffer as well and it was also rated in fair condition quick question intermittent stream means i uh i have some slides on that okay all right no no you're good just it's gonna i'm sorry yeah if there's related i have some at the end if uh ron you included those okay and and i can get to yeah no just go through your presentation if you can that's fine thank you very much um also with that there was crest timbers upland habitat and prior to the esa field assessment the city estimated that there was about 10.9 acres of the upland habitat on this property and the assessment found that some of the upland habitat was no longer no longer existed and so it was removed but in other areas it was found to meet that criteria and overall increased the upland habitat to 20.6 acres and then much of that riparian buffer also meets the criteria of upland habitat so there's some overlap in that habitat the proposed encroachment is this roadway improvement to connect the northern and the southern tracks and to install the utilities along that roadway improvement and to remove about a hundred foot long segment of the riparian buffer so it would be a hundred foot by a hundred foot square of the riparian buffer that would be removed in that area an assessment of the trees found that there were 72 72 trees that would be impacted with that count and the average dbh provided here in this table and that most of the understory is this invasive species chinese privet and i can tell you from experience that stuff is just crazy i mean it's just difficult so with the recent adoption a renewal of the ordinance in the sub chapter 17 there was some guidance that was provided for criteria for approval and that was to create and expand or improve the existing habitat to improve habitat that does not exist and sorry i got a little hung up on that sorry in order to create an improvement in the environment and maintain habitat continuity to maximize public access and utilization to preserve the protected area in perpetuity and to create high quality development the applicant feels that they have met all of these criteria and there's more information about that in the staff analysis that was provided to you prior to this meeting the mitigation strategy is to preserve the crossland uh crest timbers upland habitat and the tree canopy beyond the minimum of city of dentin requirements and the uh specifically the upland habitat minimum preservation requirement was 10.25 acres and the applicant is proposing to preserve 11.5 acres and the tree canopy preservation requirements currently is 6.16 acres and they are proposing to preserve 11.7 acres the second mitigation strategy is to remove that chinese privet and a another invasive species called calorie pear from the hundred foot riparian buffer along the fletcher branch tributary number four and they are proposing to use mechanical and chemical removal methods and the strategy will improve the chances for the understory that they're in the next slide i'll show you what they're proposing to put in place and for that to thrive and to create a native adaptive understory they will also be installing temporary erosion control measures including a rock check dam at the crossing during the construction process and to use erosion control waddles along the stream banks to prevent erosion during the during the re-establishment of the native understory they will be revegetating the area clear to the invasive species with a mix of native and adaptive trees and shrubs and to use a seed mix called riparian restoration seed mix to provide that protective ground cover council member riggs you're asking if you want to wait to have the presentation you want to ask it now it's up it's up to you it didn't matter okay so on the on the map i'll just go ahead and ask it um so it looks like there's the how the houses are are plotted out um and you may have mentioned this when i was in the back so this is the alternative esa but does that are we talking about tree preservation at the same time and so the rest of the trees that we see on the property are going to be gone and this is the and the um are are we are these two separate the understory and i mean sorry the tree preservation for the whole lot for the whole site i don't believe it's separated um i i do believe there's a lot of the cross timbers that would be combined but i'll let ron answer that question more calesman breaks yes uh just just for clarity um there's esa requirements which will be met and there will also be tree canopy uh coverage will also be met and that will be taking into consideration the entire site so this doesn't really show the 45 acres but there are areas that will be preserved and those will contain uh tree canopy coverage that will meet the the development code requirements okay just wanted to understand to follow up on that there was a slide that showed um the requirements of the of the code and that they're improving it by 1.5 acres or two five acres right there so this this is the tree canopy here that's not the same tree canopy you're talking about with the tree code this is just the tree canopy for the mitigation strategy or is that the sort of melding of the tree code and the esa i think i think it's this includes the tree canopy coverage for for the entire site right so the entire site is 45 acres so that's that's the requirement okay all right um okay does that help you understand that it does but it was it's presented as as two different so thank you for the clarification that that is all-inclusive that's not just the alternative isa or isa okay yeah okay so the long-term management and monitoring of this alt isa is to have a three-year monitoring period where the developer will replace any dead material he'll repair any rotas land and remove any trash along the site and there will be an annual report to environmental services for any activities that occurred during that year and their inspection reports and their mitigation for anything that they find that of concern and then there will be a final acceptance after three years environmental services will inspect for conformance with the alternative isa plan and issue that final acceptance and our recommendation is to approve the alt isa with the following conditions that 11.5 acres of the existing cross timbers upperland habitat and 11.7 acres of the tree canopy will