Apr 02, 2019 City Council on 2019-04-02 2:00 PM

All right welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday April the 2nd 2019. We do have a quorum so I'll open the meeting. We'll go through our work session reports. The first item on our agenda is our work session agenda item 1. Citizen comments on consent agenda items. I see no blue cards for comments on consent agenda items. So now we'll go for requests for clarification on agenda items listed on today's agenda. Anybody have any clarifications for Councilmember Hussbett? Thank you mayor. I would like to have a short presentation here I mean you know not for later if possible on just the item 8. Just kind of understanding what that is there for it. So you want the you want the presentation here so you're not asking to pull it you're wanting to see if you can get your questions answered it to avoid pull. Yeah just as they could give a general. I read the overview but want to just kind of understand it if possible if not then okay yeah great. Good afternoon Scott Gray airport manager. That item is a airport lease agreement with a long standing tenant that is sold off one of his building is building a new facility on the airport next to the MedTrans facility on Westcourt and John Carroll. It is under a new standard lease agreement it's a 30 year lease based on the development costs it's about a 1.3 million dollar project. It'll be a 30 year lease with two five-year city options. It's for approximately 1.3 acres of land on that corner and it would be at 30 cents per square foot which was based on the appraisal value that was done last year. I can answer any specific questions that you may have but it's it's it's one of the one of the remaining parcels I think we have about seven acres remaining this is a portion of that that parcel is called 5a. The rest of that parcel that same individual will be coming back with another lease request to construct some additional hangers for renting out space. Sure of course. Thanks. So and so what are those buildings is it just kind of what's existing there kind of steel frame some sort of metal outside now it's all the parking so just kind of want to understand I mean I think first I'm excited about it and and I want to thank you for you the work you do out there but to just understand kind of what it is going out there the the the what type of business is it that sort of thing sure generally most of the hangers are a metal construction may have some sort of a block or or rock structure for for aesthetics in this particular case it's a 120 foot by 120 foot hanger that would be of metal construction to house a number of corporate airplanes but there will also be a 2,000 square foot office building which will be block construction the the developer actually owns a business in in Ponder I believe and this is for their corporate airplane so their corporate offices will still remain where they're at but this will just be for their pilot services and and things of that nature in that building the parking is is part of the city development code the number of parking based on the square footage sure and then lastly is that did we so they were here existing so just kind of inquired or did we prime to pump what how did that how do we get to this face I believe it was in 2015 they constructed a hanger it did not have any office space they realized that that wasn't sufficient enough as they were moving through their business plan so they assigned that lease agreement to another entity that put their corporate airplanes in there and and then they came to the city looking for a lot to construct something that was more conducive to their new business model excellent good thank you again appreciate it that's man Briggs you said that area was appraised and that's what the rent is based off of that original appraisal yes so if they the same people wanted to build I think you said they're looking at another parcel would a different would it use the same appraisal or would we get a different appraisal back last year we had all the vacant property appraised so each parcel has a different rate depending upon its location relevant to the runway taxiway system so the further away you are which this happens to be the furthest away from the runway system was the cheaper rent at 30 cents per square foot and as you got closer to the runway it increased to 45 cents a square okay any other questions on this agenda item thank you appreciate any other clarifications on the agenda seeing that okay we'll move on to our work session reports 3a receive report and hold discussion give staff direction regarding the 2019 water conservation and drought contingency plan afternoon council mayor my name is Tyler Dawson I'm the field services tech manager for the water and wastewater department and I'm here to present the updates to the water conservation and drought contingency plan today we're going to be asking for comments and feedback and we will be returning with this item next Tuesday the 9th asking for approval of an ordinance adopting the same plan the water conservation plan has been in existence in its current form since year 2000 it's created under a regulatory framework from the TCEQ and the Texas Water Development Board this will be the sixth iteration of that plan so what you're seeing is a reminder of what's there what we already do and bring forward a few updates we've gone to a public information meeting we held a public information meeting on March 14th asking for input from the public so the main components of this plan are just two pieces the water conservation plan is the day-to-day activities that we do to try to encourage long-term conservation this is addressing our long-term water scarcity needs and the drought contingency plan is only in effect during stages of drought or in emergencies and these are the short-term efforts we use to mitigate temporary loss of water supply or ability to meet demand so we're going to jump into the water conservation plan first this is a history of how we've done with water conservation in the city of Denton on the water development board's recommendation we track our success on a five-year rolling average of gallons per capita per day in 2000 when we started this that number was 189 gallons per capita per day and our latest number is 140 so you can see that steady decline with that orange line over time we have conserved water better on a per capita basis basis we are using less water over time the dotted blue line that you see is our conservation goal of 152 and you'll probably notice that that orange line does dip below the goal in the past five years weather has played a significant part in reducing water usage if you'll remember the drought that started around 2010 broke in 2014 in 2015 we had record rainfall and DFW flooded some lakes and the Trinity River and since then we've had pretty mild summers mild and rainy summers so we feel like that is a depressed number that that's been brought down by weather and that will rebound and we want to try to hold that at 152 we think that's a reasonable goal for Denton so real quick question what it seems like what you're saying is irrigation because if you have more rain or drought that is the biggest impact as far as sometimes on our water usage so with more irrigation you're gonna see that per capita go up that's absolutely true okay in fact for 2018 about 31% of our total water usage was from irrigation so a big change in irrigation needs makes big sways in our total water demand for the city so the conservation plan is made up of best management practices or BMPs that are published by the Texas Water Development Board this is a comprehensive list of ways to conserve water known ways that can help municipalities in our case put out the message put in either codes or recommendations guidelines outreach to encourage conservation so we'll see a long list of BMPs that our plan consists of the vast majority of these have been in the plan for a decade or more these are the things that have contributed to our success and this is anything from simply metering customer water usage so we can help customers be accountable for what water they use to finding and repairing leaks to building our rate structure to encourage conservation we have five updates to the conservation plan most of these are changes slight changes to the plan we have two additions and I'll walk through these the first one section 3.3 the plan deals with metering of raw supplies and treated water deliveries this is discussing metering at the water treatment plants we have two water treatment plants one down on Spencer Road that pulls from Lake Louisville one up north that pulls from Lake Ray Roberts both of those meter their raw water which is untreated like water that then passes through the treatment process and then we measure the treated water that's then sent out as drinking water to the city the reason this is important is when we're looking at how much water we're using this is the biggest piece of that puzzle to try to understand how much water we're using it's important that these be accurate and because of some concerns with the accuracy of those meters in the last few years we actually did replace both meters at the Ray Roberts plant last year one in May one in December and we're looking to replace both Lake Louisville plant meters in 2020 the plan was updated to indicate those those replacements item 3.5 deals with the water loss audit you'll actually hear from me again in about two weeks coming back to report on our 2018 water loss audit this is a very comprehensive process I don't want to bore you with the details now but this was updated to be consistent with language of modern water audits some of the way water audits are conducted and required by the state have evolved and so we've updated the plan to be consistent with that item 3.6 public education and information this is the outreach portion of our water conservation plan we've added an item here shown an orange partnerships with nonprofits this is not a new item that we want to propose this is actually something that's evolved over the last several years the sustainability division in particular has picked up a lot of partnerships with these nonprofit organizations some are teaming up on awareness efforts like we recently had fix a leak week that was a nonprofit effort to push that team with the EPA we also have outreach materials that come through nonprofits and classes that are held that are driven by nonprofits so we wanted to codify that into the plan it's something that's done well and we want to continue that item 3.7 non-promotional rate structure you may have also heard this referred to as a declining block rate structure what this refers to is on residential water accounts during the summer when you use in excess of 15,000 gallons a month the cost of water starts to go up for for additional water usage so the more water you use that last gallon starts to cost a little bit more and it starts to encourage residents remind them that using water at those levels is a cost to everybody so it's an accountability issue to Councilmember Amato has a question yes sir so I I applaud that I think that's excellent does that apply to businesses as well the rate structure is different the reason we're able to do this on a residential is we can say we can assign those block rates from 0 to 15,000 gallons 15 to 30 30 to 50 and 50 and over since businesses aren't all the same size it's hard to do that you would end up having a much different rate for larger businesses and almost a penalty so there's actually a irrigation rate they have separate irrigation meters one water meter for indoor one water meter for irrigation and that irrigation is at an increased rate okay yes so you do in general charge more for more usage yes yes we do and I like that to that to that point as well I I'm glad to see that but I would like for that to be advertised more because there's a lot of people who just use a lot of water and then they say well my bill is outrageous they don't really understand and remember making a comment about it during one of the the budget seasons when we were going through and people really had no idea so sure they're held accountable but if they knew they were going to get charged more they may use less water so I mean you know I just wonder how we can get that information out to the the public and I'm also curious about HOA's or do they use the same are they considered residential or business how if they're because on their irrigation mm-hmm I don't know the answer on HOA's regarding the outreach on the the declining block rate structure we're in the time of year right now where we're preparing some outreach to get ready for summer and there is some discussion on how to how to best let that message go out into the public and inform people of kind of what's expected what's hoped for in the summer months and that would include some information on how rates change in the summer right well I would also include in that ways that you can the different types of systems for irrigation that you can use if you know to reduce that water usage as well as as far as like sprinkler systems versus drip systems okay okay all right the last item that we've updated in the conservation plan item 5.6 park athletic field and golf course conservation we've had an item in here for parks and athletic fields for quite some time we're rolling golf courses into that and the reason that those those types of land are kind of focused on for this is because there are large landscaped areas so it's a it's a way we can get out there and help people learn to use water responsibly when they need a lot of water to irrigate so golf courses are in addition to this and staff is interested in in assisting any golf course management golf course owners in helping them find ways to conserve their water while still maintaining their their property for what for what it was intended to be used for and we'll transition off of the conservation plan into the drought plan again the drought plan is something that's not an effect day-to-day in fact in in the current form this drought plan has never been enacted this is a plan we make as a contingency in case it's needed for drought or emergency and that that plan is built around three stages and it can be triggered one of three ways so you can see the three stages here and we have a type a B and C trigger on each most commonly we look at a type a trigger because that deals with how much water is in the lake that's the true drought indication for this plan we look at how much water can be stored in the lake to be used and how much that water has been depleted we partner with Dallas on this we share water rights and both Lake Louisville and Lake Ray Roberts so we've worked with them and found some consistency between our plans on these levels on these indicators so on the type-a conditions a stage 1 drought plan would be triggered if combined lake levels drop below 65 percent of total conservation storage stage 2 would be triggered if it drops to 50 percent and stage 3 if it drops to 35 percent that 35 percent has actually been updated this used to be 30 percent that was a little too much risk to wait to put those last last measures into effect so we've up that number along with Dallas to 35 percent if lakes reach 35 percent full we'll go into the final and most most significant stage of our drought plan type B trigger deals with how much water we're using as a city we know that we can treat and deliver about 49 million gallons per day at the moment we don't have any concerns about meeting that number but we are a growing city so this is something for the future as population increases as we have more development and more water use in the city if water demand reaches a certain percent of that capacity for a certain number of days you see 80 85 percent for four days we can enact this drought plan to help save water until we're able to build more capacity type C condition is basically there in case of emergency or a failure we have a lot of equipment that comes into play to keep the plants running to pump the water out of the system we have six storage tanks ranging from one to three million gallons in capacity and we have over 600 miles of pipe so there are some cases as much as we do to try to maintain that system in case of emergency in case the wrong piece of equipment fails we could enact the drought contingency plan to help mitigate and when the plan is triggered this is what the three stages entail kind of a overhead view of it the headline here is stage one we would require two day a week landscape watering stage two we would drop that to one day per week and stage three we would prohibit irrigation you can see there's some more focused restrictions on this that would come into play and as as intense as this seems I want to remind you this is something that only comes into play in extreme situations and extreme drought or emergency so I just I just want to point out for for the public that in the ordinance that's part of the attachment it says that the two day a week watering schedule is the recommended best standard operating procedure year-round correct yes that is a recommended yes and I think that's wonderful so I just want people to notice that that is even when we're not in it in drought conditions that is the best practice yes thank you well those are the updates to the plan that we're proposing you have a full draft plan in your backups we've provided some some places on the city didn't websites that you can find more information about water conservation and about how we run our water department in general I will remind you that we will be back next Tuesday asking for approval of an ordinance adopting this plan and I will ask for any comments at this time any comments questions yes yeah so I wanted to ask along the lines of the the twice a week watering recommend right watering recommendation year-round because I think that I think that's excellent have you thought about where I should ask what ways do we have to currently to enforce that because as I understand it it's more of a recommendation outside of drought conditions than a than a hard and fast rule with teeth is that correct right there is a water waste ordinance already in place that in cases of more or less extreme irresponsibility with your water usage that that can come into play we can still address that the drought plan actually includes citation and fine amounts I'm not familiar with how that would be done as that's never actually been enacted but I'm happy to look into that great thanks and I will say you know that I have had at least one one situation where somebody had reported to me a case where there was an extreme water waste that was looked into by the city it it it turned out not to be an issue but you know just so people know you can report that you can even report that through the engaged at nap and staff will look into it and I would like to request a staff report on ways that other cities give put more give more teeth to weekly watering maximums that's something that I would like to see because I feel that if if there was some accountability for that that people would be less likely to overwater their lawns and going back to what councilmember Briggs said you know that that I think would do it might not entirely solve the problem of education but at least if people saw oh there's there's consequences then they might be more likely I'd also like to you know to see if other cities might have ways of notifying residents or businesses or anybody if there's a they see a potential water leak just from looking at the the water use in their bill or looking at their meter you know a lot of times customers don't realize that until they get an exorbitant bill and they think there's something wrong with the billing and then it turns out they have a water leak so I'd like to see to see if there's anything we can do to kind of notify customers before they get that scary bill hi Frank Pugsley water utilities director I'd just like to add on to the the weekly watering schedule enforcement and recommendations one of the things that we consider especially with weekly watering recommendations that two days a week it may be challenging for people who don't have an automatic sprinkler system to move their manual sprinklers and only be able to water two days a week it may take some of the people who are less mobile a lot more time to move their sprinklers and water so they may need more than two days so having too many teeth and that could be a detriment to some of those folks and as Tyler mentioned we've never actually had to enact the drought plan so we haven't had to enforce any to do two day a week watering yet but that's definitely something we'd be happy to come back like you requested in the staff report yeah well let's make clear that we don't have these are recommendations I mean what you're saying is you want that to be an enforcement or a requirement and this council has not decided on that policy so while staff can certainly look into other cities and all that but I just don't want to get the cart before the horse so if this council wants to consider making two-day watering requirements permanent or or actual requirements set of recommendations outside of a drought contingency plan correct because that's something we need to talk about because that's pretty that's pretty severe and substantial and we've not gone there so I would really hesitate to have a lot of time spent on something that council hasn't given any direction to staff on yet councilmember Duff you know we'll talk about something is not now if you kind of looked at what is going to happen in the future as far as water because North Texas is going to end up being very short on water at some point in time it may be five ten ten years from now and I guess kind of the way I look at it is do I want to have green grass or do I want to be able to take a shower I think you know because I know places like Arizona and I think even California now are going through some probably trying to replace a lot of grass so that you don't have to water it and also the drip but I think this is something in the future that's coming but it's not here now sure would you like us to address that a little bit now or do you like an informal staff report or yeah in formal staff report yeah yeah I just want to bring this up because I know it's something that we should be looking at in the future and we spend a lot of time discussing and looking at that for sure councilmember Briggs and councilmember Meltzer so my my big concern is the the water loss and I think I heard you say that discussion was coming and I just want to clarify that that's coming in a separate item yes we have that going to Public Utility Board on Monday I believe and then and then a council okay thank you councilmember Meltzer we postpone now and maybe a little bit later soon yeah I think just maybe to put a little fine point on the staff report I'd be interested in who out there in a similar kind of climate is great at having low water use for irrigation and what do they do okay anybody else yes I just want to point out for the public that that one of the proposals in this new plan is a once-a-year zero scaping class offered by the city and that is you know drought tolerant low watering gardening and I wanted to propose again I don't know if this would be a staff reporter just something that staff could look into come back to us with next time that staff collaborate with a master our local master gardeners in doing that maybe offering it more than once a year all right and I know mr. Armentry asked about ways to notify customers of leaks or to report leaks you're absolutely right on engaged in those actually get routed through me more often than not so every time somebody in the city reports a leak I usually get to put eyes on that and help get the right person to figure out if it's a leak and whose responsibility it might be to fix it and we've seen all types we've seen leaks on our assets because again we do have over 600 miles of water main in the city so it is fairly common to have leaking assets I've also seen people see a leak in their neighborhood that happened to be coming from a neighbors water service so wherever that's coming from we're happy to investigate that we do offer also offer customer water audits for anybody who needs them if you're concerned about how much water is showing up on your bill or how high your water bill is customer service can help route you to receive a customer water audit and we can have a professional come to your residence and help walk you through some steps like try to determine if your toilets are leaking without you noticing or if you might have irrigation systems that aren't working as you as you intended for them to work so that's a service we offer year-round okay thank you so much thank you appreciate that agenda item 2b is receive report hold discussion provides staff direction on airports governance related to Airport Advisory Board Economic Development Partnership Board and Council Airport Committee good afternoon mayor and council Scott Gray airport manager here today to talk about airport governance a little bit of overview of what I'm going to cover for you this afternoon a little bit of the background of why we're here today airport guiding documents the airport related boards and committee history the existing structures in purview and then a comparison regionally and actually statewide of what other airports are doing and then lastly seek councils direction so a little on the background airport staff is currently rewriting the the code and airport related documents within those documents is the rules regulations and minimum standards for our businesses but there are references to our oversight bodies so in an attempt to make sure that the the direction that we're headed with those documents are going to meet the desire of the council we presented some of that information back in April and a number of other meetings to the Airport Advisory Board and to the Council Airport Committee when we were discussing the framework of those documents at that last meeting in in 2018 we were requested to take a look at the structure of the the bodies that we have now what their purviews are and then compare those regionally to the other airports so let me briefly just touch upon the airport guiding documents again what's kind of pushing forward this this particular topic chapter 3 of the city code is covering the airport specifically airport rules and regulations general walk the dog with a leash don't spill fuel things of that nature airport minimum operating standards are relevant to our businesses so what's the minimum insurance types of operating hours things of that nature rates and fees schedule and if you recall back in May of last year we actually brought the airport rates and fees schedule to the council which was approved that is a document just identifies fairly easily what our rates and fees are to our users tenants general public and then lastly the leasing and development policy which would which set our our leasing and development standards out at the airport these revised documents that we did bring forward have a structure and a hierarchy to them with the chapter 3 being kind of the the framework and then everything kind of falls from there within those documents there's some additional governance that is identified including rulemaking authority the general airport business permit approvals or ratifications and then appeal processes for decisions that may be made that that tenants and or users would have concerns with so let me touch upon the history and before I get into the slide specifically let me let me talk about how we got to this particular point in time with these three bodies back in 2010 the city conducted an airport business plan and in that business plan they identified a number of recommended changes to the city system including an airport enterprise fund versus general fund and then a number of the things that will we'll see here today one of those and I'll paraphrase what it what it said the city should consider modifying the airport governance structure to assist with vetting financial proposals as well as provide policy input related to marketing and development that was kind of one of the guiding factors that created these three bodies some of which already existed and were just added on to over a number of meetings over about six months with the airport advisory board and the City Council these three bodies were identified it's included in exhibit two in your packet as the three bodies that would governs the airport the airport advisory board is a seven member board there's no specific qualifications or criteria to be appointed to that board it actually has been in existence since the since the 1966 and then it has been updated periodically as you can see there the economic development partnership board was expanded upon to include some airport items and I'll get into what those are in just a moment that is a 12 member council appointed board there are some specific qualifications and criteria to be appointed to that particular board and then lastly the council airport committee which was created by resolution in 2011 following that airport business plan so this is actually included as exhibit 3 breaks down the matrix of what these are and I won't go over each one of these but generally the airport advisory board remained in place and was a opportunity for stakeholder reach reaching out to the public about airport matters it was an opportunity for the public to be engaged in a board level relevant to airport items and then some of the day-to-day stuff was under the purview of the airport advisory board including including grant funding and long-term financial plans and then just interaction with our tenants can you go over I know that at some point the the board changed on what they could do and what they had been doing can you go over that I know that at one time they had oversight on budget or some kind of decisions that were made and then that was taken away from them like past council I don't if you could go over the history of that for me a little bit because I've heard a lot about it but I've never really heard about it okay absolutely and it's actually covered on this particular slide in 2010 and I believe if I'm not mistaken the mayor may have been the only member of council that was here during that period of time so again why we're here today is kind of fill in the blanks of what we're doing a lot of these things that are identified for the airport advisory board were things that they were already doing from my understanding and looking back at the history and reading some of the minutes the one item that was removed is the item that you actually see at the bottom of this slide regarding leases and contracts would you back up this side so this is the what I believe they were already doing and that remained in place so it was mainly an outreach item advisory in nature to the council on general activities at the airport so when the 2010 report was done it identified some suggestions to change those one of the one of the things I don't believe it was in that particular document one of the concerns at that time that I believe the council did have was concerns about the makeup of that body included tenants and they were making recommendations