and begin so if you can call you your respective meetings to order okay uh today is tuesday august
first 2023 it is 11.09 a.m and we have a forum so i'll call the city council portion of the meeting
order and with the forum present on the planning and zoning commission i will call our meetings
okay so we only have one thing on our agenda today uh just to set the staff will do it as
well but it's a gather input from all parties then we will uh the council will make a recommendation
but want to make sure we have a good conversation around that decisions so with that first items
item a id 231193 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding draft scenarios
for the northeast end area plan thank you mayor tina fergens i'm the deputy director of development
services so again as the mayor mentioned the goal for today is to have a collective discussion
amongst the commission and the steering committee and council but ultimately we do need to receive
policy direction from city council since they requested us to be able to do this project and
they customarily provide policy direction for the city um ultimately our goal coming out of the
meeting today is to receive direction regarding one of the two scenarios that is being presented
and hence where we need your feedback we do request that um so shy ruse with hdr is on the
consultant team that the city has retained to assist us with this project so i do ask that the
group um allow her to get through the various sections of her presentation we've got some breaks
programmed in to allow for some opportunities for question and clarification but really our goal is
to get to the proposed scenarios um so that we can have the discussion there and receive that
feedback if we start to go down a rabbit trail on a particular item let's make note of what that is
we can always come back at the end of the meeting time permitting and with that uh mayor chair ellis
if you do not have any questions of our team i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to shy
yeah i would like predicate though and so if it's a question that you can't note without a question
and to the presenter by all means otherwise just note your question we'll come back to it but if
it's something that is absolutely critical that hey i can't formulate my question and else i know
that please get my attention let's address those but other than that we're going to try to it just
be impossible the questions will take over so all right thank you yes thank you so
thank you tina and um good morning everyone and again thank you all so much for your time today
we'll move on to our slide here i'd especially like to thank the council appointed 15 members
steering committee that has been instrumental in guiding the project team to get the project to
this stage so jumping to the project overview part the background part here the northeast
denton area plan is a result of the 2040 comprehensive plan recommendation to study this area in further
detail in april of 2022 the city council directed staff to proceed with preparation of a community
community-based vision for the northeast denton area the key purpose of this area plan was to
respond effectively and efficiently to the developments that are being proposed in this
area and the resulting concerns raised by the community related to land use traffic open space
and the lack of environmental protection in the area so this area is bounded by clear creek to the
east us 380 to the south loop 288 and fm 428 to the west and to the north by e sherman or the future
the future outer loop so the one one thing to know about this area though is out of this
8500 acre study area only about 47 percent is in the city limits and the majority which is over 53
percent is in the outside and not outside the city's jurisdiction so the biggest challenge for any
planning effort in this area is that the city can only influence development on 47 percent of this
study area unless the property owners choose to annex into the city so this plan shows in the
slides in the next you'll see that this plan shows recommendations for future land use
in the etj area which is in the county sphere of influence only so that the city will be prepared
in case these property owners or developers choose to annex into the city in the future
therefore when you see land use or policy ideas that are outside city limits please keep in mind
that at this time the city cannot ensure that these ideas or proposed uses will happen so
in addition to addressing the development the purpose of this plan is also to ensure an inclusive
community dialogue to develop a collective vision for the future of the area to identify areas of
change or areas of preservation and to develop some ideas for future improvements and to make
recommendations about the capital improvements to meet this collective vision of the community
here's a quick look at the timeline for the planning process we spent january through april
in the area collecting data researching and engaging the community we presented our findings
it doesn't point my apologies we presented these findings to the steering committee in may
and also worked with the steering committee to finalize a draft of the vision statement
at this meeting and we spent the summer developing two scenarios their options
and both of which reflect the vision statement once we have direction from you on which scenario
to use we will incorporate your feedback into our recommendations and then spend the next three
months getting community input in various settings like an open house online and public public
hearings the anticipated adoption date for this plan is november of 2023 so as mentioned we engaged
the community for four months the goal was to involve and to understand the vision the desires
the challenges of all stakeholders of the northeast area the current residents as well as the
stakeholders like business owners property owners that don't reside in the area visitors workforce
and even future residents of this area with this in mind we started with stakeholder interviews with
25 people then for the community at large we conducted two in-person visioning workshops
and an online survey 265 people attended the in-person workshop 44 people took the online
survey we then conducted a strategic foresight workshop with 39 participants that ranged across
all age groups professional backgrounds and interests in northeast denton and so on
a detailed description of the community engagement events and the results are posted online on
discuss denton under the project link so if the participants total participants 201 provided their
addresses we've mapped these here for you of these 201 overall 89 were city residents 112 were county
residents out of those 201 participants 140 people lived in the northeast denton area plan
study area and of those part of our participants living in the study area 43 live within the city
limits and 97 live in the county so in summary in the stakeholder interviews we heard that elected
officials wanted this plan to manage expectations residents wanted to keep the zoning as is meaning
five acre minimum lots preserve green space preserve small town rural environment and
developers wanted some higher density with in to allow the preservation of open space or to be
allowed to build according to market demand everyone agreed that respecting and preserving
the natural environment of northeast denton is important here we see what some of the summary of
what we the themes that we saw coming out of the visioning workshop and these themes are preserving
natural field preserving green spaces maintaining rural area limiting construction keeping the area
affordable enhancing outdoor activities and making the area walkable we also held the strategic
foresight workshop where we asked the participants to consider future trends and imagine potential
scenarios for the year 2050 so during the workshop again the consensus was on preserving and
celebrating the natural environment the majority asked for no more apartments but not all stakeholders
were against apartments in fact a diversity of housing and live work environment but in a rural
setting were popular among the majority of the participants and the scenarios we we took the
vision statement generated at this workshop and conducted an online voting we received 123 responses
of these 69 responses voted for the vision statement developed by the friends of northeast
denton we presented this to the steering committee and the committee modified some of the words and
phrases what you see here is the steering committee recommendation i won't read the whole
statement but as you can see we've highlighted the central themes of this vision statement
environmental preservation rural character conservation development and an area that
is valued and enjoyed by all of dentin so keeping these main themes in mind we started our existing
conditions analysis with natural systems so the purpose of the map to the left shows you the
existing floodplain on the map to the right you can see that there are creeks and channels in the
area that are not fema designated however these still function like the land in the floodplain
in our environmentally fragile areas that should be cared for similar to the land designated in
the floodplain as we've seen in the northeast denton area itself any development whether it's
agriculture or five acre lots or higher density it all requires repairing restoring preservation
and or enhancement strategies if we want to preserve a natural environment or natural systems
so we studied these five types of environmentally sensitive areas designated by the city of denton
and the existing ecosystems to understand areas needing repair and restoration due to the impacts
of existing development and lack of maintenance and the areas needing preservation
and the areas where enhanced interventions could mitigate the impacts of future developments
we wanted to determine the strategies that would be needed depending upon the type of development
so we then also analyze conditions that may impact the future of this area as you can see
on this map growth is moving not just towards dentin but also towards northeast dentin specifically
the thoroughfare plan here shows northeast dentin study area bounded on all sides by major existing
or proposed regional thoroughfares making it easily accessible to the rest of the region
with two major universities a lively downtown eclectic music and art scene and a unique vibe
denton's popularity as a place to live is only going to increase and thereby bring more development
to the northeast dentin area large parcel developments large parcels of undeveloped land
under single ownership in the study area will be instrumental in shaping the future of this area
but as you can see on this map only only properties labeled one five six and seven
are in the city limits with property labeled five being city owned parkland all the rest of the large
properties are in the etj and outside city's ability to influence any future development
on this land unless these property owners or developers choose to annex into the city in the
future a summary of the developable land analysis shows 3,300 acres or 45 percent of the land area
is protected flood zone and parkland but there is still 3,000 acres or 30 percent of the study area
that is undeveloped surrounded by well-connected existing future transportation network directly
in the path of development especially coming west along us 380 from mckinney to aubrey to denton
there is also 24 percent of developed land that can always be redeveloped and again all of this
the city can only influence development on about 47 percent of this area
next we'll uh i'm sorry yeah next we looked at the demographics that will influence the future