be preserved encroachment into the riparian buffer esa will be limited 10 000 square feet invasive species within the fletcher branch tributary number four riparian buffer esa specifically the chinese privet and calorie pair will be removed and they will revegetate according to the native plants provided in table three and the riparian restoration seed mix there will be annual reporting to provide the cumulative work during that time period and that the plants installed as part of the proposed native flora and revegetation will be maintained during that three-year period and any plants that are removed destroyed or die will be replaced councilman breaks on one of the slides you said um or it it listed that there would be the chemical methods would be used for removal um do we approve those chemicals or what because some of those things are very harmful to the animals and to the vegetation that is left so do we have a list of chemicals that we approve or do they just get to to throw out whatever they want i'll let deborah veera answer that question good evening council devra via environmental services at this point we don't have a list of permitted herbicides uh when handling um chinese privet the best method and more effective is actually burning however this is an urbanized area so we can now use that method the second method that seems to be more effective is the mechanical they are keeping the chemical option as a if the mechanical doesn't work then to be able to go back and spray all those applications have to be applied by a certified person who control the drift and all that we don't have a less in the city of dentin for herbicides to be used however the applicant have been proposed to before they go that option to actually come back to to staff and then to explore what the options are and what the preferred option would be so a chemical hasn't been named no no no at this point okay thank you and my my question is along those lines um so let me let me go back to if you go back a couple slides just so i understand this sounds crazy so i understand what we're talking about so i can understand what we're talking about go back one more let's see uh no the recommendations where we get into the recommendations or what we're wanting for approval right there so what i'm thinking what we're approving or what's being asked to be approved here is there's a request to be able to take out 10 000 square feet of a riparian buffer e.s.a. on whatever the name of that tributary was number four number four so that's so then in number three what we're saying is that if we're going to allow you to take that out the way you're going to mitigate that is you're going to go along the boundary of that tributary number four and remove all the privet do we know what the length is of that thing do we know what the length is it quarter mile the total acreage is 3.4 of this yes what we're looking at the green the green area um and so then they'll replant native plants and things uh i've had a lot of experience with privet privet is difficult uh i didn't know that we could burn it so maybe i'll burn mine but um just stay outside the urbanized areas well i'm outside the urbanized areas i am i'll get a i'll get a burn permit uh but my question is this um because it is difficult to kill and with this being a is this the one that's the intermediate tributary or is this the one that has yes water in it all the time this is intermediate yes yes which means it doesn't have flow through it correct it's just during rainfall it's a drainage well the i think that we have it's time for us to show those slides okay so the ephemeral one is the one who was on the northwest corner and that's not the one that's the subject of correct mitigation the one is the intermittent which is the second and pretty much is uh has flown water during certain times of the year because that's provided by the uh water table but during dry seasons that dries out and then uh the rainfall it just supports that flow so my my concern question is that if chemicals being used i think we need to have a policy where we identify acceptable and non-acceptable chemicals because to use chemicals when it's in the wet season or the the rain or the water can that can get into the watershed so i don't know how do they what policies do we have that sort of mitigate that or protect against what we can do is in for the application within the riparian buffer we can limit to aquatic grade uh herbicides okay so it is more attuned with the habitat and the propensity to be uh washed out in that area so we can definitely put those conditions uh when um when the applicant comes back if they find out that chemical treatment is needed so uh that option is is available so we could we could put that option in the approval if the applicant was okay with that correct okay um and then so the three-year period is if somehow they clear it they plant all their plants and like everybody knows that stuff can grow back so we have this three-year time frame where we can ensure that okay you go back clear out what you didn't get so there's a constant kind of monitoring evaluation of that to where because you wouldn't want it to return back to the way it was i mean that's sounds like what your goal is is you're really trying to get that thing cleared up you're using this also as a way to get that invasive privet out of there because it it'll just take over yeah and and what we are doing is is a combination of approaches we are not only removing the privet and stopping there we are actually re-vegetating with with native hoping that that would give a better chance for the native to get established and then have a better chance so we are using a multi-approach in this particular proposal okay so has this uh this has already been approved by i guess pnz or platting i mean so this is the final stage of this correct development is to get this result okay all right okay um council member briggs i have a few more questions about just trying to figure out um the the tree canopy and the preservation and i know that that was probably a different item and on the plat but i'm trying to wrap my head around all the trees that were there and then what's going to be left so um where did ron go okay there is a slide that might kind of help with that okay well well there was a little chart that said so many