and changes to leases for their competitors so that was there was an issue with that hence the reason it that particular piece was moved to the council airport committee amongst amongst some other things that went to the council airport committee certainly the council airport committee has oversight over all of the stuff that the airport advisory board does but it's primary primarily was established to take care of the financial and leasing and contracts specifically the economic development partnership board the first two items were relatively the same as the airport advisory board and more of a public outreach opportunity but their primary focus and again that was spelled out in and what I read to you earlier was to advise council and make recommendations regarding airport branding and marketing efforts development incentive policies and then create and leverage a common goal and create synergy between the airport and development around the airport they had particular expertise in that area hence the reason that that was recommended that it went to that particular member and so do all of these committees or boards I'm part of the economic board and I haven't I haven't really seen anything but do they review the the budget or the numbers for the for the airport or is that just a staff thing dude does that do those go to any any of the boards for the airport advisory board we present periodic updates on our current fiscal year budget so where we're at relevant to budget timeframe but that's the only group out of these three that review our regular financials if we have other items that are of significance they would go to the council before coming to the council thank you so with that then the next task and then what we were requested to do was look at comparison of other airports we originally looked at DFW area and then we kind of expanded to include others there are 11 comparable airports on this particular chart as you can see dent enlisted at the top with our particular three bodies there and to make it simple none of the other communities that we looked at have any kind of a council related committee looking at airport related items they just went directly to the council there are three of the eleven that we have here they do have an airport related board two of which the the Cleburne community and the San Marcos community have a small group they meet fairly infrequently from talking to their airport managers but the Meacham one is part of the Fort Worth system so they actually run three airports so it's Meacham Sphinx and Alliance so that particular group covers all three of their airports primarily from what we can understand because they have such a broad range over a larger community that they have that committee so I just I had a note here on this chart and I just wanted to say that our airport is also a very successful one when you put it up here and you've listed next to these where we're I think at the top or there's some list that we've made that I don't believe any of these other ones have and I wanted to credit that because I think our boards have a lot to do with that our oversight for our community boards ma'am I think you're referring to that we're number nine overall in operations yes thank you for that we actually we're actually number eight now we're sliding around between McKinney Meacham and us depending upon the time of year but we are we are very successful in the state is as far as a general aviation airport don't we have the a number very high number of flights that come in and out of our airport approximately 150,000 primarily generated from the flight school correct about 60,000 of those are flight school so we're here today seeking some council direction again to set the stage for the airport guiding documents depending upon the direction we see today we'll revise our documents to bring those through a public process so option one keep everything as it is and and and keep the two boards and the committee retain modify or disband the related boards and committees as the council sees fit eliminate all of the boards and committees and that would result in all all airport matters going directly to the full council so let me provide our staff recommendation and then and then where we go from here and I'd be happy to answer any questions staff would recommend that we we go with option one keep the existing boards and committee structure and purview again the airport advisory board would keep the same purview as identified in exhibit three of the matrix continue to work with the economic development partnership board for airport marketing and related economic incentives and continue using the CAC to review the airport finance lease and other high high level items so what's the next step after today certainly if there's a change in any one of the of the bodies and what they're going to do staff will prepare the necessary resolutions or ordinances for the council for formal action to make those changes and then secondly staff will prepare the airport guiding documents in accordance with the direction provided today and fit in whatever additional guidance is needed within those within those bodies so with that I'd be happy to answer any questions the council may have any concern or opposition to staff's recommendation of option one if I don't hear anything I'm going to assume that we're okay with option one okay looks like direction is option one staff recommendation thank you very much thank you thank you Scott agenda item C is receive a report from staff hold a discussion you have staff direction regarding the future park that is to be located at the corner of heritage trail and Linden Drive and razor ranch town center good afternoon Gary pack and director parks and recreation here today to talk to you about a proposed razor ranch park I have two gentlemen here that we have been working with since last summer Charles Hodges from Hodges Hodges architecture and Kevin Bankhead from alliance alliance Hillview Charles will step up in a few minutes and go through some slides and give you some additional background and answer questions in regards to razor ranch as a whole and how this park is designed and how those work together but I'm going to go ahead and get you get you started initial the initial steps we're going to do today is give you an update on the the park itself provide you a design concept that we have together for your consideration and feedback and then provide you some next steps in regards to what we can do to get the park completed so this is a general location of where the proposed razor ranch is located to give you an idea here's Winco here this is University here's Bonnie Bray and its relationship the McKenna park in regards to the overall development here's interstate 35 University going this way this is north and here's the park in green it's it's a little less than 10 acres it says on their master site plan is this what was approved in our ordinance this was I believe so okay yeah and I let Charles comment on that okay second on April 18th we had a double header of two public meetings one for razor ranch and one for McKenna the same evening since their parks are primarily located right next to each other in the same neighborhood the overall feedback some of the highlights of the points that were taken walking trails and connectivity are extremely important to everybody that seems to be something that we hear at most of our meetings throughout the community so far during our master plan process Gary right quick man protein had a comment clarification because you have feedback from our late March 18th sorry March 18th yeah yeah March 18th water fountains and shade structures are extremely important public transportation was feedback that we had educational signage about history of that in itself lighting and call boxes for safety turf quality was was a concern especially with discussing McKenna McKenna does have a lot of wheat challenges it does not have irrigation this poke this park is proposed to have irrigation so we can improve the turf quality there green space more trees whenever possible parking where parking was going to be located as a neighborhood park there's no designated parking for this space there is on-street parking and there are spaces that are designated for ADA accessibility and we have a map for you for that restrooms there are no restrooms identified in this although that was a question that we'll probably end up looking into it sometime down the road we could look at porta potties if if that was an opportunity maybe something that's screened just to provide a little bit more of an aesthetic look and feel street crossings on how people are going to get access to the park will a traffic light be eventually placed at University and heritage trail and then considerations for a spray ground we're getting a lot of interest in spray grounds as well in the community Carl Young has been pretty successful so far so we are looking at from a master plan standpoint where we could put future spray grounds throughout our park system so they're strategically located Charles come up and walk us through from this point so real quick question Charles is this this says site plan is this something that you created for this meeting or is this part of an ordinance no this is something we created really for the overall design and this meeting okay but this isn't incorporated in any ordinance as far as a requirement or anything like that not specifically although the outline of the park area okay in our GDP okay as we've looked at before thank you so thank you for having me this afternoon we've been working on this about a year with Gary and drew Jason and have progressed to this point had great feedback the other night I was really thrilled because I got stopped by a five-year-old girl in the meeting the other night her name was Zoe and she said well are those trees where I can climb them and I didn't have an answer for that because I normally specify trees so that you can walk under them clear to eight feet and then the head of the tree begins at that point so we'll be adding one more tree to these plans called Zoe's tree and it'll be a magnolia because we talked about that after the meeting and she likes doing that so approximately 160 to 190 tree positions in the overall plan more importantly it's a park that we feel like complements both McKenna and North Lakes and the challenge design-wise was to create something that was complementary but was different there's no point replicating the same part within a three iron of each other between this park and McKenna Park so we really felt like it was important to advance a plan that enabled us to incorporate a lot of walkways both perimeter and the internal walkways a more formal promenade as you see Charles I'm sorry could you get a little closer to the mic because we're trending so we don't want you to not be able to be heard okay so we have a central promenade that extends north-south that begins at Linden as Linden passes the south extremity of the park it is right up the middle of the park it's a very formal promenade as you can see it has a more formal planning okay thank you so promenade being north to south in this orientation all the way through the park terminating at what we have reserved as a performance pad on the north end of the park a lot of discussion took place between parks and ourselves as to the position for a potential performance pad that pad would be a concrete structure that is not elevated because we felt like anybody who came in and set up any kind of a music presentation is going to want an elevated stage in the ability to cross wire underneath that so with the park we felt like having a formal promenade down the center really delivered us to this point in a very formal perception processional way the terminus of Crescent Avenue into this element gave us the location for the crosswalk through the park and the park is based on diverse topography it's based on trying to create an area that blunts some of the ambient noise off I-35 you've got prevailing winds at about 240 southwest we've got a cut coming up through and off of I-35 and we really wanted to segregate the park a little bit we wanted to segregate it visually and we wanted to segregate it more importantly from the noise factor of 35 during the prevailing wind that ambient noise really affects what you do and how you enjoy the park so we felt like that was very important in doing so we wanted to create the topography diverse enough that you had different fields in different areas of the park itself as you know the perimeter of the park is frequented our residential on three sides this would be the residential development that's underway right now this area we're negotiating with one of the most skilled multifamily developers in the Texas area Texas market in order to achieve this area this area is currently under contract for a senior 55 and over multifamily development by a group that's nationwide experienced so we feel like we've got a great group and assemblage of residential communities as a part of this councilman step back just a second go to the master no councilmember Briggs if you if you go back as you're talking about residential around around the park which I then I go back to the stage and performances and so what I think I heard you say was that it would be more acoustic that there wouldn't be outlets or a way for bands to plug in or would there be oh no it would definitely have amplification okay we've really tried to conceive the north end of the park is somewhat of an amphitheater effect with the berms on either side smaller berms at the south end of that segment and that would be this area right here it's an approximate two acre area and then it has berms that basically define it on the south and then berms to share for berm side or slope side seating on the side so that everybody in there has kind of an amp an amphitheater effect towards the performance venue but does that I'll just have a message for you later about park rules and performing in parks at certain times later sure yeah thank you we had always hoped I mean I think we were debating I think I've had 12 birthdays since I started working on razor in the design side we'd always hope this would be a stop on north by 35 we thought this part maybe could be a venue an additional venue for what goes on within the city got the greatest music heritage in Texas or basically United States in UNT and we just felt like this was an opportunity to share that gift with the public in this area so in creating that it was important to divide what that element would be with a more open passive area to enjoy the park here so that there is somewhat of a separation we don't envision this to be any kind of a programming such that you'll have something happening here every week every two weeks or every month we think it'll be three or four times a year potentially as an opportunity for having a public function in the in the northern sector of the amphitheater sector but we're surrounded as I said on three sides and so we have an open area through here we wanted to put in that position we had extra dirt as you may or may not remember there was about 40 feet of fall across this site from west to east so from Heritage Trail down to Bonnie Bray we felt like sculpting the park was an effective way rather than just loading up and hauling off dirt we felt like sculpting it was also in keeping with the park design criteria I think in the manual it really talks about trying to create diverse topography and I think that's very important everything can't look like a plowed field that's just been grasped and become a play area so we felt like having the berms did several things gave us an opportunity to introduce different types of landscaping on the exterior of the berms then on the interior of the berms so what we have is we've created a series of these four berms and then flat areas with the approaching streets on either side through this area and then also in this area so that the berms exist here here here and there and then it's open to the streets here and here so approximately a third of each of those street frontages is open to grade level versus having the berms the berms give us also an opportunity to introduce some history and history is really important y'all know me that no me know we did the deal in Frisco where we have one of the largest continuous themed bronzes in North America it celebrated the Preston Trail there's a really rich history here to be celebrated both from the natural resources the prairies the prairie grasses all of those elements to the actual history of the area and its settlement and development so I really felt like this is an opportunity for a teaching piece as well as a part so the teaching piece portion of this really incorporates a lot of historical entablatures and things that we'll talk about in a second but the berms were very important to that I passed this site every weekend from my 19th through my 24th year going to school and I saw the ranch I remember the Longhorns and I always remembered that and to be able to come back and work on this development for the last 12 years been a real privilege I thought we ought to capture a little of that and I thought we ought to tell that story and I thought that it's real opportunity for an educational element to this park so the celebration of the history of both the native resources and also of the settlement is something that we really want to concentrate on so this would be the area that we were just discussing again would be this approximate two and a half acres to the north end we have smaller six foot berms here to use not only as slope seating but also as a dividing point so that the personality of this area may be a little different than the personality of this area yet they all work together and they're all interconnected by the walkway system both perimeter and exterior one thing I want to mention is we've had this discussion about the perimeter walks whether they're directly against adjacent to the curb line which they are in the other areas we spent a lot of time with engineering talking about the opportunities having the walks against the curb versus away from the curb in the other areas the active street areas we push the walks up against the curb in this area we have pushed portions of the walk up against the curb we were actually talking about removing the walk from these two positions and actually bringing you into the park so you really don't have a chance not to be introduced to the park and be able to walk into the park rather than bypass it on the street frontage we felt like that was a good opportunity again in the areas where we have the openings from end of this berm all the way down to this firm so same on this side so I think that's a point we may want to discuss today is whether we want to again push up I'm adamantly against having parallel parking against a park if it's an open play opportunity people chase balls and they run between those cars and I think it's a risk we should not take so I've eliminated in the preliminary plan we talked about having parallel parking on the East Park Boulevard which is this area up against this side and we basically have decided to eliminate that parallel parking because we just feel like it's not a risk worth taking I mean you might gain 50 spaces on that frontage it's not worth it it's not worth one time of even taking a chance on that to that end though what I envision is a or ask your input on is a Clyde Van Warren approach where you have the parallel parking but it's for food trucks or service vehicles that sort of thing so what is it what are your understanding your concern are you is that palatable to have reserved spaces that would then be utilized for food trucks or service vehicles honestly Councilman I think a food truck position in that area is just as much risk if not more because a mom that's got three sub 10 year olds and they're trying to wait on food at a food truck that one of those can get away and get around that truck just as easily if it were my absolute discretion I would say let's don't take that chance let's find other areas potentially in our transitional area to the north where we can do food trucks and get them off the streets and off that perimeter of that area okay you know I'd look forward to because I think that same mom you know if you go to hula hands it's gonna be pretty expensive Winco is tough all the other fast foods cross-street except for the taco place on on you know I mean so I think options close by are limited but our house has a great sandwiches and brownies are killers thank you yes sir so back to where we're going let's move a little bit the retail parking within adjacency when we did Frisco bridges which is a million and eighty thousand square feet has over 700 multifamily units in it I probably have two thousand spaces out there that don't have an oil stain at the time the city didn't look at integrated parking and cross utilization we built 7700 parking spaces when really only about 4,000 were required in actuality here we're gonna have the same access to the adjacent retail parking as Frisco has for the ballpark whereby the overflow crowds and those not accommodated in the interim lots can park at the mall parking some of the other peripheral furniture stores and other uses and I think we have the same opportunity in addition we do have the parking on both sides of Crescent and I really like the feel streets streetscape wise of having that on Crescent it's a slower street it's quieter traffic and I think it feels the way that urban design has intended that street to feel I know staff has always encouraged us to push everything up to that street and we've done so we have I'm sorry yeah so when I see the the numbers of the parking spaces for me I thought well that's that's a lot so what you're saying is what I'm seeing are shared spaces with the with the other retail around but the ADA compliant are they close enough to the park to where they can access safely from you know one area of the retail to the park well those spaces are on East Park Boulevard so they're strong along East Park and various ends of the park gotta remember the parks really long what we've talked with staff about was incorporating at the service we at everybody's request we put a cross service opportunity here that may be decomposed granted or maybe a paver a pervious paver type use we've talked about incorporating a couple of ADA spaces off of that entry to that point which would be right here behind the berm and also over here and so we think there may be an opportunity to do even more spaces directly adjacent to the part my planning answer to that is we had really intended that this parking lot incorporate many ADA spaces across here but that is future development so in the interim we felt like it might be better to cut in some additional ADA spaces there are 54 spaces through which are ADA compliant along East Park Boulevard and 47 spaces on crescent that have two compliant spaces on them so there are five compliant spaces just on the east side councilmember Amater yeah so I like that idea about having the additional ADA compliant spaces closer or on this side of the park and have you considered since we're talking about you know the hypothetical mom with the with the stroller having a stroller parking we don't really see much of those around town but you know special well you know we think that there's an opportunity to do it both on this side and this side so we might be able to have a couple of mom spaces on the left and and compliant centerline spaces on the right that that would be wonderful and kind of along those lines you know it for those as far as on you know safety for for kids and families well for everyone for people who are parking at the retail on either side of the park mm-hmm have you and maybe this is a question for traffic engineering here but maybe and I thought about this but I mean right now it's not you don't see much traffic going through here but what about crossing you know crosswalk protected street crossing and when you do visit with traffic you'll find we've had some really spirited discussions about us wanting flashing signals at crosswalks four-way stops three-way stops in every opportunity I think you'll find they think we're being overly conservative on that I don't think so if it's my kids or my residents or my grandkids out there well could we have a staff report from traffic engineering on what they suggest for pedestrian cross street crossing at this area or is that premature should we wait till this this progresses yeah I think it's premature at this point but we can certainly ask Gary to work with freedom and make sure that these questions can be answered as the park comes forward okay thanks Preetam and Todd and I have had some really good discussions because I think we're ending up being a pilot program for LED perimeter stops along Heritage Trail and Panhandle because we want to slow it down and stop there so they've agreed to let us go ahead and do the experimental LED display which gives you a much longer distance of acknowledgement for a stop sign and particularly down where we have a high concentration of senior living at that point on the 47 spaces 288 compliant are you saying those will be on Crescent Street they are on Crescent yes sir both sides of the street both sides and so if we have cars parked on both sides is that four lane or two lane road well it's it's designated if you can can discern how the islands dive in at this point it's two lane at the throat we're it tees into East Park but then it becomes four lane with designated parallel parking on both sides so the parking is offset they still have four full lanes yes okay now let me clarify that for no it's a two lane road but with two additional lanes where parking occurs yes so moving along this is a photograph taken a couple weeks ago I believe where the berms are in place now the actually the topsoil has been placed we need to get planted at least on the base turf we've been back and forth with parks many times on whether this is celebration turnt type Bermuda or and we sought the advice from UNT who has tried that we've now moved away from celebration I think they're not having really good luck with it we've gone to a text tough or a tiff tough which is now the designation that I think we're all in concert on on the best wearing surface for the for the park area itself the you can begin to see the berms starting to cast and take shape in this area we actually have a the promenade between the break in the berms here and the crossing point which is the extension of crescent here we actually took another grade break here and so we held this area up a little higher and there's about a four to five foot break on a soft slope there so you even have to topography there to take advantage of I mean be honest you give a kid a slope and grass and let him run up and roll down that's most effective play you can do so I think we're really trying to capitalize on the things I remember as being passive play opportunities and those that still can be the quiet respite kind of opportunity that we have here you can begin to see the line take shape now on this side and that will be complimented on the same vein on this side so we're starting to really feel the scale of the park which is really important it's a it's a big area on the on the previous slide it looked like is that water gathering the end of the berms yes we haven't put in the internal drainage system yet okay see where it ponds okay and then we put our internal drains that will actually feed into the will be trained okay yes thank you you bet so here's begins to be the finished product as we start to envision it this would be at the entry off of Linden as Linden comes past the park the south end of the park and then you begin to see the promenade beginning here we actually have terminated the berms with stone walls on either end each end of the berm in that area where they're compressed up to the walk begin to form stone walls and so we have those stone walls that's a real opportunity for our entablatures and we'll talk about those in a second but so there's a very formal entry into the park off of Linda here there's a formal break and kind of a place to pause along the crosswalk we'll call it the crescent walk going across and and where it intersects with a promenade we've created a lens which I think is an opportunity for some public art in the center the Longhorns or something that I've suggested to parks that there ought to be a program much like there was at the National Ranching Heritage Museum in Lubbock that we did at Tech and the founding families there actually donated a steer to the herd they were branded with their ranch name on it and it became a very nationally renowned place of sculpture for for the Western Heritage so there's an opportunity with the Chisholm and all of its rich history to do something I think is very meaningful and an educational piece here so Charles in that picture I'm seeing parallel parking on the right side of the screen is that for the facility the whatever that building is on the right but I but I see parking spots but does that is that for the parkers that for the that's public yeah right yes yes yeah you'll need to get yeah sorry because I can't okay well I thought I heard you say you didn't want parking on the street near the park you're saying where that big sidewalk is you didn't want Jason okay all right okay because the park side is where the liability lies and I wanted them on the other side of the street there so moving in this would be the north end we have suggested in the area that we call the transition piece we think there's an opportunity in many cases just like Clyde Warren now there is an opportunity for commercial and service development in or on the perimeter of the park and that north end originally was reserved for Civic hoping that the museum would be able to come out there in place and we've been through three directors and 12 years and and we don't know if they ever will want to do anything we're suggesting that we still reserve a component on the very tip of the north end for that but we also think there's an opportunity to do some services we know we'll have to come back for a zoning case for that but we think there's an opportunity to do adjacent services there that remove the restroom issue from the park and the maintenance of those and the construction of those from the park we think that because you will be offering food and beverage hopefully at that location we're also suggesting that there's a much there if you're not familiar with much from the the uptown area and or in Fort Worth along the trail system now they pushed a much right up on the main Trinity trail system in Fort Worth and it's fabulously successful it's a dog park with food beverage you you mentioned museum I don't know if you've are aware or not but we have a up-and-coming children's museum now in Denton Explorium and I'm sure the director of that museum would love to talk to you we'd be happy to we've been a final a final home we've been looking for somebody that wants to really talk about this for a long time we think that there's an opportunity to do both there we've left three positions on that northern area that was designated civic away from our nine point eight seven acre park we've left that area reserved for that