development the largest population as you can see on this slide especially in the study area
is gen gen z which is people aged between eight six and 25 in the northeast denton study area
57 population is under the age of 40 and citywide over 60 of the population is under the age of 40
we also looked at workforce in the area as you can see 1361 people come into this area daily
and that is before counting the employment that will be created from the new warehouse and
industrial developments along mingle road these workers are also people who might look
to move to northeast denton to be closer to their jobs these are some of the factors to consider
address and balance alongside the community input to choose the future scenario for the northeast
denton for the project team to develop further so before we continue um we'll open it up for any
questions up until this point if you all have um okay question of clarification to make sure you
yeah barony i'm sorry so shea sorry vicki mcgovern i'm a part of the steering committee
i'm part of the etj so shea you had mentioned that the city has no um say if you will in anything
in the etj and i just want to clarify the question is there not a collaboration at all between the
county and the city that's that's point one number two i will say that i recently as being part of
the etj replatted my land of seven acres and i was oversaw seen if you will by the city so there is
some level of influence because i had to go through the city to get that replat done so i just want
for the broader spectrum to know that there is some level and i'd like clarity on the collaboration
of that sure and that's a that's a question we'll come back to certainly thank you uh
i've noted it staff's noted it we go councilman watts yeah just just a couple of data questions
um i'll try to go backwards so that i remember on the slide that shows the developable area
i think it was slide 24 to 30 percent and all that we can go back to that i just want to understand
from my own it's got the little high graph i'm sorry i'm trying to go back circle on it
right there uh is that just the acreage within the city limit boundaries of the
plan is that the total plan i'm sorry could you repeat that sure are the acreage uh numbers
represented on this slide based upon the 8500 acres of the plan or the just the city 8500 acres
sir do you know what the breakdown is for the city land that's in the plan for that slide
not off the top of my head but i can definitely calculate it by the end sure uh there's just a
couple more mayor sorry um let's see on the floodplain on the slide that shows the floodplain
and the acreage associated with it you said there's so many acres in the floodplain
and now okay just so that i understand any acreage calculations moving forward in the
presentation are based upon the 8500 there's nothing that says hey here's what's in the city
floodplain here's what's in the etj or county floodplain is that okay so then on the floodplain so
if i could get that as well that breakdown if we could on what floodplain is in the city and what
designated floodplain by fema and so then total when you say the total number of acres in the
floodplain is that representing the acreage that's designated by fema plus the acreage you say
quote unquote functions as a floodplain no only the acreage designated by fema is calculated in the
floodplain okay all right uh let's see i think that i've got other questions but they're more
substantive questions or not okay so then my understanding is the the acreage of the
largest landowners is in the city portion where those four landowners yes one five six one five
six seven and that totaled up 1538 acres when you add those up and then you're saying how much of the
plan is in the city is was it four thousand or 3800 or 47 percent of 8500 approximately here or
there okay all right thank you mayor appreciate it yeah and i'm sorry i can't see you that's that
yeah i just got also equal kind of clarification on data so when you said the average home is low
three hundreds are those new homes in the area or those existing homes in the area
i heard the number new cost cost on homes is low three hundreds
yeah i'm just asking this because i can't find a home of under three hundred and ninety thousand
dollars in the area anyway in the area in that area so i'm just kind of qualifying when we talk
about affordability on homes and you say low 300 i'm not finding anything under 390 in that area
that's new right and we're talking about new development oh okay that was from stakeholder
interviews my apologies so in the stakeholder interviews that is what the developers had
presented is what the starter home is at okay i did they qualify where they were looking at
i was told in denton a starter home is considered three hundred thousand is what the ideal is that
not really narrowed down and then secondly um i think there's some just just disconnect
between how many people voted for the options other than the seven proposed vision statements
um if i i recall correctly there were 189 other votes aside from the seven proposed vision states
i just want to kind of clarify because you said that there were 70 or whatever it was
that were specifically copy and pasted from what we proposed but i understand there was a significant
other amount that modified that i just want to make sure that we're aware that it was substantially
larger amount of people that voted for anything other than the seven i will need to go back and
double check how many because my data that i did look at for this presentation i had 123 total
people that responded to it so i will double check where the 189 numbers come from and i'll get back
to you that's okay okay go right ahead yes at the end that that i've noted it but i don't
i don't know that there's an answer we can give you that would then inform other questions it's
just a question generally uh for the for the group but in summary and i've noted all of them and
noticed i didn't answer any of them because uh we're going to let her finish but i i hope
that the information provided helps people jot down their questions for the end of presentation
that's my goal okay so looking at uh both scenarios that are being presented today
meet the vision statement they both prioritize um environmental preservation they both honor the
rural character of the area and both recommend conservation development that protects open
space and greenways and both strive to establish northeast denton as a special area for all of
denton to enjoy so without further ado the two scenarios are business as usual and balancing act
the business as usual scenario is based on just the community desire without accounting for
the development the balancing act scenario is based on community desire while accounting for
the future developments we developed a set of character areas and roadway cross sections that
would be compatible with the vision statement as well as serve the needs of the proposed and
anticipated types of future developments as again as i mentioned previously an important point to
keep in mind is that while we show land uses and roadway recommendations in the etj outside the
city limits this is just aspirational and in case property owners wish to annex otherwise the city
has no jurisdiction to ensure that these land uses and densities are in fact followed i'll describe
the character areas and then come back so you can relate the colors on the map to the character
areas better so the green on the maps is meant for the conservation or the natural areas for
environmental protection as well as for recreation areas and then the yellow is rural residential
two to five acre lots the orange is residential transition an area about three to five dwelling
units per acre overall density but with some neighborhood retail and large public open spaces
to transition the high intensity uses into the rural residential and then the dark lime which
you'll see at the intersection of mingo and collins road is a rural village center this area is
envisioned as a mix of residential and commercial uses in one or two story buildings with a rural
village feel main main street style setting and this land use we want to let you know we've shown
it in this area but it could be used as a transition between residential and residential transition
in other areas as appropriate these three character areas gateway town center and
industrial were developed to respond to some of the existing and anticipated future developments
based on regional transportation improvements in the area the purpose of these character areas
is to provide development guidelines to ensure preservation and enhancement of natural areas
while accommodating the grocery stores and retail the community wanted as you can see in this town
center image at the bottom providing higher density on a smaller land area can allow for
preservation of larger open spaces so coming back to the scenarios first business as usual
under business as usual most of the study area is designated as rural residential this is regardless
of the future plans for expansion of 428 or into a six lane thoroughfare and the construction of
outer loop north along sherman in in addition to the rural residential business as usual provides
for residential transition and industrial on the southern edges to us 380 and loop 288 next looking
at the balancing act the balancing act scenario considers market impact of these regional thoroughfares
yeah the second to the right is the balancing act and this one considers in addition to the
regional thoroughfares it does consider current and future younger demographics in the study area
and citywide so north of bottom circle you can see on the map here and adjacent to the outer loop and
fm 428 these areas have been designated for gateway and town center uses residential transition is
proposed just south of these higher intensity uses with rural residential and conservation areas to
protect the natural environment in this scenario the area between fm 428 loop 288 and ferrish road
the orange area to the west of sorry the rural residential this has been designated as residential
transition in this scenario this reflects some of the existing developments in this area and
it also is a means to balance the development and preservation by allowing for more density but with
larger public open spaces we hope that this will both protect the rural residential and the natural
environment in the to the east in addition this also keeps the cost of infrastructure cost of new
infrastructure lower by allowing for new development to happen where the existing infrastructure is
the next few slides are just examples to help everyone envision what residential transition
areas and the rural residential could look like and how these character areas relate to the vision
statement so the red shows you where this site plan has been considered or some ideas of this
site plan if you stand in on Collins there's a little directional map up there showing where
the person standing and the view looking out towards rural residential
again there's a little map showing where the view is looking towards the park you can see these are
all one or two story buildings this one is standing at the edge looking towards the industrial
and then on this one it's up on the north where on one side you're looking out into rural residential
seeing some of the residential transition and then looking into
your more mixed use type from one location so going forward we assume densities for each scenario
and calculated rough estimates of the traffic counts these are definitely not traffic impact
analysis level trip generation but have only been developed to give us an idea about the cross