acres and then that so you said that was part of the the tree preservation so we have a current ordinance and it said they exceeded that so by what percentage did they exceed that preservation requirement so my understanding is the the total requirements for preservation is a little bit over the 12.32 acres it's double that they're they're they're able to reduce that by 50 percent yes maybe yeah we'll get into the public hearing so we'll hear from the applicant that may be able to answer these questions for you okay okay and so then when he comes up maybe he can help me answer because um if the they did the e.s.a. count towards that preservation and then hence we're eating into that preservation by reducing the e.s.a. that's all i want to know okay all right any other questions for staff and okay uh this is it thank you very much oh and then this is a public hearing so i'm going to call the applicant uh thomas fletcher if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin good evening mayor and council my name is thomas fletcher with kimley horn 5750 genesis court frisco texas 75034 i am the engineer for the landowner and the applicant um got a quick presentation for you we're here tonight on the alternate e.s.a. application that we've submitted just a little bit of site information is 44.973 acres located at the southeast corner of ryan road in duffy's way it's bounded on the west by lake force park uh and the east by the forest meadow subdivision the current zoning is in r6 which allows for single family development of six units per acre um just based on the total area that would allow for up to 269 units our proposed development is 140 units which is 3.11 units per acre as staff has gone through their presentation there's riparian stream buffer and upland habitat located on the site here's an aerial image i've added some labels that kind of shows you in reference to the surrounding properties what's around us we have lexington lexington park to the southeast forest meadow due east teasley trails to the northeast ridgemont to our north lake force park to the west and good samaritan village to the west as well um so what we're requesting our request is so that we can cross fletcher's branch tributary number four the slide that's shown above does show the riparian buffer that was determined based on field assessment when we did the initial field assessment the city's gis map did not have the area in the northwest as riparian buffer but when we went out and did the field assessment we did determine that it does constitute and has all the characteristics of a riparian stream buffer so we added that to the delineation this is the blow up that shows what we're proposing for the impact so basically we're asking to impact 100 foot by 100 foot area so that we can do a residential stream crossing at the planning and zoning commission hearing the question came up was how did we come up with that amount of impact so basically the city's code requires a 55 foot right away for residential street when we're looking at and doing development we need to provide a franchise utility easement for the for gas electric communications that's typically an eight to ten foot easement outside the right of way because this is a stream crossing it will have box culverts that have head walls in those take up areas well so that's kind of where we came up with and how we determine what that minimum impact would be so that we could do our development so through the process we did the esa assessment we did a pre-development meeting with the city and we looked at it we determined that an alternate esa would in fact be required so we ended up submitting our preliminary plat in our alternate esa application concurrently then we started the process we're talking with city staff who wanted to get neighborhood citizen involvement so we did have two neighborhood meetings the first neighborhood meeting was on december 18th the second neighborhood meeting was on january 31st in between the meetings we had a meeting with city staff to discuss the comments and concerns that came up during the neighborhood meeting neighborhood meeting the first neighborhood meeting what we did is we sent out the invitation to all residents located within 500 feet of the subject tract the city staff provided us the email address for all within the 200 required notification and the 500 foot courtesy notification we held the meeting at the emily faller library central library there were we provided a sign-in we also had a an esa fact sheet so what we did is prior to the meeting we put together what is an esa what are the different types of esa why are we asking for an alternate esa approval and how it impacts the property and benefits the development we provided different layouts one layout that we can do by right another layout that shows the request we had 26 people sign a sign in we felt like there was probably more like 50 people there it seemed like there were a lot more people there than what had signed in we did after it was a real informal presentation where it was q a where we went through the request and and gave the citizens the opportunity to interact and ask questions we did have sign-up sheets there that had the ability for the residents to sign either in support or opposition we had 22 that signed in support two that signed in opposition so here is the different concept plans and kind of to get to your question the the exhibit c and exhibit d this was from the initial meeting exhibit d on the right hand side that can be developed by right without doing an alternate esa because it preserves all the riparian stream buffer so as you can see there's there's a there's about 13 acres total of open space there's just under 12 acres total of tree preservation so the way the code currently reads and allows is that the canopy and the the upland habitat are not necessarily separated you have the two different requirements so the total tree preservation for the sites just under 12 acres and the overall open space for the site is is roughly is just over 35 percent for the site and with the approval if if we are approved the the exhibit c with some modifications that i'll show on another slide that came out of the neighborhood meeting is what would be approved so you have a you have a and we we laid this out strategically because if you look down