and we think it's great opportunity we also think it's an opportunity if there wants to be an extension of an outdoor sculpture garden that's a great place for it so there's some there's some real opportunities there but not to divert away from the park itself we've kept the interior very passive one of the comments was more trees this happens to be in at the one angle in the middle of the amphitheater section on the north end where we did not want to put trees along the promenade because it would have blocked obviously view the stage from a good percentage of the seating area so so you mentioned Clyde Warren Park which is you know I've been thinking of that as I was preparing for this meeting and looking at these sketches I really like that park and and this is this feels much bigger this is much yeah that's why we subdivided it into yes these quiet smaller bites and you know have you looked into because they seem they seem to have done just kind of from it as a visitor they seem to have done a good job in kind of creating this urban park and added out of nowhere in making it feel like a park but also it seems anyway to be pretty water friendly you know not to you know there's it's green but there's also lots of you know mulched areas and and have you looked into the kind of plantings they've used and I know I know you need irrigation and I know that they do too they've got a specific challenge there because that park is on concrete double T's spanning over Woodall Rogers so the amount of water that infiltrates that system infrastructure wise will be totally destructive so that's why we propose that the entire perimeter of our berms be native grasses that are low water consumption and at some point we hope no water consumption because as they establish and get a root system those native grasses lived here for the last five thousand years they don't need us to water them to survive yeah and I love that if you looked into in these big green spaces incorporating more need you know native plants look more you know drought tolerant well we have but we need we need the turf I think we worked hard with parks to develop areas of turf and areas of the native plantings and trying to give different characters and different personalities to different areas of the park itself this one just happens to look wide open it's only two acres it just is the angle of the rendering but the point being is though when you have a performance on a stage in this position we want everybody to be able to sit on blankets average blanket seating is about 20 square feet per person I don't know if y'all remember the EDS campus when starplex used to be there and all the great concerts from national acts went over there and we all went over and took a picnic basket and bottle of wine or two and sat and enjoyed the concert we'd like the opportunity for that kind of seating and that kind of field to be in this northern two acres so yeah I would love to see if I'm not sure if you've met with our master gardener local you know master gardeners group but at some point you know to arrange a meeting with them I think they're gonna love our grasses we've currently got a debate going with parks on whether seat mule and burger and golf mule and burger are actually the same grass but they can weigh in on that it probably will be the deciding so here are some of the this is actually the crossroads where we talked about the crescent crossing being in this position the amphitheater being behind these smaller six-foot berms these walls will be frequented with our historical entablatures and I think this becomes a real gathering spot we've looked at two different types of benches this happened to be the old type of benches we were looking at but the grinders are a real problem in parks nowadays and so we've decided to go with the looters limestone butter what we call butter stick benches they're not good for skateboarders they're great because they don't retain the heat in the summertime that strap iron or any kind of metal benches do we find that they're incredibly durable but more importantly they're going to match our our rock that we use on the wall the stone walls so we think it's a better more natural application and they're starting to be adopted all over Texas this is the area that where the crossroads occurs this is actually the area from heritage trail is right here sorry for those that I'm in the way of heritage trail is in this position you're able to cross at that area right there and then this is where the wall the walks actually go into the park on both sides that bring people into the park instead of allowing them just to traverse the edge of the street our entablatures are meant to tell the history not only of the natural history but also of the history of the settlements there's some a wealth of information on Denton historical from the standpoint of actual stories I've got books that I study for other Western history issues that have some stories about when the herds came up through here when the Chisholm was really about eight miles to the west but some of the areas drifted over to this area and followed I-35 all the way there are some incredible tales about how quite frankly hard the life was back then and what struggles people had to settle in this area and I think there's a wealth of information that we can tell those stories on these entablatures distributed around the park and on the walls so as I said the perimeter of the exterior of all the berms would be populated with native grasses those low water consumption drip irrigation at some point will be able to turn that drip back and almost no water we think that's really important because then it also gives a different personality to the streets gate from what happens inside the park this happens to be at Linden as Linden crosses the south end of the park here's your formal entry into the park and into the promenade that goes northward this would be the end of the berm walls where again we'll put our information boards our storyboards we've even got a flat spot on top of the berm up here with a grove of trees because it's gonna be a nice place to gather the breeze when it's hot they're gonna be a nice place to just sit under the trees and just be quiet and enjoy the park for what it was intended to be here are just examples of this happens to be on a salt marsh but this is the type of photography and history written history that we can incorporate the walls will actually have those elements mounted these types of storyboards mounted this actually is probably one that we will replicate because it talks about how the native landscape the native grasses how they take root how important that root system was to retaining soil if you remember two weeks ago when the wind was 70 miles an hour those areas that are well vegetated stayed intact and half of West Texas blew through because it was plowed ground and the soil erosion it teaches the lesson of the root systems and how important it is to avoiding erosion Councilmember Briggs has a question right so I'm glad that you said that because I had a note here asking about erosion on the berms because they are where the sidewalk is and so that would be you know a constant battle if it wasn't taken care of properly we work with Gary and his team and we decided to do a 10-foot grass section at the base of every berm separating the base of the berm from the sidewalk area one it's a convenient most trip for them to it gives us an exfiltration pad if you will to be able to exfiltrate anything before it goes off into the street or the storm system so it's just good technique I think from a design standpoint well to that point what I was curious about was that this root systems if you're going to be displaying it at the bottom and it has all these lovely wildflowers and natural flowers and the one thing that I see missing from the park it's it's very structured and manicured but I don't see any wildness or colors well actually I mean from my standpoint the sides of the berms that are exposed to the streets are all very soft and very mixed we did get a request from I guess the landscape consultant for the parks to segregate our species which I think that's fine when you've got Gulf mule and pink mule and a little blue and big blue and some windmill grasses so those great native grasses they live better than colonies that are monoculture colonies by themselves if you mix it all you tend to lose the definition and the real impact of that wildflowers and I think we've had our discussions about areas along the promenade where we can create not nine acres of wildflowers but more blue bonnet areas right almost like southeast stations coming sure the one thing that we talked about doing to incorporate some wildflowers is to integrate some blue bonnets into the mounding on the inside so in potentially place some boulders there so the families could actually get up on the boulders and sit with the blue bonnets behind so it's almost like a framed photo opportunity I think councilmember Hudson talked about selfie stations in the parks and that was one of the ideas that we could we could use and integrate that into our park system well I think wildflowers would be lovely I remember looking out at the field as I drove by and seeing wildflowers out there and so if we're you know trying to bring some of that aspect back yeah I mean if I had to say so I'd really like us to do more than just blue bonnets quite honestly the Galartias are spectacular the paint brush is gray in this part of Texas so I think any of those the red blankets are wonderful flowers so I think any of those even a mix of those around the boulders got to be careful because kids and adults alike will be climbing all over the boulder so they'll be stomping all our flowers but as a backdrop Gary's right we picked two areas to do the boulders when I get back to the overall I'll show you where those are the example I used was in Jackson Hole they actually put climbing boulders they imported big boulders into their parks for that very reason just let the kids climb on great exercise probably have some of our seniors climbing on them so as you can see would be using a two-legged pedestal for most of the freestanders and they will be mounting the entablatures much like what you see here on the root system we'll be mounting those on the walls so that at the formal entries both in Linden going north and at the crossroads where our walls come together we've got opportunities to do teaching places maybe with two different things we haven't really worked through our criteria for our theming yet but we're real close so here's a good example of the mixture we have a wealth of information and photography here if you remember on the north side of razor I did those buildings design those and I use the historical murals from downtown and in the gatherings in historical dent and I felt like we had a really rich heritage to work from and archives I think we'll have the same thing to be able to mix this councilmember husband thank you thank you quick question I guess mr. city manager or whoever in staff would know what is the dividing line between the new where red development stopped and start is that heritage heritage is a cut cut off okay got it so we're really the the east side of heritage is still red development no no it's a it's no that's really us okay what we're developing all okay and then so the other and so have we well then it doesn't matter because most of that is developed anyway got it tracking way thank you you bet so this would be an example of what you would see mounted on the walls at both the entrances in color both photography and written historical so now moving around you begin to start to see the role and the softness of some areas the more formality to some areas the mix of landscaping and native grasses on the exterior so that you can really see cultures of that pink muley and golf muley that's a good example you want that sea of pink because it blows it's beautiful grass and it quite frankly it's one of my favorites of the natives and one of the least water consumptive grasses that are this would be as you progress to the south now you begin to come out of the flat area and begin to pick up the toe of the southern berm the area that I talked about before which is the tabletop we call it is this grove of trees on the south berm this would be the southwest berm and that's a place where we really will encourage people to come up this is the entrance from Lyndon going north as you can see the promenade has two species of trees we actually mix crepes and cedar elms there I love crepe myrtles because when everything else is burning up crepes are blooming forth and so I think that mix is really a good mix for the promenade and people can really enjoy that color even in July and August this is the lens we talked about where we think there's a good opportunity for for art public art you begin to see the butter sticks the limestone benches from looters and then you approach as you approach the crossroads area that we talked about which is the extension of crescent and you've got another set of walls and another opportunity for more entablatures and more educational elements then you go from there and you move into the area that is the amphitheater and it's like stadium golf quite frankly it's it's smooth around the edges with the slope so everyone can enjoy whatever is going on at the performance pad and in that area that you see at the terminus of the walk is the performance pad itself the buildings you see there beyond that will be back to you talking about at a later time when hopefully we have some input from children be great great so that's really our basic presentation happy to answer any questions or well we've been going for about an hour and a half let's just take about a real quick five-minute break I know we're at the end of the but yeah if we get off the question till we get back after a while okay so there's a couple slides left okay we'll try to plow through this and then we'll get feedback and thank you Charles appreciate it and you're right it has been a long time it's been 12 years so just to kind of give you an overall budget the budget proposed for what you've been presented for today by the development group is around 965 thousand dollars for all those items listed there some additional designs that aren't included in that a playground shade structure additional trees if we wanted to put more trees in there and restrooms you know we've struggled with restroom costs that's not right yeah so we're we're gonna be we're gonna be here next week Drew's gonna be talking about a couple opportunities to build the restrooms within in-house staff to do that much much more affordable so these all could be added a later date once we see how the park functions so this gives you an idea what's they're committed to based on the development of the 915 16 is two hundred fifty five thousand dollars in park development so they're well beyond that as well as the acreage there are a few acres beyond what they're required to provide and then system next steps we have a draft to develop agreements that we're working on so we when to get that finished in this month if we can come back to you in May with approval for that a development agreement and then application consideration of park naming would follow shortly thereafter we're gonna be coming to you in the next month for a update to the park naming policy so we're waiting for that to happen and then they would proceed with construction drawings and then fall into park construction and then potentially the park would be open next summer if not sooner okay that's member breaks question yes so I think you heard it you heard I'm sorry okay development park fees and so on on that itemized list is that there on their side that they're paying in instead of normally like the developer would pay us and then we would spend that is that how that's working there's an option where they can pay in lieu of providing land as well as development so they could actually provide land and pay the development fees and then we would develop it they could provide land and provide development which this is that example or they could just pay it pay out both for both both opportunities so this is we haven't really this is similar to Patrick Park so they're kind of happening at the same time so we haven't done a lot of this where the development community is developing that in cooperation with the city and eventually turning it over to the city for ownership so yeah thank you for clarifying that I just have a few quick comments I really like the design and so I'm just gonna tell you my wish list so I I wish that there were you know some wildness and some color in the park and I'm glad to hear that that's being discussed I also would like to have that the in the in the drainage the drainage go into some sort of reuse system for for watering if that puddles down if that could go into some rain system and then reuse back up I think that would be great and save on on water yeah irrigation since we started with the the topic this morning I thought I would just kind of continue to bring it through to this item I would rather not see a playground I would like to see a not a spray ground but a water feature that kids can play in I've seen them in several other like retail areas where there's just like a mound of water coming up in three and three or four different areas and the kids can run through it and it you know kind of pops up and down more of an interactive fountain right there's not you know a lot of you know plastic and you know like where it's a water park but it still fits into the design it looks really nice but you know it's fun fun for the kids that that's what I would rather see the money spent on because like I think you said in the beginning we have McKenna Park which is right across and we're gonna upgrade those we're gonna get extra like another structure I think so there'll be two structures there so instead of just having the same thing I'd like to see a little bit different for me I consider this park part of an economic development aspect because what we want to do is we want to bring people to the park so that they they spend their money and their time and their dollars in the in the rest of the area so anything that we could do that's different to bring them there I think would be great Councilmember Meltzer yeah I was actually at the public meeting and you know the only change that I've heard since that input was the addition of Zoe's tree I remember Zoey very clearly but so I would you know echo some of the things that were said there and like to you know see them first of all I'd confirm the desire to something there for kids I mean it's multi-family around there I think it's gonna be families with kids and you know I'm very happy with Councilmember Briggs's comments on that but you know the answer that there's a very high number of trees already there didn't didn't satisfy the people there said we don't see enough trees there's there's a feeling that it's hot here and that those big expanses could be kind of like a big green baking sheet so you know I definitely heard people have a desire for more areas where there are shady groves with places to sit in the shade a thought that I'll just pass along for consideration I don't know maybe it's not doable is I heard and I heard and share that view that amphitheaters oh by the way berms great the fact that there is a performance space great but I heard people say why is it more like an actual amphitheater so you know could it would it be possible to have that land there more more terraced so that you could you know set blankets on level ground put chairs on level ground and then yeah that the comment about the outer walk up against the traffic is is was mine I think as I you know had time to look at it and contemplate just the idea of street trees providing shade I think would increase the likelihood that that outer walk would get used those are my comments the only comment I have is on that sort of entertainment pad if that's really going to be something that is going to be a focal point or focus to have I think that pad site either not necessarily elevated in the sense but a gradual slope so if people sitting on the ground I mean your stage would have to be popped up pretty high to be able to see it if you're sitting on the ground so just I mean I don't know all the particulars about that but if that if there's a way to maybe get that a little higher not build a bigger thicker pad but you know your your ground could be elevated a little bit then you just put the pad on top I think I think it's a 1% slope yeah in the amphitheater yeah so it's gradual you can't really see it but there's a slight slope there's about six feet difference between the front of the stage in the back of the amphitheater okay okay all right so got you all right that's all I have Councilmember Armitage just to mention to add my voice to what's been said I support the comments just made so far about the some sort of a water feature play space because of how hot it is more trees because of how hot it is it'll bring more people there too and yeah and of course you know making sure that there's sufficient slope it sounds like I mean a slope that gradual you're not going to notice it but really really would have an effect and then you know that combined with my other comments made through about the master gardeners irrigation concern you know street crossings in the additional ADA parking spaces and possible stroller apparent parking spaces but I think this is it'll it'll be really great when it happens and I'm looking forward to it oh and you know and one more thing as far as water goes some sort of drinking water you know drinking fountain doesn't have to be pretty even just a spigot okay excellent excellent great last comment and they may be in the red and see them with bike racks garbage cans water fountains park amenities are clear thank you so I was trying to put it off but um so mr. city manager if we could get the flyover video maybe posted to our Facebook page with the music no no it's fantastic no so and then I think I agree that I don't know that the playground fits for my input I agree that this shade structures particularly in maybe the amphitheater side of things is maybe the way to go you have some more slender post or kind of work that in maybe it you know it serves a dual purpose lighting etc etc so kind of think there's some dual purposes there maybe even I'd love to see us to go with the the shade structures that have the solar panels on top of you know but I were you as a parent with an eight and a two-year-old the water feature should not be on the end with amphitheater is just because that creates a dueling interest right so if I'm trying to watch an artist inherently those two want to go towards the water you know so it you make it rough on parents that way I mean they have to be segregated it has to be far far on the other end where you're we're either in the water or we're we're doing something else I just for my my personal real-life experience that's that's what I see it just to take it easy and make it easier for parents to kind of coexist and watch a show that sort of thing but the restrooms I look forward to that coming back obviously I look forward to the naming side of things great presentation so that's that's kind of my my look on it but and then I would be if I could borrow you one more time Charles that's okay just so we have it on the record and just to get your thoughts so you have the luxury apartments going in which will kind of be right on the back side of the amphitheater there across heritage yes they're already yeah right vertical right so how do you how do you envision those two worlds colliding so you have well I really don't I mean I think that quite frankly the when I'm designing parks or public spaces those multifamily units are my best friend because the more eyes on the street the better I love it I want people sitting out on their balconies and looking at the amphitheater and enjoying what goes on out there I think that's a wonderful interaction and I think that because we've selected different sectors of residential around the park market rate senior all the different mixes I think we're gonna have a wonderful population of that area around that that park I think it's just all gonna mesh beautifully it's probably the first plan in 40 years that I've ever done ten years ago that it's actually getting built the way the old plan so and then if I may yes and so then one last thing on the sound though have you worked that in your other yeah I think that I think the trade-off for residents there'll be very few that oppose three or four times a year and in fact they'll be right down in the middle of it and enjoying it I know our 55 senior multifamily there they're gonna be up there in the mosh pit probably love it I mean standing room in the front so yeah I mean they're very active so I think they'll be all over got it thank you you bet I do have a solution to what you're talking about because I did it in Wolf Ranch in Georgetown and it's called a tactile bubbler the kids little kids can even go up and play in their different heights so I'll try to get some photographs and bring them next time so you presented a budget and so you just need direction on hey is this we're going to this what you're asking are we heading the right direction I have all your feedback we'll look at how we can integrate some of that stuff and move on from there yeah any other comments questions yes for clarification that total cost of the city is not what we're looking at now right because we're not so so this is what they're proposing to spend as presented and these are just items if we wanted to add stuff and we can continue to add to that as other discussions come up today yeah we're not or take away yeah we're not giving any direction on the by the city it's just the direction on by developer okay sounds like we're okay with that yes yes sir any objections to that okay thank you appreciate Gary thank you Charles we'll go ahead take a five or ten minute break welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on April the 2nd 2019 we're going down through our work session items work session item 3d I receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the potential leasing of the 3.5 acre property at 308 Bradley Street the former side of that Veterans Village and Bradley Street apartments please note that council member Meltzer and council member Armitage have recused themselves parks and recreation want to spend a few minutes afternoon talking to you about a proposed park for consideration that would actually be a lease land in cooperation with UNT we're calling it Veterans Village Park as right now it's a current naming for discussion purposes so to give you an idea where that's at it's sandwiched between Scripture and West Oak Street just north of campus on Bradley Street here's your three and a half acres with a parking lot and then open space on both sides of the property in relation to other parks proposed Veterans Park Village Park is down here on the bottom right hand corner McKenna Park is about 2,000 feet away razor ranch is about 2,500 feet away again the location is about three and a half acres former site of Veterans Village it was a temporary housing location for veterans that came back after World War two that went to UNT and there were 50 hutments or small houses that were placed on this property UNT is interested in leasing it for ten years we'd be proposing a dollar a year lease plus plus maintenance which we anticipate is about ten thousand dollars which will show you in a future slide this is an photo from circa 1947 Oak Street is running along here here's Bradley here's the hutments that you could see that were placed here they look like about average size pavilions that we have in our park system just with with sides on it obviously to give you an idea that's where that space is today this is what it looks like today open space with some chain link fencing around the perimeter we would propose to possibly replace that just from a visual standpoint it's not very attractive from a park usability standpoint so that's looking southeast here's the parking lot there's another space of green grass over here that is completely fenced in as well with a small entry point here off Bradley staff put together some draft concepts just for discussion purposes at this point time this all can be modified so we very basic would be that we go in there clean it up maybe put down some additional sand or soil just to kind of level out some of the low spots and call it a day something simple as that but from a permitting standpoint any development that we do we would put in the amount of trees that are appropriate and then possibly replace the fencing along the street side on Bradley this is a decomposed granite trail that we possibly could work with volunteers to put in we've had some volunteer veterans volunteer group reach out that could be possibly interested in helping us these areas here are wildflowers so we could continue our monarch way stations and our our bee plantings to enhance that effort and then obviously continued trees each one of these could be a little reading nooks for kind of carry the campus into the neighborhood as well and then the pavilion what we thought would we do kind of creatively there is look at the same size of one of those Hutmans and try to find a location where it was actually placed so we could put one kind of there and it would kind of resemble the Hutman and kind of help tell that story so a little zoom in a little bit so draft concept provides open space for play so you come out here kick soccer ball in this open area six reading nooks a pavilion area existing parking lot would stay the same make sure that everything is ADA compliant we do have to put in some access from the sidewalks and into the trail that would need to be required for any improvements we do the monarch way station the pollinator garden had mentioned obviously it's a neighborhood beautification effort in that area the historical tie with the veterans villages is kind of neat theme obviously health and wellness to the neighborhood and students it would help our 10-minute walk program primarily to the east of the park and then the trail is about 1200 feet in length some of the base services if we took took it over from a least standpoint general maintenance we figured it's probably some somewhere between seven and ten thousand dollars that's basic turf care mowing litter removal and then miscellaneous vandalism sidewalk and ramps we have replaced the sidewalk in there and the ramps are roughly twenty five hundred dollars a piece so that's a little over twenty thousand dollars the required number of trees that we buy off contract and install and then any permitting expenses we have associated with that is that per year no the general maintenance would be per year yes everything else there would be one time that the sidewalks trees and the permitting so one time I understand this we'd be leasing the land from North Texas but where they're doing the maintenance now we would be doing the maintenance that's correct all right added services if we wanted to add the park amenities garbage cans picnic tables that type of thing a park signage just saying what it is the name of the park maybe some