section street cross sections that would be needed for both people and cars to navigate the area
safely in the future the one thing i'd like to point out in this is that while the land use
shown in the etj south of heartley field is the same in both scenarios if you can see the 3460
and on the other it is 27750 so this is because in the balancing act scenario we counted existing
lots and houses and then assume market densities similar to the current development applications
that the city's been receiving from the developers for the rest of the area so we added the two and
the thought here was that while the city can deny these applications in the city limits in the etj
the developers can just move these proposals to the county area as the demand for housing in this
area increases so using these densities and traffic counts we develop the roadway infrastructure for
each scenario a key difference from the existing thoroughfare plan that we'd shown earlier to this
one is that the proposed east west primary arterial has been downgraded to a secondary arterial
and it does not go past the green belt anymore also while we kept the classification names the
secondary arterial commercial collector these names are the same as they exist in the current
city thoroughfare plan we are proposing cross sections that will be more compatible with the
vision for the area so here's some examples of the cross section for secondary arterial which is
rural section section of heartley field road between collins road and purist these are two
options you can use them in that section then here is a secondary arterial cross section for the
residential transition area which would be west of heartley field so you can see we're trying to
make sure that the cross sections in this area do match the vision and the character of the area
so we also studied so and we we performed an environmental and fiscal impact for both the
scenarios for environmental impact we considered land in both city limits and outside the city
limits but for fiscal impact we only considered land within the city limits in business as usual
scenario we assume needing restoration and preservation strategies one of the main
environmental mitigation challenges in this scenario is the large land set of sites that
will be needed to offset the lower density development sprawl which becomes difficult
with privately owned properties and open space for for balancing act we assumed repair and enhance
strategies in addition to the restoration and preservation strategies while in this scenario
targeted development areas allow for more publicly accessible land to incorporate the restoration and
preservation lack of certainty about specific development configurations makes it difficult
to plan improvements without major public investment so in summary both scenarios have their own
challenges in implementing the environmental strategies and they both have similar costs
the balancing scenario cost estimates are 25 to 50 million higher however the balancing act scenario
also includes strategies for repair and enhancement of the natural systems and it also allows for
considerable cost burden to be shifted from public sector to private sector we use city's fiscal
impact model to conduct a high level analysis of property but as mentioned earlier we only applied
this model to within the city limits to each of the scenario we use this model to calculate the
revenues and the expenditures that is to get the net city fiscal impact for each of the scenarios
over 40 years let's start with business
yeah let's start with business as usual scenario in this scenario we used assumptions that you see on
the slide here the rural residential has five acre lots and residential transition is a blend
of small lots we assume that the areas south of hardly feel are similar on both the
business as usual and the balancing act scenario and this is because in this scenario it's likely
that the county areas may develop high with higher densities and the traffic generated from
this higher development will leave the etj and travel onto the city roads when planning for
infrastructure costs the city will want to be prepared to build infrastructure to accommodate
these higher traffic counts in the balancing act scenario we use densities you see here on the slide
for for example was modeled with development clustered together in open spaces
i am obviously reading from the wrong thing so let me go back to the slide here my apologies
so we did look at both the we had some assumptions for these business as usual as well as the
balancing act and the only difference is in the business as usual south of heartley field we
considered it exactly the same as we did for the balancing act and like i said earlier the reason
for this was that we don't know how it will develop and the city will want to be prepared in case
there is a higher density development that goes in there that you all can't control because that
traffic will come on to your city streets in addition the way we looked at the assumptions
was for business as usual we had it laid out as the entire area divided into lots five acre lots
and basically what that did was it passed on the maintenance and restoration of natural environment
the cost of it to the private property owner in our balancing act we we assumed that the development
would occur on a smaller pocket with higher amount of land publicly accessible land at which time the
costs of environmental protection or maintenance went away or the private property owner was
relieved of that cost so looking at the two estimates what we got was for business as usual
your net impact is 2.3 billion and for balancing act it's 6.3 billion the additional open space you
get for business as usual is 442 acres and for balancing act is 627 acres so summarizing this
the difference is that the main difference is that we basically have a fiscal impact on the
city's general fund with the balancing act scenario results in four billion dollars more in revenue
and almost 200 acres more in publicly available open space the cost estimates for mitigating
environmental impacts at about 25 to 50 million less in business as usual than in the balancing
act scenario with most of the restoration left to individual property owners but the main difference
in these scenarios is that the balancing act scenario prepares the city for future infrastructure
needs and also allows for sharing of infrastructure and environmental mitigation costs with private
development so these are quick summary takeaways now we'd like to ask you all for direction on
today the direction on one of these two scenarios business as usual or the balancing act yes sir
yeah um that concludes your presentation okay great do you have the answers to those other
questions before we dig in so questions yeah the questions one was around uh collaboration with
county i know we have to answer that because i already asked it and so it's on the sheet if
someone wants to just read it with respect to how the city and county collaborate on
so in terms of the city and county collaboration i'll be uh i don't know which number you're
referring to because i just received this but normally we do have good strong partnership
in collaboration with denton county that's why we have stephen belknap here that is
serving on the steering committee as well so and the bottom line is platting authority in our
etj area etj one we had an interlocal agreement with denton county in etj one the city provides
platting etj two the county provides platting so in denton county someone that does not live in a
corporate limit will plat their property and have to follow subdivision regulations it does not
address the number of buildings the size of buildings the use of buildings or the mass of
buildings and the only regulation then with the city is an etj one and it relates to the platting
authority and sorry may i just add so when we said that city has no jurisdiction or cannot influence
development we're talking about land use authority so you can subdivide a property
you have to subdivide it well the city has to say yes as long as all the utilities are provided to
the property but the city cannot say no to land use right bear with me let me get through your
first rate uh and then um land amount of land in the city in the plan did you have a chance to look
at that so that was councilmember watts's question you can come back to it if you had we'll have to
follow up with that we're calculating and the same within the floodplain don't calculate got it okay
and then um how many people voted that you you have you still calculating looking at that right
123 versus 189 yeah i just need to go back to the okay yeah no problem just wanted to touch on those
okay uh councilmember melton thank you very much for your indulgence yeah thank you um i want to
track a little bit of the sequence of events and and add a very important piece
uh attended a okay i want to track a little bit of the sequence of events and add a very important
piece i attended some of the community input and i think a very telling exercise that's reflected
in everything here was the the visual one where people placed red dots by images of various types
of development and and uh by and large if the rectangle was predominantly green correct me
if i'm wrong that's where the red dots were anything vertical construction pavement not
uh and that's uh that's reflected in the vision statement that came out from the steering committee
i think we're talking about early may uh that talks about prioritizing environmental preservation
and healthy recreation honoring rural character protecting open space and greenways
and establishing northeast denton is a special place for all of denton to enjoy
now we also heard that the city only influences 40 some odd percent because it's etj
but as i get to this last event i ask you well who does influence in the city and out of the city
i'm going to answer that question in late may after our meetings after these two uh visions were kind
of crafted governor greg abbott signs legislation authorizing a billion dollar fund to buy land for
new parks and expand existing ones now you might say well how would would they notice our little
part of the world even though we're one of the fastest growing parts of texas well tell you
who the author of the bill and the resolution was in the house who's tan parker tan parker from
flower mound uh so when i look at the the bipartisan acknowledgement that texas is
under parked when i look at the fact that our population is growing and our parks per park
acreage per capita is shrinking and the fact that this area has a variety of ecosystems
it has already planned accessibility and that this direction could provide a fair return
to landowners and achieve the preservation goals that the neighborhood so clearly requires
uh i i ask that that be uh investigated seriously as an option i've mentioned it to staff and
the response has been interesting we'll monitor with all due respect i don't think that's how
you get it done i think it requires putting together a proposal and a plan that speaks to
the ecosystems the accessibility the population growth of the unique features and the fact that
it could be adjacent to clear creek reminds me of how big ben's got a state park adjacent to a big
national park you could have a big contiguous area so uh submitted for your consideration
all right um so i'm gonna thank you appreciate it we only have an hour if you want to hear from
them speaking then then we'll have to be uh a little more efficient so thank you very much
i appreciate your support for the comments um that being said any anyone ask a question hadn't asked
question first time around let's get those uh this goes suzy and then uh did i see your hand