in the southwest corner of the site where we have the the north south road that's one of the areas of the site where it's very there's not it's sparse there's not many trees so we we created that open space down in the southeast where the upland habitat was currently located to try and take advantage of you know where we had large masses of trees for preservation and then we've got the the central tree preservation and the preservation in the northwest so the other thing that the crossing would allow is it it makes the the open space more interactive which is one of the goals of the of the preservation and going through and doing an alternate e.s.a. is are you are you giving the residents the opportunity to interact with the open space and the e.s.a. so the second neighborhood meeting was really just a it was a follow-up after the meeting with city staff what came out of the initial neighborhood meeting from forest meadows was concerned about traffic and and if the e.s.a. was not approved the primary access to the southern portion of the tract would then be through forest meadows forest meadows already has concerns about the amount of cut through traffic or the traffic on their streets currently so they did not they were in favor of the alternate e.s.a. they actually put together a petition of support they had 131 signatures carol ackerman who was the hoa president for forest meadows presented that at the pnz hearing and and i'm not sure if you all were presented a copy of that or not but there were 131 signatures in support of the of the request so there were only seven members that are residents that came out to the second neighborhood meeting those members were in support of our proposal this layout shows what we had discussed with city staff and what would be proposed with approval or or be constructed we removed the connection of hollister lane so that we would eliminate the cross traffic between the two developments so the primary access would be ryan road and creekdale creekdale is a collector so it is designed for the residential traffic ryan road is a secondary arterial and it's in the process of being designed and moved forward with construction so what this what this plan does is it provides a little bit additional open space and tree preservation where hollister lane would have gone through so that hollister lane would not look like an incomplete street that was just stubbed it currently has a sign that says street to be extended in the future we would as part of our project go in there and remove the street stub replace that with with vegetation and trees so the overall open space and tree preservation would increase with this option as well in in addition to that there would be pedestrian connectivity from forest meadows over to the lake forest park through this development so the total request for the impact is 0.2 acres the total riparian stream buffer is 3.4 acres so we're requesting to impact six percent of that so for that impact we're saying that we'll go in and and make a concerted effort to remove all the chinese privet calorie pair and then go back with with native plantings the reason that the herbicide is an option is because in discussing this with staff we want to try and have really a toolbox that allows for the highest chance of success so what we didn't want to do is remove an option to help with that success i know what we've talked about is using water soluble chemicals and such for that for that treatment so we're we are open to that okay that that was uh that was the time so if you if you've got some things if you could just wrap it up real quick and i'm sure we'll have some questions this was my last slide i mean it just basically went over the mitigation it's been a collaborative effort with staff it's been a collaborative effort with the neighborhood associations the adjacent neighborhood association and again um i think the the number of signatures from the forest meadows neighborhood shows that you know they are in support of this and and would like to see the development move forward as proposed with the alternate e.s.a. council member armature i thought i saw you did you remove your request to speak okay all right council member briggs sorry to be taking up all the questioning here um so i'm glad to hear you say that water soluble um or safe chemical would be considered if at all i would really not like for any chemical to be used if possible so that we can protect our watershed um it's really important especially um to protect the the whole reason for the e.s.a. is for it to be um intact and remain healthy and so if we start putting chemicals in there that can harm it we're not doing any good and we're fine with just limiting it to mechanical methods just knowing that that may impact the effectiveness of the removal so i know i know the goal is to get in remove as much as you can or remove it all do as as good as a job as you can get in and replant with the native species and try and help give them the opportunity to kind of take over and flourish and grow can you um just talk about the the plat of the housing um positions when there's a road and when there's not um so what i like about exhibit d um besides that i know that the people that are in favor of the e.s.a. don't want cars going through their neighborhood and i mean that's a lot of people don't want that um but i like that the whole upland habitat and the e.s.a. is connected there's not something sectioned off where um there's not access to it so it makes it one large area so if you look at if you look at exhibit c there is a 50 foot um buffer that's between the residents and the forest meadow residents uh that runs along there currently there's an existing gas access easement so there's not so it's it's limited on vegetation there's vegetation on the edges which would be preserved so and i know you had mentioned you like the connectivity of d between the the northern areas but with exhibit c you would have connectivity to the south eastern area the area just to the northeast that's within forest meadows then you have this 50 foot buffer all the way up because now you don't have holister that's cutting across that and then now you have also that entire area to the north that's also connected over to to to forest meadows so um you know really the the request here is when we go through and