interpretive signage talking about the actual village itself and the hut mints and provide that photography a pavilion could be placed there with a pad obviously we could replace we could pull the pavilion in ten years if we decided we weren't going to continue that that space or if UNT wanted to move forward with development we could relocate that to a different location panel fencing would just be basic wooden a wooden fence that we could technically pull out if we wanted to and then the granite trail is something probably we would invest in that we probably wouldn't get back so that's cost actually just by the granite and then have volunteers to install it so that would be another forty thousand dollars of one-time money that would need to be appropriated for this effort so just in summary about ten thousand dollars for annual maintenance about another thirty two thousand dollars just to get kind of get the doors open and then if we wanted to do a little added more it's about another forty thousand dollars services that aren't included irrigation on the trees would be putting gator bags there as of right now there's no lighting provided other than street lighting resurfacing a parking lot and curbing is not included in this any call stations if we decided to put that in there most trips along the fencing and the edges of the trail it's just it's it helps us for maintenance it reduces our maintenance costs Wi-Fi is something we might want to consider since it's next to the campus and then drinking fountain there's that's not included as well so this is just some of the ideas of a pavilion crushed granite trail interpretive science which we have in our park system it would it would contribute to the 10-minute walk and it could be a volunteer project as well with our our veterans next steps if council gave us feedback and decided us for us to move forward we would continue discussions with UNT working out memorandum or understanding or a lease agreement with them consideration for any enhancements we could start discussing immediately and identifying funding for that finalized the lease agreement hopefully in the fall pending UNT schedule in that process and then bring it back to the City Council for approval in the same time frame and then we would start recruiting volunteers for any enhancement that we would do work on that this winter so we can open it up in the spring once grass starts turning green you ready for questions yes sir customer breaks and so has the funds been identified from any any budget at this time it's not I mean we could put a budget supplemental in for this year's budget for consideration okay so do we know what the plan is in ten years are they I mean I'm in favor I guess I should say of this park and I've had emails you know of individuals who have had family members serve our country who are interested in and supportive as well but do they know that it may just be temporary I mean I'm just kind of curious because there's there's a lot of emotion involved with this and for some people and then for one day it just to be gone that's really my concern I'm okay with it and I think we should do it but I really would like for it to be something more final where you know it could be historical designated area we could have an actual hut replica you know and it could be I guess I'm just kind of throwing out all the things that I dream of right now but so that that's where I'm okay with it and I hope that we can find some funding but if you and T agrees and we just signed the lease I mean that it is usable right now right yes okay yeah so we haven't gone that far with UNT in regards to the discussions for you know what happens past ten years so I'm not familiar with their long-term plan is for that we were waiting for council feedback before we kind of went that next step I did have someone reach out to to me this week about it as well envisioning you know sculptures and plaques and all that and I told us well this is this is least property so it may not be a permanent site and he said I understand so if that's the desire of the community another location for that type of thing maybe need to identify for a long-term plan but you know as of right now I think the best chances look at this as a temporary location for green space and trying to capitalize off of that that kind of historical opportunity okay who who mentioned the ten years ten-year lease I was in the official letter from UNT okay okay yeah it's up at some point are we gonna need to go into closed session not not net right now but as we get closer to a formal agreement is that something that we would hear in closed session as far as if we wanted different terms or different ideas and things such as that I mean I'd like a longer term lease and that quite frankly I got an email from someone who actually grew up in one of those huts and so yeah if that's possible fine but obviously this is the very preliminary stage and yes councilmember Hudson yeah no I agree with the terms I'd be open but I think even if we're at the 10-year term then my preference would be to do the kind of ground enhancements because that veterans group could build a structure or volunteer like that sort of thing so that way if ultimately UNT takes it back it's only there for a short period of time that it's not city funds that sort of thing and they've I mean and they do great work I mean they rework the schoolhouse that sort of thing so that I mean I think it'll be fantastic it's you know but so I think that would be kind of the the in-between ground as we provide the grounds that sort of thing and then they can anything above ground anything you know vertical they kind of develop that okay all right so sounds like direction is sort of continue to move forward and continue to discuss specific terms and the like okay thank you thank you if someone could grab councilmember armature and councilmember Meltzer we're going to go on to agenda item 3e we've got two final agenda items and depending on how it goes they could be to take a long time or short time e e probably bit oh which one we doing oh the city of a point that I thought we were doing the development first okay so now eat put provide a report whole discussion give staff direction regard appointment to removal from all boards and commissions of the city right good afternoon mayor and council I'm Rachel wood chief of staff and the purpose of today's presentation is to discuss leaves of absence as they pertain to the boarding commission appointment and removal process so we've recently had two board of ethics committee members report a leave of absence from their respective position and the current code of ordinance is actually silent on leaves of absence the only provisions regarding absences are for excused and unexcused absences so if there are more than three unexcused absences from regularly called meetings or if a member misses more than 50% of meetings within a calendar year that's considered cause for removal from the board for excused absences I won't read through the list but those are things like personal illness or attending a conference on behalf of the board or commission that you serve on that could be considered excused absences so the reason we're bringing this before you today is there have recently been some concerns raised pertaining to the board of ethics regarding their ability to meet a quorum there have been several recent resignations there are some members who aren't able to vote because they're conflicted out right now and so for the two board of ethics members that have declared a leave of absence what we're asking from you is how do we treat those leaves of absence since the code is currently silent on that for the board of ethics the quorum is comprised of four members any vacancies that are due to resignations or removal for cause can can be filled using the typical appointment and nomination process and I should note that while I've mentioned the board of ethics this issue could present itself for any board or commission excuse me or commission and so what we're seeking feedback from you on is how would you if you would like for us to amend the code of ordinances to address this because it's silent on the matter for all boards commissions and committees so staff's presenting three options for you to consider today as I've already mentioned any one of these three options would require a code of ordinances amendment option one would be to consider a reported leave of absence and automatic resignation from the board and considered cause for removal option two would be to consider a reported leave of absence and unexcused absence and then that would follow the provision that once there are three absences from the board then that would be considered cause for removal or option three would be to consider a reported leave of absence and excused absence that of course would perpetuate the concern regarding the ability to meet a quorum but that is an option that council could consider so those are the three options we've come up with staff is seeking feedback today on how you'd like for us to proceed then we'll come back with given the direction we'll come back with any suggested revisions to the code of ordinances for you to consider at a subsequent meeting that I'll be happy to answer any questions you have comments questions mayor protein one thing that's not addressed in here for I wonder how to stress it's not been more of a question for legal is the alternates that are on boards who are not required to show up unless they're called for and yet it's if you missed three meetings how would we know if they're if they're a if they would have that many absences would you have to wait until they got you had a vacancy that you had to call them in so it's not missing three regular scheduled meetings it would be three that they were required to go that they're participating in so who outside the leave of absences that have been stated who has a appointments that are open or who's resigned or who hasn't come or what what what's available as far as people who've vacated for reasons other than a leave of absence declaration sure and we've actually got some pretty new news on that so on April 1st Ben Clark who was an alternate resigned from his position so that will be an open nomination that will be putting on the agenda for April 9th we also had Sandy Christopherson resigned from the board and so we're gonna be placing the nomination that's council member Hudson nominee he's gonna be placing a nomination also on the April 9th agenda for consideration a couple of observations I think and this could apply to all boards and commissions I think part of what we see here who appointed the alternates so we've got names listed but any council member can don't understand that because I think we need to think about that when it comes to appointment of alternates that council members should have only a certain number of appointee you know they got the regular appointee and then because what's happened here is we've got people who are conflicted out for certain reasons I do want to address the leave of absence in particular one that I know that I got an email stating that there was they were taking a leave of absence till May 4th after the election and that they were therefore I forgot what the wording is not going to be involved in any of the functions that would be available as a board as a member of the Board of Ethics however in the meantime there was a request made for information to city staff based upon their title as a member of the Board of Ethics and now I've gotten an email just yesterday that this same individual sort of says well I want to come back and we just can't have people saying we're going to take a leave of absence and then wanting information from that leave of absence and then deciding well I want to come back now for whatever reason so I think it's very important that we resolve this issue because if we're going to have people who are willing to serve on our boards and commissions they need to be willing to serve and if they're not willing to serve then they should just resign I don't think it should be I'm going to get out when somehow I don't want to participate but then I want to come back when I do want to participate you can't expect to have also the privileges of board membership if you haven't also assumed or continued with the responsibilities and obligations of board membership so I'm okay with option two because I think what you're saying is that if the leave of absence is based upon any of those reasons listed as an excused absence then those are not considered unexcused absences in other words if you're going to take a leave of absence I don't think you should just be able to take it because you don't want to serve for whatever reason I think it should be fall into those excused absences and if you don't want to serve then you should resign your board affiliation because it's necessary it's just important that we have that stability and that continuity in that regard so that's that's sort of where I am with that I know that whatever we decide on these options does not apply retroactively that it would apply moving forward if I'm correct in that because it's going to require an ordinance change so it really wouldn't affect anybody that's you know taking the leave of absence at this point but it would and I think it should apply to all boards and commissions and I think we need to look at as far as appointing alternates if we want to put some limitation on how many alternates you know individual council or single council members can appoint not because there's anything wrong with that but it's just how do we how do we not avoid how do we avoid this situation in the future and I think that should apply to all boards and commissions as well that's just me we got six other people here so council member Amater yeah so that even though I'm the one who appointed multiple alternates because actually and the reason why I did because I just I came into that meeting figuring other people would have you know suggestions of alternates and I was the only or maybe I sent them an email them in advance anyway I figured there would be multiple alternates and then we decide so but so even though I was the one who had like two alternate two alternates and I I agree that you know it would be nice to have something in place where to prevent that from happening yeah that wasn't a criticism on you appointing I just want to make sure it was just more of a just an observation yeah oh I know yeah I just wanted to say I agree with the part about the alternates that especially for a committee like this just gets gets complicated would you council member Arthur would you be okay with that we were just sort of applying across the board to boards and commissions in general I think it makes sense so so it would be you know no more so for alternates no more than one alternate per council member I mean usually we'll have we have depending on the size of the committee three or four alternates yeah I think I think that's that's reasonable and of course you know then if there's a problem it sometimes happens when if there's a council member who hasn't appointed but that's another issue I'm gonna go mayor pro-10 I'm gonna go to council member Duff thank you in and I agree too with the only one alternate per council member makes sense especially on a board like ethics that anyone has to recuse themselves so you automatically would take out two if you've appointed one you take three people out of the mix it if you're appointing two I guess based on my earlier question about the alternates and when we would trigger these the for cause the unexcused absences I would have to go with option one from a stand that moving forward not taking into account those that have had happened in the past but if your alternate were to give a leave of absence and you're down to where you need them to make quorum they haven't had those three so you haven't been able to replace them so that that's the only reason I would say that a leave of absence would be the same as a resignation moving forward council member Duff yeah I'm kind of kind of my first thought was option one and then you know in a way option two but I think I think what John Ryan's saying it makes sense you know that option one I mean if you're gonna have to take a leave of absence you need to be off well I don't necessarily agree with with option one I understand what you're saying about the alternate but maybe the alternates have that but the actual board members I mean I know it's easier to do it all across the board but the leave of absence if it's unexcused because these appointments sometimes are four years sometimes two years and if somebody someone is pregnant and they need to take a leave of absence for something or their mother is sick or something tragic has happened but it's not going to take two years to get back and they really are doing a great job in their position I don't think it's fair to kick them out especially you know one of these things that we have already listed as excused is happening that that's my preference I don't think that would be very fair because some of these are you know they last a long time and if they're gonna be back and you know then we shouldn't just say sorry too bad that you're having this thing you know that's where I stand on that so I'm okay with option two in that in that sense. Councilmember Meltzer and then Councilmember Armitage. Thinking out loud a little bit here well actually let me take the easy one first yeah clearly when somebody is out they they're out you know I mean during the time that they're out they should be asking for privileges that assume they're in I think that's straightforward I think I'm kind of tossing over my mind if somebody has a you know whatever reason they want to take a leave is and if we can't backfill with alternates it wouldn't make sense to have there be such a thing as an interim appointment right like I've got to take three months for a family reason or whatever okay that opens up a three-month interim appointment. And I understand that I guess are you saying that because I think it comes down to really our existing policy already that is we have excused absence we have unexcused absence and what I'm hearing you say Councilmember Riggs is that if you need to take a leave of absence because of something that's been identified as an excused absence which whether you're gone three meetings or ten it's still an excused absence what doesn't count towards the policy if you have three unexcused what I hear you saying Councilmember Meltzer is that if they have to do that and there's some predetermined amount of time that it's going to be gone past that time then the person who is that a person's appointee do we think of some paradigm where they have an interim appointment and the person who would be appointed in that knows that going into it and that they know that they're only going to serve until that excuse that's occurring is is satisfied is that does that yeah that's good summary of what I was saying and then and that if we if we had something like that in place I'd be more comfortable giving a little more latitude in terms of what people take leaves of absence for because the real issue is are you stuck without people so I feel like there's a question of for me anyway of how do we define a leave of absence especially on a commit thought especially on the Ethics Committee because you know because anyone can say I'm taking a leave of absence right but it might not theoretically affect your attendance if on a committee like this that only meets when you know when there's a case before them you don't always you can't plan the year right and say and that's different from just about every committee other committee than I can think of right where you can look at the calendar for the year and you can say where these are all the dates we're gonna meet there might be some others that'll pop up you know so what about if if we just simply don't recognize a leave of absence as a thing and instead just have an attendance policy where if you're called upon and in other words so you know someone someone on this committee could say I'm taking a leave of absence and it could just be meaning be meaningless unless they are called upon to serve on a on a panel and then if they say no then that could count as a in an unexcused absence say and this is not I'm thinking specifically about the Ethics Committee this is not including because the kind of this kind of situation Councilmember Briggs mentioned say someone on the Ethics Committee you know say there's a an illness or a pregnancy or something you know you could you could theoretically have that and then not end up missing anything any meetings so I'm just kind of throwing that out there as just another another possible you know approach to the same problem and and I understand what you're saying I guess from the standpoint of trying to keep things fairly consistent if someone who's a member of the Ethics Board and says I'm taking a leave of absence because I'm pregnant or I've got an illness that I'm gonna have to have surgery whatever it meets that excused portion calling it a leave of absence really doesn't it's still judged under excused or unexcused so if the and really actually with the board of with the Ethics Board they could be called in at any time there is no schedule so I mean like we saw here that we've had you know several meetings back-to-back for various different reasons and some of the people who've declared a leave of absence on the Ethics Board might have already missed three meetings potentially so I think if we said that if somebody wants to declare an official league of leave of absence that it has to meet one of the rationales for excused absence and if it applied to everybody it's really not gonna have any different impact on the board on the Board of Ethics because if they don't meet they don't meet so they're not either an excused absence or an unexcused absence it's just there's there's no attendance record that's required but because I think it would be easier to have one rule that consistently fits all boards and commissions than one that separates one out when the effect is the same the result is the same because we so I could say the exact opposite of what I said and agree with you and that is we could take out leave of absence all together on any board or commission you can't declare that and it's just is your absence excused or unexcused based upon so if you're not there for ten meetings but it's because you've been ill or because you've had one of you've met one of these excused conditions it still is following under this policy so it could be we just don't officially recognize that in general and we just fall back on what our current policy is which I'm okay with that yeah I'm okay either way it's just well and there if I may there is already some latitude and excuse absences if you look at the very last line here or other matters which the board commission or committee finds qualify as an excused absence so there is some latitude there within each border commission yes okay yes councilmember Briggs and councilmember Meltzer so it says or missing more than 50% of meetings in a calendar year would be considered cause so is it either or or or and or either or so you're saying yeah help me understand the observation well I'm just I mean if you're if you're taking out leaves of absence and you say excused absences but for me when you say leave of absence it means a longer period of time so it's you know you're you're prepared for that you're not just thinking three so I don't I know I'm 50% of meetings I guess that is quite a bit especially if you're in a four-year you missed two years of meetings then then that would make sense so I'm just thinking okay to me there's a difference between sort of unexpected absences you know for whatever reason and it's like you miss you know oops oops oops I get that but the benefit of recognizing absences it lets us it lets us plan right if somebody knows up to an event certain or date certain you know that they need to step away I I'm liking my idea that I just had right here live a couple minutes ago you know that it gives us the opportunity to to appoint an interim and if you only have the reactive rule then you don't get to potentially plan and have better coverage okay so it seems like it's all just sort of frame it as an initial question for the council direction it seems like that to recognize the leave of absence and to judge it in the form of our is it something it meets the excused criteria or not and in conjunction with that have staff develop some some options of what is a time frame that would trigger this interim appointment it would give us something to talk about in that regard is that is that what what what does council think about that because really we're saying recognize that somebody can ask for a leave of absence but that leave and those absences for the meetings where they're taking that leave will be judged under the excuse or non-excuse category and then applied accordingly and then if it is a leave of absence for an extended period of time that we predetermine then an interim appointment would be assigned and is that sounds good to me okay could I just get some clarification on that really quickly so would the interim appointment only apply to those who have declared a leave because we do also still have the alternates yes okay yeah well it's where the alternates maybe it's where if there's a if there's a void that the alternates are unable to fill in other words if if we've got three leave of absences and we only have two alternates then we've got an issue so it's is that well you know it is what I previously said but you know as we've discussed I think you know maybe just it stands like in other words an alternate could could request a leave of absence a regular person you know you you kind of always want the full complement because they're just gonna be situations where you need people oh no I think what she meant was if we have an alternate available would an interim appointment be necessary oh well yeah is that what you were asking yes yeah I guess if it's like a long enough period of time then you still want to the full complement you know yeah you might could do the interim appointment as as the alt because if the alternate then would become the interim yeah it would be an interim alternate which means that if it's if it's your appointee to a board as opposed to the alternate you can work it out that person can contact the council person who appointed them and say look I need to take this you as a council member find someone that person resigns and when you find that person you say look I just need you take it for three months then they can resign and you can reappoint the original well but you're talking about a resignation instead of a leave of absence well yeah and it yeah that's what I'm just saying is opposed to doing it as a leave of absence because I think the leave of absence is gonna put us in a sticky position on some you know on some other boards as well and that's that's my concern is one thing that hasn't been brought up that I meant to ask earlier we said we have four people available or it takes four people for a quorum if how does the voting on that board go would it then have to be a four zero on anything that's that's done when you get down to a four-person quorum does the voting go on a majority or does the voting go on a and this is for any border commission for any border commission is yeah okay well I want to ask you I want to clarify because on council according to our rules and procedure maybe the charter I can't remember which one that there has to be four affirmative votes and we can come because we're just gonna be another session on this so we can if we need to there has to be four affirmative votes for something to pass so if you only have four council members in attendance and it votes three to one that's a failure so we want to see it is that same paradigm apply to our boards of commissions and that may be something you just need to research and we'll look into that okay and also I want to make sure that we have some tracking mechanism that when the alternates are called upon sure that if they say I can't tonight we're not just calling the next one we're counting that towards that absent okay all right okay council member husband and councilmember Meltzer yeah I think for simplicity I would like to see us extend the same kind of decision we made on P and Z my fear is this you have something that gets caught up in a three-week vortex if all the things kind of like lay out right and I just don't think that's right I think it needs to move on because they're not the final decision-maker so give them a couple of shot one shot really is my preference at pulling together someone maybe a second but other than that it just needs to move on without a without an advisory so for example traffic Commission traffic Commission can't make quorum once I would say move it on but if there's no appetite for that then let's give them a second shot but after that I mean it just needs to move on I mean because in this instance if all if all the stars line up right alternate can't be there someone resigns they get a second shot at it and next you know it's caught up for three weeks I just don't think that is it's fair to the requester you know and I think that's the key is to get whatever request processed timely so that they I just think that that we owe that to whomever is coming before us if if it's a street so we're we're holding up a street a bike lane or whatever because we can't get four people together on a Wednesday night I mean I think that to me is unfair to the business owner that has the street in front of their their house I mean in front of their business torn up or a homeowner that has you know sidewalk torn torn up in front of the home and we got to get these projects moving they have real effects and so that that to me is a problem and they're all advisory right I mean so that's that's other thing it's not binding and so how long do we want to have we know some of them are I mean the Board of Adjustments is that the zoning Board of Adjustments that's a binding that's a legislative body is it right this the the ethics so I hear what you're saying what you're saying is can we apply sort of a same paradigm on the boards and commissions that work that have another appeal process above them I have another body that's gonna look like planning and zoning it comes to counsel traffic safety it comes to counsel but let's take for instance the ethics board there's no the ethics board has to hear the complaint there's no other body that hears that the zoning Board of Adjustments has to hear that and I think they can appeal I don't know district court they don't even appeal to counsel so where that works that paradigm I do get that yes so basically what you're saying is apply the same paradigm we did with planning and zoning on those boards that it would work appropriately to where something doesn't get tied up sort of delayed because of absences or recusals or anything like that give them that time frame that we decided for PNC if that doesn't work it goes to the next level of board that hears that after them is that is that what I'm hearing you that is that is correct and even those that are final decision I get it there's