councillor member okay and then mayor pro tem susie and the mayor i was curious if the fiscal
analysis included i was curious if the fiscal analysis included um anything beyond when we
actually replace the infrastructure because 40 is a little around the time we might start to replace
or a little before we start to replace infrastructure i know we've got um the next bond that's going to
come up is going to be road heavy a lot of that is road replacement reconstruction that kind of
thing so i'm curious if we're accounting for that when we're comparing the option a option b the
replacement part sorry i got a big voice anyway i work first i am a senior commons with uh in north
texas area the ticket model that we were using which is the one that is developed by okay which
is the one that it has been developing is being used by the city of den i understand does take
into account some of the um replacement costs especially what you're doing with roads especially
since uh this particular physical impact model went out 40 years so yes that's something i did
notice a lot of fiscal impact models go from about 20 to 30 but this one does go out and did take
into account um the replacement of particular types of roads thank you all um so i'm going to
follow up with that with another a couple of economic questions for the model which i was
unclear on um if we're it seems like the the correct me if i'm wrong that the the fiscal
impact was just the region just the 8500 acres less than 8500 acres the fiscal impact was
only that property that's in city limits because outside there's no tax revenue coming in so the
39.95 or 4000 acres that's about 4000 yes sir um okay so um when we're doing this sort of analysis
we have to take into account i think um the a couple of environmental factors and and economic
factors that i'm not sure i want to ask about um when in general a lot of the factors uh for
economics both in the region and in the detton region writ large will be determined by uh vmt
vehicle miles traveled and so if if you're looking at the the number of vehicle miles traveled it'll
it'll impact the environmental costs and the roadway installation costs and the roadway
replacement costs and so i i'm curious if you have an assessment on the sort of level of vmt
that changes between the two models and if you consider um the city as a whole uh because that
that's a destination point for the city it's envisioned as a destination point for the city
um and so what are the what are the roadway impacts and both in terms of installation
replacement and then when we're doing stormwater runoff lower levels of miles and different types
of road installation will and the vmt's on those different types of roads say etj roads where they
might be bar ditch or something else will will impact environmental costs and remediation costs
so i know that was a lot but it it all circles around what are the vmt's and what are the
associated costs environmental and economic of the vmt's so i was gonna try to answer the
environmental side so with the environmental costs we did consider what you've just talked about the
vehicle miles travel the impact of it and doing that whole stormwater infrastructure that will
be needed and now i'll let um on the physical impact portion um i guess it was separated from
the the environmental and they did a separate portion to put that into the overall analysis
so with the physical impact yes the um not specifically vmt but essentially the road
ways were uh impacted as far as the lane miles and so the for the various scenarios that went on
we adjusted the lane miles which then adjusted that and took into account the vmt and the road
in the traffic and it also not only is just the lane miles that are increased but the type of road
whether it's going to be asphalt or concrete so those two combinations had an impact on that
particular uh model used by the city in order to uh bring in a lot of the issues that you're
talking about as far as vmt as far as traffic and those are portions that go into that particular
impact model okay first time questions anyone else before we go back around seeing none okay
um i think travis you had as succinctly as possible and then um vicki and councilor walsh yeah i guess
i got two questions so the first one is kind of relating to uh mr brian back here said um so
when we talk about this movement of a vehicle vehicles and stuff we has anybody studied the
impact that this is going to have on the inner city of denton in terms of we've got all these
allocated money that's going to be going to this area granted i as a as a neighbor of northeast
denton when i go wanting the village type feel i go into downtown right because that's exactly
what it is when i talk to people about this the question becomes why even go downtown anymore
if there's a village place right there so has anybody studied the impact of not infilling
downtown but rather moving that stuff that makes downtown unique outward toward us what impact
is that going to have on downtown that's my first question but i'll wait again well i'll take i'll
take staff so it's outside it's a question about outside the area right uh and so i'll however you
want to address that as population grows so too will be those those centers that we need to have
so we reduce traffic by virtue of having different city centers if you will um where those where those
people can congregate or go do what it is that they're doing so i i think it's i think it's
somewhat in the equation shy and we are collaborating with the consultant who's doing your downtown
redevelopment plan anyways so some of these ideas we're gonna make sure that we're not recommending
something in one part of your city that the other part of the city is going to get damaged by so we
are collaborating and downtown will have a very distinct special vibe it definitely will not be
the rural village center it will probably end up being more vibrant and more intense okay shy can
you please put up slide 31 do i need the mic yes so i just want to this is a clarifying comment
no sorry it was one of the other ones that showed the um the higher density the orange and the yellow
but you had the numbers listed in the traffic analysis so i want to just point out south first
off heartley field road is a county maintained road except for at the very end down here that's
number one number two this is existing i'm sorry this is existing neighborhood in here anything
west of ferris is existing neighborhood i happen to be as i mentioned i'm on a was on a seven acre
parcel and i replatted and my restrictions because we were on septic and a well means one house per
two acres all of the this neighborhood anything west of ferris is all under those restrictions
so when you talk about raising the count west of ferris to 13 000 trips by the way calculated at
the rates that the city has come up with that's seven thousand additional homes outside of the
existing neighborhoods so unless you're going to mow those down i don't know how we're fitting
seven thousand homes and in this little area but no there are restrictions because we're on septics
and wells so may i answer that one sir so what we've done is in business as usual we actually
didn't take into account the houses that are existing in that area south of heartley we assumed
five acres only five acres one lot per five acres kind of as you can see that's the existing homes
plus one lot for five acres that is all we did in the balancing act we actually counted the homes
that were already there looked at the undeveloped property for example there is reed property that
is completely vacant undeveloped on the other side of cooper but there is a empty property so what we
did was we took into account we counted those lots that are existing the homes that are existing
then we counted the acreage that was blank and then we put the density we're talking about on
that acreage so that's together that's what we got but you're putting a ton of houses on a small
the reeds area is not that big okay so i'm assuming they're they're mapped it's a standard
equation you can by all means so if you can write down or jot down a follow-up with the size of the
acreage and the and the algorithm or the formula and then you can you can punch that number those
numbers okay so councilman watts yeah and i think for clarification on the acreage for a septic or
a water well i think that's a county and a state red the city doesn't regulate that so i just have
a question of clarification these are the two plans right the business as usual options and so
i want to make sure that i'm looking at this right the only difference that i see in these two are
primarily right here everything else looks about the same when if you if you were to make these
colors orange so this right here is the same this area this area is the same this area is not so
but this area is the same am i so we're really talking about as far as the plan either as usual
or with a balancing taking in development into consideration we're talking about this area here
and then these areas up here is that am i reading that right yes sir okay do you know how many acres
these comprise yes we actually have it somewhere we do i don't have it off the top but i have it on
my spreadsheet i can okay and as a follow-up are all of these areas in the city or some of
them in the county so north of heartley field is in the city um are you talking about where it says
12 110 or 105 12 110 and 1162 okay so this is in the city the 13 328 and 27 750 is in the county
and as i talked about before the reason those numbers are higher is because the city has no
influence on the density that goes there so we assumed that people would build according to what
the market demand is a very important point because on the city council and well planning zoning
doesn't have to deal with it on city council we are approached all the time with muds and with
mnds that are in the county and i think it's pretty clear to say we have very little if zero folks
zero regulation ability over those areas so it doesn't matter what we do here it doesn't matter
what we do here on this plan because it's going to that's not going to affect this right here
because we have no say this area right here because this is in the county so this is in the city
what about the 14 185 i'm assuming that's in the county because the number is so high
no that one is in this this is right around it hot well what number is it yes okay so this
is in the county which is this line here okay and what about up here how many acreage here
in the city the seven three one one twelve three seven seven and sixteen thousand that's in the city limits so these
three along the highway yes along 428 yes all right so i'm just going to say this isn't ready
for city council vote we we spent a year on 6 000 acres off i-35 talking about physical impact
talking about things such as that there's no way i'm not voting on either one of these
because there's no way there's enough information to understand what's going on here i mean it's
just it's crazy so i think we need to we need to this is the first time the city council has seen
this and i know a couple council members have been involved in this process which is disappointing
because i would think that given the the importance of this item to the community both the people in
the city and the people in the county we are asked as policymakers in a two-hour meeting
to decide this that's that's nothing
because because if i had to vote if i had to vote today i would vote on the balancing act
because that's what i can control and in fact if these people really i mean i don't i'm telling
you all you got to do is look out 380 heading west we've got 7 000 homes going out there in
