May 21, 2019 City Council on 2019-05-21 11:30 AM

Welcome, everybody, to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, May 21, 2019. It is 11.35 p.m. We do have a quorum. I'll call this meeting to order. Councilmember Ryan will not be joining us for the work session, but as reported, he may be in attendance at the 6.30 meeting. We'll move through our citizen comments on consent agenda items. Do we have any citizen comments, any cards? Seeing none, okay. We'll move down to requests for clarification of agenda items listed on this agenda. Any requests of clarification? Yes, Councilmember Briggs. Well, I had several questions ahead of time. One of them was about the striping. I'm sorry, I'm not really ready, and it was that the the roads that I ask about, bicycle painting and striping, if that was included, and I it said that it was for the certain streets that were done. Is the striping, because I did see some of them included share rows, and has that, is that part of our old bike plan or is this new and is they have these stripings and pavement and these markers been run by our new coordinator? So, Pre-Champion traffic engineer for the city, and yes these are all new and these are part of our micro seal project. Once they go do a micro seal, we go and put the striping back. So some of them may be share rows, but a lot of them are bike lanes, and we are moving forward with the striping for bike lanes. Okay, but I just, the bike lanes on the paths and the share rows, are those from a new mobility plan or is that from the old mobility plan or is it just going to go exactly the way that it was? It's going exactly the way it was. This is part of the street maintenance program, not necessarily brand new bike facilities. Okay, because Windsor was on there and I thought that we had talked about different... Yes, there will be different swapping of lanes happening. So the bike lane will be outside and then, I'm sorry, inside and the parking will be on the outside. It will be swapped. Okay, so that's part. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you. You said you had several questions? Most of them were all answered. That was just an extra clarification for that one item. And I had a question about item K, about the probation tracking software. I don't know if there's anyone here who can answer it. If not, I'm fine pulling it and just getting public input on it, but I had a few questions. Okay, okay. Captain Melissa Kraft, Chief Technology Officer. Hi. Yeah, if you could just kind of explain just a bit about the kind of probation tracking software, how it's different than, you know, what the improvements are and kind of everything that comes with it. Not everything, but just kind of a little overview. We'll do. So the Encode software is software primarily used by courts for their case management system. So they manage various different types of cases, whether it's traffic, probation, and things like that. It also interfaces with the citation software that police uses as well. Okay, yeah, and so this, and just to verify that, more for the public than anything, that, you know, this isn't coming with any new kind of policy change or kind of extra cracking down on people who are on probation. No, this is just regular maintenance and updates to the current existing software we're utilizing. Okay, thank you. That was my impression. Just wanted to double check. Thanks. Any other clarifications for agenda items? Councilmember Hussbeth. I have a question regarding E, the downtown cleaning. The what? Downtown cleaning E. Consent agenda E? Yes, sir. Okay. What's your question? You want to pull it or you just need the question answered now? We need to get the question answered now. Yeah, who's him? Oh, how you doing? Drew Huffman, Park Superintendent. Yes, sir. So thank you. Wanted to understand the Muse streets, those off the square, those included, not included. I was trying to quickly look at the answers, but I didn't, I don't know. Yes, sir. So the Muse streets are included in that. Right now, it's only for litter removal on the Muse streets. Okay. And so I guess my question would be, and I guess it'd be to say, do we have to go back and rebid it? If we, I want to coordinate lifting the trash cans when they clean, because all the trash just goes up against the trash cans, the dumpsters, better said, on the Muse streets. Yes, sir. So the contract is for the sidewalks around the Muse street, and it's for just outside the curb and around all the trash cans. So they will sweep and remove all the litter and, you know, around the trash cans. So they won't, they don't have the capability of moving those trash cans and sweeping, actually like street sweeping underneath those trash cans. We are currently working with Solid Waste on coming up with a new solution on moving those cans, bringing street sweepers and cleaning that area the way it really needs to be cleaned versus, you know, you and I just going out and picking up the trash. Okay. I guess my ask would be if there's a way to see that product or at least give them feedback or at least make sure they understand our expectations as far as what clean is. Yes. And we've met with them and there's a constant look on the square. And we go, I personally go out there usually on a clean Monday nights and Wednesday nights and Friday nights. So normally on my way in, I go in Tuesday morning and Wednesday or Thursday mornings and make sure everything's cleaned up and taken care of and give them a call if it's not and they come back out. Okay, very good. Thank you. Yes. For this one. So you mentioned power washing and it was in one of the questions that I had and there were a couple of emails a while ago about power washing happening at 3 a.m. And I see that this the times have changed. Yes, ma'am. The contract. And so is that is that the same company now they just have different times or is this different? It is the same company that was on the last contract has also won this contract. And then we did meet with them after we had the incident where they were pressure washing at night. We have given them timeline so their days that they will be pressure washing have lengthened, but their time is is the same so they can only pressure wash from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Because most of the restaurants and stores downtown open around 10 a.m. So therefore we gave them that time slot so they have that three hour time slot with a pressure wash, you know, A to B this day and then come back B to C the next day and so on and so forth until everything is pressure washed. Okay. Thank you for addressing that. And we did meet with the downtown association to clarify their times on exactly when they would like to see us down there. And then we give them a two week notice on when that will happen that way if we can coordinate so they're having a sidewalk sale in the morning. Well, obviously, we don't need to be there while they're having a sidewalk sale and all these different excuse me, these different events that are taking place that way where they know what's going on. We, you know, and we coordinate with them. So we just don't miss anything and there's not a miscommunication or they're not there in the wrong times. It sounds like you have it all figured out. Thank you. Any other questions of clarification? Not seeing none. Wanted to welcome Councilmember Davis to his first council meeting. So welcome. No questions for clarification. That's a good sign. I'm just teasing. Just teasing you. No, thank you. Thank you. Congratulations again. All right. We'll move on to our work session reports. 3A, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the Denton Energy Center external sound level study. I guess those people didn't want to see my presentation. Good morning council members, mayor, have a presentation here that's origins are in a issue that was brought to us by a neighbor that's that lives adjacent to the to the Denton Energy Center. So the purpose of this presentation is to provide you some background information that residents is concerned kind of the actions we've taken some mitigation options or some options to alleviate his concern. And finally, I'd like to end the presentation with a recommendation of how we go forward. So we'll start with the background, but also like to give a little preface to the background at this first. If you look at the fourth word here, that was a poor choice of words by me as I use the word complaint. So through the construction, the resident was residing next to the probably the largest construction project in the city of Denton. And for about the 18 months or 24 months were under construction, he was a very good neighbor. We did not hear from him once. So we took steps to try to try to to not impact him as much as we could. But but he was next to a large construction site. So as this issue brought forward, he brought it forward to us. It's been professional. He's been courteous. It's been friendly. He just has an issue that he wants resolved. So complaint is not a fair word. So as I go through the presentation, I will use the word issue or concern instead of complaint. So now we go back to November 2018. So the issue was brought to my attention that the residents that's just adjacent to the to the west side of the Denton Energy Center had an issue with the noise. They were hearing the plant running in their house. So kind of to take us. So that's where the issue started. So kind of to give you the basis of that. So a couple of years prior to 2018, the residents DME staff visited with the resident to discuss the impacts of having a power plant just to the west of him. And those impacts, what impacts it would have on him and his family. So at that time, he was insured by staff members that the noise impacts would be minimal. And looking back at that, that was the information he was provided. But at the time, DME was on in the planning phase of what was to become the Denton Energy Center. And there was only plans to have six engines at that site. Councilmember Briggs has a question. Yes, ma'am. So by reading that, what what I can assume is that if there were just six engines here, then there would not be an issue at all. I would say less of an issue. So at that point, the noise source would be half. The footprint would be half. The actual plant would be further away from his residence. So it's half the plant that's there now. Well, I'm going by a presentation that I saw as well when the DME presented to the public that morning. And I tried to find it, but there was a slide up about the noise level and the sound, which would be absolutely nothing, basically. And so do you know, is this the same homeowner that came to speak of their concern of the sound? Because I know there were a few nearby. Do you know if that's the same? I do not know. I do not know if it was. I don't know if it brought that up before. So and there's kind of a gap in some information there. So some of the planning information I really didn't have access to. So kind of stick into the facts here here that I know. So in this is this this presentation covers this entire area. But essentially, we're dealing with the the only resident that we've heard of since the operation since the planet started operating that has an issue with the noise. OK, thanks. OK, Councilmember Briggs, are you talking about the meetings that were had before the. The on start, the commencement of either construction or approval or anything like that. Is that so about a couple years ago, two or three years ago? Yes, sir. There was the town hall and a few of the residents nearby came and voiced their concerns. And there was actually a couple of slides that had sound studies on there. And I couldn't find those because I wanted to look to see if it was a real study or if it compared to this and if that. But so that may be something we we look for. They're out there somewhere. I'm not sure. I was just trying to go back for my own personal memory to help me with this decision. Yes, sir. And I could address that. Yeah. And then we'll have councilmemor has either question or comment. Yes. So I reached out. So this presentation was given to the PB last night. And we had some very good feedback from them. And that was one of their questions. So I reached out to Burns and McDonald. They were they were design engineer. They're engineers last night and said, hey, guys, did you do a study before? You know, what's your normal operating procedure? So he kind of thought about it. I'll get back to you in the morning. So as is one of the PB members said, hey, I've seen a study or I've seen some memos or some information. But but he couldn't he couldn't find it. So he's going to continue to look for it. I'm thinking I'm trying to recreate that through Burns and McDonald. So the story I got from them and and and we have legal here as well is that in their contract there's an excerpt. And I actually thought that might come up. So I brought it with me. So in any big project, you have your design specification. So your engineer is telling you how they're going to what standards are going to build the plant. So when we get to the noise section of that, it reads the noise analysis of the existing site and the impact on local noise receptors is not included due to a lack of definition of noise analysis, scope and requirements. So that's the language in the contract. So when I spoke to the engineer this morning, I think as as there was some public concern that they reached out, DME staff reached out to Burns and McDonald says, can you give us some information? So I believe it was not a sound study. They have the ability to model the sound and they did. But as more of a informational analysis of kind of what they thought the predictive sound would be at that point, they're going to research those. They had to do it for for six engines, nine engines, twelve engines. They have a bunch of variations, a bunch of memos. So they're trying to find what the latest was that would correlate to the plant we actually built. And they're going to get that to me as soon as soon as they find that. But I think that is the information that that's your that's your reference is exactly. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage. So a couple of things when I wanted to follow up on Councilmember Briggs saying. But first, just to kind of clarify what you just read. So am I interpreting it correctly that it sounds like in the contract, there's no real teeth to, you know, no, no guarantee about about noise. And and what what constitutes to noisy, you know, what they're promising. Is that correct? That is correct. There is. And the second line, as I should read, is is the study that I'm going to show you today is called a far field noise analysis. So, you know, two thousand feet, three thousand feet away from the plant. What does the sound look like as far as being modeled? But they explicitly state no, no noise guarantees are included. Yeah. So, as you know, with the construction of the deck. So this is for the construction of the building, all the site work that's done by Burns and McDonald. Our engines do have a contractual obligation to meet sound levels and they do they provide us documentation that they do meet the sound levels. Noise was a concern. So back and forth. So this is, you know, I wasn't a part of it, but but noise was a concern. So if you were to visit the Red Gate plant in McAllen, Texas, it's about 26 miles out in the country. Noise is not a concern. So as these engineering companies build these plants around the country, there are certain specifications they have to meet. I mean, if you're, you know, 26 miles out in the country and there's nobody around you, it doesn't make financial sense to spend a lot of money soundproofing your building. If there's the tree falls in the forest, there's no one to hear. So so Burns and McDonald had different methods. So noise was it was it was a concern and it was brought up. It's just not documented in the contract. And we ended up with very high grade soundproof walls as part of our plan. Yes, thank you. And I just wanted to kind of to follow up Councilmember Briggs saying and to turn this into a staff request for future information, because I remember to I wasn't on council then, but it was a member of the public and was very involved in speaking out against the the gas plant. And nobody I will say nobody here on council now voted on the gas plan. I don't think you were here. So, you know, we're dealing with what we have right now. Big turnover and staff. But anyway, I was wondering because I tried to look for that information to if kind of staff could dig up even Debt and Record Chronicle might remember and have some kind of documentation of that. Obviously, we have the videos, but I'm guessing it'll be more the answer will be more in the videos than in the minutes of the meetings. But there was discussion in the public meetings of noise levels and there were comparisons made. I don't remember, you know, there were just analogies, but it was it'll be like it'll sound like the wind blowing or, you know, something like that or birds tweeting and there were analogies made. There was discussion and there was kind of public skepticism about about that. As I recall that, you know, by that point, I don't think we were looking at this six and six engines, six engines on one side of town, six on the other. But I might be wrong about that. But as I recall, we were looking at the either nine and, you know, the remaining across town or maybe all 12 of them. I don't remember. But anyway, all of that will be in the video. So staff can kind of look that up and give us a staff report on kind of what was said then. Even though I understand, you know, there's it, you know, contractually, it might not make it make a difference at all. But I think for the public in terms of memory, just kind of archiving history of it, it'll be useful to be able to see that. But thank you. We're dealing with today. Yes, sir. Whatever happened back then, we'll do our best to figure it out. But so how are we going to how are we addressing the issue today? Yes, sir. And that is that is the focus of this of this of this presentation. Some background information was important. So you see where the resident was coming from. We will say there is probably a DME staff oversight. So through the through the process to determine that 12 engines were going to be located at the Jim Crystal site, there was a pretty good time period in there. So once that that was decided in the projects moving forward, the staff oversight was they should have returned back to the resident and said, hey, look, now we have 12 plants here. This plant is going to be much larger. The noise impacts. So that was not done. So now we'll jump back to to the homeowners specific. A specific issue is the he feels that the operating noise of the deck when it's operating at night or late at night, early in the evening, times when he's in his home that he can notice the sound. It's not every day. It's it's it's certain sound conditions, certain atmospheric conditions when he could hear the plant. So if anybody's been on a cruise ship, it's just kind of that rhythmic kind of base sound that you hear that that's probably two Zilla engines. Well, we have 12. So that's just the kind of the sound that he's hearing. So I actually spoke to the resident, you know, so he voiced his concern. I listened to him. His other concern was he's like, man, I don't think your engineers could have done a better job shining lights into my window. So he's a long ways away. But there were some substation lights that were causing him a nuisance. I spoke to our substation manager. The deck is very well lit. The plant building is very well lit. We normally light our substations. We keep them pretty bright because you want to deter people from getting into a substation, a place they shouldn't be a place they could be injured. So he's like, hey, you know, we can turn the lights off in the substation because there's enough light out there that, you know, that people can see that it's there. But if my staff needs to enter there at night, we'll have to turn all the lights on for safety's sake. So basically, it'd be the opposite of what our normal operating procedure is, is we'll keep the substation dark until someone needs to go in and work. So we did that on a Friday. We shut it off. I contacted the homeowner and said, hey, you know, see if it's any better. He called me back the next week and he said, thanks. That really the light issue is now taken care of. So I wish the sound was as simple as a light switch, but but it's not. So at that point, I said, you know, can you give us some time? This isn't going to be a fix we can do tomorrow. We need to find out what the issue is, what the noise source is and what can we do to make that better. So that's how we left that. So now we get into the actions that were taken. So I took the I took the concern to the DME management and the city management and it was decided that we would install two sound monitoring devices. One would be located inside the plant just north of the north engine hall by the by our gas fuel gas equipment, which I think is the noisiest part of the of the outside of the building. And the landowner was gracious enough to give us to let us put the second monitor in his almost his backyard. So there's a line of sight from his residence down to the deck off to his driveway. He let us put that equipment on there. So we consulted with environmental noise control. They have the equipment. They're freestanding devices. They're solar powered. They communicate their data back to the server with cell phones. They're pretty noninvasive. And we decided to leave those monitors in place. And they are real time monitoring and logging the sound levels as well as they have the abilities to where we set thresholds. So due to data memory, we can't record everything for four weeks. But they have a trigger so that if the noise exceeds a certain level that the audio portion records the next 10 seconds time stamps it and puts it on the server. So at that time, you can see, hey, you know, our intent was we'd be able to hear the deck. So we wanted to hear at the different times the impact that the deck was having. So and our justification for a four week monitoring period was, you know, this Texas, the weather changes a lot. So we were trying to catch, you know, some different atmospheric conditions. We go back to his the timing of his complaint was November, just an unusual cold spell hit North Texas. So it was a cold, still night. So we wanted to catch the plant operating at some different atmospheric conditions over this four week period. So we got the monitors installed about three weeks into our monitoring period. I got I got a phone call from the resident. He invited me over for coffee. He said, you know, could you come over? Can we set this up for like a six o'clock in the evening? And being very genuine, he wanted us to experience what he's what he was hearing. You know, he didn't want to just be, hey, I'm a citizen making a making a complaint, you know, just come firsthand and witness that. So so we accepted. I got with Jason Brown, our plant manager. We found a spot on the deck schedule that we could invite the plan as well. And we set up a forced run so that Jason would have the ability that at six o'clock, we could be at the residence home. We can start the plant and then we would have control of the output. You know, to be fair, we're trying to be as loud as we can during this this monitoring period to be our worst case scenario. So Jason are driving over and his radio comes on and we're about to pull in the gate of the residence and his control center says Urquhart, just dispatch the plant. So we're setting there. The plant starts and and we could hear it. So it's the same noise that he described. So we went on. We met with the residents out on his back pool area behind his house. You could hear it's just it's it's off in the distance. It's just this low bass sound. And so we and a thing I noticed there is that his residence is higher than the deck. That's not something that I'd realized before driving by it for a couple of years. So out on his pool, you're looking down at an angle at the front door of the deck. So that plays some significance later on in the presentation. So we went inside, he invited us in his house. If you're having conversations, then you can't hear it. So some of the the analogies that have been given, I mean, we didn't have a plant before. Some of the analogies were given. There's a church, you know, by the one in Greenville. Well, if you're inside and you're having church services, you're not going to hear the deck. We're inside the home and you're speaking. You can't hear it. But the second it goes quiet, which would be a nighttime situation and you train your ear to it. Once you hear it, you can pick it out. Can you feel it since it's a base like you might not be able to hear it all the time. But can you know, ma'am, up closer, you can. So at the plant, you definitely can. So that was one of our concerns is there's instances where you translate sound through vibrations like through the bedrock. It's more of an audible sound. You're not close enough to feel like the base energy. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. So we thanked him for the coffee and we laughed and then we continued on. The next phase is obviously there's noise. So where is it coming from? So we proceeded with environmental noise control. We brought them back out to pick up their monitors. And at that time, they brought some handheld equipment. We profiled the deck. So we spent the morning taking 30 second sound samples around every fan, every pump underneath the radiators. And then we had DME had a service or a transmission bucket there. We actually lifted up the acoustic tech to 50 feet and to 100 feet. And he was taking measurements. And then the Lyman rotated him over the building and he took a reading at the ridge vents. So that's that's another key star here later in the presentation. So anyway, so they gathered the data, picked the monitors up, took a couple of weeks for them to prepare the study. We got it about March 19th with the report that's in the backup. And then I provided the results with the with the homeowner. An area map just kind of give you some spatial orientation. Jim Crystal is the road here at the north. The residents he sets just south of Jim Crystal. If you see this this part right here, that would be the sound monitor that was installed. So it's just you can kind of a grainy picture, but you can see his pool, his house, a structure here. We put it in an open area facing towards the deck. The his backyard area is about twenty two hundred fifty feet from the north engine hall corner. So here's your line of sight. The second monitor was placed just inside the gate next to the fuel gasket. So the rest of the rest of presentation, we'll talk about the sound levels as as we discussed before. You know, there's some information put out prior to the planning stages and all that. So this is this is modeled as as the plan is today. So the the noise levels, as I mentioned, are our engines. They do meet the manufacturer's guarantee are at about our engines average one hundred and twenty six DB. So some of you've been on a tour, you have earplugs and they're very loud. So it's not cumulative. So six wouldn't be seven hundred and fifty. It's your noisiest item you have in your engine hall kind of set your level. So our engine halls are about one hundred and twenty five DB. If you're inside there, if you see the first red line down here, so our building, our engine hall shell does have some sound mitigation properties, actually quite substantial as the sound is logarithmic. So it's it's it's some crazy math. But outside the plant, we have a we're at about 70 DB. That's at about 50 feet north of the engine hall at that monitoring site. There is 70 DB. When the plant is running at two hundred and twenty megawatts. Yes, ma'am. So how does this relate to our current sound ordinance, our current sound ordinance? It it does. Well, I yeah, is there a legal interpretation? Well, basically, if you a legal interpretation, we could get Larry up here. But our sound ordinance, as in the code of ordinances for section 17.20, if you read this, it is for residences. If I spoke to Scott McDonald this morning, there's not an industrial nose noise portion of the code. So but if if kind of some of the the note I read you earlier is Burns McDonald went to this document and it's not specific to industrial applications. So the number is 65 DB. So if you wanted to have a to get a variance on the on the noise ordinance, you cannot exceed 65 DB. And we're at 70. So at 70 DB, yes, ma'am, is where this one is. Yes, ma'am. One hundred feet outside of the of the deck building. That's a nice loophole. Thank you. Yes. So and it will show that there's a there's a pretty color representation in here that I think kind of where you're heading is the interpretation is you can do what you want on your on your property. But at your property line, your noise levels cannot exceed that. So to prove that you're in compliance with the ordinance, it seems to me, as I understand it, and maybe Larry could comply is if the city was going to cite someone, they would go to their property line with a meter and see what your noise level is. So as I'll get in later, the deck side is very large. So I'll be able to give you some of those numbers and what we think it is at the property line. As we go down to the second line, this is the sound modeled at the residence. So that monitor I showed you this often is backyard. The model predicts about fifty six point one DB at that site. Finally, the line at the bottom here at about forty five DB. That's the average sound level at the residence when the plan isn't running. So that's generally how noisy it is or how quiet it is when the plan isn't running. And I have some additional data I can show you there. So any questions on that and this other stuff is sound is kind of relative. So the intent of this chart is to show you just some common items and kind of what the sound levels they would be. So here's here's some busy graphs. This is actually the data that was that was generated by our our monitors every day. So I took this is on January 28th. This is a 12 hour real time reading. So as you see that the logs the lines bouncing around that that's a real time non smooth function. So on the left here is the plant reading. This is the ambient plant noise not running the spikes here. I'll call the planes trains and automobiles. So as I mentioned before we had the ability to go in and hear the sound when it went above a certain threshold. So both the plant and the residents out there they're in the DFW flight path. So you can hear jets there in the regional airport. You can hear the local airplane traffic in the flight pattern. You can hear the train blowing his horn as he goes down the tracks over by 35 here at about five thirty a.m. You can see the plant ramp up. So this noise is still going on. But the way sound works it's your loudest sound you hear. So this other stuff becomes background noise and the plant as predicted is running about 70 dB. This is at full full output. And then as you see the plant shuts down on the right side is the residents logging device during the same time period. So we have on the left here is the ambient noise in the middle of the night your traffic on 380 your planes trains and automobiles. The second box is when the plant starts up. You can see that it does trend up as the plan is adding to the background noise at the residence. So the benefit of this or the the this proves our model. So our model is going to predict that that meter is going to be fifty six point one dB. As you can see the data the real world data kind of confirms that prediction. So now as we move on to the noise source and trying to figure out I know we have soundproof walls. They were an upgrade. We have an insulated roof. Where is this noise coming from? So it's probably easier just to go to the next slide. So if you look at the slide on the right this is kind of the Instagram post for our engines in our north engine hall. Very very nice looking. But if you look up to the top you can see the ridge vents. So the ridge vents are ten foot wide and they're a hundred and sixty foot long. And so the reason that they're there and you can actually see the sun coming in hitting the girder. So the the reason that they're there they're a vital they play an important part to the functionality of the engine hall. So these engines as you know are kept ready so they can be started on short notice. So they're about a hundred and fifty to a hundred seventy degrees is what they're kept all the time. They're a large mass of metal. So it's hot in there and when they when the engines are running just like your automobile. Even though it's water cooled you put your hand on the hood. It's putting off a lot of heat. So these engines do the same thing. So there's exhaust fans or intake fans. There's six on each wall. So they can be turned on. They automatically come on when you start the engines. So they're bringing in a massive amount of outside air which is always cooler. Even in August it's always cooler than