no solution to that but but here's where that problem comes in so now it runs up to you know your names on the ballot or whatever I mean it you know and if you can't get it heard timely and you can't get that processed and get whatever result out there so that you can move on and everyone on both sides can you know begin to tap that down then that just lingers right for three weeks that's a problem I would think anybody no one wants to do that to anyone I mean this is not right I mean you want it let's yeah let's make a decision and move on well and I understand that in those instances there's no fix yeah there's yeah there's yeah because but yeah so I think that's what we're trying to fix here if there's an issue where there's people who aren't able to meet for a lot of various reasons if it's a leave of absence or if they're excused absences we're trying to figure out how do you how do you backfill that void sure councilmember Meltzer because we're getting a lot of issue so I'm gonna hear your comments I'm gonna hear is I want to summarize sort of so we can start making some decision on these because I know it's getting very confusing we're throwing a lot of things on the wall and I want to make sure that we're organized about it councilmember Meltzer so I remember the point I wanted to make before I think with a leave of absence where it's a planned thing I don't think you declare a leave of absence I think you apply for leave of absence you know it's not one piece of paper right goes goes to your board commissioner committee and they say yes or no you know and that's that okay that's the point okay and then may approach him real quick then we're gonna start summarizing this well mine falls on that same line of is it only up to the board commissioner committee as to whether that person remains on if they've missed three if they've had three unexcused that only up to the committee or is that because that seems unusual that we would have to go to that board to find out if they considered their member to have something that is an excused absence that that last line on the screen all right so let's let's start go ahead but we got it I mean we're way out on the boundary so I'm trying to get us a little bit more focused go ahead well right but I'd also like some data to you to help us with this on issues on the boards and commissions that we do have that experience quorum issues or if they if this is a thing besides I know that some ad hoc committees that we had some issues with but I'm talking about our standing committee so if we could have some of that information of you know if there's been quorum issues and how many meetings have been missed I I don't I don't know that councils made aware of any of those things so just some data on that to see if it is a big issue or if it's just this this one board the ethics okay so let's sort of start walking down through some of these leave of absence as something that is either declared or applied for but there we recognize that term of art that sort of say it's not a legal term but that's it that's a definition leave somebody can take a leave of absence whether they apply for it or whether they declare it is that it sounds like we're okay with that leave of absence I am okay okay all right I see a couple of unfurled brows but the five raised brows or happy brows rule the day and so then we're going to apply the reason for the leave of absence to the policy we already have which is excused or unexcused so let's go ahead and take up mayor Pro Tem's question here is that is excused and unexcused solely within the purview of that board commission or committee to define what that looks like there's some latitude that can be given in that regard comments or thoughts on that yes the general idea of applying it you know just asserted I'm okay with the idea that the body that decides could be could be counsel if you're uncomfortable with it being the board itself either way okay yes I like the idea of it being the the board itself because it shows you know because these are citizens committees it should put some shows where you know I'm empowering this group to make these decisions however you know if it comes to be a problem where boards are you know excusing absences left and right and kind of compromising their own work then counsel could step in I just hate I would hate to take away something that you know empowers the board to make decisions about themselves council member well currently I think it's within the council member right who appointed that person to make that decision on if if you wanted to remove them from the border not for unexcused apps I what is the current I'm looking at Larry I'm I believe it's the border commission okay however I feel like whatever it's consistent I would whatever that would be my yeah because I've always thought that removal of a member of a board of commission if because if they were nominated by council that it would be counsel that it would have to to operate that removal that'll be part of what we bring back so that's one of those things that we can bring back so then what I'm hearing on how does excused or unexcused get who defines that we are we obviously have a definition already a list of things but then there's some latitude with the border commission members duties absence necessary so forth and so on qualify as an excused absence I think it's a very good point we only get attendance data on our appointees once a year and that's when we go to make those appoint those reappointments or new nominations so that might be something we want to get a little bit more frequently like maybe once a quarter just to get an idea of what's going on because a year can go by and you know somebody could miss eight meetings and you're not sure unless somebody brings it to your attention okay alright well okay well I'm not sure I've been have we been getting it quarterly okay we'll make sure we'll just double check on that so then the things we have outstanding are how many people does it take you know what's what's the affirmative votes needed for something to pass according to our boards and commissions the toss around some ideas what's up what else is outstanding on this issue councilmember hudspeth's observation that do we apply that same paradigm of something getting sort of delayed or stuck in a committee because of either prolonged absences by a couple members or a recusal that would keep it there forever do we only apply that to planning and zoning or does that apply across the board to our other boards and commissions where there's some other governing body above that one that it's able to move to and I don't know the answer to that question and what else are we are we out saying Rachel can you think of something you've written a note down that we're missing on that well there's just a lot of stuff being said and I was trying to write it down I guess the interim appointment versus the okay and that would that that would apply it sounds like that if an if an alternate moves into that place that is an excused absence prolonged absence then then it could be an interim appointment of that alternate and do y'all have an issue with whoever appointed that alternate being the one who makes that interim appointment since we're relegating or we're limiting the number of appointees for each council member to the one that they appoint based upon the charter and then one alternate and so they could make that interim appointee if I'm not sure if I'm following correctly but if I am wouldn't it make more sense for the person who appointed the position that that's become a vacant you know temporarily vacant to okay that's a good point I was just assuming that the alternate was the same point of it no that's good point yeah so does that just on generally the alternate is discussed by and voted and agreed on as an alternate yes and it would come through that process yeah it would be somebody we're just trying to determine who would bring that name forward who would bring that alternate interim alternate name forward and then the whole council would vote on that yes and so what you're saying is it's it's whoever appointed the person that is taking the leave of absence yeah okay all right the only other note I had mayor was no more than one alternate named per council member yes earlier in the presentation yes yes yes council member husband question on the alternate process do we need a another option on the application that says I want to be an alternate or would you just select from those that are interested in that particular board and let that serve as the alternate so when you're going to select should we add that so there may be citizens that just want to be an alternate right I mean or do we say no that's not an option select what board you or commission you like and then we will you know each individual council member could consider that or source someone else the practice I think has worked in the sense that you know each individual council member nominates the person they want to serve as the primary member of that board of commission and there's always several slots that say hey this alternate position anybody can not any of the council members can nominate and typically they'll call people who've applied that maybe weren't selected on that first round and say hey we do have an alternate position available are you okay with that because if somebody if you nominate somebody's the primary and they don't have time to do it and they'd rather be an alternate then they're going to tell you I mean and so then you could but that's a big assumption on my part councilman yeah just anecdotal piece of information one nominee that that I put forward sir first experience on a board she really wanted to be an alternate like less pressure sure learn okay yeah yeah and so that supports yeah yeah which I mean it's a box on the application so I mean I don't see any big issue and does it cost any more to have probably not yeah yeah so yeah just add a place where it's to be an alternate for that board they could work on that yep any other questions comments do you have sufficient direction is there something else you might need from us okay I believe we've got good direction and we can get answers for you in this week's Friday report regarding absence reporting and how frequently you get that just to make sure there's clarification sooner alright fantastic thank you very much appreciate it okay we are moving on to our next agenda item I think it's the last work session agenda item for agenda item 3f receive report hold discussion provide staff direction on the dent development code update and draft zoning map good afternoon mayor members of council give me a second to pull up the PowerPoint presentation how much you know how much how many slides do you have on your formal presentation I mean I'm not trying I'm just saying I think we have it well we talked a lot about a lot of issues in the last development review committee meeting which I think are very important to discuss so we're not gonna get them probably all discussed here today we may so I just I just say that for time purposes because we spent an hour and 40 15 minutes just on issues that weren't even part of the presentation so I'm not saying we should change it we're gonna have more of these meetings correct so what we don't get decided here the problem is we've got you know public hearings coming up and all that so we've got to get some things decided we have we have just several things that we can speak to you about either today or next Tuesday we have a DC RC meeting on Friday that we can map out kind of the rest of this and come back and bring it probably in and maybe a more structured format we wouldn't have to go through much today so we can certainly limit that time I think they're just a couple of items that may be useful to get council sure I think we just discussed several issues yesterday that I think really need the yes the full attention of the council and so that's really our intent so we don't have to go through an elaborate presentation okay all right okay Ron will Ron will reduce the slides no no it's not it's not a criticism it's just we I want to make sure that we get discussed some of the important issues that that none of us have really thought about until we got into this process at the end well if you take away the title in the question slide I've got seven slides so it shouldn't take too long I'm going to go through it really quickly okay so the in the agenda information sheet I listed out those items that we will be discussing and then of course the last one is any other topics that the council would like to discuss the first one that we have to discuss is the manufactured home development the HUD code and this is what we're talking about the project we're talking about projects that have multiple manufactured homes the discussion we had at council the last time we met during a work session the full council was where should they be permitted and how should they be permitted so the discussion we have with the DC RC was to allow them in the something there they're flagging me with a light and Brian's coming in and it's the mic on is everything on is everything good there we go my apologies my apologies I got a blanket line here I don't know Morse code so my apologies so the based on the discussion we had with the full council as well as with the DR DC RC follow-up staffs recommending r6 and r7 with an SUP so if anybody wants to develop a manufactured housing development in any other zoning districts they would have to apply for a rezoning for an r6 or r7 and apply for a specific use permit that is what staffs proposing the minimum stand size for a manufactured home will be 5,000 consistent to what we have today so a lot of what is provided in the proposed draft will be carried forward from the existing development code related to manufactured housing we also talked about a minimum development size of 10 acres so it has to be at least 10 acres to qualify as a manufactured home development we're gonna be introducing you specific standards related to site setbacks site design access and circulation parking accessory uses screening open space requirements and then the perimeter wall or screening of that said mobile I'm sorry manufactured home development lastly I think we also discussed that if there was someone that wants to propose the manufactured home dwelling within a single-family development and a single lot and just one home they would be allowed through a specific use permit that is what we are proposing does anybody have any questions regard regarding manufactured home developments I think we discussed parking that it's for still the four spaces that apply does that sound right or no let me double-check the parking requirements for a single-family home or for a mobile home in a mobile home development mobile home and mobile home development I was believing that it was two parking spaces and then additional parking for any accessory vehicles that they may have trailers etc well I'd prefer to have it for I mean you know the same amount of people living there say I mean you start the clog up the streets in that regard I mean I get it that they you know they may be less than pumped about it but I think function wise they're not gonna have less cars because that's where they decide to live I mean that's just not gonna be the case and so that's my preference is that they have to meet the same requirements current and it's got square currently it's two per dwelling unit but that's just to provide information yeah yeah so that's I don't know where everyone's falls but I would prefer them because our new our new parking requirement is space for four car single-family home right or for single-family duplexes and town homes I believe yeah four so if they and for me the argument is because if I'm for it I'm gonna say it's just normal housing so normal housing gets normal housing treatment so I'm a little confused so can you explain to me about that when is there the two parking spaces under what conditions is the two required under what conditions is the four the current proposal in the code the draft code is two parking spaces per dwelling unit but I believe councilman has been is proposing that it be increased to four to match single-family duplexes okay so it's true that single-family duplex in town currently for parking spaces and we count the parking in the garage as to the driveways count as to so that's how we got to four okay got it I think the arguments persuasive can can you tell us what the what the rationale was for originally proposing to I believe it was just a carryover from what is currently required for the current code so and in and to think about the manufacturer home development they have carports not necessarily garages so you know the garage in the single-family would be able to accommodate the two and then the driveway would be the other two if this was a manufactured home development would they still be able to fit four within their stand size of minimum 5,000 square feet I think what councilmember husband is saying is they that should be part of the requirement I mean whether they got a carport you got two that could fit under the carport and you have two off-street because the whole point for the single-family residential let me give me some water for my crackers jumping because the whole reason for the single-family duplex and whatever it was was to prevent unnecessarily on street parking in other words let's get if you have a single-family dwell and we want to get the vehicles off the street as much as we can in the garage counted as two whether you got it full and you're not parking two in there it still counts as two right whereas with manufactured housing it's still an individual housing unit and so I sort of understand that and don't know if I just necessarily disagree with it that much yes mayor council I think that the mere fact that we're requiring to plus an additional space or 160 square feet of area I really we're talking about adding one more space so I think that it's it's quite practical to do that and to be consistent with single-family dwellings that that we would just put forth that it would be for parking spaces instead of the the two with an additional space so so three it's an easy instead of three it's four okay with that okay okay okay so next topic for discussion is tiny homes there was some clarification we wanted to get some direction from the full council minimum size for the project staffs proposing 10,000 square feet for again a tiny home development a minimum number of units of four so in order to qualify as a tiny home it will have to have at least four and a development size of 10,000 square feet at a minimum it will be required to be part as a plan development so that means a public hearing with the planning zoning Commission and City Council and then one additional use specific standards for additional parking so similar to what we discussed earlier for guests parking they would be required to provide additional currently in the code tiny home development is required to provide one parking space per dwelling unit yes council member brace for clarification that these with them a PD can go in any zoning district correct just to put that out there there is not as only that you would apply a PD would be their zoning district yeah so you've got an established neighborhood with a 10,000 square foot lot go through PD plans but it would have to get it would have to get approved correct yeah any comment you had another comment could you speak to how we look at I watched a tiny home house hunters last night and they all had composting toilets so the ones that we're talking about tiny home dwellings would have regular plumbing correct and I remember that specific discussion we had for the proposed tiny home along a mingo and based on input from our utilities department they would have to provide some sort of connection to sewer so they would have to provide the sewer connection and that would not be an option and I we can we can double-check that's it more of a development requirement but unless we want to specifically call it out I don't think we want to get that detail well no what I'm saying is if you have it if you have a tiny home development you should have it connected to city water and sewer services it would it would be it would it would be it would follow all of our other criteria what is the parking requirement on these tiny home one space per dwelling unit and then we are adding a use specific standard to provide additional parking for guest parking so only two spots for tiny home correct sorry you got your mouth full it has to be a tiny car a smart car a smart car levity yes I like it are these okay so these tiny homes have to be permanently affixed to the ground either through a slab or pier and beam kind of here anchoring or something like that they can't just be on axles and wheels no they would not be okay definition they're American okay okay all right Scott did you have a I just want to take one step backwards on the manufactured housing I'm gonna make the assumption that everyone was okay with what Ron spoke to we were just bringing that back before council because we had those questions we believe we've answered them sufficiently just want to make sure yeah with what you have up here minimum stand size minimum developments 10 acres correct r6 and r7 with SGP we just intend on proceeding forward with that it was just the conversation got into the parking we talked about the parking then we kind of jumped off it okay I just need to validate that so we're given clearing clear direction all right I see no objections thank you okay next topic is RV Park and really the input that we want to hear from the council is just the length of use currently in the code it has a 30-day maximum we're recommending that that move up to extend to six months so there's no objection to that this is to accommodate those folks that are wanting to stay longer than 30 days and I think six months is an appropriate time or we feel that six months is an appropriate maximum time councilmember Briggs is there a reason why we're putting a limit on it I'm just saying because we just heard that you know if you have a smaller home on an axle or a wheel then it would be considered an RV right right but then we're saying so they would only be able to park in an RV park for up to six months and then have to move their their home to another location correct and my understanding is that RV parks are intended to be just that it just just temporary recreational area not meant to be more than permanent they're not designed to be permanent housing so we typically have more code enforcement type issues when we have people trying to convert an RV into some sort of permanent housing okay another topic we wanted to discuss and get some direction from the full council is clustered cluster home development and I know that council Ryan brought up a comment and I don't know if he liked to discuss it or we want to talk about some of the options that we have as it relates to the comment and if councilman rank and bring that up well I think we've handled by putting it into a plan development when it was in base zoning and we just said 30% had to be put aside as opposed to the remainder of the lot size that was my concern but I think with the plan development would be fine I think you can just go ahead and take just what came out of the DC RC and speak to that being that's that's the direction that we're going unless we hear differently from council okay so we will proceed with the option one allowed as part of the plan development community garden urban farm I know that we had a somewhat of a discussion on this at our last work session the seat the what you see up here where we're added tax for community garden is stating that any facility for the cultivation of fruit flowers vegetables and ornamental plants by more than one person or family where members of the community have access to individual garden plots again the word community is stated there again it's meant to be for a community purpose where the urban farm is defined as an a private facility for the farming of fruits flowers vegetables and ornamental plants more of a business more of a more intense type use might be unnecessary but maybe a little clarifying just based as I recall our conversation if we added the words primary purpose of because that's kind of where I got hung up a private facility for the primary purpose of farming of in other words not for not for residences okay good comment thank you okay all right next topic at all did we discuss this in DR DC no okay the the short-term rental we did discuss months before and we came to some determination but wanted to bring it up I guess was requested by counseling breaks to have a short discussion I'm not sure what questions but really just kind of presented to the full council we are introducing the use of short-term rentals these are your Airbnb's your your you know where individual units are rented to folks the definition for short-term rental I'm going to read it out loud for the record is the rental of an entire dwelling unit for monetary consideration for a period of less than 30 consecutive days this is not including a bed-and-breakfast boarding or rooming house hotel or motel the definition does not include offering of use of one's property where no free is charged or collected so again intended for rental for no more than 30 days of entire unit is what the short-term rentals defined as we currently show it in our table allowed in the RR are 1 2 3 4 6 and 7 in the MN and in the MD zoning districts with you specific standards the first one is that prior to any rental a property owner shall register a short-term rental with the city of Denton to all taxes applicable and fees shall be paid prior to operating the short-term rental and again the third one is to make sure that it is not occupied more than 30 days what is number two what are you what are you thinking are that I mean I know there's property taxes what other applicable taxes and fees are associated with a short-term rental I my understanding and I don't know if Caleb can help me with this one is that other cities have the ability to collect the sales tax or the rental tax based on their fees that they pay to say an Airbnb there's there's tax associated with that all of that does not necessarily go to a city unless the city has some sort of ordinance is my understanding right right so I don't think we have anything in the books for short-term rentals and that's absolutely and we've been visiting with Brendan McDonald about it and then she's recently passed a couple of ordinances for a couple different cities that relate with short-term rentals and that's an inclusive part of it that have those that they've got to collect those fees to get remitted to the city correct is it a hotel motel tax that get goes to the state and then gets remitted back to us as whole hotel occupancy tax meaning the hotel occupancy taxes defined in chapter 74 of the so Tony point the chief financial officer those lodging establishments they are considered lodging is to establishments are required to remit the sales tax to this I mean I'm a hotel motel tax to the city at 7% of the of the rate of the daily rate and so they're obligated to do that now okay but when you say remit to the city do they go to the state and then we get them but it goes to the city there is a there is a 6% that goes to the state and the 7% comes directly the same and so this would have to be with this have to be by definition hot funds tax with this with this or could it be some other kind of tax because they are providing lodging it would just be the hot tax okay I'm a little confused by the wording if we're talking about hot tax how could you pay them prior to operating as a short-term rental you don't collect them until you actually do the short-term rental I think the fees may be associated with that and the applicable tax can be paid as part of you know throughout the stay or after a stay so we can work on the wording but I think the fees any fees is associated with maybe the other registration fees that sort of thing and then the taxes can be something separate okay yeah that's same issue then who are they registering with whose job is it to take the Airbnb registrations is that out of the development department correct it would be councilmember Briggs I just went blank yeah that happens a lot to me right well I had a really great question and then he asked his and I thought well yeah that's a good question yeah okay so no so the registration so would they is it something that say I have an Airbnb I rent out my room and I use a an app or something to do that I know that I've done these before and then there's certain taxes that apply and certain other fees that go on so if I have my home registered these are taxes that I'm already paying that now will just need to come to its right place that in the past has not is that what I'm understanding or is this a new a new tax I would say a new tax but I'm gonna let Tony talk to that okay so councilmember it's it's not a new tax you know the these these locations are very much different from a standard brick-and-mortar hotel and many times they're a residence or in some cases they could be an RV there's a number of different types of locations and so trying to identify those especially if they're just happening sporadically is much different to monitor but I think this certainly gives us the ability to be able to point to to what the requirements are to be able to identify them to be able to track them just like we do our other establishments then our office through the monitoring of our hot program we will then reach out to these individuals for activity that they may have had during that month and make sure and and also they'll be potentially open to to auditing by the city under the applicable statute just like a normal hotel or motel in the city yeah I think I think we would pause such a not maybe if I if I understood it right that the enforceability of it is hard for me to get my head around but I think if I'm hearing it right and it gives us an opportunity to address complaints then I think I can get on board with that so understanding we're not going to get on Airbnb and source every didn't address and track them down and extrapolate the 20 bucks I don't think that's a good use of time but if there's a person out of state that owns a home that's using it as a rental type thing and it becomes problematic for those that live in a neighborhood and this gives us a way our path forward to address that hey you're not registered hey you're not paying the taxes hey you're not you know get them compliant and monitor that situation then that is something that that is appealing to me because it begins a process of correcting those that aren't being good neighbors and the intent of that is is really that ultimately through development services so we can make it easier for for our citizens to be able to do this but also it provides for those that are visiting you know the safety to understand of if they had an emergency who is it that they contact we're providing that information to them that they have adequate safety features in that in that rental so carbon oxides smoke alarm just some of the very basic components and information so the guest is there I think that's a great I think