the etj we cannot control at all and you know where they're going to come start looking next
so we've got to figure out a way to do this right and this isn't it and paul maybe you know having
some time to petition to see hey if there's some property owners in here and folks i would say i'm
number one on private property rights and to say that this body is going to make a decision in two
hours on something that's affecting now we're only saying we got 3,400 acres or 3,900 acres in the
city i bet you when you consider this acreage it's probably not a whole lot of that that's the
differences in the plan i'm talking about we're all getting all been out of shape and trying to
figure all this out for these small areas when everything else is the same and unfortunately
the people who are in the county that have the most at stake that want this to see us this go
through even if we voted for the businesses you guess what somebody could come in and plop down
a mud two or three muds with about 7,000 homes or 8,000 homes right in this area this is for you all
it's a county issue and a state legislative issue because not only did the mayor did the governor
sign in a billion dollars for wildlife the governor also signed that people in the etj
a lot of y'all out there can vote to opt out of the city etj so this isn't ready folks
and i think if we move forward on this this is irresponsible because we do not have enough
information because if we have to vote well if i have to vote i'm going with the balancing act
because isn't that what we try to do is balance interest because we can do nothing about the 13
328 and all these the the other ones so this this isn't ready and so i just that's my input
any other questions before i go back to you for a third time give me a second anyone else
i have a quick question about the roads uh just one second let him bring you the microphone
in your name i'm sorry uh yeah those that are online are not able to hear unless we use the
microphone uh i'm ben hocamp i'm on the steering committee on slide 40 i believe uh the roads
quick question in the plan um so the only difference uh looking at the southern portion
is the connector between collins and cooper creek but are we to understand that hartley field road
would be redesigned in the same way regardless of the plan or would that also be affected so
currently on the city's uh existing thoroughfare plan uh what hardly field road shows it's gonna
stay that way because it is a county road what we are doing here and i've been trying to hit it
from the beginning is we are showing it in case the property owners in the county want to annex
that's the only reason the areas in the county are colored or the streets that our county owned
are shown or we're showing streets in the county is if they want to annex if it the land comes into
the city limit then the city would have an idea and a plan and they will be prepared to know that
this is what they're gonna have to spend today none of this in the county area is getting designed or
is getting built or nothing is happening or can happen whether people ask for it or not yes sir
oh i'm a mayor thank you very much thank you mayor pro tem and then uh council member gee all right
so i had two questions um on the sort of i'm trying to understand the the way we
we designed the the model and looked at the impacts um the business impacts from the model
the so i'm could i get a little more clarity on how the open space calculations were
were done if you if you have a parcel in a residential parcel
is the entire parcel taken off off of the model as is not an open space even though the vertical
structures would be some 20 or whatever of a five acre parcel um i mean so that's i'm confused on
this how is the open space calculation done and and then maybe i'll take that and then ask my
second question so the way we looked at it is not parcel by parcel we we didn't that's not
there's not enough time to do that what we did was took an area and on that area we laid out like we
did the probably okay let me go back here you know how we created a little rough layout so that's what
we did as we looked at bigger areas we looked at what the layout would be we looked at the acres
that we would keep open and how many units ended up fitting in there we had we looked at lane miles
that would be needed to build that type of development and it's all assumptions so it is
logical assumptions but they're all based on assumptions but but just to follow up the
assumption on a residential region is is that that no longer counts as open space yes sir so if we
were going to do five acre lots we took the whole area laid it out in five acre lots and looked at
the street that would be needed to get to how many lots that would be the street calculation
and rest of it all becomes private property no opens yeah i think that's not a good model going
forward because somebody on a five-acre parcel is not building five acres of vertical structure
so and in fact some of our highest conservation properties are represented in the room with lots
of tree canopy and they have a little house one one when we say open space we're talking publicly
accessible open space so if it is a private lot it is not public open space so city will have no
control over it whereas when we laid it out we're counting publicly accessible open space so yes
that's that's that's fair i think that's a probably a different consideration than the
environmental impact but anyway on on the the business model side when we did the fiscal impact
and tried to assess the difference in the in the various models did we take into account the types
of business practices that would go on so like if we've got the new rodeo and and new facilities
supporting the new rodeo and equestrian and agricultural areas that are related to sort of
a more rural type business agribusiness model environment versus the the kind of mn small model
retail i mean how how fine grain was the business model did you take a differential impact when you
looked at the the the change in one versus the other go ahead and stay there again well they can't
hear you online we can hear you in the room but yeah thank you very much my apologies for those
online to answer your question yes sir there are differentiations made for the various types of
business types to include agricultural there's a great deal of breakout as far as if it is going
to be some type of retail and within the model there was a way to kind of designate if it was
going to be a mixed use and to put in there the combination of retail and multifamily and
some offices if need be so to answer your question yes there are differentiations made in the in the
background of the model it was a pull down device we would say this portion is going to be retail
this portion is going to be such and such there's even if you look down at the bottom that's along
us 380 we even included those portions that were going to be industrial and designated them for
kind of the industrial as there that's more warehouse okay real brief follow-up but again
that was that was just the model for the 4,000 out of the 8,500 acres it wasn't the the regional
impact of these different business models for someone going out to a restaurant from downtown
or from the region or someone going to an equestrian park from another nearby region
it was just the 8,500 acres right correct it was a fiscal impact which is the model saying
if we put this type of business here this is going to be the impact to the municipality what they
expect to get into various revenues and how much more cost is going to that I believe and correct me
if wrong what you're actually talking about is an economic impact so if we put this business here
what are going to be the secondary and tertiary effects in order to build more businesses and
additional revenues and if we put a plant out here if you go down the load will the cleaners
get additional money and I should speak out of cleaners because that's my dad's job my dad's
business real quick yes that's that's I'm asking that sort of economic model and the larger impact
on the entire community for this particular study sir we did not do the economic impact model
okay
thank you Mr. Mayor first off Madam City Manager I want to thank you for doing the work to bring
all the stakeholders and various groups together I just want to say publicly just as this body has
now begun more regular meetings with our partners like DISD I would encourage us this is the time
where we should be reaching out to our county partners and try to have a joint meeting setup
between us and our county commission our county judge given that they meet on the same day it
might be an opportunity for us to have some collaboration because I'm going to agree with
Councilmember Watts I really don't want to have to make this decision today only because I would
really like to know what the county's thoughts are while we don't it is true we don't have any say of
course an ETJ1 it would be helpful for us just to know the general direction that they are thinking
things might want to go so just uh just a plug for more collaboration between a different body
so much as time will allow and they would be permitting to do it with us
thank you sir just a quick clarification for everybody around the table today we're not asking
you to vote on anything at all we're just asking for direction on which which scenario would you do
you seem to like that we should go develop some recommendations and implementation and go look into
in more detail than you all asked for Councilmember you mentioned you need a lot more detail we just
need to know which scenario would you like us to look more into detail about and and I'll and I'll
piggyback on that um Scott McDonald director of development services HDR has put in roughly 500
hours into this project already um staff has put equally as much time in a variety of ways
and if we're going to go further or longer we're going to need additional funds to carry this
forward most importantly we're looking for a path we're not looking for a vote today we're looking
for a path from our policymakers if they have a preference on a path to go how would you establish
that path and as we go through this process we can address what needs to occur or if we need to
modify either of these paths so i.e. we're looking for additional information so council can send us
on path a or path b we'd like to go down whichever path and we'd like some additional information
brought back to us in the next couple of weeks via work session or through an isr or some other
function to provide that information as far as including the county we have a county representative
my counterpart Stephen Belknap is is in regular communication with with his his folks at the county
not to say that we couldn't put together another joint meeting or something similar if they're even
amenable i don't know but truly all we're looking for from city council today is do we have a path
to continue down and if not then ultimately i'm looking for whether we're going to continue this
process i'm going to have to have some funding to be able to do that thank you mayor well just make
it easy council member and then i i'll take it thank you for the opportunity and i also want to
thank all the players involved in this it's just such a it's a wonderful thing to see that we are
grasping our growth i'll pretty much consider the city of bidden like a teenager trying to figure it
out and so we've come to a crossroads now this is a very big project uh but keeping that in mind
i it i i would like to see us take the uh the balancing act uh and work with that
uh i know that there's a lot of opposition to that but i also want to comment to say that we are