we do a residential development one of the things that builders have to look at is being able to draw people in and the hard thing is is if your neighborhood has access from another well-developed or established neighborhood how do you get those residents excited to come and look at the potential to buy and and create and you know kind of plant their roots in this development when you would have to you would have your marketing or your you know your your main home up off ryan but then you're having to divert them through forest meadow the other thing with that is forest meadow was constructed under the old design guidelines so it has 50 foot right of ways and 28 foot back-to-back streets so it has a narrower street section which doesn't have as much roadway capacity and that was really where the concern from forest meadow came in their residents is that you get these narrow streets you get people parking on the streets and they've already feel like that you know there's a congestion problem there in that if we connected to their neighborhood as primary access all we're going to do is exacerbate the problem that they already feel and have that answer your question yeah yeah i'm just looking at the the top the top section there that's just a little little piece and then it has the two houses and then the i mean i would really like to live in those two houses surrounded by forest on either side that would be really great property but um for the the connection of the the habitat and i guess if it was approved as our esa then um then it's fine we're not concerned about sectioning or blocking off or is that is that a road or does it connect to the other side is that what you're saying there's another you're talking about this right here above above that little section yeah up here okay yeah that that's going to be open space that's not going to be impacted is not part of the alternative esa plan so it is uh is planned to be preserved okay but it's it is it's connected to another larger area is what i'm saying yes well if you see the edge of this picture right here this is a driveway to the um weakly field park right here at that park and then that area continues all that is uh esa as well uh the other thing that most of the time people see uh the potential is uh cutting off uh species to move from point a to point b a culvert will be available okay so many many in even in urban settings species tend to follow those paths and use uh culverts to be able to continue their way and their movement up and down that area so from uh from a wildlife movement we are not that concerned because the connection will be there okay over the culvert okay thank you thanks member armature so a question for the applicant and apologies mayor i know i keep pressing the button to speak and then something new comes up and i take it away um but now so i just want to make sure that i that i understand um uh so it's it sounds like and correct me if i'm wrong so the the main um uh motivation for this is to uh attract to to have a way to attract potential uh home buyers future homeowners to this property so they can see it and potentially so they can visit and see it and potentially that's certainly part of the the uh the request is that um when we go through and we look at and talk to home builders and right now toll brothers is the builder that's got the property uh under contract to do the do the development when when they're looking at it and they're doing their assessment they look at they look at marketing they look at access they look at how the development is going to to to be designed and constructed and and marketed and sold and having that access across that creek to where it's a it feels like a single community and it's not bisected by the creek is important to not only them but to the other builders that we talked to prior to them putting the project under contract it just creates a unified feel for the neighborhood the another thing to point out is the fletcher's branch tributary number four it was crossed here with forest meadows and it was crossed here with duffy's way so it's not it has been crossed previously and and i guess my point of connectivity to the esa this right this this location here if you follow the mouse that's a 50 foot wide buffer there that creates all this open space connectivity through here so we are we are you know kind of separating this and this is separated a little bit but we're providing cross access along here and then over to this area here as well and so so to follow up um on that so say so theoretically so say that um uh that that this say this were not a possibility right and and and the residents just were kind of living there and they had the existing roads right to use the existing roads um what would be the can you speak to what the disadvantages would be to the residents who not in terms of you know marketing and kind of attracting people to see it and giving the feel of connectivity but what would be the practical disadvantages for the people who would actually be living there so the practical disadvantages would be that instead of accessing this southern track directly from ryan road they would then have to come through forest meadows and then come across holister so now you've got a majority of your traffic coming down a residential roadway that's already servicing this development so a residential roadway typically has capacity for about 800 to a thousand trips per day so a residential home generates about 10 trips per day so you're talking about a roadway starts to get to its capacity when you have 80 to 100 homes on it so now what you've got is you've got roadways that were designed to be 28 feet in width that are now having to serve an additional number of homes because now they're having to come across holister before they go north to get to ryan road so i would say the disadvantage would be the the level of service that their internal roads would provide to not only this development but their impact to the forest meadow development yeah and so the residents so to follow up on that so the residents who were um the neighborhood residents who were concerned about increased traffic going into this these meetings they were they were concerned it sounds it sounds like so not about the traffic of the new uh or maybe they had one one concern going in but it changed going