the air inside the engine hall. So these fans come on and for every cubic foot of air that they bring in it has to go out the roof or you'd over pressure their device. So that's that's that's the importance of the ridge vent. But as you'll see that the white you can see the insulation on the ceiling and the walls. It's the only portion of the shell of the building that is that is not soundproof. So mitigation is just a fancy word for noise reducing options in our in our spot. So I'm an engineer. I said I can solve this problem. So we'll just build a berm. My idea was to based off some text dot data that the berms are efficient at blocking noise. They're passive. So there's no moving parts. You just have to bow them. My idea was to put a berm along the property line that would cast say an audio shadow on the residents. So his house is about 15 foot tall. You put up a berm. Hey, I took a shot. So anyway, we had that we had the ENC model that the earthen berm was was modeled at 16 foot in height and ran approximately 1200 foot along the West property line. The price tag came in pretty steep at about five hundred thousand dollars. It was a massive amount of import would be about thirty five thousand yards of soil to construct it. But if you get to the next line, the burn would provide point to DB of noise reduction. So obviously, I'm not a very good engineer because my idea wasn't wasn't valid. But in looking back, so the the failure in this idea was that the residents is elevated. The noise source is also elevated. So basically, you're broadcasting the noise out of the roof of the deck, which is about 40 foot to his house, which is elevated. The burn I proposed was in a valley. So all that sound was just traveling over the top of it. So the burn to be to be effectual would just not be practical. So mitigation option two is the acoustical engineer. So this is this is this is their proposal is an installation of silencers on the existing ridge vents. And the theory there is that the that you you you reduce the source that you reduce the noise at the source and it's much more beneficial. So we did we did some checking. This option is feasible without major structural modifications to the building. The budgetary estimate is three hundred seventy eight thousand. That's where the supply, the design, the supply and the installation of the silencers. And they would provide approximately eight point seven DBs of noise reduction. So I'll quantify that in a few slides. Here's the sound models as I was showing you. So this is something you could have done ahead of time. We don't have that. So this is actually the real world data was gathered off the operating plant. And this is the unmitigated. So if Jason was to start the plant tomorrow or today, this this is what the model would predict. Sound levels are so receptor one is the the the monitoring device in the residence backyard. A full output on the plant. It would be a fifty six point one DB. It's color coded. If we get back to the say sixty five would be the yellow. That would be this line right here. I'm sorry, sixty five. So this would be sixty sixty five. So the brown inside of here, this kind of Pacman shaped thing would be the sixty five or higher DB range. And as you will notice, it's kind of hard to see. But underneath here is the property line of the deck. It extends over here. And these are the only two property lines that the deck is near. So you can clearly see the red in the middle, that's the source of the noise. Now we go to the next one. This is mitigated. So this is the same color scheme. But this is what the silencers and salt. So now you will see that the 70 DB is wholly contained almost within the footprint of the building. The sixty five DB is contained within the security wall of the energy center and out at the residence. We've brought that level down almost to the background noise. >> Council member Meltzer has a question. >> Yes, sir. >> You might be about to get to this. But is there any way to kind of represent this impact to that homeowner? Do we know that this would be an acceptable solution to him? Is there some way that we've been able to let him experience what that is? >> I don't know if we've experienced what the final result would be. I've spoken to him. He's seen the report. He has the data. And very straightforward. We're never going to get to zero. We're never going to be like Greenfield before the plant was there. So very straightforward with him. And again, this is theoretical. This is modeled values. This is a level that I can't answer that question for him. So all I can tell you is normally without the plant running at all that when the plant is running, that this noise source is going to be considerably less. >> Before we give direction, I'd like to have a brief closed session on this just to discuss options that would require confidentiality. And I'd also like to point out that not to rub salt in the wind, but I'll bet mowing that berm would add .3 dB. >> You're probably right. Council Member Briggs. >> So you mentioned berm, and I saw that in the presentation. I was going over it, and I swear I thought that that was a proposed thing to do already. And when I went out there, there was a large thing of dirt, and that was what it was going to be used for. Is there not a berm out there already? >> There is. So during the -- so these projects went through separately. We have the substation and the power plant, the substation's zoning that was required during the development of that is to put a landscaping buffer, which we do around our substations. So if you were to go out there now, there is a three-foot landscaping berm that runs along its property line. And there will be trees. So we have a landscape plan that was approved. There will be some shrubs, some trees. We already have the water line out there. We have the irrigation tap. We put all that on hold just with the permission of the landowner, says, hey, if we have to build a big berm, which is going to make, you know, reduce the sound, then we'd tear out our landscaping. So we've kind of postponed that until we have direction the way we're going, and that will be complete. The large pile of the soil you saw out there, that's created a hill on the north side. So we shaped that up there so that we didn't have to haul all of that off. >> Okay. And just kind of follow up with another. So before, if we are going into closed session. So how long will it take if we do give direction to do the recommended for the -- >> Yes, ma'am, as we get -- >> Yeah, yeah. >> I can jump right there. >> Right. Because I'm -- my concern is time. >> Yes, ma'am. >> And it's been over a year. This homeowner has had to deal with this extra noise level. And, I mean, at some point needs peace. So I don't know if there's anything that we could do in the meantime while we wait for this process. You mentioned a berm. I don't know if it, you know, we could make the one that we plan on a little bit bigger, add a few more extra trees, and get that done as soon as possible. But I would like to hear if you thought about, you know, something to do more sooner rather than later, even if we do just to go for the silencers. >> Yes, ma'am. So you obviously see what the staff's recommendation is. So in the meantime, the short answer is not really. So if the direction is given, you know, if we go out for the RFP, we know that the berm can be finished. The screening trees will be planted. And doing some text out research, it actually takes a forest. It takes about 100 feet of trees to actually provide any solid noise mitigation. So generally, the screening is for visual effects only. So we have the trees, and I've given them my word. As soon as we get our direction, then we'll go out and we'll get those trees planted. As far as mitigating the noise at the deck, the way it's set up now, there's nothing mechanical or any temporary thing that we could put up that would alleviate that issue. As far as our timeline goes, these items are custom made. Their lead time is not crazy. But we'd go through our RFP process, which is normally about 90 days with the city. So we'd be looking at installing this in the fall. And that's as soon as we can get them out there. And as you brought that up, that's another thing. So I'll give you some alternate options. I'll go back to the staff recommendation. Yes, sir. >> Councilmember Ombretor has a question. >> So just after I mention this, feel free to pick up right exactly where you left off, because this is more of a request for future information. >> Yes, ma'am. >> So, and I wanted to just say this before we go into the closed session. We're looking at mitigation option one, 500K estimate. Mitigation option two, 378K estimate. We've got this gas plant that is 225 million dollars, big investment that we now know isn't needed to back up renewables. I'd like to see a staff report on what the cost would be to just turn off the gas plant. I'd just like to see what the cost would be, which would solve the noise issue, would also solve the pollution issue, and people might not think that's a realistic option, but I'd still like a figure in addition to the cost of how much it's costing us to keep it running every year versus what we make from it, not versus, but in addition to what we make from it in revenue. Again, even if this is not realistic, I'd like to have the figures just to show and be able to show the public, because I think that- >> Councilmember Armitage, I can certainly tell you that there's an $18 million a year debt payment on the deck. Beyond that, and it's in that debt payment, quite frankly, is a financial hedge into the market. We're not going to be able to give you a credible answer above and beyond the $18 million a year debt payment. And the idea with the hedge is there's going to be years where you save that much. There's going to be years where you have that payment and it costs you a little bit more, but I wouldn't feel comfortable putting any number out there above and beyond the debt payment. You're going to have that $18 million a year every year until that debt is paid off, and we cannot predict the cost above and beyond that in the market. >> Okay, well, then just to, even just to have kind of in writing, something that I can show people if this question comes up, because I should say when the question comes up, because it does, why are we still running it, just to be able to say, here's the cost. And the debt, obviously, the debt will exist as we run it, and it also would exist if we don't run it. But I just like to have kind of those figures in writing. And I know that there have been some figures before that we've asked for. So kind of adding that to, for kind of estimated O&M costs that we got from before. >> We're sort of way off topic here. So if we could, I mean, appreciate that. And you all had some dialogue, so you all can talk about that offline as far as your request. But if we could stay on topic of the mitigation. >> Yes, sir, and to her point, so this is, as you know, the deck was finished under budget. So we finished substantially under budget. So we kept some money back in the capital account that would cover this expenditure. So we saw it coming. We know it's been dragging out, but we knew we could get to the point where we needed to install this. So this does not increase the debt of the deck. It's funds we kept back out of our how we came under budget that would fund the installation of this. >> Can I ask how much has been kept back? >> Can I give you a ballpark answer? >> Sure. >> I have Tony. Yeah, I guess. >> City Council, Tony Point, the Chief Financial Officer. So there was about a $10 million contingency in that project that we've already captured. What Chris is talking about is about another $4 million that is still in that project account. And a portion of that we would use for whatever option the council directs here. Any amount that's not going to be used here will then offset potential future debt issuances for the rest of our utility CIP, primarily our distribution CIP program. >> Okay, thank you. Can that figure be somehow worked into that staff report that I asked for, just so we can kind of have that in writing? >> The $4 million contingency. >> Yeah, plus the $10 million, yeah. >> Sure, I think what we can certainly say is that we've got about $4 million to cover this, which we return to the reserve fund if it's not spent, but we're happy to include that. >> Awesome, thanks. >> So back to our recommendation on item one here, it's prepare an RFP for the design. The justification of that is multi-fold. So if you look here, it's kind of where we're running today. Yes, the reason we're here today is the residents' concern. That should address that. But as you look in the change of these graphs here, this is what the silencers installed. This also would be an investment to reduce the sound footprint of the deck. So we have flood zone here. We have a creek here, a creek on this side, the airport on this side. There is land down at the bottom. So the investment in the silencers should alleviate the residents' concern. That would be not foremost, but the first part and the reason we're here. But the second is also the surrounding footprint for future developments. I mean, the plant hasn't made it to its first birthday yet. It probably has, you know, hopefully 30 more to go. We don't exactly know what all is going to happen out in this area. It is future zone is for industrial area, but the investment now will just reduce the sound footprint of the deck. The other options are some other technology out there that we don't know about. Putting out an RFI to Councilmember Briggs. That only adds time to it, but it is an option. We don't know everything that's out there. There may be something better. And finally, the last option would be to take no option, no further action for at the deck. We've had a, I appreciate that, the next thing is direction, but before we do that, we've had a request by Councilmember Melzer to go into closed session on this item. So, Mr. City Attorney, if you could ask for any additional clarification that you might need to make sure we can form this process. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to understand the justification to go into closed session. Is it? Discuss options that require confidentiality. As far as attorney client privilege information related to those legal law, to those options. Just where competitive issues would come into play. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so I think at this time then we would convene into closed. You need to have a clarification before you go in. It's not exactly competitive. Just. Consultation with attorney. Yeah, consultation with attorney. So that's what, I just want to make sure we're clear that if that's the rationale that we move into closed session that the only topics for discussion will be attorney client information as far as what would be within the posting. Is that correct? That is correct. All right. Okay. So we will, what's the section number on that? No, I'm coming back for the closed session that case, according to 7. It would be 07-2. 07-2. 07-1. 