talking about the future we're talking about 10 15 20 30 years from now and there's a good chance
i probably won't be around about 30 years from now but i know that we will have to leave a legacy
for the people that are coming up behind us we did recognize that a number of these people there was
a chart that showed us the age gap of the folks that we are going to have to make this work for
and i need to think we need to keep that in mind we like what we like i don't want anybody living
behind me i don't want richards on the either side of me i don't want my neighbors to move away i want
to keep everything just the same but i know that that is not going to be my future because that's
what happened to me my neighborhood doesn't look like the way that they used to and i had to grasp
that so i want us to be mindful of that that we're not talking about ourselves we're talking about
the future of us probably a generation and another generation behind that so um i for one if i were
to say that we were to go which is what you all are asking for right now i would definitely point
us towards the balancing act thank you okay thank you uh so i have uh my questions are these uh and
staff provided these in the answers so i'll just kind of glance over them for for speed sake so uh
line so that those tracking along and forgive me uh 21 ish i might be off my eyes uh so average how
home cost staff analysis staff's analysis based on association realtors four hundred sixty thousand
dollars average amount uh deposit that you need is is twenty thousand dollars that makes a down
payment if my math is wrong forgive me ninety two thousand dollars uh and so my my just a a comment
is this my concern is and i've heard the the neighborhood and and in the in those that are
interested and i take note of it but i do want to note that the consequences of those discussions
if if we don't want multifamily in this area then you end up with an area of
people that have one hundred thousand dollars to put down on a deposit and they can afford a half
million dollar home uh and and so that's just what we're talking about however many hundreds of acres
of people that only have one hundred thousand dollars and only can afford half million dollar
homes at least uh because that's the it gets later and staff talks about the cost of land
and for um they estimate ninety thousand to one hundred twenty thousand dollars per acre
so if you're going to buy five acres that's a little over half million dollars so half million
dollars in the land half million dollar home let's say you pay to build it it's less than that it's
not full uh market rate but a million dollars um is what we're talking about we want in the north
part of town million dollar homeowners only uh and so that's that's just the results of the request
and so as i that will i process through that information there's there's nothing to that that's
the the numbers are the numbers um but i when it comes to questions staff do you have the slides
can since someone pulls up from the pictures i i sent in
okay i i purposely picked these out for those that don't know this is west lake area that's
fidelity investment it's a corporate office um one is google maps one i took myself but
that's a parking garage absolutely surrounded by trees
that's a corporate headquarters one of the largest finance institutions
in in the world absolutely surrounded by trees and water so i absolutely believe that these can
things can be done well and they can be planned appropriately and they can be sensitive to their
environment you i mean you tell me the engineering to drop that that parking space in between those
trees seamlessly not one disturbed it is absolutely impressive and i and i that's what inspires me
that we can do things well in this area and preserve all those uh requirements and another
thing that i noted and i asked staff to look at and i forget what number it's number 41 on your
spreadsheet is they i asked them about the gay lord texan and just rough math dallas there you go
thank you very much dallas business journal notes that gay lord texan makes 10.24 million dollars a
year for uh the city of grapevine their their um conventions generate a little more than 21 million
dollars per year dropped in right on the lake environmentally sensitive area uh and you can't
see it from the state highway again another example of how things can be done well and we
can balance uh the approach of development you won't find another convention center hotel that's
busier and you absolutely don't know what's there if you're driving by uh and you don't even know
what if you're driving halfway down the um driveway and it's next to one of our critical lakes in the
area so obviously they had to be diligent about their their planning that sort of thing so thank
you very much for those so i i believe it can be done well and the just real quick to touch on um
a couple of things i want to i want to note as i go into the 2040 plan because i we received a
lot of communication about that so i want to make sure i understand that well uh and that'll inform
my decision i want to make sure we're from the same basis everyone's seen south ridge area here
in denton are familiar understand those houses in that area is zoned r2 or r3 so great larger lots
than most of the city it's not five acres it's not one acre some of them are but by and large
it's it's zoned r2 r3 and it is one of the most scenic areas in the city of denton and built out
so um and there's million dollar homes in there as well but it's it's also uh there's homes in the
in the half million dollar range but just say for a static again just another example of how we can
do this right so if i don't know scott maybe it's you that answers um questions about the
2040 plan who answers those is that you a number of us can absolutely okay so so here's here's
one so low res as i looked on the on the 2040 plan because people said follow the plan i look
under the low res definition that's two dash 19 i don't know what i forget what page it's on
but at the very bottom it says density up to five dwelling units per acre is that that's in the plan
i can pull up the page if is it so yeah low res is that exactly up to five dwelling units per acre
that's an accurate statement yes and that's in the 2040 plan that's correct so i got an email
that said follow the 2040 plan and i recommended five houses per acre i'm in line with the plan
under that future land use designation yes okay thank you very much and then uh also the
who can speak to the state highways i asked that question as well but i want the entire room to
kind of that's number 29 can you speak to the the planned state highways we have our transportation
expert here if you could go over the plan like the planned expansions in this general area so
that would be 428 the loop etc so as right now there was a public meeting i believe last week
for state loop 288 in a connection from 288 to three and as well as 380 so right now they're
looking at doing it what's called a limited access facility along 288 and making a high speed
connection to 380 that basically bisects that industrial section as shown here on the map
as far as the outer loop that you know that's a joint partnership between the county and text dot
looking at doing a limited access facility that basically connects the
outer ring and that's part of a larger regional project as far as called the outer loop and then
as far as 428 as of today as far as utp in the step the improvement plans there are no improvements
on that corridor and that's currently funded or identified as funding but i think through this
mobility plan we recognize that it likely needs to be a primary arterial with six lanes
okay so six lanes just on the that would be the western border of this plan okay got it
and then back to the 2040 plan what number seven of the 10 principles of the building of healthy
places as follows again 2040 plan and our and i quote mix it up is the title and it says a variety
of land uses building types public spaces can improve both physically active and social interaction
with with the necessitates update updating and regulation of the standards and that's what we're
having that's what we're talking about today updating the standards and regulations so that
we can and that's in line with the 2040 plan am i right yes sir okay great um and then i don't know
i have the quote here but i don't have it earmarked so i'll just say also in the 2040 plan it talks
about spreading out and and someone can correct me it if i'm wrong it talks about spreading out the
open spaces throughout the city and advises against
what's the word grouping too many open spaces in one area but talks about dividing it across
the city am i right that's right you want to balance you know the lane uses in one of those
land uses open space okay right thank you very much uh so that's what i mean i'll continue to
listen i'm i'm happy to have more information i'm happy to give uh direction uh once we're done as
far as where i fall uh but i i i just wanted to touch on those things that i i received the emails
i did not have time to reply to all of them but they it did direct me to the 2040 plan and i
researched the 2040 plan to make sure uh my suggestions are in line with the request and
it just happens to work out that way and based on examples i gave i i don't think it's a zero sum
game i think we can treat this area with the sensitivity it deserves and deliver an outstanding
product uh for our community that then uh helps our our our uh residents and it helps us have a
diverse housing stock so that people that don't can't afford one million dollars can live in
north denton i i don't want to do that to the exclusion of 90 of the city of denton all right
thank you mayor um i know we don't have a vote in direction but i'll just kind of
say i guess a few opinions that i have for you policymakers who are going to um send this a
direction um not taking development into consideration is exactly the reason you need
an area plan in my opinion um so by trying to do business as usual this seems like a
catastrophic waste of time um so i would urge you to there's a lot of holes here as as councilman
watts pointed out there's so much we don't know there's so much i'm not even sure we can do the
area plan as i think a lot of us envision because of the fact that a majority of this land is not
city-owned land and we have very little to say about its development but what i would say again
is if we're going to go forward with trying to make an area plan i think you have to take
development pressure into account and and directionally in my opinion would be we've
got to fill in a lot of these questions that we don't have on on the maps that you provided is
what is city land where exactly is that what is county line just better better staged on a map
than it looks right now um at any rate my two cents would be is you do have to consider development
pressures that's the whole reason that we want an area plan because it's here it's on the back door
it's coming it's knocking if we don't set a plan in place we're going to get what we just are
constantly fighting so um commissioners commissioner smith did have um his hand up earlier so i'm going
to pass the mic that way thank you yeah i want to echo uh commissioner alice and council member
watts's points on the fact that the county pressure that we do have here is one of the key
reasons why even from the work day that we had uh that the discussion was along the lines of that's
great great plans uh and some some really good input from the community but there's only so much
we can do with that county land there the only point i would have uh with giving no voted
direction whatsoever to council but the only thing i would ask for is as presentations come back and