that's a great service great marketing tool for those that that are registered right to say hey we've gone through some of these checks and balances we're not you know fly by night we're you know we've gone through some of these prerequisites and I think that then if we can give them you know some sort of you know like the alarm patch or the alarm sticker on the door something I'd even see going that far to where at least they they can say hey we're we're certified to be whatever registered with the city and if that gives them an edge against their competitors here locally so be it but I think I think that's spot-on I mean I think I think that's really really good thank you oh I'm sorry I tell you honestly I'm sitting here thinking about this and I'm not sure why we want to get involved in that to begin with I really don't because it's gonna be hard I mean how are you gonna police this how are you gonna you know it's gonna be more trouble it's worth my opinion I think I well I think there's been there's a number of challenges with many of the things that we do and the intent of it is is really what we've heard from you know just from the public that that ultimately that if people are able to do this then that's fine but we need to make sure that it's at least safe for people that are doing it so it's it's really the basic minimum standards maybe a little bit of a difference in culture and in Denton certainly not in other cities across you know that the Metroplex so we're not looking to do anything that's overly invasive as much as it is just some pretty basic pretty basic information so short-term rentals we've got one person who expressed a very clear opinion anybody else yes council member yeah no I think I'm for it because of so a couple of things but that last point is very salient so if someone comes to Denton it almost to me is protections for those individuals that would visit that are staying in those environments that we give them at least some level of hey they have a fire extinguisher in there you know they have you know doors aren't faulty wire not that we're gonna go that in detail to expecting the house but we it's better than nothing you know it's like hey we've looked at the house and you're not gonna fall through the floor you know and you're not gonna lose your money and and they've least have taken some vested interest to then be have some sort of okay where we are I'm seeing heads nodding so yes I think you said this I'm just want to check is this what other cities do are we pioneering here no there are a number of other cities recently Capella just passed something incredibly similar Addison passed something very similar and there are a number of cities that are already doing it but those are the two most recent I think in the last couple of months okay all right okay yes member I will just say or just ask for clarification some of the issues and questions surrounding it or when cities just try to outright ban them right like when there's they try to like say well you can't put them here or you can't put them here it's not that the cities are asking to have their property registered it's just that's not the contention that's out there right now in the in the world correct or at least that's what we're hearing yeah so we understand that it's more where it is that we're in opposition of so we're not in opposition we just want to make sure it's safe for the guests right thank you okay so we have direction on that yeah Mary if I can appreciate that if I can just make a clarification to your comment earlier Achille councilman Briggs that is we are looking at short-term rentals as renting out the entire dwelling where a bed and breakfast if you're renting out an individual in an individual room where you're still there that does not qualify as a short-term rental it would be a more as a bed and breakfast because you're renting out a bed versus short-term rental is for the entire unit oh thank you for that clarification that makes that makes a difference thank you okay action that that's all we have unless there's any other questions that y'all have I've got a slide here that kind of summarizes what's gonna happen next but we're open now well we need to grab us something to eat so when we come back we'll pick up here and then we'll also go over the things that we talked about in the in the committee meeting as far as some of those processes and things such as that right yep all right so let's grab this welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday April the 2nd 2019 we're on agenda item 3f report on the Bellman code okay all right Mary um just just final as we get to the final stage of the Denton code update and draft zoning map wanted just to highlight a couple of dates here that we're scheduling tomorrow we're gonna publish the final adoption draft so that it will be available for the public to view and review for the upcoming public hearings we have a scheduled work session with council next week Tuesday clarion our consultant will be here again another opportunity to ask any questions just just to hopefully wrap up again we're towards the end and hopefully we don't have many to discuss many topics to discuss the next date April 10th we're meeting with the planning zoning Commission this is the first of the two public hearings that we will have we anticipate some folks attending that and providing their input on the zoning letter that they received last week so I don't know Scott you want to add to what will occur during that public hearing okay a couple of things that we've been discussing and we're still working through is that ultimately on the 23rd when it is that we have the public hearing we're hopeful that we can get through the development code we do not anticipate that we'll get through the zoning map so the thought process is is that we may make the we may be able to adopt the code and then put for a date certain the zoning map so that we can allow an opportunity to ultimately vet what it is that that we have citizens come in and want to discuss whatever their specific issues are maybe in the beginning of the meeting the mayor may be able to call that anyone wishing to have any discussion on the draft zoning map that they could meet with staff prior to the public hearing knowing that we should have an hour two hours three hours prior to that that item being heard that we could set up shop downstairs in the lower meeting room give those individuals an opportunity to visit with staff staff could then come back to council and ultimately support or reject what it is that they're saying those individuals would still have an opportunity to spend their three minutes if they'd like but I think that we could consolidate the time that individuals would have to get before council to be heard a and then B is whatever feedback that we receive or we find that we have any egregious errors or items that we need to correct that we have an opportunity to do that instead of attempting to correct the map on the dais okay so what we're going to recommend I believe is that we'll we'll put the the adoption of the zoning map off for four weeks so we'll open the public hearing up we'll hear testimony we'll take that feedback try to distill that down and then come back in four weeks and and figure out what that resolution might look like or things or next steps that we need to do questions comments yes and then we got I think yeah yes so are we posted to talk about that letter is that in this I think so yes it's part of the draft zoning map notice correct yeah okay so a lot of feedback on that people that own several properties because it doesn't have the address on it and then I thought I understood it that we were paralleling what's the zoning is currently just changing the terminology but I've heard it I've heard people say no it's a definite change and you know from residential commercial commercial residential can you help me understand our ants better answer that question yes let me let me take it in pieces first of all I'm we've we've sent the letters out we've sent the letters out to all those that are affected however I think that you know we even got notification today somebody just received their letter so any of those stragglers may still be coming in we are sending out another round of letters and in particular we're addressing those individuals that own multiple parcels so if they own multiple parcels and or addresses they received letters and the letters were addressed to them as it would be in DCAD but it didn't reference specifically which property that was so yes there was confusion as soon as we identified that that occurred we took proactive steps to address that those mailings I believe will be going out tomorrow I don't think they made it out today we anticipated getting those out today so those will be out today everyone should have those by the end of the week so they'll get another another letter looks very similar to what the letter that they received before with the exception of adding a paragraph to the front of the letter to address the fact that this is a clarification letter nothing else has changed we're just simply providing this so you have the parcel ID and the address for the proposed zoning classification change the second part to your question I believe is is that that we weren't making changes what we were doing is just ultimately changing zoning classifications which is mostly accurate not a hundred percent so if if it's an r1 r2 r3 r4 those just transfer if they're an NR they're going to an R so that to truly is just a transition in titling we did consolidate so in consolidating the zoning districts some of those properties are changing from what they may have been to the past to what they are today but certainly we've minimized any transitions from residential to commercial or commercial to residential and I and I think that's just the simplest way to put it it may not be just a straight transition from title to title but we have spent I can't tell you how many countless hours with the development review committee walking through each of those zoning classifications let alone we're addressing any of these issues with individual citizens or property owners that that have a question or concern I will also say that will continue to do that and and really that was the conversation that I was speaking to on when we have the public hearing on the draft zoning map that we allow for any of those individuals that have any concerns with with what's occurring to be able to vet those with with staff and that we can present that the council for them and they can present on their own so hopefully we have kind of this this multiple ways for us to be able to make sure that we get all of our property owners engaged in the process at the public hearing after the public hearing and prior to the adoption in addition to that we know once we adopt this map we will be bringing for city initiated rezoning so we know some areas that need to change but we certainly don't want to make those changes without providing notice to adjacent property owners so rather than making any radical changes that are that are going to have an adverse effect on a property owner or property owners adjacent to that property we'll bring those as separate so we can provide notice so we're already budgeting for how it is that we can do notices whether it's going to be a group of three parcels or if it's going to be a matter of 600 acres so I hope that that answers your question yes it does and so for those that would would represent to me that their commercial property did transition to a category that now is either mixed-use or residential or something like that it they say it's a drastic switch do I just need to email that to you have you take a look at it and and let me know please do okay please do thank you and we'll absolutely make contact and and and if they have a grievance with it we'll certainly bring that forward yeah so what what I'm understanding is that if there's someone who brings something to you that they say hey this is what it was this is what it changed to and if it's something that we just missed in the conversion that it should have been some it's not a drastic change that they can bring that forward in this time where you go down and you talk about it and that might be something that you bring forward to say okay let's clean this up because it's just something we would have done if we'd have caught it then it's not a drastic up zoning or down zoning it's just it's just a tweak is that correct and and that's part of what we'd like to do in the public hearing right is we want to make sure that we're as transparent as possible we do not we do not intend to make any changes or we will not be making any changes to the draft zoning map before that public hearing right so that that is the map that we're gonna work from however in a public setting we will have those conversations I know those errors that may exist that we need to clean up again give another waiting period of four weeks that we can sure vet that out and make sure people are aware of what it is that we're proposing to do before the next public hearing okay thank you mayor I had a question I was doing a little more comparing of the old code and the new code and we used to require SUVs in certain zoning districts if you were over 25,000 square feet and we've now dropped that to 15 we've got a under 5 5 to 15 and above 15 it's like I want to bring this up with the full council to kind of vet this out a little bit because my understanding it is per business retail business so you could have a 200 square 200,000 square foot building and as long as you break it up into the smaller sections you know I use them all as an example other than the big boxes nobody would be required to get an SGP if they were you could build that kind of situation and nobody would be required to get an SGP as it sets and I see where you're referring to and there's a you specific standard I don't know if you have that readily readily available anything over 15,000 page 205 of the proposed code anything over any retail business over 15,000 square feet in the MN and the MD would require a you specific standard and a specific use permit I believe that's what you're referring to correct I think there's two pieces to that I think what he's alluding to is where it used to we used to have a higher number that we're being more restrictive so our mid-sized businesses so where it might be a Walgreens DSW shoe store would be required to get an SUP where it is we shouldn't be requiring SUP for a mid-sized building it's kind of where are we defining that mid-size we used to define it as up to 25,000 and now we've dropped down to 15,000 but in those 15,000 maximum are in the mixed-use neighborhood and mixed use downtown outside of that the mix use regional like for example the mall area or the town center those would not fall under that it would be they would be permitted anything over 15,000 be permitted by right in and I agree with with that what I'm saying is should we be looking at because somebody builds the building is the new spec building right strip mall and you don't know up front when they build it how many tenants are gonna have in there so they build 30,000 square feet well at what point do we it's I'm really kind of getting into is it should it be the building that we're restricting on size as opposed to the business that the overall proposed development right or structure rather than each and this was it mostly a carryover from the previous code so I think it's I think it's appropriate to have the conversation as to whether we want to regulate the larger sized buildings right that that's you know when you're looking at those mixed-use neighborhood type situations you do want that smaller economy of scale but exactly but based on the fact that we're only regulating for the business size you can still have that huge building without the SUV without coming before us so I would rather it be okay we do it as a building size with a higher square footage than a business I've seen several strip malls that you that five years ago they had they were full with four tenants and now they're full with two tents because they the businesses succeeded expanded in and then they may not all be retail they can be a number of different things right right and so we should look at the building rather than the UC exactly we had just a question so you're you're looking at the footprint and is it in what district certain districts are would it be in yes it's if you're over 15,000 in MN or MD you're required to get an SUV and I know I talked to Scott beforehand I don't know if you got any of the square footages back I sent them to you via email okay I certainly can read those off if you'd like okay and I haven't got I do believe that the cupboard is about 12,000 square feet so that gives you an idea that it's just gonna be slightly bigger than the cupboard that's in the downtown right so right so do we want to see anything bigger than that or prevent any other areas that want to build a bigger and then just leave them out individually happy to read these off so so pet smarts 19,000 square feet DSW is 30,000 square feet CVS or Walgreens is 14,000 square feet Ross is 25,000 square feet H&M 23,000 staples 24 5 below is 8,000 famous footwear 6,000 Michael's 21,000 Altus 9,800 you know I was just gonna say if I were to make a suggestion on this it may be that we want to go to a 30,000 square foot maximum building size or 25,000 something on that line as opposed to this the individual business requiring an SUP right yeah raise the raise the square footage but pertain to the building as opposed to the business would that be just for the MN in the MD correct I've got a couple comments so I've received some calls and as I've looked at this there are several of the zoning classifications where there was not an SUP required for the current use on the ground that exists and that with the new zoning classifications there would be an SUP required for the current use on the ground whether it be retail apartment whatever so it's a couple of questions but it's also some comments so I'm concerned about that I'm concerned about that if we don't put some kind of a mitigating rule or code in so let's give an example you've got a retail building or an industrial but whatever that you are allowed to do by right beforehand sort of almost supply because we're if we're changing the paradigm from a building square a business square footage to a building square footage that's huge and so that's a whole different paradigm than what we've used so if we're requiring an SUP based upon a whole different standard we need to figure out a way and I'm just gonna put it out there that I think if you've got a use that you have by right currently and somehow you're stuck in a zoning classification that if you try to put that use there on a piece of vacant land you would require an SUP which I'm okay with that that change because if let's say the building burns a tornado comes through destroys it to within over 50% because you're a non-conforming use now once the zoning changes because you required an S you didn't require an SUP now you're going to require an SUP now it's not quite so let me ask the question is that a non-conforming use if that's the only difference in other words you've got a use now the use requires an SUP are you non-conforming simply by the SUP requirement because that question will hinge which path I go down on this discussion so let me I would like to ask Brendan McDonald that very question okay so let me tell you why I asked that question because let's say if you're not a non-conforming use then that means if it gets destroyed you can you can build it back well actually that's question I if it gets if it gets destroyed and you've got to have an SUP to rebuild it well now you're you're getting penalized and punished for what you had there by right just to put it back to the way it was now you've got this different level of entitlement so you've really lost an entitlement so whether it's a non-conforming use or not that same issue applies if it's more than 50% but again that also applies if you if it's destroyed and it's less than 50% you can rebuild it and repair it but does that require an SUP and so I'm saying I don't I think that we need to figure out some code that says if you have an existing use not that you're expanding it not that you're adding to it but if you have an existing use that it is that now is requiring the SUP that if you suffer a casualty loss all right that you can restore it back to what it was before nothing bigger not a different use without an SUP because otherwise you've really taken something that the city has come in and said all right we're gonna put this special condition on you that you didn't have which is okay if it's not if it's not destroyed it doesn't matter right but it's it's in that casualty loss situation which is no fault of your own you can't expand it if it's a piece of vacant land and you had an entitlement but now you're quite a SUP I don't care about that SUP is required it's if you have a structure that you you know developed by right and is legal then all of a sudden there's a possibility that with the requirement of the SUP you could be asked to change something altogether or even possibly be denied right to rebuild what you had there so to me that is a very big concern that I have and I think we can craft some language that really mitigates that and draws a line around it because I just don't think that's fair quite honestly if somebody is able to do that if they're if they're not able to do it when they had it there before and it's it's you specific you can't have a retail and something happen and put back I don't know an apartment building or vice versa you have an apartment destroyed you put back a retail building it's that SUP requirement that could really damage people who've nothing has changed besides the the code you know the zoning classification and also we need to think about the implication of that and I think you mentioned it at one point where somebody was requiring an SUP but if they had something on the ground that didn't require it if they wanted to sell it if somehow they wanted to sell their property they may not be able to if they're not entitled to that outside of some other governmental authorization I think you had somebody send you a letter that they needed from development services to the bank because they're saying hey can this person do this so I don't know all the answers but I think it's really because the calls that I've been getting that's been the question is okay I don't have an issue with this per se but now I've got to have an SUP just to put back what I already have if something happens to it and I think we need to find some way that's not harmful to the city's interest of why we're doing this to really leave people whole not give them something more than what they had but to leave them neutral it's you know sort of a zero-sum game you know we're not gonna take something away we're not gonna add anything to you and I think we can find a way to do that I mean I'm not gonna sit here and draft it right now but that may be something that because I know it's single-family duplex or triplexes or is it just single-family duplex said we are not creating any non-conforming uses which avoids that non-conforming trigger but that's different than what I'm talking about I'm talking about this SUP requirement does that make sense absolutely and I can visit with our with our with our council okay you know that very topic and get into that a little greater detail hopefully we can have an answer by Friday okay what's happening Friday if I just may add one one more to that sure because I sort of goes along with that sort of in the inverse on those projects where that have gone through through an SUP and may have certain conditions put in place we're now they're permitted by right but haven't been built making sure that those conditions still stand and I agree and I agree so it does it does apply both it does apply both ways and so you're not you know you're not giving some nice something more than what they had and you're not taking something away to give them less than what they had started out it's just you're sort of keeping it at a neutral as much as we can yes because member and could we extend that and maybe this was implied by your question but along those same lines you know can we extend that to a situation where a residents you know experiences some damage you know act of God whatever something beyond their control and say that a fence is destroyed or something and then they had to you know now they have to rebuild per the these new it's not going forward for an SUP but kind of there these new standards that apply can we have right something built in there I think was what the mayor was referring to you earlier when we say residents we're talking about single-family duplex in town homes those we will be automatically non-conforming there would there would not be concerned non-conforming so they would be able to rebuild site you know features or whatever it is in structures as such under under under the clause that they're not considered nonconforming okay great I think correct me if I'm wrong I think the gist of her question is if something happens to this to a single-family residential structure fence or whatever are they required to build it back according to the new code specs instead of what they were under before it got destroyed is that what you were is that what you're asking yeah in other words if there's something that's changed you know because you got new residential codes you got new energy codes you've got new fence permit codes you but it would be you can rebuild it but it has to be to the current code what about setbacks and things such as that I think I think that it's going to be a case-by-case basis but for the most part it should be afforded the same luxury that it has today it really is not going to become non-conforming to your point on the on the other adopted codes they would have to comply with that but the subdivision is already going to have those setbacks so to automatically put a new setback on that wouldn't wouldn't make sense so I I think for the most part we will not have any problems with single-family and and and that's not and that was our intention our tension was to avoid wood or is this for Michael okay okay that is that was that helpful okay councilmember Briggs just to that comment the only thing would be that the homeowner would likely have more options of fencing with this new code than they currently do this would be accurate thank you good point it's a new new more flexible code and I think we talked about as well I know that y'all had talked about for people who are in the the zoning application process that certainly for what council has approved back I don't know how far back you're going two years years that you're going to match what council approved with that zoning the same we talked about the same applies in reverse in other words if council has denied something and I think it was brought up there was an issue that council denied a zoning recently and under the new code they they would have the ability to build what they were proposing the council denied by right so we want to make sure that we don't do that in reverse if we denied something that we don't go and put that same zoning classification on the property that we denied that now they're able to build by right W thank you anything else yes well that was short good yes we didn't get into all the zoning map stuff yes well so I was driving in Arlington and to a school and looked over and saw a neighborhood with all the different fences and I know that in our meeting we discussed that about having one wall if we could just at this point or next time bring that up again as far as development goes because I know there were some issues about requiring a homeowner to put back up a fence that they couldn't afford or something if we could just refresh my memory on what we decided because we were talking about and it may just be that the it was on the main street or it was facing so if you could refresh my memory on that because I you know it was all these different fences some were falling down some were standing up and I know that when we were talking about it we were trying to make it a little bit more uniform for these housing developments was there something we decided on that could you remind me absolutely it's it's been a while we'll bring back that on our April 9th work session okay and in short answer it's on the perimeter fencing that the preventer perimeter perimeter fencing will not be on the individual lot that perimeter fencing will be one single fence whether it's a fence or a wall based on where it's at and the zoning but that way we get it we avoid the situation where it is each individual property owner has a different type or color of fence or responsibility to replace something they can't afford correct yeah so that that's it in a nutshell okay thank you thank you for that reminder it was a long discussion many days of it so just as clarification on the upcoming public hearings for both the didn't for the code and then for the zoning map that if people have specific questions about their zoning letter that they received if they come to the public hearing we make an announcement we've got a triage of staff downstairs that you can go discuss with them your concerns if staff analyzes it and recognizes that okay this is something that was just missed it's not that it's not conforming to the future land use map it's not it's just something that maybe was overlooked or just makes sense that you have the opportunity to bring that forward staff does and that we're not going to approve the zoning map at the first public hearing but we're gonna have that okay that that opportunity and then come back I think you said four weeks later or something like that to bring all this together to then consider that and then approve it based upon changes if any to the map recommended by staff or absolutely correct and one thing I'd like to add to that is that we'll certainly do that triage what we'll do what we can so that our property owners don't necessarily have to come speak on behalf if we're supporting it however they still may if they'd like sure we're not going to prevent anyone from speaking just we think that we should consolidate some of that and help help them through the process prior to the public hearing are are you open to receiving people who have those same concerns and if you say you know what you're right we're gonna make a I mean or is this just the day of the public hearing are you open to people setting an appointment come in and talking to whoever absolutely we encourage we encourage anyone that has any questions Ron's door is always open so I require him to stay there and okay and so but we have staff we have we have a cadre of staff that are available to talk to anybody anytime right because that might help you know I think there's been a lot of calls and comments and we can get some of those resolved that you know they may feel a need to still come talk but they might feel a little bit more assured that they've you know done what they needed to do by we'll take their comments we'll take their input and feedback and of course nothing will happen and until the council considers it yeah