out but so the concern was not it's about so much about the traffic of the new uh pathway being created but about this the overload on roxbury lane on roxbury right so their concern is that roxbury is already overloaded in their opinion and that if we have direct connection from holister lane that we're going to increase that traffic load on roxbury which is going to create more of an issue within their development so that was that was their primary concern okay thank you so i'm trying to understand what we just spent about 15 minutes talking about um you're saying that development exhibit c is what your is your your primary desire correct which is not connecting to the neighborhood adjacent to the what is that east correct so is that what the discussions i mean i was trying to follow the discussion are y'all are council members saying they want that connection i would think that i mean i don't think i would want that connection just for the neighborhood to the east and also for my own neighborhood so i wasn't i wasn't saying that i want one thing or the other i was just trying to figure out just to have confirmed for me what was going on here and those questions were answered okay so yes do you want me to comment you were sure no go ahead you're asking me a question um so my my line of questioning was about the connectivity of the habitat gotcha okay yeah um so and not the placement yeah okay well the road is right the road going across no i am well aware of all the um i watched the planning and zoning meeting all the the residents who don't want traffic coming through their neighborhood and and i don't blame them but i just wanted to make sure that we weren't creating another issue by allowing the alternative that's all okay the picture of all the green and i see the tributary up there the sort of you see it up there to the if you take the mouse and yeah all that green how much of that is the privet and how much of that that is the tree because i've looked at aerials and i mean privet can grow 20 feet tall 15 feet tall so most of the privet on the site visit is probably no more than okay three feet got you two to three feet in height so the majority of that is the large oak stands the upland habitat okay um good right so it's not it's it's no i appreciate that because i know that it can be a little deceiving in an aerial to see that right that vegetation yeah no and that that i mean those there are nice large oak trees that will be protected and that will remain great customer breaks you got a question yeah just one last question because it looks like the the road um if we do approve this alternate then the the road to holister lane all of a sudden becomes green but it says it's a trail so is this a natural open trail or is it or is it going to be like coming to what what is that why so right now they've got the street stub we will go in and saw cut out remove that concrete we'll go back with sod where their existing sidewalk is we're gonna we're gonna bring a concrete trail from their development across ours so what we would do is instead of going through and just doing a clearing we would build a concrete accessible trail so that that way they have pedestrian access all the way over to lake force park because one of the things that they said was important to them is they like the idea of pedestrian walkability and access but they they also don't want the the vehicular traffic so we were trying to accommodate removing the vehicular traffic but still providing the pedestrian accessibility do you know how many do you know how many trees or what area that's going to cover that will be cleared to make that path so that i mean for a six-foot trail generally you're only clearing a 10-foot path in in our calculations that that what would have been right of way that's not considered in that 11.7 acre preservation so any tree located within that area where the extension would have occurred that is preserved that's actually above and beyond the the preservation measure that we that we had called for oh yeah yeah i know i know i know but it's just it's on this one it's concrete and on this one it's green but it's not well it's just symbolic because it's a conceptual plan i mean but it's still going to be what it would be it'd be a six-foot wide concrete trail so where that would have been a 55-foot right of way now we're limiting that to six-foot concrete trail gotcha okay thank you any more questions for the applicant singing thank you appreciate thank you uh we have a card bob sheldon you wish to speak state your name and address and your time will begin you know the drill bob sheldon 2925 country club road then uh i just wanted to introduce myself to the council i do own the property uh and i'm the applicant and uh just to answer any questions uh as thomas pointed out we did have a couple of homeowner or neighborhood meetings out there uh which the results of the last neighborhood meeting resulted in a petition of 131 signatures against uh having that connection into the other subdivision uh and we have been working with staff with environmental with everybody known the man over the last year to bring us to fruition and we would certainly appreciate your vote in favor of the e.s.a. so question there was a comment made about um that it would be okay to limit the remediation of the privet by mechanical means only and not chemical are you okay with that or there was that comment there was a comment there was a question about the chemical uh removal in the toolbox for the privet in other words there's going to be mechanical means and then chemicals uh possibly but then there was a comment from yes is mr fletcher yes mr fletcher that the mechanical that you might be willing to just limit it to mechanical means to remove it and not use the chemical is are you okay with that or i was certainly okay without using chemicals anymore than we just absolutely have to out there i don't i don't want to use the chemicals if we can do something different we'll do it okay and also um are are y'all saying that if the e.s.a. is approved that exhibit c is the is the site plan or for letterback better like that plenary plan has been approved at p and z subject to the approval of the okay so there wouldn't be any problem if we approve the e.s.a. with a condition that the the connection to is that hollister but