the future path is to specifically identify the zoning levels that would be within rural residential
or in the uh the the residential transitional areas within there even in just in the balancing
act for two versus the business as usual you have a wide disparity between one acre per one unit per
five acres all the way down to in the balancing act it was one unit per two acres or three units
per acre and there was some wide varying between those so having some more homogeneity some
standards relating it back to what we would see in our in our zoning laws as this continues and
gets to get more refined and i don't think that that was omitted uh or or forgotten about i think
just that this is a 30 000 full level view and as we continue to move from 30 000 down to 15 start
getting more specific start incorporating the ddc that we see on planning and zoning the city council
sees more into the plan as this comes in uh and then i want to echo commissioner alice's point that
i would love to be able to see a very clear map that has city county differentiated between there
so so if you look on the screens here that that dotted line is showing you where the city and the
county is with the layout but i can make it darker and send it to you all so for sure
on top of this map without the roadways we just to say in a plan that the level of zoning information
you're asking what we usually do is recommend that this area can have a certain type of density
very generally it's it's not gonna what you're asking for is a complete different project
and i would love to do it if but it's not at this time yes sir
current zoning is what the request is for is what areas have current zoning today so
we can address yes we can we can definitely we've considered it thank you mayor i'm going to try to
learn from chair alice as well although that i've been trying to for two years and not a bunch has
soaked in um and just offer some general comments um not really direction but things to think about
as we move forward with either of these plans um as denton doubles in population over the next 20
years or however long it's going to be um you know we will become fiscally solvent if most of
that development activity occurs near our core where we already have existing infrastructure
services etc um so you know in general for that reason i kind of like that model and i think the
the comp plan supports that however we will expand and when that happens we also must make sure that
everything is fiscally solvent as we develop it but that solvency can be achieved either by
increasing the development intensity to meet the infrastructure we plan to put in or by looking at
other types of infrastructure that can be sustained by that development right it's it's not true that
i want everything to be dense i just want everything to pay for itself um you know i
i really kind of like the this rural village concept um i think it gives a diversity of housing
options um that that you know people of different means can afford to live uh in in an area near the
fringe where you have close by access to these assets that we're talking about that everybody
loves um there are some specific problems i think that could be solved in implementation and that's
primarily um you know collins road right now doesn't cross over i don't know if we have any
friendly uprr people here or not um and um you know whatever plan happens for that wherever it is
if it's incorporated uh would need to be able to be realized in a in a development method that's
not your typical oh one person is amassing 230 acres and they're going to build it all at once
because there's just too much partialization here so there's some detail that needs to be go there
as we go further further north right uh near the um future outer loop and that sort of thing does
does that type of thing make sense um i i guess it makes more sense from a environmental and
fiscal perspective than 50 acre parking lots and huge nebraska furniture marts um but to be honest
it also kind of looks like hey tex dot is going to subsidize us by building this
two billion dollar road and so this is what we're going to put up and we're sort of letting them
determine our land use um so it's it's a rock and a hard place on that one um and then finally the
the one thing that i'm really nervous about is on the south southwestern area of the plan really
just because i haven't seen a proposal to uh explain how we're going to phase the infrastructure
to be consistent with the built environment's ability to to sustain it long term i'm nervous
about adding additional transitional areas uh because typically when that's done we we don't
phase the infrastructure we we put in top class curb and gutter and everything so uh hope that
helps thank you okay anyone else okay we'll go um travis then councilman melzer and mayor pro tem
and it is we do have a hard side because we have a regular council meeting starts at two uh so i'm
willing to go a little over one but we have we have to have time to get across i just wanted to
reiterate one thing that we've kind of talked about a lot is that business as usual was never
our plan it was never our term it was never anything that we advocated for we have always
advocated for keeping in the 2040 plan there's always been what the neighborhood with the large
vast majority of the committee has advocated for so i just want to say that that's a bit of a
misnomer that that is something that we've ever advocated for on top of that um just so we're
understanding we've talked about um all these emails that came in that we're talking about 2040
plan and then so we talked about having five homes per acre so my understanding that this committee
that the city council is going to recommend and hold to that five houses an acre because that is
not what's being planned north of harley field road right so that i mean if we if we want to hold
ourselves to that 2040 and i know it seems like you are we is that what we're recommending five
homes an acre right that's what the 2040 plan is so are we going to hold people to that if we're
going to say that that is not what it's currently so but but but i have other things to say real
quick um because i've got a lot ned's not here so i have to talk for him um i think my other
question is in the 2040 plan there's a lot of talk about conservation it's rural conservation
is mentioned in here 61 times out of the land that is not watershed area that we would be very
difficult to build on financially difficult how much of that land are you guys advocating for
conserving not not not not not i'm going to put a parking lot and trees around it right can anybody
name some any of the endangered species that visit this area can you name one just one
so well and is there a plan to conserve land for that there are bald eagles that come here there
are freshwater otters and i understand um this is just your question right so i want to i want to
use this time to get you the answers but i gotta have your question all right so my question is are
we willing one question are we willing to hold people to five houses an acre as you said within
the 2040 plan that that's the discussion we're going to have today yes okay so that's one
question second question how much land developable land are we committing to conserving so at this
point this is just a concept once you tell us which direction you want to go then we're going
to work on those details for either either scenario you will we have to do that calculation it's going
to be different depending on what development types you're putting on that property what land
you're going to preserve or how much land you're going to preserve those calculations to do that
we need to know which direction you want us to go in so that's why we're here asking would you say
that business is beautiful as business as usual with modifications or balancing act with modifications
or whatever which one of those in your mind would conserve more land she she they don't have they'll
have to do the calculations that was our answer the first time so and then we'll go to councilmember
melzer thank you a couple of in the in the way of giving direction a couple points of clarification
i was actually in the group during the i think it was called the visioning session that sat about
this part of the room that introduced the idea of village but it was understood to be a way to create
more preserved open space and more five acre zoning the intention wasn't you know yeah have
traditional tract housing and village and consider that you know more preservation that that's not the
case so you know i perceive balancing act to be saying do the most vertical construction of the
varying types which was not the intention so you know i would be i'd be very interested in a view
that had that rural center as a trade-off for the maximum percentage of conservation we haven't
heard what the acreage is that having been said i perceive a bit of creeping conviction we put
500 hours into this we've involved so many people we're so far down the path but that can't keep you
from going to a better answer if it's presented so i'm interested in developing also with slides so
it will seem as real to you as these two what hartley field state park will look like maybe
maybe it can happen maybe someday you'll say you know gee there are only a few of us who expressed
anything about it but now we're taking our families to enjoy it now in 20 and 30 years
that's our heritage that we in that we have hartley field state park so let's shape that up
thank you and then mayor pro tem sorry one more point just one more point on that
if that comes to pass that becomes state administered state land it doesn't decrease
the ability of the city to spread open space on city-owned property it increases it
because it doesn't require our funding to do it okay but bear with me i just need to track along
and then mayor pro tem with your indulgence she she wants to speak so right next to her and then
we'll run it up to you what land are you talking about who owns the land that you're talking about
that you would you've identified for a state park who owns it i don't think it's entirely up to me
to do all the work of the planning right no doubt but you've spoken about uh you you have this idea
i just want to know what what so some of it's etj that's why that's why the virtue of going to
state you know becomes relevant because you know we look at a land at a map where you know a lot
of what we would like to be open space is not under city control so that's the whole point of
going to state but it's it's basically the maximum amount of the undeveloped land you know a year ago
i learned but i'm just i don't want to i don't want to lengthen the comment i'm just asking
because they had the landowners up there and so i'm just asking you who owns the property that
you're referring to so that i can i just want to note that so i can track along with you
okay orion thank you okay that's fine but i will point out that a year ago i learned that
the amount of land that's come under development plans in the prior six years is greater than the
amount of undeveloped land that's left so this is a disappearing heritage so if we don't act to
preserve land like this we're going to be out of options very soon okay right it was uh yeah and
then we'll come back to mayor portu hello i'm susan smith on the steering committee as a city
resident and i just have one comment to make to reiterate what chris said and i think what paul's
saying is that i don't really feel like we're ready to decide on either one of these options
today because i don't really agree with either one of them i think the business as usual is a