07-1. Okay. We will now convene into closed session at 12-27 to deliberate regarding consultation with attorneys under Texas government code section 551.07-1 for agenda item 3A. Welcome back everybody. We're back in open session. We convene for our closed session back in open session at 12-47 p.m. on Tuesday, May the 21st, 2019 meeting of the Dent City Council. We are on agenda item work session agenda item 3A. And so we'll resume staff presentation. Sir, I think we're back to the recommendation. So as I stated before, staff recommends preparing an RFP for the design supply and installation of ridge vent silencers. We feel that this will alleviate the noise concern of the resident as well as benefit the general area around the Dent Energy Center. Alternate options are to prepare an RFP for alternate mitigation methods. Be whatever they are, go out and let some companies tell us what they think their ideas are. Again, we put that as an alternate option. There may be something great out there, but the timeline could be unknown at that point. And finally, the last thing would be take no further action on sound mitigation at the deck. So at this time, if there's any questions that you could possibly have. Council Member Briggs. I'm ready to give direction. Yes. So I'm good with the recommendation. But I would also like to suggest that we -- I know you mentioned going ahead with the landscaping and the berm. Maybe get the berm a little bit bigger, a little bit larger, not the one you said. But just build it up a little bit and do this ASAP and plant a forest. You said it would take a forest, and I'm saying let's plant one. It's not only good for sound mitigation, but it also helps absorb some emissions. So I mean, it's a win-win. So whatever the trees are that are in the landscape, we should double it or triple it if possible. That would be my recommendation. And that would be kind of in the meantime for me doing that part of it. Yes, ma'am. And then I don't want to add any new thing to the RFP to drag out the time. Just, you know, get it done as soon as possible. Yes, ma'am. Council Member Wilson. Is our option one and the second option one mutually exclusive? Is there anything preventing us while we pursue one from also finding out about alternatives? I think to answer your question, the answer would be no. I think if we -- or would be yes. We could do them both at the same time. I think -- It's a huge effort to do that, it might be. Yeah, I don't -- so you're saying issue an RFP for the silencers. Is that detailed in this presentation? Issue another RFP for alternate options? Yeah, so that, you know, let's hopefully, you know, on similar timing, you might find out that there's something way better. You know, if -- I mean, just -- Yes, sir, that is -- I'll get with purchasing and see if maybe RFP might not have been the exact terminology here for purchasing, maybe a request for information, something along those lines. Yes, sir, we can definitely look into that. And I like the tree thing that's probably -- Yes, sir, I'll speak to my -- I'll speak to my new boss here and see if he's okay with putting more trees in. Yeah, I mean, I've got to be honest with you. I mean, I'm optioned with the silencers and if we want to put out some alternatives. But I don't have enough information on what's been suggested as far as building a berm, planting more trees. I'd like to know how much that's going to cost. Where are they going to be? If they were supposed to be there in the first place, why are they not? I mean, I don't know much about that. The options were build a half a million dollar berm that's not going to do any good and then do this, which shows substantial reduction in that. So I just need more information on that. Yes, sir, yes, sir. That's my direction. I'm not opposed to it. I'm just saying I don't know exactly what all that entails. So I don't want to give this open-ended direction of planning a forest or doing something that has really no -- I don't know what it means. Yes, sir, we can prepare some information. So the landscape plan was approved as part of the Jim Crystal substation. It has a berm. It's a three-foot berm. It's already been constructed. The irrigation system hasn't been installed. So the tap is -- and it's two inches commercial. If there was direction, hey, increase the tree, count some, we could still accommodate that without costing us any additional money that we've already put in. If you could just send out a white paper on that. Yes, sir. But what I'm hearing you say is what was planned originally for the substation is in the process of being constructed. And that's going to continue, notwithstanding what our decision is here today. Correct. We spoke to the landowner, we didn't want to put the trees in and then the berm be the perfect fix and you have to go take out all the trees. Right. So we kind of got his permission to say, hey, let's see the direction we're going to go. If we fix the sound at the plant, then he has the landscaping plan, then we would install it per the landscaping plan. So this would be my thought. Yes, sir. We've already got a landscaping plan in place. Yes, sir. We've got at least potentially direction on the silencers and some other alternatives that may resolve the issue. Yes, sir. But I'd like to see if that resolves the issue first to go above and beyond what the original landscape plan was for the substation. In other words, let's see if it's going to fix the issue we're concerned about. And if it doesn't, then we can come back in if we need to to talk about some other alternatives. But unless you're just wanting to plant more trees just to have more trees. Because from what you're describing, it's not really going to it's not going to cut down that much if they're not tall enough. And if they're 100 100 feet of forest, what takes us 100 feet high. No, it has to be tall enough so that the line of sight covers it up 100 feet wide. Yeah. OK. So yeah, I appreciate it. I'd like to know more about that. That's yeah. Yes, we can we can provide the landscaping plan so you can take a look at that. This is part of we'd have to go out and get bids on trees. Then we'd have unit price. And then we could say here's your options per tree. This is what it costs to go above me on. Is that is that what you mean? Yeah, I mean, sort of as a separate direction than this. I mean, I don't I can't give my direction to do both of them. That's your direction moving forward as approved for me. It's I'm OK with the vent ridge to see if that solves the problem. Come back with the alternative or the additional part of going above and beyond what the original landscape plan was for Jim Crystal substation. Yes, sir. And we can decide on that based upon the cost that you're talking. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Mayor Pro Tem, any questions? So what is our understanding of the technology as it relates to the ridge vent silencer? So we're going to go out for RFP, but we also have modeled results. That means we we we have an understanding of what's in the market currently. Is that right? Correct. So the actual the the the silencer technology is pretty standard on power plants, especially gas turbines. They're exhaust and the noise they generated is very significant. So most of those apparatus is have to be exhausted or ducted through these these silencers. So the the silencers as modeled here would be this company's product. So they're all going to be very similar, very similar to a muffler is a good idea. They're passive. There's no internal moving parts. They're basically baffles that allow the air to move through. So basically what we do when we go out with the RFP would be very specific engineering instructions. Our fans are moving X amount of CFM per minute. That much has to go out to your out your ridge, your baffles or your silencers. So that information would go out and each one of these acoustic noise control companies would provide us with their own their own model or their own product that meets these specifications. And due to our ridge vents existing, then they would be custom made to fit our to fit our our application. OK, if I may. Yeah, of course. And so where's the difference in the manufacturers? Because if we're if we've modeled a result, correct, we base that on something. And you say they all kind of and I'm putting words in your mouth, but they can all perform the same. It's just the same result, just a matter of how they price it. No, sir, because if there's a varying difference, doesn't that change the model? Yes, sir. That is correct. That's based off the attenuation, the sound attenuation or mitigation that this specific example would would that would provide. So it's not an off the shelf market. You know, we can't just go online and order it so that they be custom made. So part of our evaluation as we go forward with an RFP would be hey, provide us your price, provide us your model attenuation for that. So that wouldn't be something that we'd pay for. That as you've seen our RFPs come through, how you can evaluate them for for the different indicators of probable performance, one of ours will be mitigation. So there may be a company out there that their that their product or their technique that they have may provide 10 dBm of attenuation. So that would be a range that we'd evaluate in the in the RFP. Okay. So Mr. City Manager, if you could help me with if there's a way I just want to kind of understand the process better if there's a way for us to have each vendor out one day. And here's here's the measurements. Here's the date we're going to allow you to put them on their measure, whatever that is. I just want to make sure we're getting I don't want to get I want to try to avoid getting into a lowest cost evaluation and really focus on a best results evaluation. And I don't know how that works in the RFP world. But but in a perfect world, I'd love to have if we have eight people reply, let's get them all on the roof one day and see if it fits, if it snugs, if it rattles. I mean, you know, those sort of things before we get too far down. And again, I don't understand the RFP process well enough to know how to steer that. But that would be my ask. We can certainly do that. So your direction, Mayor Pro Tem would be. Yeah. So I'm for option one, one, one, not one, not two, one, but trying to confuse you. I just saw that the first time when it's good. No, no, it's a good thing. So no, for option one. But I would like to see them come out and give us a demo of some sort as a component of that. Could I address and then catch a member in dealing with that customer husband. The problem with this is that these items will be custom made. So they'll be custom made for our for our for our application. So I doubt we could get a vendor to submit us a bid and say, hey, build one of these. There's say they're twenty thousand dollars apiece. I doubt we could get them to construct one as a demo for us. And the issue we would have is that they'd build one. We still have one hundred and fifty feet. It'd be hard to tell. So I think in my opinion is our part of our submittal process in the RFP. The RFP allows you not to pick the lowest cost, but to the best value for the city. So we'll come up with a metric where we can wait. The DB attenuation that they provide us, it'll be based off of model data that they provide us. Would be we could really bump up that valuation process to make sure we're getting maybe not not the least expensive, but the best of the best product. If I may. Well, to that end, can we go visit sites? So will they have products in place? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I believe so. We could definitely look into that. Sure. I mean, I just would that would be my concern that we obviously they'll they'll snug it up. They'll make it custom. But I would just want to try to do everything we can to fully understand what we're buying before we get it before we get locked in. Yes, sir. Thank you. Appreciate that. That makes sense. Councilmember Armitage. Let's see. So, like I said before, I would most of all like to just turn off the deck altogether. Because that's not on the table, though. But I do look forward to seeing what the rough estimate of the O&M costs in addition to the 18 million would be. Oh, anyway, but about the recommendations before us today, I'm for the RFP for Bridge vent silencers. I'm wondering if because I like the idea of exploring alternate mitigation options. Are these two mutually exclusive? Can we send out both RFPs at the same time? And is there any any cons you can think of, you know, to just looking into both of those at the same time? I would definitely have to check with purchasing. I don't know exact purchasing rules. If you could have to have one, it could be like an RFI request for information, which would be different than a than an RFP con. What I see is companies out there saying, hey, these people are shopping this around. It may affect the ultimate price that they're that they're willing to put on there. That's the only kind of con I can see. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, I'd like that explored. I mean, I could be convinced that it's not a good idea to do both at the same time, but I'd at least. Yes, I'm just kind of I got the RFP rules kind of down. We use that a lot, but I have to check with purchasing to see what is allowed. We can get that information to you. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Yeah. Well, just a couple comments. So just one comment that I do know that once the landscape is is complete and full, something we could do go beyond that is that we do have tree fund that that's its purpose is to plant trees. So that might be an option as far as cost goes. I know we can't use it for the plan because that is part of the development agreement. But so that that could be an option. So don't give up. The next thing would be, is there a way because time is of the essence for me, especially for the homeowner to have a little bit of a piece. Could we include a time limit in the RFP? Yes, ma'am. It is a time sensitive issue. So I believe there's minimums. I think if it's not construction and don't quote me, I think it's 17 days, but we would we would do our best to get that through there as quick as possible. Okay. We would do that. So we get it evaluated, get it turned around, because we also know that there are some design, which they will start ahead of time, but some construction of these materials will take some time. And then we also have to find just have to be totally transparent there of when we can install these. The plant cannot be running when we when we install them. So that will be there will be an economic consideration of when they're installed as well. So we could take out an engine tall. You're basically going to lose half your engine hall while you're installing the product. So that'll be something to just to let you know, the day they come in might not be when we could install them. But we would we would definitely convey that to the homeowner of our schedule, and we could probably fit all that in and then we'd convey that to the council as well. Okay, thank you. Yes. Thank you. And sorry, I forgot to mention the landscaping option to you so I support the planting trees there because you know not trees are not only decorative but they, and they also block the sound and of course their interest in air cleaning infrastructure and they're not going to take a lot of trees, you know to to clean the air off from the deck but but but I strongly support that and also add and this is probably probably going to happen anyway, but that we make sure to have, you know, really clear communication you know after this meeting with the homeowner, you know, letting them know exactly what was decided in case they don't have time to watch the video maybe they're here with us. I don't know. Okay. So anyway, thank you. Yes. Okay, so what I'm hearing is move forward on the RFP for the events, bring back some information on additional mitigation above and beyond the landscape plan for the substation and pursue possibly I mean I think that's still sort of up in the air I haven't really heard a strong consensus for that but we don't want to jeopardize our RFP and the pricing model by sending out something that might jeopardize that as far as an RFI. I think you can do that probably behind the scenes a little bit just to try to understand what, because my question would be what are the other options I wouldn't even know where to begin to look at them, based upon that, it probably take a wholesale configuration of the, of the engine hall. Yes, sir. So we have looked at that it's just not. That's right. That's right. Yes, sir. All right, so I think that's the direction I've heard if there's any, if you've heard that differently. If you would go ahead and speak up that'd be great. Okay. Fantastic. Yes, sir. Thank you for your time. Yeah, and also, because the homeowner is here. Yeah, if you could just in the next few days, sort of have a debriefing to see if there were any concerns or questions about, you know, some of the things that were said in the meeting or the solution and just to make sure we keep that open. Yes, sir, we have we have a very good channel communication. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. We'll move on to agenda item 3B, which is received report hold discussion to give staff direction regarding funding options and recommendations to strengthen the housing crisis response system and homelessness initiatives in Denton County, including an option to increase shelter availability. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council, Sarah Keickler, Director of Public Affairs, here to do a presentation today on options to strengthen the housing crisis response system in Denton County, and assist individuals that are experiencing homelessness. So, this presentation was developed after prior direction from City Council, and we received direction through a City Council retreat in August 2018 that one of your priorities was to work on homeless initiatives. In addition, in December of 2018, the shelter planning work group presented its recommendations. After looking at our current environment and one of those recommendations was to expand shelter availability in Denton County. So our presentation today is broken up into three main sections. The first is just a quick recap of what has been done to create and build the housing crisis response system here. The second part will be kind of the meat of the presentation in terms of what are the funding options that we're recommending. And then lastly, we'll offer some City Council discussion and what you may be interested in. So, I'll start with the first section of the presentation. Again, I'm going to try to move through this rather quickly. I know many of you have had been presented with this information before, but just want to take some time for context of what has been done so far and then as well as review some current data that we have. So this slide shows all of the major steps that have been taken over the last four years to build our housing crisis response system. I'm not going to go through all of these, but you can see the progression from the mayor's housing, the homeless tax first, first in 2015 identified that we needed a more structured collaborative approach throughout the county. That led to the formation of the Denton County homeless leadership team and taking a collective impact approach whereby we bring all the partners together to the table to take United strategy to addressing homelessness in our community. The Denton County homeless leadership team immediately went to work on developing a coordinated entry system. And what that system is, is it's a homeless management information system so all of our service providers use that same system to assess individuals and store data about those individuals. It also allows us to come up with housing priority lists so that we're better able to put people into housing and understand their individual and unique needs. So last year in 2018 we also took a number of other initiatives including launching the barriers fund, hiring a housing navigator, joining the challenge to end veteran homelessness, and also starting shelter planning work group. The first key system component is diversion and that's really to help at risk individuals and families remain housed in times of crisis. This is the lowest cost, most effective option. The second key system component is outreach. And this is to connect with individuals that might be living unsheltered to understand their needs, provide them supportive services and get them connected to shelter or to housing immediately depending upon their needs. The third element is emergency shelter, and that's to shelter and support individuals and help them find a path back to housing. And the fourth is ultimately housing to help individuals and families become housed and stay housed. So with that system being built, we now have data to understand our needs and also how we're performing and that's helping to open up more doors and opportunities for funding. Do you want to share that recently the United Way of Denton County received a grant of $123,000 from the Texas Homeless Network to continue to build and expand our coordinated entry system throughout the county that will fund the housing navigator position and also allow a new position for an additional coordinated entry intake specialist. We've also applied for grants for supportive services for veteran families and also with DCTA to submit a grant application for outdoor storage lockers. We're waiting on the results of those grant applications, but we hope to continue to apply for grants such as this and leverage any dollars that are out there. And so with our coordinated entry system, we do have a housing priority list and data, and we're able to actively track homeless households in Denton County month to month. So this is our latest data set here. You'll see we have 528 individuals on the housing priority list in Denton County, so this is countywide numbers. That gets further broken down into three categories. So we have 94 individuals currently that qualify for diversion, meaning they're at risk of becoming homeless and we want to help them remain housed. The second category is eligible, 296 individuals eligible for rapid rehousing. This means they need short or medium-term assistance to become housed again. The third and final category is we have 138 individuals eligible for permanent supportive housing. These individuals will probably need long-term assistance and supportive services in order to remain housed on their own. And so all this information, we do have active on a data dashboard that's available to the public through the United Way of Denton County's website. I just didn't understand the 94, if you wouldn't mind running that again, because this is a breakdown of the 528, right, that are actively homeless. Can you tell me again what the 94 are? The 94 are eligible for diversion. That means they're at risk of becoming homeless. They're not currently experiencing homelessness. But they're in the actively homeless. I don't know. Do you see why I'm confused? It's just a small point. I want to get to the meat of this, but I just want to follow you. Mayor and Council, Danny Shaw, Community Development. The 94 actually are people who are literal homeless. The only numbers we're counting currently in the coordinated entry system are people who are experiencing literal or chronic homelessness. These 94 are just scoring lower. They're at a lower risk, which means they don't have some other condition or issue that's putting them at a need for a higher housing intervention. So could you give an example of one of the things that would keep them from scoring lower? Like, say, why would they end up as a 94 instead of the rapid rehousing? So we have a scoring system that assesses their vulnerability, their risk of dying on the street, and it factors in things like how long they've been homeless, whether or not they have a disability or some other mental health issue, how often they frequently access health care or other issues like jail. So those things all get put together into a score. So anyone who scores between 0 to 3 typically falls in diversion, which means they haven't experienced some of those higher issues or barriers. And then those people who are kind of in the 4 to 8 category are considered rapid rehousing. They may have one or more of those issues, but it's not considered significant enough to prevent them from being able to live independently at some point. And those people who are in the chronic numbers are scoring usually nine or higher. And those for folks who have multi co-occurring disorders that make it really difficult for them to be able to live independently. And so when we're talking about having a housing list, so the 296 would be at the top of that list? Is that how it works? It does depend on the list. So the prioritization would be the next highest scoring person on the list and a couple of other factors if they are chronic and how long they've been on the list as a prioritization as well. Okay. So it wouldn't be like, so all 296 have to be housed before someone in, say, the 94 category could find housing. So that's not what we're talking about here. Yeah. In the conversation in the case management case conferencing meeting, they're actually looking at the list differently. So when a permanent supportive housing bed comes available, that list is looked at. So that's that 138 number. When the 296, when that funding comes available or unit comes available for rapid rehousing, the next person on that list is contacted first. Thank you. So I know there's a lot of people interested in that. And right now we're just kind of seeing numbers. And so to know how how we're placing people is pretty important. Right. And they are prioritized based on their score and the length of time they've been on the list. Thank you. So I want to go into the next slide. As Danny just mentioned, what the result of the housing priority list is that we have collaborative case conferencing meetings. These are going on bi-weekly where there's about 15 to 20 case managers from various service providers in a room. They're going name by name through a list and trying to identify what housing we have available or what funding we have available and then trying to match individuals to get them housed. Through that work, we've been able to house 73 households over a period of nine months. And that information is also available on the data dashboard. And then we're continuing to build out that data dashboard so that all of our system performance measures will be included there. And these are the system performance measures that have been adopted by the Denton County Homeless Leadership Team. I just want to take a moment speaking of caseworkers just to send a shout out to our caseworkers without whom nothing that we do, by we I mean everything going on publicly privately in the city of Denton could happen. So just wanted to recognize and to let those really angels, earth angels know that they are truly appreciated and we need more because they cannot do it all and it is hard full-time work. Thank you. We'll pass it along to them. The next slide and the last piece of data that I wanted to present to you is in terms of our Barriers Fund. So this was a fund created in May 2018. It's administered by the United Way of Denton County and its purpose is to have more flexibility in order to help individuals that are either at risk of becoming homeless or are facing barriers to housing just due to past evictions, poor credit, criminal convictions or so forth. How do we break down those barriers and help them to get housed successfully? So since May of 2018, we've assisted 31 households with over $12,000 of funds used. And that's used in a number of different categories as you can see in the chart here at the bottom right. Maybe for things such as assisting with rent and utility payments, providing transportation, helping to cover one-time unexpected costs such as medical costs, or just providing assistance with securing critical documents. So right now, the Barriers Fund has a remaining balance of $8,000. However, only $2,000 is available for use right now. That other $6,000 is committed with landlords that we've already made arrangements in in terms of getting individuals housed to help them get past those barriers of having additional deposits necessary. Councilmember Briggs and then Councilmember Romer. I just wanted to make a comment about the Barriers Fund and how important it is. And it feels like every single time I'm recommending something, I'm referring someone to an organization to access these Barriers Funds, the Barriers Fund. My request, or because I feel like it's, I know there are several organizations, but for me, I keep, you know, giving hope is my go-to, you know, like you need to go there and access. I know that they've been able to access some of those funds, but it's almost daily. When we talk about the homeless situation or unhoused individuals, we immediately go to those we can see, right, to those who are on the street, and that's who kind of are the conversation. But for me, it's the ones we can't see who actually fit into this category who are right there who need this help really, really bad. And I would like to see this become more accessible or more advertised somehow. And if you want to donate, this is the thing to donate to if you want to help. Anyway, I just wanted to comment, like I have think I've recommended this at least three times a week in the past few months. So what, I don't know what is happening in our community, but something severely has happened where people are needing this more frequently than they used to. And so it's, I've seen it, I've seen it help and work, but I would like to see it more accessible. Okay, thank you. Well, we'll take that feedback and work to see how we can promote and get more donations into the fund. But yes, it has been very successful so far just in terms of having that flexibility, more sometimes our hands are tied to more regulations with federal or state grants that come with it. On the $6,000 committed, because that's there's sort of two tracks one is for the barriers fund is, you know, if people come in, hey, I've got a car repair I got to get it done or I'm gonna lose my job, medical bill or I just can't make the rent. That's one sort of side of it. But this side here. I don't think many people know about and I certainly want to ask a couple questions on, because that's a lot of money to commit so my question is what, what kind of commitment is it so let's say you got a landlord. And they're willing to provide whatever one or two units. And we don't have anybody identified yet, or maybe we do. At what point does that money, because it sounds like it's a contingency commitment. In other words, we've placed somebody, we need to hold out x amount of dollars in case there's some damage or an issue that needs to be reimbursed is that that's correct and that's a very good way to put it in terms of if we're successful in case management and wrapping supportive services around that individual. We should never have to use those funds for a damage repair or otherwise that may be done to the unit, but it is money that we do need to set aside, because we've made that commitment to the landlord in case something does happen to their unit. So, is that a template commitment that is made at the same level to every landlord or are they individually negotiated. I'm going to ask Courtney cross with the United Way of Denton county to answer that she's much more involved. Good afternoon, Courtney cross. So it is we do have a kind of a broad template that we can present to a landlord or a property manager. But from other funds that we've observed throughout the country. One model that we are, we are taking is such that the committed amounts may be different from household to household, depending on just the each each scenario is different. So it could be that a certain amount of damages may be covered or a lost ran or that sort of thing, but each each commitment is its own separate contract it's a contractual agreement it is a contingency it's a it's a guarantee basically to say that, at the initial term of the lease, the, the tenant will be supported through supportive services whatever kind of financial subsidy they might be receiving. And that they have the, you know this contingency here if something were to happen but like Sarah mentioned, most of the models we've observed have very little actual payout to landlords or property managers because of the contractual commitment for all parties involved. So this $6000 represents how many units that apply to that commitment. On. So, on average we've estimated about 5000 up to $5,000 per unit. But it's. So the 6000 here is not actually currently committed. We haven't we haven't had to tap into it yet. But it is reserved in the fund for risk mitigation if and when that time comes which is getting very close. Okay. And so I think in, as we move forward. I think we in part of the presentation with there may be a presentation about bifurcating or having two different types of funds one for the barriers fund as we're looking at here with prep providing transportation, rent utility payments so forth and so on. And then that it's a very different need than to have sort of a contingency guarantee on damage mitigation for housing placement one is prevention. The other is placement. Sure. So, because when you start talking $5,000 per person. Your fund gets encumbered. And I think, and I think you'll see throughout the presentation that's why we tried to parse it out separately. Okay, in terms of, you know, kind of upfront diversion or preventionary costs versus that supportive housing piece and saying we're going to open the door for someone that might have a barrier with this other, the two streams are kept separate. Okay. Fantastic. Courtney is for you. So, a couple questions, you know, one, I asked you before in the past, but just to kind of explain for the public and to kind of remind me of the answer why and it's a question that I got. When the barriers front fund was the question I had and also the people were asking me when the barriers fund was first announced. Can you explain you know why the money goes to the landlords, instead of to the tenant. Sure. So, did you. So, as we mentioned, the client assistance portion of the fund is, is such that, you know, a case manager or a nonprofit employee could apply on behalf of a household who might need some tires so they can, you know, drive their cartoon from work so they can keep their apartment, whatever that may be. The risk mitigation route is really too intended to be a kind of acknowledgement that