that's not made that that that would not be made is that an okay condition the connection to hollister yeah they're away yeah well we're taking it yeah you're taking away but if we we can we can put that as a condition on the approval that the connection to hollister will not be there that that's removed and it won't be a connection no that's yeah that's what we're requesting really okay and the approved or the preliminary plat that was conditionally approved at p and z all the backup information shows that that connection has been removed okay all right okay all right fantastic okay council member riggs i just have one more question for staff okay any more questions for the speaker sena thank you very much mr shell i appreciate it thank you for staying and being patient council member briggs yeah so can you help me understand so the um the intermediate or the creek that that we're putting the road on is the one that has holds the water or is it next to it or does it run across from it and then the culverts will go yeah the the right here this is where the stream is this is where the connection is going to be so the the stream actually continues to the west and what the culvert is going to do is just imagine huge pipes where the road is going to build on top of it that allows the continuation of the water flowing through actually um flexure creek right here so it is just like any other culvert in the in town where allows the continuation of the water that prevents the flooding and and all those um drainage consideration okay but any any fish or anything can move under under that we talked about during high water conditions fish will be able to to to go through i just keep in mind that a stream that intermittent will be a period of time that it will be dry and macron vertebrates still live in dry conditions and when the water comes back they are kind of resurfaced so staff is not concerned about that the other thing is for wildlife small mammals to move from point a to point b that culvert will provide that connection as well okay all right thank you again for answering my questions okay all right council member hospice oh wait no i'm gonna close the public hearing hold on this is a public hearing anybody else wishing to speak please come down and state your name and address your time will begin anybody wishing to speak we'll close the public hearing council member husbeth i move approval with staff's notes and and limit limiting the removal of privet to manual removal only okay all right and that that i'm assuming in that i'm assuming staff's notes based on the applicant capture that what is it that street that connection yes is is is uh showing that it's it's uh removed all right do you need the conditions back yes please yeah yeah yeah there were several conditions so you're saying that's what you're saying yes yeah and i'm assuming those those uh those notes in the the version of the plat captures that road okay that's moving the conditions do not include that road because it was included in the preliminary plot right well the conditions meaning that you're saying the road was not included in the preliminary plat it was okay and ms is not reflected in the staff recommendations all right the connecting to hollister so okay i'm a little confused yeah because i thought i thought the preliminary plat did not contain the connection to hollister if we could get the that's what i'm trying to say is that that disconnection that that is um what would be proposed with this alternative isa uh it's shown on the preliminary plat thus it's not part of this recommendation okay all right got you okay all right so go ahead i'm sorry do i need to do it all over again or we please yeah so that we can well so i can understand yes yes go ahead please okay so um i'm gonna move approval cons accepting staff's recommendations and confirming the plat excludes hollister is that right hollister road being connected right okay all right and then the mechanical oh yes thank you and that the the privet be removed by mechanical means only no chemicals to be used okay all right okay we have a motion on the floor is there a second councilmember breaks i will second um because there will not be chemicals and i'm going to acknowledge the neighbor's concerns because i did hear them speak during the pnz meeting councilmemorandum yes so i i just wanted to say um i'm going to be voting in support of this it was uh uh it's taken me a while to get over it i still won't never feel comfortable you know with the idea of losing so many trees that's a lot of trees um but the combination it's combination of several factors the concerns of the residents about the traffic um and also you know the really kudos to staff that really impressive um job that that staff has done to um to to work with you know and and the applicant and cooperating and going through you know all that i know that the time that it takes um uh to to recreate if not identically what was lost um but you know this is um there's clearly uh a real effort made to create a thriving um natural habitat i would prefer for those trees to stay and i got to you know had neighbors the neighbor had not come out to say that this traffic issue was a big concern for that you know them i would have probably been voting against this one thing i really like here um that i just want to say that it's in the the staff uh staff conditions um is this condition that uh any that of the uh plants that are um uh put in place the the new uh plant life that any plants that are removed destroyed or die within this three-year period are required to be replaced by the current property owner developer i i really like that uh and i you know i hope that we see um you know more of that coming forward in in in future recommendations on how to deal with these kind of uh situations it you know it always um there's always a kind of bittersweet irony for me when we you know in an area that's named after forest the forest meadows area and we're taking away forests you know i feel similarly about razor ranch which used to be a ranch and we've still got the name and but in this case there are so you know there are going to be trees um uh but but there is that loss and so i i just want to acknowledge um that i'm sad about the loss of these trees but i will be voting yes all right we have a motion and a second