misnomer we never indicated that we want no development in our neighborhood group we absolutely
expect some development but just the right kind of development that follows the 2040 plan and the
vision statement however we may interpret that and i think that's what people are trying to come up
with good solutions for and keep everybody happy we know there'll be development the balancing act
as it stands to me looks a little heavy in areas like heartley field road i i would like to keep
that as a county road i also think it seems a little heavy up by the elm bottom circle area in
some of the density that's there so i really think that we need modifications on either side
whatever we decide but i'm very pro keeping to the 2040 plan and the vision statement that we
developed i think everybody put a lot of work into that and i agree with it so however we come up with
that i just really don't think we're there yet thank you and while you're walking around scott i
do have a i need an understanding uh county county road who decides when that's developed
um it's it's a county road so i right so does the city have a if the developer is developing
and it's going to require something addition to that then yes but is that a county in a developer
conversation or is a city invited to that conversation it may be a county and city
it may be a county and the developer it may be the city and the developer if again if the if
the property's in the county it's it's a county developer got it okay thank you mayor pertin
thank you all um yeah i think the naming of our options has set a tone that i think is very very
unfortunate um i think oh over two years ago the neighborhood came to the region with development
concepts that were developmental um they they were not um leave it in place uh change nothing
they were this is this is what the neighborhood has sort of collaboratively worked on and the
task that we gave them was community developed community based the words community were first
and foremost first and foremost in um in the mission and goals that we gave them uh and the
by and large uh the leaders of the of the steering committee um have you know communicated with us
both through the steering committee as an individuals the neighborhood has communicated there that there
is a room and desire and and understanding of the growth potential of this region um and so i think
again it's it's unfortunate that we chose business as usual versus balancing act um you know those
those names are you're not going to be able to convince me that that doesn't bias the conversation
that we had today so i find those those names unfortunate a couple of things that you you heard
from members of the the stakeholder community is is a way to increase usage of and main but while
preserving which is in our 2040 plan the newest edition the the preferred land map preservation
and so you know that there is development with preservation that that that that is what the
community came to the area is and and i agree with those who have said that what we have here is
sort of an incomplete product of two disparate uh strategies where there it's not balancing act
versus business as usual it is it is two viewpoints that don't even represent the viewpoints
of the the primary proponents of those viewpoints so we have not gotten to a place of consensus
and we don't we have not even gotten to a place of consensus with our regional partners as well
there is um the the the the where i'm going with this is the the mobility plans are are coming
through and they will absolutely change and so that's going to have to be incorporated and
yet they really weren't nothing we were really presented with today addressed those mobility
plan changes and and i'm particularly not talking about the fact that there will be uh 428 and the
outer loop and the 380 expansion across 288 but the fact that all those proposed changes will
require right of way changes that there is currently not space for at least close to the
city and definitely out as you get towards core of engineer lands there's simply not right of
way space and if you do you're taking it out of these landowners properties for what finally the
final point i want to bring in is in our comp plan we try really hard to get away from what we did
decades ago just strip zoning and leapfrog zoning and the balancing act is a leapfrog zoning approach
where we're leaping over an area now is it the fault that there's a donut hole in in an etj
donut hole yes it is the fault that we have sort of a pseudo leapfrog happening there where we've
left a uh a big use gap and then we're trying to leap into other uh usages that don't really
transitionally align but then also i will point out as my final comment and and the reason i'm
giving direction of business as usual with modifications is is that that donut hole itself
if it was so easy to drop a mud in there or an mmd or develop that as a 50-story high rise or
a cement batch plant it would be there and there is one cement batch plant and otherwise there's
homes if it was that easy if the economic pressures were there to make that happen it would have
happened already all right so i my direction is is uh is not for the balancing act but for the
other now this is for staff though i would ask you to what would how would you summarize that
though if you have to put it in one line in one word or a summary or a phrase you don't like
balancing act or business as usual what do you like you you you mean for my direction or the name
of yeah i'm just saying if staff's going to come back with something and you don't you take issue
with what they write your right to do so but i think if you ever you're going to have a challenge
or something you should have a solution that that's very fair and so but it's it's easy to
come up with a solution where you say something like uh you know lower density in development or
something like that where you are expressing a characteristic of the feature of the development
and not assessing um so lower density development and what else um balancing act which which would
be uh i don't know something more like on the realm of you're forcing me to yeah and i'm saying
you know staff have the same challenge right so i want to be fair to them and and and just i
understand you don't like the terminology but i just want to choose a similar characteristic
i'm not going to you know i'm going to say something like you could say um high density mixed use or
something like that thank you wanted to compare them thank you uh is there anyone else seeing none
i i guess mayor just again i don't know that we have clear direction so i'm just looking for what
it is staff is to do going forward yeah no we we um we don't and we're gonna we're gonna have to go
because we have a two two o'clock and so we have to have time to transition everyone and so um i i
mean i can't i'll open the floor for comments you asked the last couple no i i have not not yet but
we'll go to uh commissioner villaral and then we'll we'll wrap up and we'll roll call council
members is that yes thank you and i'm okay if we call it a and b right thank you so uh just going
back to the conversation that council member watts brought up earlier i was wondering if we were going
to do a more thorough process what differences would you like to see us do in that in that process
what changes would you like to see what are you looking for in a more thorough thorough plan
and and i will say that we can take that guidance that's given to us uh it can get put into writing
and then we can submit it to the committee mayor okay yeah so what do you want to see is the in the
in the plan in the future or more detail that's the that's just a general question we'll put it
out there i have council member bird that expressed an interest in in a in the balanced approach as
staffs name it option a and b right so let's let's not yeah so a is a is on the left right is on the
is b simple thing so um councilman bird has expressed an interest for item b uh mayor
pardon me pardon me thank you uh council and then mayor pro tem has an option for a preference for
option a and i need to hear from the others i'm happy to call you our own councilman melzer is
expressed a pro uh preference for option a uh councilman holla option b b b no oh no
well well no no no no i understand i just i the what's before says a or b i'll just put you as
undecided that's great no no let's keep it moving uh okay uh and then
i think my questions can get answered in the process so i'm going to go with the b
okay uh councilman mcgee
option b
okay mayor hutzpeth is is here's my i'm a b with modifications i don't want to i don't want to
discuss the upper part i think that i take uh mayor pro tem's point and i take the conversations
we've had and that's too far for projection and we're not going to do anything up there any any
time soon i so it's b with the exception of we're going to zero in on uh the right up to the green
space there one and then two it with the caveat that that are whatever that is r4 is by plan uh
or r or r6 with different shapes and different uses if you have commercial uses i think you can
get to uh r6 um and it looked like r4 on the ground and meet the expectations and so
suffice to say 2040 plan low density allows for five houses per acre however that's calculated
no no no no that's not is it wrong is it so remember low densities up to five dwelling
units per acre actually net whatever that total acreage is no low density not rural low density
the 10 2040 okay all right yeah the other thing that that were mentioned by some of the
uh committee members that we want to make sure we're very clear on is a very clean and clear map
to delineate between city land and county land map out the development authority on each so you know
which one's county which one city and then show current zoning and zoning levels so that you can
show very clearly county land zoning levels city land zoning level what is currently zoned as not
necessarily what it could be and and then the development authority a little note to say here's
the development authority under the county here's the development authority under the city and it's
important to note scott correct me if i'm wrong nothing is going to be developed here without
intense conversations and meetings and all those things so nothing happens but for everyone having
an opportunity to be heard correct this was an opportunity for everyone to be heard to get some
general direction from council on which direction for us to go and we'll continue to work through
this and and ultimately i hear in this is is really the option b with some modification so there are
any number of things that we'll be bringing back to council to ask for their direction and we'll
just start drilling down or distilling this more each time we visit right but there's no plan that's
in in queue that's some stage of that's benefited by this conversation nothing no nothing absolutely
not perfect okay uh right here the zoning maps that everyone's asking they are in a powerpoint
for student committee number two meeting it's on the website and all these detailed plans are
in that uh powerpoint can we get it out to the council members as well we will we will we will
make the new new drawings better but before that if someone wanted to go home and see it i just
wanted everyone to know and give that to me again it's the steering committee meeting too
yes may 30th meeting
got it and it's in its um undiscussed intent got it thank you take a look
okay very good uh so at uh well i'll let you conclude then i'll conclude uh thank you everyone
for time um thanks commissioners for showing up this afternoon i appreciate it i'll adjourn
our joint meeting at 108 and i would conclude the city council's meeting at 108 as well thank you