the, the real estate community that we're working with to try to get these people house that each of them has their own, you know, business model. And, and each landlord and property manager is going to have to assess risk when they have someone, and if they see a criminal history or a rental history that might be a perceived risks for their business model. You know, whereas somebody might have a family member or a friend who could guarantee their lease, maybe through a better credit score or a better rental history. These, these households that we are working with don't don't have those support systems or resources to be able to do that and so this approach is such that it really is a guarantee for that. That landlord, again, it's very few far between that the funds are actually, you know, paid directly to the landlord it's a it's a commitment that at the end of the lease, the client has or the tenant has built up their own rental history a good positive rental history, and then the funds can be recommitted to another household. So it's kind of would you say almost, almost like an insurance. And then my second question is when I don't think I've asked you before but maybe I have been that is, you know, what has the barrier fund been user is there kind of room to be able to use it to help with people who either have a voucher that's not funded or. Yeah, or, you know, are on the waiting list. So, I can say that there have been applications to support like a security deposit for someone with a voucher, or little application fees or things that come up that, you know, when you have someone who's experiencing literal homelessness that has no income. They don't have $500 to put down for a security deposit they don't have $35 put down for an application fee so the fun has been used to help support those households. Okay, excellent. And so if, and again, I know I said to you, but this is a follow up question to that. So if somebody comes to me and says I have it and this is a real life center. I've been told that that I am next on the list for a voucher but money hasn't come in yet and, you know, homeless now. What, how do I direct that where do I direct that person because you'll remember, you know, kind of throw myself out here as an example the one time where I came to you with somebody and said, we're here to talk about the barriers fun. And then you explained well that's not quite how it works and yeah and educated me yeah so what so in a case like this, you know, how do I, or how does this person get help for themselves where they turn to knowing that that money is, is there. Yeah, so the, the fun really is intended as a last resort, it is a fund of last resort. When the the framework is such that case managers or you know other nonprofit support staff are applying for the barriers fund on behalf of these households. Because also within the framework is is just the approach that these households are ideally supported by whether you know either a financial subsidy of some sort, whether it's a short term or a long term rental subsidy, or they're getting that supportive case management to be able to to help support them in their housing stability so whether it's they're getting house or staying house. Whenever an application comes through there's a committee that thoroughly reviews it to to assess you know, is this really a last resort has this case manager in this household really exhausted all other sources of funding. And how is it really promoting their housing stability and can we like, is there a plan in place that this household is going to stay housed. You know once this this support has been provided. So to more directly answer your question I would say that really going to the front doors that we've established through coordinated entry in our community is still the correct course of action. And each agency is trained to utilize this fun if and when it's needed. It as you know because it's a fund of last resort it can supplement some existing funding, or it may be the only form of funding that a household is supported through. So, so just to sum up in other words then the the answer is it sounds like is, is not to say, hi. How can I use the very fun but here's the problem. Right. And then through coordinated entry, different, you know resources and pockets of money are used applied to end case with case workers to help solve that problem. Right. Thanks. As we're talking about it and we talked about the landlord I guess insurance as we kind of say do we know of the 73 people actively housed that we saw that number earlier how many of those have been housed with this fund. I don't have that number off the top of my head. We can definitely try and determine that through our HMIS data, but I don't have it with me right now. Okay, so that was just kind of a quick review of the current status of our housing crisis response system. The next part of the presentation will focus on what are options to strengthen the system if we wish to invest more. And so when we were developing the different options we tried to take a balanced approach, meaning we developed an option for each one of those four key system components for consideration by potential funders including Denton City Council. These are options that could be taken in the short term to have an immediate impact. However, we're going to continue to work with the United Way of Denton County and the Denton County homeless leadership team on long term strategic planning and next steps. So summary proposals were attached in your backup, but this is kind of a menu and a quick overview of the options that we'll be discussing. There's one for diversion one for outreach emergency shelter and supportive housing. I'm going to first focus on our priority recommendation which is a result out of the shelter planning work group, which is to extend Mont Senior King Outreach Center from three nights per week and inclement weather to be open seven nights per week. This would be at an annual cost of $370,000 per year, and then a one time cost between $55,000 and $80,000 to bring their facility up to standard to be open seven nights per week and and accommodate those operations. So, I'll jump right into that proposal and let's see a question. And then I'll go over the last three options last, since this is the main proposal that we have in terms of expanding shelter availability and also enhancing the service level. So just by quick way of background again, the shelter planning work group was formed last fall through the Denton County homeless leadership team to evaluate the current shelter environment, and they did make a report and recommendations to Denton City Council in December of 2018. Also want to mention that we did present that to Louisville City Council in February of 2019. One of the key recommendations coming out of the shelter planning work group was identifying how we could expand shelter availability in terms of nights and hours. So if you look at the chart here, this is one of the data sets that we had put together. So want Senior King Outreach Center has 92 beds available, it's only open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and during inclement weather, which means those individuals that are staying at MKOC for part of the week must find another location to stay during the other half of the week. And on average, we're seeing that MKOC has 64 clients staying with them per night. So that means 64 individuals must find another place to stay the remainder of the week. Oh yeah, can you go back a slide. Yeah, so, um, just this morning, I met somebody who's had been staying at the Salvation Army and they told me that they've maxed out on their monthly nights. Can you can you explain exactly how that works with with somebody or somebody or Danny somebody else you know with Salvation Army mass Danny to answer that question. So every organization has its own policies and procedures and Salvation Army does have limits on the number of nights that folks can stay, as well as offering some extended stay programs for people who are working. So they have kind of two options for folks who are staying there. And is it, is it totally individualized I mean what what or, or do you know if there's a criteria they have to enter into a program in order to be in the extended stay option and I'm actually not sure if they're expanded from seven days to 30 but they did have the opportunity to stay there a little bit longer based on some of the conversations we had with the shelter. Okay, well thanks because that's something that you know is, is you know a lot of people don't quite realize because yes they are open Salvation Army is open a lot, but you can't just necessarily stay there every night. Again, there are limitations but they can return after certain yes yeah. Thanks. So, building upon the work that was done the shelter planning work group including all the data we collected and the surveys we administered staff from the city and United Way of Denton County looked at cities across the nation in terms of what they are doing to change the shelter environments to further encourage shelter use by individuals that may be experiencing homelessness, and also improve those housing outcomes so we did look at Seattle Washington in Austin, Texas. There is a shift in the model. These are these cities are shifting from basically what you think about traditional basic shelter, where the focus is to keep someone warm cool or dry for the night. Moving to more of an enhanced shelter model so the goal is to still keep someone cool dry warm for the night, but also provide a stable environment and the elements necessary to support transition and house individuals. So on the slide here I have listed what we found to be some of the common elements of these enhanced shelter models to really focus on encouraging shelter use and improving how housing outcomes. It includes individual case management housing focus plans writer return meeting individuals can return to the shelter and have their bed each night they don't have to go through a bed assignment process each night they come into the shelter. It also allows for storage of their personal belongings. This is a factor we see quite often that encourages shelter use by individuals. The provision of meals and 24 hour access or a combo of overnight shelter and day center, and then as well as hygiene, including showers bathrooms and laundry. So as we were developing our division the presentation for today. What we want to do in the short term is to begin to incorporate some of those elements of the enhanced model into our shelter environment knowing that we might not be able to achieve all immediately but how do we build up our shelters and improve them as much as we can now. And then our long term vision is to continue to work with the Denton County homeless leadership team and all of our partners to develop what is a long term facilities plan with the goal, so that we can reach more of that enhanced shelter model of co locating a shelter and a day center, or opening a 24 seven facility that will just require more work to be done, and it was the long term goal of ours to work on. So today we are presenting that short term option to enhance nights of the week that MKC is open to seven nights, as well as start to incorporate some of those elements of the enhanced shelter model, where we feel like we could encourage more shelter use and improve our housing outcomes. Yes, go ahead. So, most of the expense is in the case management, part of that is that is that correct. Yes, I'll go into the budget. Next, in terms of the proposal, you seem to be pausing. I should mention the proposal that I'm going to go over for MKC was presented to the shelter planning work group a couple weeks ago and they did vote and approve this proposal. So some background first on one senior King outreach center, it was first established as a church ministry in 2009. It operated out of various buildings until 2015 when it received its nonprofit status, and it entered into a lease agreement with the city for its current facility. They did initially invest 95,000 to bring the current building up to code and have a max capacity of 46 beds. Approximately a year or so later, they raised privately raised and spent $350,000 to expand and approve that facility to 92 beds, add restrooms and showers for their clients and install a catering kitchen so that they could provide meals, dinner and breakfast as well. Over course of a year, MKC has provided over 11,000 nights of safety rest and meals and showers to 544 different clients with nearly 7000 volunteer hours served. In addition, they've begun to expand their model already starting programs with transportation, having some case management available. They do share a case manager with our daily bread right now, which leads to a lot of great synergies and collaboration as well as entering clients into HMIS and other areas to assist clients. The MKC board is seeking this proposal to change their model and expand to seven nights per week, and they did vote and approve of this. You had a question for this. Did you still have a comment? I'll come back. Okay, Councilmember Ritz. So on the HMIS entry, so that's that's kind of what we saw earlier in the earlier so they're using the same scoring system. Correct. And so when they have someone come in a client and they are entered in that system that is reflected in the pie chart in the numbers that we saw earlier. That is that is correct. Okay, thank you. Okay, so in order to go to this new model, it will require a fundamental shift of MKC. They've primarily been a volunteer organization that has sheltered or has focused on sheltering individuals part time and from inclement weather. They're now going to be shifting to full time operations and providing those supportive services in order to achieve housing outcomes from the chart on the right here. These are the enhanced shelter elements that I just discussed. Okay, so we're going to move on to the next slide. So, in order to move on to the next slide, we're going to move on to the next slide. So, as you can see, the number of beds that are highlighted in yellow would be achieved through this new model with MKC, including individual case management, housing focus plans, right of return. There would be some number of designated beds for right of return. MKC would still designate a number of beds for available for inclement weather needs as well. So, these are currently available at MKC. So, the proposed overall in terms of our system, this would help us to leverage our current shelter environment. So, we could have an immediate short term impact. It would provide that stable environment that I just went over and improve housing outcomes. And then we're also trying to encourage shelter use more by individuals. So, the 24 hour access is not included or is included because it's not, I'm just, it's listed, but it's not highlighted. Yeah, so it is not included in this current proposal for MKOC. We do want to incorporate some of these elements that may be a goal down the road or something that we can reassess, but in terms of not in this proposal. So, it would be to see, I'm sorry, man. So, just the, it would be the night so it's still have the same daily operation it would just be every day, correct, it would be from 630 p.m. to 8 a.m. Each day, night. Okay, thank you. Yeah, and I will add to that. So, as you know, I attended the last shelter meeting as to and I want to say shout out to Kevin sample who is hiding behind there who's also who serves on that committee. And you can, you know, correct me if I'm misrepresenting or if you're reflected in the minutes, but at that meeting, the representative from our daily bread expressed interest in our daily bread, you know, serving that purpose in the future. So, that's something that could be, you know, coming to us in the future. I can't wait till that comes to us. Again, I'll leave that for you to correct or add to that. Yes, that is going back to just a couple slides ago that is a long term goal of ours is to continue to work on strategic planning and facilities and what may we need for a day center or co locating those services. Yeah, and that would be, I mean, I, I hardly, hardly approve of this proposal today, which will make such a difference that seven nights a week I meet people every day who they've got their Monday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Wednesday night. But the rest of the nights, especially if they, you know, maxed out at Salvation Army, or, you know, aren't welcome there for whatever reason, they'll be sleeping in the police station or the train station. So and I want to say to that, that other