and we will present it to the council as such so it's it's not like stop oh yeah this is great no we're gonna be back you know that's what I meant but you but they have that opportunity to get on this list of things that y'all are doing as a cleanup to get before the council or when the zoning map itself in general is approved those things are incorporated because they're really de minimis they're de minimis changes and some of them may be part of like I say what we do with a city initiated rezoning which will be that next step after we can you can sort of identify that and let them know that process correct okay and then we're gonna help we're gonna help everyone that we can through sure okay great wonderful all right any other comments or questions okay fantastic then we will stand adjourned at six oh three and we'll move into council chambers at 630 I'm invited to this meeting of the Denton City Council on April the second 2019 it is 630 p.m. we'll start off with our first agenda item please stand with me if you're able to pledge allegiance to the US flag and Texas flag , thank you. Okay we got a pair of glasses up here if somebody forgot glasses are sitting right up here all right this is a proclamation for Denton Arbor Day who's here for Denton Arbor Day come on down this is the only one all right so this is a proclamation by the mayor for Denton Arbor Day but I would just want to give you a chance to introduce yourselves and I guess you'll be a spokesperson Julie and tell us a little bit about Arbor Day sure yeah I'm Julie the KDB program manager and we're here to celebrate Arbor Day in Denton and this is our we do it for many many years we're a true city USA for our 28th year hello my name is Emily Bilsik and I'm one of the board members on KDB the KDB for numbers good afternoon Manix O'Connor I'm a board member of KDB and proud to help Denton stay beautiful I'm Carly Weld I am the program and volunteer coordinator at KDB Heywood Morgan board member for a keep them beautiful and urban forests are for the seat of Denton 100 Moreno board member because I felt peer pressure from the chair of the committee on the environment Keely Briggs very very very big fan of trees so I'm down here in support all right read the proclamation proclamation by the mayor of the city didn't whereas an you know what we're gonna tell you about Arbor Day sorry okay great I don't know a whole lot about specifics of Arbor Day but tree person has better info than me we do celebrate Arbor Day every year at our Denton Red Bud Festival come this year April 13th it's our 26th annual Denton Red Bud Festival who is better info about Arbor Day Courtney Courtney works with the Texas Forest Service Arbor Day it's about trees and tree planting and my main purpose here is present y'all your tree City USA award this is the 28th year for Denton's which makes them one of the older in the state for worse the oldest at 40 but it means you've met the four criteria for being tree City USA but y'all have really gone above and beyond the basic four criteria and it's because of keep getting beautiful and city forester and folks like that y'all really done a lot so fantastic all right well I'm gonna read the proclamation as we're displaying the flag yes yes this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city didn't whereas in 1872 J. Sterling Morton proposed that a special day be set aside for the planting of trees and whereas this holiday called Arbor Day that's why we have Arbor Day was first observed with the planting of more than a million trees in Nebraska and whereas Arbor Day is now observed throughout the nation and the world and whereas trees can reduce erosion cut heating and cooling costs clean the air provide habitat for wildlife and serve as a renewable source of wood and fuel and whereas tree serves as green infrastructure by increasing property values enhancing the economic vitality of business areas and beautifying our community and whereas the city of Denton is celebrating its 28th consecutive year as a tree City USA through the National Arbor Day Foundation and whereas in celebration of Arbor Day keep didn't beautiful annually holds the Denton Redbud Festival and children's Arbor Day programs as well as numerous and other community forestry programs to encourage the planting and care of trees now therefore I Chris Watts mayor of the city of Denton Texas do hereby declare and proclaim April the 13th 2019 as Denton Arbor Day here in Denton and urge all citizens to support efforts to care for and plant for the and plant trees for the betterment of our community for this and for future generations thank y'all so much for what you do for our community thank you thank you thank you so much again per glass is down here anybody's missing a pair before we go on to our next agenda item which is the public comment or presentation from members of public I want to just get sort of a housekeeping update agenda item 6a which is believed for special specific use permit over on Windsor Drive that's going to be postponed till the 16th however we are going to open the public hearing so anybody here that's wanting to speak on the public hearing can do that and then also on the 16th if you also have comments you're welcome to do that as well so just wanted to get everybody an update let you know sort of where we are okay we'll move to our now presentations from the members of the public if we could have review of procedures for addressing the City Council the Denton City Council has adopted rules of procedure including a code of conduct that applies to citizens as well as council members these rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizen reports citizens will have four minutes to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes to give an open mic report there will be an electronic bell when time has expired if the remarks are not concluded by that time the citizen will be asked to stop speaking if the citizen does not cease and a second request is made the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chamber citizens are asked not to approach the dais if a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council please let the city secretary know in advance for scheduled citizen reports the council may initiate discussion or questions following each citizen report for non scheduled open mic citizen reports the council may listen to citizens speak however because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance the Texas Open Meetings Act limits any deliberation or decision by the council to a proposal to place the item on a future agenda a statement of factual policy or a recitation of existing policy citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member please refrain from making abusive personal impertinent profane or slanderous remarks anyone who violates this council rule of procedure may be immediately removed from the council chamber thank you in advance copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary well I noticed as I asked for that to be played we didn't have any public presentations from the public or open mic so just nice to have a refresher okay so we'll move on to our agenda item which is the consent agenda council member Briggs I'll move to approve councilmember Armitter I second we have a motion the second for agenda item consent agenda items agenda item four let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero moving on now to our agenda item five which is items for individual consideration 5a is considered option of an ordinance of the city of Denton at Texas home home rule municipal corporation authorizing the approval of a fourth amended amendment to a professional services agreement between the city of Denton and Park Hill Smith and Cooper good evening mayor members of the council my name is Ethan Cox I'm the director of solid waste for the city of Denton the item before you tonight is a topic we've talked about before in January we provided the City Council an update on the where we are in the process for a landfill expansion permit this is a process that began back in 2011 so I do have a couple of slides here where we just basically provide some of that background information I'll quickly get to the amendment before you tonight so as members of the public may be aware we do operate a municipal landfill type one at 1527 South Mayhill Road we've been at that location since 1980 in 1995 we had a similar expansion term 1590 a where we pulled in additional acreage currently we dispose of about 270,000 tons per year at the facility the expansion that we have now is titled 1590 B and that's for a vertical and lateral expansion across about 107 acres in January we talked about this but I want to refresh everyone so why would we consider expanding the landfill our existing site has about 17 years of capacity left expected closure years 2036 permitting landfill is a multi-year venture we started this process in 2011 so it took us the better part of eight or nine years to get to this point a length of life is affected by waste volumes compaction and settlement we are in a high-growth region don't need to tell the council members the public rapid population growth rapid commercial growth and currently our per capita waste disposal is just under a ton a year per person type one landfills currently in Denton County we have three by the time we reach the closure of our facility we will be down to one the regional capacity for all North Central Texas is about 38 years and so my understanding is we were the only permit in the pipeline with Texas Commission on environmental quality at this stage what we've completed so far again we began in 2011 today we've had property acquisitions and a number of professional and engineering studies performed expense and investments today just tops just over 10 million dollars permit application was followed in January 2017 and where we stand right now is we're in the last leg of the review process by TCEQ the way I think I termed it to the council in January we are pretty much at the one yard line in terms of the permitting process what we have left is the completion of technical review by the agency at which time there will be a 30 day public comment period for members of the public and impacted parties to weigh in there are a couple of steps here that I'll cover in the amendment these may not be necessary but you do have public meetings and hearing requests that can occur you also have contested case hearings that can occur as well one last bit of information or one last test that we need to do also is we do need to update the permit at some point in the next couple of years to reflect the realignment of Mayhill Road is that still pending so the permanent or the contract amendment you have in front of you for Park Hill Smith and Cooper is to allow for additional expenditure authority you'll notice these tasks track with what I had on the previous slide of this amount thirty thousand dollars may not be expended if that steps not necessary as part of the permitting process so that's item before you I'll be happy to stand for any questions you might have customer Meltzer I know some people don't like when I ask questions and I already know the answers to but I want the public to hear so if this permit were granted would that mean you could go ahead and expand the landfill we would only expand the landfill if we exhaust our capacity so again we plan that for that to be about 2036 if we are allowed to or if we have the means to expand in our existing cells we only develop a cell when we absolutely need to it's probably the easiest way to answer that I mean yeah that we didn't have to go before a council before you could expand or that typically we'll bring the construction and design to the council for approval whenever we start to break ground on the cell purchasing item for the design of that the engineering of it would be brought before councils review as well and you mentioned that we're you know kind of on the one-yard line so we've seen there's something like 10 million really expended if we if we didn't do this because we'd prefer that our landfill never need to expand but if we decided to punt on this and then come back later would we be able to reuse all the effort that's already put into it or to what extent would we be starting over the regulatory environment is always evolving and we've actually had that discussion with our legal counsel as well as folks at the agency for TCEQ and the answer is we basically be starting from scratch the one thing that we would not have to do is purchase property if we elected to permit in the same site but all of your engineering all of your legal work the thousands of pages of permit would basically be started over from ground zero and so the expense to start all over again the very floor of that expense would be at least three million dollars and I think depending on how the regulatory environment changes it could go well above from there thank you the other thing I'll add to that is the timeline for doing this again we started this in 2011 if we have 17 years remaining in our facility if we elected to do that we'd need to restart the permit process again in the next four to five years you mentioned yesterday to me about something in this permit that I wasn't aware of but it would allow something about composting which we currently don't allow on our permit can you kind of expand on that a little bit and I only asked this because I'm not sure if you're aware or not but I don't know about the full council but I myself have probably received close to 800 letters asking me not to vote to expand the landfill and I know this is just for the permitting but it's for more funding to continue the the expansion but it also asked and that's in these letters to expand our composting residential and commercial and recycling and we're working on recycling which is one aspect of it but if in this it would allow us to do the composting it would because then it's like well if we have to do that then we need this permit so I if you could just expand on that for me a little bit to make me more comfortable with the future of this permit right so currently we do have a composting facility that's operated by our beneficial reuse department now that's a separate permit than what's being contemplated here what this would allow would be a source separated organics composting which gets into some of your food waste I'd probably need to do a little bit of research to tell you specifically what we could and couldn't accept on the facility but in addition to the SSO composting there's also another number of other operations contemplated at the facility some of those you're familiar with the construction and demolition diversion rubble processing grease and grit trap processing and so it's not just the landfill piece of this all of that is also folded under this umbrella as well so I think that's an important point I appreciate you point that out well yeah no I'm just I'm so I guess I understand that that is all under it but just for clarification the expansion of those services that the residents have requested that would in in turn help us keep the landfill reduced is included in this permit application that we're applying for that's correct okay thank you yes so and I to receive hundreds of letters asking me to vote against this permit I've been pretty vocal my my opposition to that to it but I still want to make sure that I myself and also the public knows you know all the facts so could you just speak a little bit to where we stand right now in terms of capacity under the current permit is I understand we're about it forty percent capacity under the current permit is that I don't have the percentage with me but essentially we're looking at about 17 years of capacity as it stands right now so 17 more 17 more years and that's based on current estimates for growth assumptions compaction of the waste and so those variables can change we basically were for instance refresh those assumptions once a year and that's is that assuming that we're that will be continuing to accept the other cities trash because I know we had talked about in public meetings limiting that and I'm moving towards you know moving away from that gradually in the feet towards the future so is the question what would the length of life look like without outside ways okay so there are some considerations that we need to bring back if council wants us to explore that we can I mean the estimate that we have right now is that could potentially let add three to five years of landfill life onto that 2036 figure now a couple of things that you got to kind of factor into that is compaction and airspace utilization is also a function of how much waste versus soil we're using for daily cover and so the less waste you accept the more soil can creep in there so it's not always a one-to-one but again our estimate based on those factors is about three to five years if we were to go that route okay thanks councilmember Meltzer if others have questions that could go ahead - I just want to make a comment yeah okay we have at least 17 years to go on what we currently have I'm for solving commercial and and dust and multifamily recycling which is potentially three times more than the recycling that we do now if you can figure out how to figure out how to you know tackle the contamination issue with it I'm for seeing if we can figure out composting I'm for diverting as as much as we can I'm I intend to vote in favor of this because we're looking something like 20 years out and it's about avoiding a redoing a process that takes many years to do I hope that the landfill is completely obsolete 20 years from now and we never need to use this permit but it's just trying not to hamstring future councils okay any other questions comments seeing none chair would entertain action on this agenda item 5a mayor Pro Tem move approval we have a motion for approval do we have a second councilmember Husbeth second a motion a second for 5a let's vote on the board please motion carries 5 to agenda item 5b considered option of the ordinance of the city of Dent Texas approving a specific use permit to allow for a vehicle repair use on approximately 0.5 acre site generally located on the south side of East McKinney Street all right good evening Haley Zagorski with development services so this is case is s 18 7 for dent 1 auto hail repair the request before you if you recall at our last meeting the public hearing was postponed so this request is to consider adoption of the ordinance for that specific use permit to allow for a vehicle repair use on a property that's actually located just across McKinney Street from our current location the site and total is just over a half acre just a refresher on the site plan I won't go into the full details of the request but there are three separate uses on this property currently in four buildings the use we're looking at is located here in blue on the map just over right at 600 square feet of vehicle repair use inside the building the back portion of the property that you see here is the vehicle storage area one of the proposed improvements is a wood fence located here where you see the orange lines on the map and then the green areas represent proposed buffers that could be installed to make this use more compatible with surrounding multifamily and commercial uses staff is recommending several conditions I won't enumerate all of these they're outlined in your ordinance and I'm happy to answer any specific questions about them but staff and the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval of this request and I believe the applicant is here if you all had questions and follow up I see no blue cards this is a an item for individual consideration so staff has completed their presentation are there any questions for staff all right no questions for staff chair would entertain action on this item Councilmember Hussbett yes I have a question for the applicant okay applicants here if you'll come on down sir state your name and address and then we'll we'll get started good evening my name is CJ and I'm representing dent one okay so thank you for being here and so my question CJ is so there's a few different iterations stop starts of application going through this process so I just want to understand how that came to be in and why that was sure thank you for that first of all I just wanted to apologize that last time we didn't have any representation here so to apologize for that but to answer the question initially our understanding was that because of this specific characteristics of this building that we're under the impression that quick servicing under regular CEO would be possible and I believe our landlord had that in mind as well but as we moved along I think it's you know basically with the consideration with the new DDC and so forth we saw that we had to go this route with the SUV application and if I may yes and then how do you envision the other question I had was a fencing so you have to put fencing between I think you and secondhand sports you and the talk of the year how is how do you envision that kind of laying out and and kind of working together sure you know that's been a quite a quite an issue that we looked at for quite some time the main thing is that my understanding is that property is actually all under 210 but the landlord was under the impression that there's 204 208 and 210 so one of the one of the things we've considered in the in the site maps is to allow for the secondhand store to have the free flow of traffic with the parking space and what have you and to set us a certain section for a vehicle storage you know in a gravel area so so that we limit the number of units there currently we don't have any barriers between the two between the three properties so that's going to be something that we're going to try to stick very close to the plans that have been produced okay and then one last thing of course so your overflow so when a hailstorm hits I mean that's your that's their core business and I've seen it and you'll fill up that entire lot and so seeing that that entire lot and now you work in a fence which would limit you know you in and out it's a tight turn as is so what do you have a does your client have an overflow area or the every client that you have would have to fit on this particular piece of property basically the shop level is what we're speaking to it sounds the shop level I think on a building that size with 600 square feet should be somewhere on ten units so we feel that ten units will easily fit within the storage area we've described and so if you get over ten what is the contingency plan reschedule okay for a later date got it okay thank you Councilmember Riggs I think that kind of answers my question a little bit I was wondering about how many cars at once you know would you have during the the busy season and then like temporary like how long do they normally stay generally is it in and out in that day or is it you know because I'm seeing here it says in operable vehicles but I don't think that these are really inoperable they just need to be fixed but but then again so how long would one vehicle stay parked in in a space thank you typically it's about three to four days but you have to figure also a lot of these units there might be a need for the insurance appraisers to come in and sometimes scheduling allows for a little you know there might be a delay of a couple more days so it's not unusual to have a vehicle there for seven days but one thing for sure is all the vehicles that come to that property are operable and are generally never gutted out when they're out there yes sir to follow up and I trying to think that area seems really crowded right now in my mind when I think about it but those spaces would not be occupying any other spaces that belong to any of the other businesses correct that's correct thank you thank you any other questions for the applicant seeing none chair would entertain any action if any on this item Councilmember Hudson sorry can I get it I have a question for staff sure thank you thank you sir appreciate it CJ thank you thank you have you had an opportunity to speak to the individuals that turned in the responses in opposition or did you just take those at face value I have I haven't had verbal communication with any of them I received those one of those via email and they didn't have much more to say other than it was kind of a noisy neighbor sometimes sure and so looking at the one that talks about the lack of oil pans etc etc understanding that's not the business are in but a car may be leaking that sort of thing what what a staffs look at that environmentally that sort of thing it's not something that we expect that they have a lot of at this business it's certainly something within the realm of vehicle repair use that could occur here under the umbrella of the SUP it's my understanding that that's part of the motive behind our code requiring pervious surfaces for areas that are for you vehicle storage so if something does leak it can it doesn't just run off in the the surface flow when it rains it would actually soak into the ground and could be remediated easier so with with that in mind they do the surfaces and everything they have there are appropriate for that according to our code but we haven't examined anything more closely about their operations knowing that their intent is for hail repair only and one last thing and so what what are the neighbors recourse if too many cars whatever their concerns are but I guess mainly I mean outside of the fence would be the primary concerns would it what what is their recourse they have they have to call the city and and and what what does that process look like I'm correct so they would call our department or you know report it through the the app that's available now to file a complaint and that would go to our zoning enforcement officers and they would go out and look into the case and see if anything needs to be done to meet the criteria of the SUP or other parts of the DDC okay and then save me from looking it up I'm sorry how long have they been there I believe this particular use has been there in the range of one and a half to two years okay thank you mayor Pro Tem thank you mayor I think I brought this up the last time I just want to refresh her on it and recommendation number three we were we in the second part of that says unless vehicle storage area is paved and striped that that they have to keep the the fence up if are we trying to block the view of the gravel parking lot or are we trying to block the view of the vehicles that are stored back there so the DDC is a little odd in that sense it does allow if it's if it's vehicle storage for something like inoperable vehicles or something of that nature it isn't it is supposed to be a pervious area so gravel fits that bill the the op option is there though under the code if you want to pave that and have it as a parking lot you could do that and it wouldn't require screening from the right-of-way so we wanted to leave that option available under the code the fence wouldn't be required if they did pave the site and maintain it more as a regular parking lot so that's the intent behind that but okay certainly it is is that something that staff strongly recommends or if that was removed he'd be okay with it it'd be fine if you feel the fence is appropriate either way so thank you customer breaks I had a question about sound like noise level or any chemicals that are used in the in the business we talked about environmental like drain and runoff but I'm just curious if if any of the air I know it's been there for a year and a half but if any of the people that are in opposition may had issues if there was noise I'm not sure how the business operates so maybe if you know that or the owner can certainly I'm not familiar with the specifics of it I know the one neighbor did indicate that there was a high high noise level on occasion I don't know what the source of that noise was though sure the applicant could address the more specific concerns by chemical usage okay you want yeah if that's okay with the yes the council can come down if you can answer those questions that'd be great sure thank you very much the auto hail repair process through paintless dent repair which is what's the application about does not use any chemicals there's no bondo there's no paint whatsoever the the motor of the vehicles is never tempered with so we shouldn't see any leaks at all we haven't had any and then as far as noise I have not been made aware of the complaint that came from that because generally with the auto hail repairs it's it's done it's hand done so the technician grabs some tools essentially some steel rods and massages the metal and occasionally will will knock down gently on the panel and not scratch the surface and the paint that way but there's no heavy equipment that's running that's making a lot of noise it might have been just some folks outside the building or something but the process itself is generally pretty silent okay Councilmember Amater yeah I move to approve with the conditions recommended by planning and zoning councilmember Briggs yeah yeah with the I I'm just I would like to go ahead and second or ask for a friendly amendment with the number 3 which would be just to have the fence permanent and I accept that amendment okay could somebody more clearly state what the amendment is that it's or councilmember Ryan or I mean mayor Pro Tem if you'll state what your amendment is or what it the proposed language is and then councilmember Briggs can ratify that yeah it is the conditions approved by P&Z recommended by staff with the exception of number three not having any of the language after the word unless correct I was going to show it on the screen but we could just remove everything from the comma over in number three so okay councilmember Briggs is that the friendly amendment that you're making that is yes councilmember Amater is that the friendly amendment yes I accept that amendment okay so will we have a motion and a second with a friendly amendment for agenda item 5 be let's vote on the board please there's no more discussion a motion carries six one we'll move on now to our public hearing portion of the agenda for agenda item 6a which announcement was made earlier that the applicant has requested that for the purposes of continuing to provide staff with some information to to better analyze that this item be moved to April the 16th however this is a public hearing so I'm going to no I'm going to open the public hearing on this one yeah so I don't think we have a staff presentation on this at least for now if it gets postponed so I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing fridge into item 6a we have three cards that are wishing to speak but since it's a public hearing you do not have to have a card to speak on this item and you also be able to speak at the April 16th meeting when we come back am I going to close the public hearing on this are we going to leave it so we'll need to so somebody will need to make a motion to postpone but leaving the public hearing open if that's council's desire mr. Ed self if you'll come down state your name and address your town begin good evening Ed so 1620 Victoria Drive in Denton this is about the past the present and the future in the past one of the gas wells near the proposed departments