with the uh stipulated conditions in the motion and seconded let's vote on the board please uh motion carries five to one all right uh we will go to concluding items do we have concluding yeah concluding items councilmember briggs so just a few quick ones um i'm going to talk about i'm going to talk about poles again um electric poles on there's another section on the loop where we have upgraded our line back a little bit to the tall metal poles but the wooden electric poles still remain on the side of the street and i think they're just all dme electric um they're not stub poles um it's near the jack in the box and then further down um on the loop loop 288 yeah but heading back towards the mall area so we made that upgrade and we set back a little bit into the um to the land the and so i just i don't if they're activated the the larger ones the the new lines why we're not taking down the the old ones i'm just trying to clean our city up a little bit with all these um extra things so that's one and then we heard about two bills today we heard about sb 1156 and hb 375 if we could just have a little brief report on on both of those in our friday report and i do know that you know it might be time sensitive if we do want to see those come back for for any kind of resolution of approval so just a quick report and then um finally my i just got a message that the city of denton was rated or listed as number 72 in the 2019 top 100 best places um in livability.com and uh i think that's pretty fantastic we have a live score of 610 and um you know that's without even the 10 minute park but i i would like people to go to livability.com and uh look at 72 and and uh and check out our our city it's it's pretty cool all the things that they they say here so that's it. All right council member hudson. Thank you i was able to jump in line because i got cleared out um so a few things i would ask mr city manager that we schedule um yearly training for city council on the aed devices i thought maybe around election time we could get trained up how to do you know utilize those so we're oftentimes in rec centers in the libraries etc so i'd really like to learn how those function uh if that would ever be needed and i think that would be a good thing for us as council persons to kind of learn about uh and then uh annually and then two um i could we look into destination markers for the rail trail and by that i mean if someone's downtown and they they hop on a rail trail let's say at the main transit center i think it would be kind of neat to say louisville you know 30 miles this way you know that that sort of thing because i don't know that everyone knows how far i just think that's really a fantastic trail and i don't know that everyone knows that you can walk from here across lake louisville bridge you know on that trail so i just think kind of some of those neat markers to say this many miles of this or that you know periodically along the trail would be kind of neat aesthetically and and maybe entice some other people to try to explore more and then lastly uh peter bill in the mornings i want to say about 7 45 ish i don't know what time the shift comes on but bonnie bright exit backs up quite a bit and so i'd like to see us maybe look at putting a police officer there to control traffic to allow some of those cars to go through faster or look at changing the timing of the signal to synchronize with that with that that shift change especially in the morning i've seen it back up up on up to the ramp for 35 quite a bit thank you councilmember armature oh yeah i just wanted to uh just to say real quickly um in response to council member briggs that uh i believe two that two uh people on council have already uh put forward the i forget the number but the um the the child uh protection act that mr stove spoke about a senate bill something something um so there's um a good support for uh for for for having a um uh you know staff report on that and having this kind of staff looked into look into the feasibility of kind of getting something on that in in time for us to at least consider putting that forward for a work session during this legislative session um and i wanted to second the uh request for a staff report uh on the uh the bill uh that would require um polling locations at campuses of i believe it's what 10,000 or more um that i think that you know clearly there's uh a lot of public interest in that so whether that that bill ends up passing or not um i i uh second that thanks councilman melzer thanks uh interestingly you mentioned the the rail trail uh in in doing the the research for the history panels that i learned about uh the fact that during segregation times for kind of all the wrong reasons uh it was a very uh particularly prairie street was a thriving um area of african-american you know owned businesses uh and i i would like to ask that at some point the preservation officer maybe in consultation with economic development uh provide an isr on whether that neighborhood would and the city would benefit or not from some kind of a historic district or designation and what might be contributing structures um uh second uh this is just like kind of a housekeeping item the with the council work session prioritization survey my uh my intention with it was that anything we haven't met on yet that's still on the list should be in each new survey of members i'm just as i think back i'm just not sure that that was true that everything kind of got recycled through just because prioritization changes and uh and last uh i'd like to uh suggest that clara's kitchen be added to the rotation for council meals okay council member breaks just a comment to follow up uh council member hudspeth's comment about the rails to trails and um it hasn't really been announced yet but we've been working on an event opening day or our rails to trails day is april 13th and we're going to do event um looking at doing event with um lewisville all the cities that are connected to it and providing um some information because you're right i didn't even know and so it it'll be um outreach and an education so that all the cities can use that and go back and forth um 13th but but it's i i probably spoke too soon but it's it's coming we'll have more information yeah yeah forthcoming okay any others all right we'll stand adjourned at 11 three.