need, and thank you for listing that as a need that's, that's not highlighted because that does fit into the continuum of care. Obviously, when that comes to us, it'll cost money. But you know, for those business owners who don't want, you know, people experiencing homelessness hanging out on a bench in front of your, your business. Well, there's your solution right there. Have a place where people can go during the day, and people would much rather, you know, hang out somewhere where they feel really welcome. So anyway, thank you for all your work on this. So the next slide is a comparison of the current service level and model of MKOC versus the proposed model that we're presenting today. Just want to highlight a couple of things here in terms of the cost per bed night. So even in the new proposed model, it'll be about $16 per bed night, which is still below HUD's average of $19 per bed night. And it will require hiring some professional paid staff in order to manage this operation seven days a week, and to also, and to also just achieve those goals that we're looking for them to do so. So it'll be hiring three and a half FTEs that will include a shelter director and two case managers, and then an additional budget for overnight attendance. So the difference between the two budgets, right now MKOC has an annual operating budget of about $168,000. That is all privately fundraised or through grants that they receive. The proposed budget under the new model would be about $538,000, which is a difference of $370,000, which is what they're seeking the subsidy for in order to achieve this new model. MKOC will still be looking to privately fundraise and go after grants to just be able to maintain their current budget as well as it to add on. And I'll go over in the next slide kind of the three main categories of the annual budget request. A couple questions, Councilmember Davis and then Councilmember Briggs. Just real quickly, I apologize if you have this in a later slide, I don't remember seeing it, but can you tell us how that budget was developed and how the staffing needs were developed? Sure, so the budget was developed with Roy Metzler, who's the president of MKOC, and Betty Kay, who is the director. No relation. Huh? I just said no relation. And Betty Kay, who is the shelter director there, as well as city staff and United Way of Denton County staff. We were looking at their current budget and then figuring in what would it take in terms of, you know, just direct expenses from going from three to seven nights per week, which is one category, and then also looking at what professional staff maybe needed to achieve the case management and the housing plan in terms of what are some staffing ratios where we feel we'd be able to start and achieve that. So it was a number of different factors, and I'll see if Courtney and Danny have anything to add or if Roy has anything else that he'd like to add. But we did review it over a few weeks just to make sure that we weren't missing any expenses. Can you tell us, when you're going through that process, were you comparing to existing shelters in other places? Were you looking at, you know, how many staff other places have and what their needs are? And can you just tell us what the data going in was to give us this data back? Yes, we did look at shelters in other cities in terms of their budget. We also have some budget comparisons to current shelters here, so Salvation Army. There's also some best practices that are available in terms of case management ratio from case manager to number of clients that were looked at. And I'm just trying to see if there's any other factors. Does that address your question? Yes. Councilman Briggs. So have any conversations taken place with the county as far as this? Because the data that we've seen and we've talked about is county related, so I'm just curious, has anybody approached them on help with funding for this? And also, I sent this question in previously, but I mean, we have a number here for cost per bed, but do we have the number per bed if someone is in jail, how much that or a hospital room per night, just to average to compare those dollars to? I sent that question at a time. On the second half of your question, I'm sorry, I don't have that number for you right now, but we can look into it and get back to you. Okay. In terms of the county, I've been meeting with Judge Ed staff and him regarding long term plan, and he's definitely amenable to a longer term solution and helping us access some additional CDBG funds on behalf of the county. So we've got quite a bit of work to do ahead of us, but he's been very open to the conversation. Thank you. Okay. So just a little bit more in terms of the annual operating costs, kind of went over in terms of salaries and additional paid professional staff that would need to be hired in terms of the shelter director to additional case manager and then a budget for overnight attendance. Right now, it's all volunteer overnight attendance and that's where a lot of that 7000 hours per year comes from. That's just simply not sustainable. We need to have some staff to be able to help shift staff that overnight shift. And then that second main expense category there is shelter operations so this is really those direct expenses to shift from three nights to seven nights per week, including multiple things security laundry maintenance replay repairs client supplies janitorial insurance utilities cleaning all of those things were looked at. And then the last expense category we had was in terms of meals and client services. So there is an additional budget to be able to provide meals for this additional four days per week. Right now it's done through a partnership with our daily bread, but again it's not sustainable at that nonprofits current level to be able to provide an additional four days per week of meals, so that has been factored in as well. Let me go with mayor pro tem and then we'll go. Thank you. So, a couple of things when that when that data comes back on the cost. Can we can we separate that because I think that needs to be clarified for for our lens for the city lens. We don't house people in our jail for extended period of times my understanding is it's one day, and then they're transferred to the county. So if there's a cost associated with that I want to understand that but really, I think it's important to clear that up that the city is not encumbering some huge cost that shifted to the county, my understanding but I think we need to clear that up so that so that our lens is clear on what it's costing the city taxpayers so that we can make a decision based on that, and then take a more holistic approach. Beyond that, but I think it's important to prioritize those two so I'd like to see that in the numbers to understand that so that we have a base of understanding for that and then to what are we. What conversations have had have been had when it comes to security, right, because now you have volunteers that are extremely vetted that's vested in it and have a passion but, and I, not to say the employees won't have a passion but I believe it to be different, and the extended amount of time together in a smaller place may bring its own struggles as well so I just kind of want to understand what conversations have been had security wise, because I don't see a cost for that. Sure, so security is included in the budget. Right now, and MK LC has a Denton County sheriff's officer that is there from 630pm to 10. Yeah, 1110 30pm each night so they're there as clients are coming in being assigned beds until they're, you know, settle down for the night. And there is an officer there for those four hours at night, and then they do have a security system available as well. Cameras and everything else that is there. But I can, if that doesn't address your question I can ask Roy, if he has anything else to add. Sure, sure. So, yes, I'd like to understand that further because with all the other things you were saying hey we have volunteers in place but with the increased time. These other things have to increase or they're not sustainable right that that's been kind of a recurring theme. So I would think that would be true for security as well that it would have to be adjusted just because more time together more whatever that is I would just anticipate that there's some change that would need to be adjusted just but but I'm not I'm not certain of that. The model does include to have make sure that there is that officer there each night. And I do think having some paid staff that get to know and especially working with the clients and the case managers and start to develop those relationships. It might help more with security, and they're able to maybe understand trigger points or, you know, relationships or tensions that might be taking place in the shelter, or sometimes volunteers are only there for two three months or you know months at a time, and it will provide kind of more of that stability to get to know individuals that may be staying at a shelter on a recurring basis. Thank you. That's member Davis. Mr. House but that's a couple of my questions but on the security piece I realized we're talking about long term, trying to co locate with a day center someplace to be during the day take care of needs during the day. But is there any consideration in what we're talking about here, especially when we talked about another slide to talk about wiring and physical plant upgrades. I know that when the doors close in the morning, all of these folks have to go somewhere and Judge McCary is here from. She's the juvenile judge in Denton County, they go right next door to the juvenile facility where there are kids in school it's not just a detention facility it's also where kids are at liberty and coming and going with their parents and all that kind of thing. So they go right next door and they charge their blow up beds and their phones and all that kind of stuff. Is there been any consideration in this conversation to now we're closing the doors seven mornings a week. Do we have something additional for people to do in that area close by you charging their phones someplace to be anything like that. We can give that some more thought in terms of planning and reach out to the Denton County juvenile center. I know that we mkc has tried to develop that relationship closely to understand if there are concerns if there are incidents going on. How can they help to address that with the individual staying at their shelter. I know that's very important to them to be able to maintain that relationship, but one item that mkc wants to work. It will help them with that is in terms of providing more transportation options, so that they're able to go where they need to, whether that be they're coming to a city facility a library for the day. To access resources for employment to whether they're going to their job training, something that can get them from the shelter environment to where they're going for the day more efficiently and effectively. We do want to work with the CTA to see is there more transportation options available that will help to bring individuals in the morning and then to also bring them in the evening to the shelter. Follow up. And feel free to let me know if this comes to later on the presentation, and I don't want to, you know, digress into long term solutions too much but when we talk about this as a short term solution, and we're looking down the road to more long term solutions, do we have any kind of timeframe for how long we anticipate this facility will be the place that we need to house. Monsignor King. I don't think I can speak to that right now I can say that, as we develop in those conversations we can certainly keep council updated in terms of what an estimated timeframe is and continue to do reports back to council usually comes semi annually with reports on our homelessness initiatives. Do you know from the organization though if they have their eyes. Anywhere else if those conversations have come up with them or if the focus has been just completely on how do we do the best thing here. I think I think the answer that question is the. Mr. Metzler has been very open to actually expanding the mission over the last year at our request and taking a look at it we are getting an increasing number of complaints the Sarah and the police chief and I in terms of the encampments out in the neighborhoods trying trying to do something to open up some more beds to help alleviate that situation. We're really looking at this as maybe a one to three year situation, we can get some CDBG dollars in here potentially have some contributions from the county which we're just started those discussions may put us in a position to get a more permanent site. Nothing's off the table right now, but you're trying to open up another 10 or 11,000 bed nights a year. That is the logical next step long term we'd like to see more of us a solution where perhaps food bank services with wraparound casework day center and shelter could be kind of housed either in the same area or in the same building or at least in the same area. And that's really what we're starting to focus our conversations on we may very well be working on grant proposals. Builder by that kind of facility on the road but we just do this as a critical first step something that we can deploy now, and then continue working on an expanded service facility in the, in the next year or two. Yeah, I want to kind of respond to the Councilmember Davis mentioned about, you know what happens when, when, when, when I've been seeing your king is is no longer open, even with seven days a week and where do people go again to get back to that last shelter committee meeting that I attended, you know, our daily bread could I realize it's not right there, you know, but with transportation. If there's anything that the city could do not part of this proposal. But if we could see I'd like to see a staff report staff we kind of reach out to our daily bread and kind of get a list of, you know what it would take from them, what it would take for them to be open during the day to fill that gap. And to see maybe it turns out there won't be time to get that into this budget cycle or even if there's time maybe there won't be consensus, but it, but at least I know that having set in on that meeting and heard from our daily bread that there's a will for it at least to kind of get that conversation going get the ball rolling. So I would like to see that and secondly, I want to just respond to Councilmember Hudson mentioned about the paid position versus volunteer, adding on to what you said, you know I strongly believe in having, you know, paying people for their labor of course we couldn't do the city can do what it does without our wonderful volunteers you know but when you've got paid people for whom it's their full time job. And then, they're not just doing it part time. And, and then there's there's also that accountability that comes with it which we always like to see in our investment. You know if we make the investment and part of that investment depends on volunteers. You know, it's, it's, well, you can, but it's hard to fire a volunteer and then to get more volunteers but when someone's paid then you've got you've got a contract and you've got expected labor that comes with that contract. So I think it's really important that we make that investment in people, the people who are working so hard, the caseworkers and security as part of this package so I strongly support that. Just a couple of comments. This isn't the city, if this plan moves forward after collaboration consultation with all the parties involved, the city is not going to be running this city will be providing funding, but the city will not be running it they won't you know they may have some input into policy matters as far as the things that we've been talking about but I just want to make that clear. Also, I appreciate the one to two year plan, which is, you know, it's. So I want to caution people that when you're, when you're talking about that kind of infrastructure in that kind of facility you're talking about considerably more money than what we're looking at here today which would require other partnerships with other communities so I just and relocating an organization that spent $400,000 in their current facility and how do we make them whole because our contract with the city even says that after a certain while. But I do know that is the plan I knew everybody's working diligently with that and also want to say I appreciate Councilmember Davis bringing up the juvenile school because in, you know, early on we had some concerns