was struck by lightning and blew up only through fortuitous circumstances where property damage and personal injury avoided the wind direction kept the flames and toxic fumes from nearby homes a knowledgeable resident prevented further conflagration by turning off a well valve the unintentional collapse and melting of the wellhead extinguished the fire in the words of a fire department official quote we were very lucky unquote in the past city staff designated this project as being in the Denton strategic plans key focus area of quote economic development unquote in an earlier presentation I argued that this is a multifamily apartment complex with hundreds of residents and it should be considered under the key focus area of a safe livable and family-friendly community but it was not instead in the latest backup material there is now no mention of that Denton strategic plan designation the development is now touted as being a quote business innovation unquote as outlined in the future land use designation of the Denton plan 2030 pardon me this bit of misrepresentation in no way removes the public health and safety issues that caused the initial denial of this SUP it's the same bad deal and presently a private agreement between the property owner CL ventures a Wyoming limited liability company with a Dallas address and sage resources of Tulsa ensures that the public the Denton citizens residing in these apartments will have no voice no voice at all in any future drilling activity that may occur under the terms of this agreement the property owner alone calls the shots but let's look to the future how would the approval of this SUP as it is now presented affect how and what the city could negotiate with the developers of the planned communities of hunter coal ranch what precedents will be set or not set by the Windsor apartments will gas well operations close to protected uses be disclosed to buyers at hunter coal as part of the purchase process at closing will the reverse setback distance itself be increased to a truly protective non-negotiable distance before the go before negotiations even begin let's go back in conclusion to the present the reasons that this SUP was denied by City Council the first time demand its denial this time as well or whenever it comes up again the potential threats to the health and safety of the residents still exist the rights of disclosure and notification are still denied the categorization as an economic development is still wrong and compounded by an attempt to rebrand the project and most troubling with the potential for more drilling in the area the future will be even more dangerous than the past and present thank you thank you next speaker will be Larry Beck good evening mayor city council members Larry Beck I'm at 2301 Paxton way and I think most of y'all are familiar with my opposition to this and the issue it raises with me about homes residential homes in close proximity gas well so I'm just going to hit on three major points that I've introduced you all in emails and so hopefully I'll be brief first let me address how some of you may feel that the applicant's request has lead has legal standing and therefore despite any genuine empathy on your part about any prospective health threats from nearby gas wells you nonetheless feel compel to disregard all other aspects that oppose this development however as I've stated before I think there is legitimate footing found in our DDC that supports denying this SUP the Dent development code states that an SUP shall only be granted if all of the following conditions have been met and the first one on those conditions at the top of the list it says that the specific use will be compatible with and not injurious to the use and enjoyment of other property nor significantly diminish or impair property values within the immediate vicinity the most recent research has been done not the three and four year old stuff that I think we based our original codes on but the most recent research has shown that distance is greater than what our codes currently allow are inadequate to ensure the health and safety of nearby residents and because of this this SUP should therefore be denied because it will not be compatible with and could be injurious to the use and enjoyment of other property and could significantly diminish or impair property values within the immediate vicinity secondly the majority of setback distances in the Barnett Shell which we're part of are not derived from peer-reviewed data data-driven analysis or historical events they are little more than a compromise between governments the regulated community environmental and citizen interest groups and landowners essentially then they are arbitrary the chances and third and finally the chances of any devastating explosion or massive emission of toxic elements might be small the reports have shown that some explosion radii can be as much as 0.8 miles nearly a mile however there will always be those small leaks of volatile organic compounds and particulate matter that will fall within the allowable limits that the TCEQ and EPA advocate yet people who live in close proximity to these wells and who have physiological sensitivities like asthma and other respiratory illnesses could well suffer these lesser effects impacting not only their health but their health care costs with more than normal visits to the doctor ER than those less susceptible so I agree with my friend Ed soft that gas wells this close to residential dwellings will be a potential threat to the health and safety of the residents who choose to live in these apartments without being fully aware of the conditions they face with these wells and that consideration should have equal if not paramount consideration over economic development thank you thank you we have a card here is there Ed would said Edwin Jones is Edwin Jones here Edwin Jones filled out a card in opposition comment of 2821 Roland Drive we are opposed to the only entry exit to the side being located on Windsor until commercial business moves in those are all the cards I have but this is a public hearing anybody else wishing to speak please come down and state your name and address your time begin anybody wishing to speak on this agenda item so help me understand procedurally so I don't close the public hearing right now we just take if we just take either a motion or a second on any action of the council so choose is that correct correct and it'll it'll be continued then to date certain okay all right okay councilmember Meltzer I'll move that we continue this public hearing on April 16th to take April 16th okay Councilmember Briggs second we have a motion in a second to continue the public hearing which means it has not been closed to April the 16th 2019 so vote on the board please motion carries 7-0 thank y'all agenda item excuse me 6b hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of didn't designate in the property at 900 Egan Street legally known as block 18 lot 16 of the high school addition a historic landmark under section 35 point 7.6 and I will now open the public hearing for this particular agenda item and we'll take staff comments staff presentation thank you mayor historic HL 19 one is an owner initiated request for historic landmark designation this is a standard 9800 square foot lot zoned in our three and is a single-family residence in 1917 the city was deeded the land that would become Egan Ponder Panhandle and Alice Street for $1 from C and Bertie Lipscomb on the left that led to the to the met in the plat map you see on the left which is from 1923 on the right is a 1940s tax image from Denton County the stripe of information across the bottom indicate indicates that the house would be a C level house a contributing house in any future historic district this is the mechanics lean indicating that in the summer of 1924 LG McCormick contracted for $3,750 to build a one frame dwelling house with six rooms one bath one hall two porches a solid brick foundation actually was a pier foundation a con vass a term I'm not familiar with and if anyone knows and will email me the answer I'll take it paper paint plumbing wire and all fixtures the deed history indicates that this home has had approximately ten owners since it the inner in the intervening ninety four and a half years and yet it is in good condition with no insensitive alterations this is the rear of the house on the right you see the the some added square footage a sunroom and a porch sensitively added to the rear of the structure here you see that the rope that the home in the upper right originally had three stretch stretcher bond brick columns and one shorter decorative column these were swapped out for wrought iron as you see on the left in the 1996 historic resource survey image and later for the door columns that you see today on the lower right gone also as the second front door comment of homes in the early 20th century in this region the original lap double novelty siding wooden double hung windows and stylized exposed rafter tails still exist and while Egan is a well-preserved Street and 900 Egan certainly contributes to this this home is associated with some interesting people on the left is a Denton record Chronicle article about mrs. mrs. Vesta Scott she and her husband TJ lived at 900 Egan from May of 1938 to June in 1950 she was a songwriter and her songs could be heard on KDNT and local stations in Dallas and Fort Worth she was also a poet the middle image that you see there is an article which refers to her recognition by the San Diego Poets Association for her poem quietude of mine she was Denton's representative for the Texas Council for the promotion of poetry if this were not enough on the right you see that she ran a birthing center out of her house known as the Scott nursing home there are several references to people who were born in this home in old issues of the Denton record Chronicle in March of 1946 as you see here on the right mr. and mrs. Joseph Kirschbaum gave birth to Ralph their son at the Scott nursing home Joseph Kirschbaum was a Yale graduate and he was a professor of music at the North Texas at North Texas State College he was a celebrated conductor of the East Texas Symphony Orchestra for 25 years based in Tyler in addition to conducting the Symphony Orchestra at North Texas State College he organized and directed the Oberlin Conservatory string orchestra and taught at Cornell mrs. Gertrude Morris Kirschbaum taught harp at TWU in this slide you see reference to their son Ralph the one born in 1946 at the end of World War two on the right hand side you can make out a reference from the Los Angeles Times which says Ralph Kirschbaum cello the highest echelon echelon of today's cellist a little about him he was he was he went on to success around the world starting with performances at the age of just 15 with the Dallas Symphony Ralph was also a Yale graduate went on to critical acclaim in Italy playing and performing in Italy Moscow London in New York he has played with most of the world's orchestras including Berlin Boston Chicago Cleveland Houston Los Angeles Pittsburgh and San Francisco and he served a five-year term on the United States Presidents Committee on the Arts and has an honorary doctorate from the Conservatory of Scotland in Glasgow I could go on the bottom line is ultimately this house is symbolic of Denton's musical heritage the house meets several of the it meets five of the criteria for designation that we have including its character its relationship to distinct to other buildings in the area its distinctive architectural style identification with a person who's contributed to the culture development of the city or the United States its location within a significant district and also it meets the Denton plan 2030 element for community character in urban design policies and actions and specifically the one encouraging voluntary landmark designation as a vehicle to protect sites with historical significance this this zoning change was ordinate it was noticed to 200 and 500 feet we have received two favorable responses and the owner also put the required sign up it's been up for several weeks now at the house the historic Landmark Commission recommended designation 8-0 on February 11th the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended designation 6-0 on March the 20th and staff recommends the City Council adopt an ordinance next designating the property at 900 Egan a historic landmark Councilmember Briggs do we know how many contributing homes we have in this in this area or in this one not off the top of my head but it must be a really intense amount because historic Denton Randy Randy Hunt with historic Denton has been working on a national registered district and it would include this area in order for that to happen you have to have pretty significant number of properties it's a lot uneasy I really enjoy driving through this area and looking at the homes and I mean what a great investment from three thousand dollars to probably three hundred thousand dollars today yes and it's really an interesting story to hear about how many you know lives were probably born in that house being a birthing center is what I would call it and they've invested in the property they could not be here tonight they're out of town today I just wanted to offer my input on the word on converse I think that's a typo I'm I just checked in and it's definitely not a word I think it's it can't canvas was spelled with two s's so I think that's what that is all right anyway what a great story I think that this is you know clearly historic landmark and I support this thank you customer customer of hospice I move approval councilmember Briggs I will second you have a motion a second for agenda item excuse me 6b let's vote on the board please motion carries 7-0 public I guess I should have closed the public hearing I need to reopen them we need to do this agenda over again yeah I was a public hearing so I'm going to recall that item 6b hold a public hearing consider adoption we've heard staff presentation I've opened the public hearing this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak on this item come down state your name and address and your time will begin anybody wishing to speak do we need to revoke well let's go ahead and do it we'll just revote to anybody else wishing to speak on this agenda item all right thank you so much I will now close the public hearing apologize for that snafu councilmember Hudson move approval councilmember Briggs I still second all right let's vote on the board please this time officially that was just a dry run I was testing to make sure everybody's paying attention motion carries 7-0 I apologize again for that agenda item 6c hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton Texas regarding a change in the zoning classification and use classification on a site made up of 15 adjacent tracts of land including a change from downtown residential dr1 zoning district and use classification to a downtown commercial DCG I will go ahead and open the public hearing and we'll have staff presentation good evening excuse me mayor council Richard can only development services the item in front of you tonight is a city initiated rezoning of the service center as as the mayor indicated there's 15 different parcels that that make up this property and it covers approximately 45 acres really the impetus for this rezoning is to it's sort of the first step in consolidating all of these lots into a single one and ultimately platting it in order to in order to go through platting the use of the land must must match the zoning so this is essentially the first step in the reason why we're why we're here tonight you can see in the table to your right of the does of the three designations that are currently on the property community service which city facilities fall under it's only permitted actually in the NRM you 12 so what this will do is bring it into the DCG where where it will be permitted throughout the throughout the entire parcel and then this is just that graph graphical representation of the map the reason we looked at DCG it's it's currently across the street and around the surrounding area and it just seemed like a natural fit for this for this rezoning of the city owned property as you're aware there's two criteria for approval whether or not it conforms with the land use element of the Denton plan 2030 and whether it facilitates the adequate provision of transportation water sewer schools parks and other public requirements and convenience on the first criteria on the first criteria the future land use plan it is designated government and institutional use obviously that's what it's being used for now so that that is it is consistent with that with that designation the real criteria to adequate public public improvements water sewer transportation the site is currently developed adequately serviced and there's no no anticipated major increase in in trip generation we did send out notifications both 200 and 500 within the 200 foot notification there were three in opposition to in favor we did post the site with 13 different signs and held two neighborhood meetings the first was held on February 18th prior to this item being heard by planning and zoning Commission and then a second meeting was held March 18th obviously prior to prior to being heard prior to being heard this evening at the planning and zoning Commission meeting there were some individuals to I believe that that spoke that had some concerns and what we've done is just sort of consolidated those concerns in in in the table that's that's in front of you now with with their concerns as well as the solutions that that the city's currently working on addressing those and I think in this last Friday in the Friday report there were some there were some images of some improvements that are being that are being currently worked on with with that neighborhood again planning and zoning Commission recommended approval 7-0 on February 20th and with that staff recommends approval of the request Councilmember Briggs has a question so on the on the ones that came to speak or that wrote the opposition letters I'm reading and some of them were just afraid of the of the zoning making it seem more intense and that some of uses may I think one of them says decimate the neighborhood which is a pretty you know intense word and I'm wondering if if those were those the same people that came to speak or is this do we have that information and my understanding is two of the three to two of I believe two or ones that came were the ones that came to P&Z and then ultimately attended that that March 18th workshop or neighborhood meeting okay because I think maybe they just didn't understand what what the youth was kind of gonna say the same for the most part but I just wondered if anyone reached out to them to talk to them absolutely I know that right after the planning and zoning Commission we had reached out to them and I know Sean had reached out to all of those that you know we had sent the notices identifying when the meetings would take place and I know they've been in constant communication throughout an even meeting I believe staff even from city manager's office has been meeting I think is actually meeting with some of the residents tomorrow again to go over some of these concerns okay and just another question you mentioned and we did get an update on it because some of the individuals that spoke they talked about you know unsightly you know things seeing and noise and so there would councilmember could you speak a little closer to your mic I can barely hear you or maybe if that if the control room could maybe turn her mic up a little if they're able to do that sorry you mentioned that earlier we received a notice about some work that's already going to be done for buffering for you know vision sight and sound to kind of go ahead and address some of these things and I drove by today and this may not be something you can answer but it may be something staff could answer there's already around the fence line very large trees and some brush some bushes and I didn't know if in in this those were going to be bothered or taken down because only because of the individuals who had the issues if they're gonna go through more during this process I want to correct Mario can is ours as the city manager as far as the trees were not any trees out in fact we would be planning actually additional landscaping to add more to the buffering the thought would be that we would do an installation of a wooden fence eight foot tall wooden fence that way it would screen any of the light that comes away from the vehicles and adding the additional landscaping hopefully to to buffer more of the noise that's coming from the service center okay I probably need to go back through and read some of them that is along Rose and wood and okay yes thank you Councilmember Armitage yes so I wanted to thank you know the residents who came out to thank staff for really listening to those concerns and incorporating them you know I've been over in that neighborhood a number of times and you know it is a more lower more are low to moderate income neighborhood and yet where people really take pride in their homes and and we want to be good neighbors I was at first ambivalent although I saw the need for the additional space for our fleet there was clearly a need for that now you know I can see with these I think with these improvements and the ones you mentioned that that this could be this could be an opportunity it sounds like to really take a not so pretty city facility and to make it look nicer for the neighborhood so that's why I'm inclined to vote in favor this time again but I just wanted to state that you know for the record both to thank staff and let you know the public know that I was really concerned about that issue but I do see this as hopefully an improvement if it turns out not to be that I will eat my words and do what I can to to try to get that fix any other questions for staff seeing none this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak please come down and state your name and address your time will begin anybody wishing to speak on this agenda item one more time anybody wishing to speak close the public hearing councilmember Meltzer I'll move approval of this item do we have a second mayor pro tem a second we have a motion in a second for approval of agenda item 6c let's vote on the board place motion carries 7-0 moving on to our next public hearing item hold a public hearing considered option of an ordinance granting approval in accordance with chapter 26 of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Code of the non park use of a part of Southwest Park for the purpose of installing and maintaining waterline for the all red water transmission main project good morning or I'm sorry good afternoon mayor and council members my name is Laura Barons I am the assistant director for parks and recreation and tonight I just want to briefly introduce a request that we've had to utilize part of Park property for a 25 foot easement for a water transmission line that park is actually Southwest Park and that transition line will hug the border there along Bonnie Bray Street and all red Southwest Park is currently an undeveloped park and the development of that park is being considered during our master planning process but future development would not be impacted as you can see it again runs along the border of the property it's a little bit closer look of that easement along again all red road and South Bonnie Bray the area of dedication is approximately 2.75 5 acres of land and that represents a value of just under $45,000 which will be transferred to a general park a project account to be used on any park project in the future councilmember breaks has a question do you know when they're replacing that if they have to remove any trees from our park property it there are it's pretty pretty flat out there I don't know the answer the timeline on that but I don't believe that there are any removal of trees affecting it I was just making sure that because if they were then we would need to value those and those would need to be included Lee Perry assistant city engineer okay so we are planning to advertise this project later in April okay for for the neighbors okay yes and how how long do you anticipate it lasting total project length is estimated at one year but this this project this this project extends all the way down to the southwest pump station okay so that's the fully full project you just mentioned not just a section right it's about 14,000 feet of waterline we're gonna install okay okay any more questions for staff councilmember Briggs is that is that the typical price that for for the easement like if it was someone else and and not a part of city property would that kind of no it's been done a couple of different ways but no we general do generally do work through our real estate and department to get comps we also look at value in that area per acre and then establish what that an actual true market cost for that is okay thank you thanks okay any other questions for staff saying that thank you thank you I will now open the public hearing anybody wishing to speak on this item please come down and state your name and address and your time will begin anybody wishing to speak during this public hearing of agenda item 6d any takers all right seeing none we will now close the public hearing councilmember Briggs I will move approval councilmember Meltzer I will second we have a motion and a second for agenda item 6d let's vote on the board please motion carries 7-0 we will now move to concluding items council members councilmember Meltzer I had the pleasure recently of participating in a joint UNT Texas A&M panel an energy symposium our students listened to panel that included me and someone from the development community and industry on the subject of gas well setbacks and there was a surprising amount of agreement and you wouldn't necessarily expect that and following that I'd like to request an informal staff report on the feasibility and desirability of site specific gas well pad site setbacks based on differing numbers of well heads and dispersion models of vapor clouds I'll be happy to follow up with staff to clear all that up alright councilmember Hobsbeth pardon me thank you sir so few things so mr. city manager I heard a recent report from I do believe it was Arlington Police Department that their SWAT team has deploys drones to surveil houses so that they don't put officers in harm's way and I thought that was fantastic so if someone does run out of the back door they surveil them with the drone and are able to follow them and it's much cheaper than calling out a helicopter type thing so I'd like to see if that's something chief Dixon would his thoughts and if that's something that we could utilize to keep our officers safe and then a note mr. city manager for the technical staff DTV's website the tab if you click on it one of the videos I would ask that they it opens in a new new tab right now it opens in the current tab you backspace and it kicks you out you have to go through all the steps again it'll make sense once they click into it but but maybe if they could change that setting so that it opens a new tab so you can close that tab and you still don't lose your place on the original site would be easier to navigate and then I'm gonna I have some paperwork for you but I just want to put it on the record so there's some there was a ordinance passed in Austin regarding a bill that I think I just want to get your insight on and so it's a it's a craft beer bill that allows them to do deliveries and so I just want to get your your feedback on it and see your take on it so I'll get I have that printed so I'll give you that that's it thank you that's a memory I councilor has but I was actually gonna ask for a work session on that item to see that if council would pass a resolution of support for those bills so that we could learn more about them I know that Louisville also did pass an ordinance and it would help some of our craft beer brewers here in the city also I recently heard that we are about or we are over 30 police officers I think short from where we need to be still and I don't know if the 13 that we hired are part of that or what just and just a little blurb about how we plan to handle that and what we're doing to to keep that to keep that going because I know that once they're hired it takes over at least a year to get them active so if we need to start doing something now to prepare if we have a plan in place for that and lastly I want to thank our students for coming here to the council meeting and you're welcome to come back any Tuesday and speak any on any item that you wish if it's a public hearing thank you anybody else I've got a couple just want to make sure anybody else all right want to get a probably work session and resolution house bill 3806 is a bill that restricts nonprofits from from from providing low-cost veterinary services wellness programs to those only that they that are on some type of government aid which I think could dramatically impact people who aren't on government aid and their ability to take care of their pets so I'd like a either staff report work session may not be necessary staff report but a resolution that would be prepared for this council to vote on in opposition to that bill also I understand that there was a resolution out of the committee on the environment that was voted out and I'd like for that to come to council even if it's in the form of a ratification because I understand that it was needed either yesterday or today or something but I still think council needs to see that and ratify that and I do want to have a work session on all the council committees on sort of what what the subcommittee's jurisdictions are and what what can they do on their own and then what needs to come to council just so that we have some clear delineation of that and lastly if we could get a staff report on the razor ranch town center yes it was announced that they had maybe changing ownership or they have changed ownership just would like to get just a briefing on what the overlay is on that land as far as what kind of specificity if it's the site plan that we saw today regarding the park and that if that was wanting to be changed what is the process that would be required in order to change that based upon the site plan or the overlay that's in place just some some briefing because that's that's an old project and we've got new council members I think it's important that we just have an understanding of that with the change of the ownership that's all I have councilmember Briggs we don't get second I'm just kidding go ahead well you reminded me of a question I had during that presentation because it is so different and I know that it's incentivized and I'm very familiar with the commercial incentives but then he started talking about all the housing and the single-family and I don't know how that translates to our contract and so I'm just wondering if we can have a information session on how that we mean on the economic development incentive for the project and if if residential is included in that if not then right yeah so what's the impact yes okay anybody else I got the over-under on the meeting time we will adjourn at 745