and some things that you know we had to really move through and I think this wouldn't be any different that I certainly hope that we can continue to have very in depth conversations with that organization as we expand services to to give some reassurances on, you know, how we're going to handle certain situations and things such as that, because I just think it's neighborly, and it's good and it's good policy so I mean I know there's an incident that happened there, a couple nights ago with somebody that was at the center. And just want to make sure that we put in the policy we're going to expand it, working with MKLC. How do we just continue and they've worked well in trying to mitigate some of those concerns so I don't anticipate that changing. It just might be a little more extensive because we are doubling the amount of time so it's been a good relationship there were good conversations candid conversations in the beginning process that really led to some really great solutions. I don't expect that to be any different. If we move forward with this particular configuration so. And I want to give an opportunity, they don't have to. But the judges here if she if she's heard something or if she'd like to add her comments you certainly welcome but that's why I said what I did to sort of preface it with the sense of their, their. I don't think the concern is the correct word but there's just, we want to make sure people understand this is near school. They have total responsibility for those school children. The district judges you know are on that board so that we have the city in the past have been committed to working together, and that I don't think that that's going to be any different and I know MKLC has been committed to that in the past I really want to just give that that shout out but also wanted to provide an opportunity if you want to discuss if you don't that's okay, but you're okay. Okay. All right. Yep. Shaking walking up here. My name is Kimberly McCarrie. I know that this is a privilege for you to give me your time. I work in the Charlie Cole building which is adjacent to the MK OC. In my building I hear over 1000 well over 1000 juvenile cases every year. I'm the only juvenile court in the entire county so any child that gets in trouble and juvenile arena in the county will come to my court. Right now I have 49 kids in my juvenile detention center. They are living there in a jumpsuit in a cinder block space with a door that shuts behind them as accused children, so they have not been found guilty of anything yet or true of anything I've got 49. But I also have 24 kids who have been found true of their charge and they live in my building. It's called the Denton County post courage to change facility facility. As part of that program we have individual and family counseling so the families are coming in to see those two dozen kids that live there. A lot of that does take place on the weekend. I also have right now 70 kids in my juvenile justice alternate education program. I'm sure many of you are familiar but if you have a child that lives anywhere in this county and a school district says that they've done something wrong. They too are not found guilty of anything but yet they're expelled and those kids come to us and so we have like I said 70 right now in Denton County we don't have the best public transportation system so a lot of them are walkers. A lot of them are train riders so they get dropped off by their families who love them as much as we love our own. You know at the train station they take the train up here and then they have to walk to JJP and it's not just my kids that are there. Thomas Rivera Elementary is also adjacent to MKOC and so there's just a lot of foot traffic between the MKOC residents in my kids and the Thomas Rivera kids. It's hard for me to come here on the one hand because councilmember Armentor mentioned Earth Angels. Those are the people that volunteer at MKOC. It's amazing how many volunteers I see there. I love my charities but I was saying earlier today I don't know if I would give that amount of time just to be frank they devote so much to that facility when they opened it up to all of us to come tour it. I literally had tears in my eyes not because of my bounty only what I had versus what those people had but the people that work there you talk about an enhanced program. They had that term nailed before this presentation was put in place I can guarantee that. There was a lot of love that went into that place. I cried leaving there for the love that they had for those people and it's the love that you have where you saw these people as your constituents. You pick that as one of your missions even though these are not the people that live in the stately historic homes you know they might live in sleeping bags. They may or may not vote and you didn't care you took them in as your people. And so it's hard for me to say this, but I would respectfully ask that you think of another location for this to occur because of all that intermittent intermingled foot traffic. We know that we need a solution and we have to do it as a community. But when we pick this location I went back and watched all of the sessions like this and the council meetings when this plan first came into existence. It was for very short term. It was for bad weather and an emergency situation. It broke my heart that the people that don't have a bed like I do our solution to them was to go live in the pet shelter, because it was the closed down pet shelter, you know, and now look what Roy and his team is made of it. But that I digress on that it was supposed to be short term, and that's what we in the juvenile facility had kind of prepared for more staffing more walking through the parking lot things like that. But when you say the mission one to two years, and then the mission it can't be open all day. Years and years and years ago this was only supposed to be for bad weather, so I hesitate to think that would be one to two years. I think it's just going to grow as it has from emergency to now maybe open all day so that concerns me the security does very much concern me whenever there's an incident, Mr Metcalfe and I pull up the police reports, and they are some concerning ones. And then the other trend that we're noticing is there's a lot of out of county people making use of this facility. And then by it not being open all the time, it creates for a lot of loitering so they'll kind of hang out there hang out near our property. It's just a recipe for something scary to happen and I would respectfully request that we come together as a community find property elsewhere. So you know you mentioned incidents, what, what incidents have there have there been you know has anyone been harmed what's the has the harm been not to any of our kids, but just like the most recent one that you touched on it was a legend machete wielding situation over the box you know two men fighting over that we see Mr Metcalfe and I see the police and ambulance there. Fairly often, Mr Metcalfe has run into knife wielding people himself. There was one incident between. Nothing got physical between one of our girls and one of the residents but it didn't rise to the, you know, to the level of a criminal incident. And I appreciate your comments and you and I have talked about this extensively so I know that it's a hard conversation for you to have and I'm going to give Mr Meltzer an opportunity to speak as well because, you know, if we're going to be making decisions we need to make sure that we have input. No, I've got a couple a couple of comments for you, or questions. So I know that in the beginning, some of the incidents as you mentioned, were some of those that sort of spurred these concerns early on, outside of what's happened in the shelter, like with this latest incident where I think it was confined to the shelter perimeter, and the police were able to take care of that situation. Over the last six to eight months to a year though since we sort of had this conversation. Have you seen those kind of incidences that spurred this concern, or initially, have you seen those drop, and that interaction, because of just some of the things that that the mon senior King average centers put in place, most definitely I personally have seen it drop and Roy put a plan in place where he's asked his residents to completely avoid our parking lot and I think for the most part they do otherwise he says he's going to kick them out they can't come back so that's definitely helped. But that's an honor system, and then understand the issue of the four hour security, to my understanding it's off duty, and they can't by law run background checks of the people coming in is my understanding so that I think that's an illusion of security with respect. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Judge. Thank you. So, Roy, if you would like to just not even necessarily but if you want to address that that's fine or just talk about the conversations we've had and and and your thoughts and the board's thoughts on, you know, moving forward and just, you know, just to hear from you all directly. Roy Metzner, KOC. I don't know how to respond to the judges comments and they're all true there is a school right next to us and we have tried to make sure that we do not interfere that school whatsoever, and that if there are any sort of incidences come to us, and the perpetrator will not be allowed back at our facility, I would speak for the ambulance ambulances coming to the shelter, fairly often that is nothing because of problems within the shelter usually when you have homeless and you have a lot of homeless you have a lot of illness and people that need medical attention suddenly, and police cars coming and ambulance cars come so that's not necessarily trouble. As far as the conversations with that you've had with staff and other sort of stakeholders and organizations. This proposal to move to think it was seven days a week. Can you briefly share just sort of your board sentiment about that and how that's evolved if it has or just speak to speak to that if you don't know, it's always, we felt like one senior king would want to help as many people as often as he could. So, in keeping with that, it's always been our goal to go seven days a week, at some point, but we also realize on a volunteer basis. It's impossibility, we could not do it. And so we knew that to be significant funding or grants or something step up for us to ever do it. So it's really not been the forefront of our attention, it's been expanding what we do, making sure we do it very well. When it was approached us that there was a possibility that the city was pleased with what we were doing and how well we were doing it, and that we might be the place to expand to seven days a week. We agree, we think we're the logical ones to do it, especially if it leads to a process of us becoming the emergency, the day shelter and then there's more transitional housing, and we begin to get people off the street which is what everyone's goal is right. So if we can fit into that we want to do that. And I would, I would assume that the conversations that we all had in the beginning, when you all remodeled and you open the shelter with the county and, and the school and so forth. Those will continue to occur as far as concerns, how can we if we're going to do this, what is built into the budget to mitigate some of those concerns above and beyond what we have now in place so you're real open to those kind of conversations to help give more. Absolutely, and especially if we go seven days a week, and I've made this very plain to everyone I can. We need to be a stop at the DC ta. Much of the trouble is the foot traffic. And if there's a pickup at our place at eight in the morning, whether we bring it to a our daily bread or a different day facility. That's going to ease, I think some of the worry of the county, certainly of the businesses up and down Woodrow, and even of us, we don't know we don't like sending someone out saying, okay now you got a two mile walk somewhere and 34 degree weather or whatever it is. And then the same thing about coming in with people that, you know, it's just, it's a different topic I know but if us being a stop on the DC ta would solve, I think, most of the problems that are there. Okay, I believe Councilmember armor to had a question and then Councilmember. Yeah, so you stole my suggested yet. No, absolutely. Yeah, having a DC ta stuff and that's something I hear from people who are who use and senior king. A lot. That would be great so if we could have our, you know, kind of staff. If there's consensus for that, you know, talk to you, maybe we can talk about that in our upcoming DC ta item. If that's applicable. But there really is a need for that. I also wanted to mention, you know, and this is something I'm not quite sure you know who to whom this would fall. But it involves the, the, the juvenile facility parking lot, and the sidewalk. And I guess the sidewalk in front of there is this city is city owned. But, but anyway I know that I have walked along there with you know constituents, a constituent of mine who was experiencing homelessness at the time and he showed me how an inclement weather when it's really really rainy and the cars drive by. There's really kind of nowhere to safely walk, except in that parking lot so it's really hard. It's not your fault, you know, but but but I'm thinking about just just practical problem solving solutions you know what can we do I don't know the answer but I know that's a problem. DC ta stop would help but then for people who are walking. Where can you walk, sure, because, yeah, even people who are people who are homeless they don't want to be completely soaked head to head to toe with dirty water. So it's really between a rock and a hard place and there should be some sort of solution to that. Councilmember breaks a few questions. One I just want to comment, I think I look back in the last time we talked about the DC ta stop was February of 2018. And so, I feel like the conversation has gone on since before then as well and so I really hope that it could be solved now. I don't think that's what the new person in place the conversation has been brought back around I'm not sure yet but hopefully, somebody can get on that and we can look to get a stop there for sure. So, the, the judge mentioned background checks. I thought there were certain restrictions on individuals coming in to stay I thought at the shelter and if, if you don't do a background check how do you know that they fall and fit into a certain category. They can't be on the sex offender list. Okay, and be near because of the school. Okay, so we can check that. Okay. And why, why did why are we choosing these certain hours I mean I know that we're not going to expand the hours but from six to eight. Is there a reason why those certain hours. Well, we're chosen, because we're 100% volunteer, and a lot of volunteers come after work. Okay, is one thing. We're open to open and we do open earlier like an inclement weather especially like these storms we've opened at two o'clock and during the 110 degree heat we had last summer we stayed open non stop. Later, we certainly said that we would stay later if that helped the school get all the kids in that have to walk to class. So, going to a paid staff and some support will allow us to do things that we just could not do as a volunteer group. We just didn't have the people. Well that's I'm glad to hear you say that because I was thinking about you know certain hours because like, leaving right at eight kind of seems you know right when kids and parents and schools are, you know, are all kind of starting so, you know, if we can extend that time maybe 30 minutes or an hour after. But we've been very open to that. Yeah, as far as being a day shelter we're just not a good facility for those of you been in there. Right. It's great. It's but it's just not correct for a day situation. Right. Yeah. I think. Oh, last question. So when someone is in your shelter, I heard you say that they do sometimes the medical attention which is but why they're there. Do they also get access to other medicines that they may need that they wouldn't necessarily get on the street. You mean, over the counter medicines. Yes, yes or is there somebody on staff or no we don't, we don't have any medical on staff, we give over the counter as as needed. Okay. If someone has a prescription, and it's a legal prescription and they're out, and they don't have the money to fill it. We will give them the money to help if needed so. Right, but medical we don't keep a medical staff there, which we could. Mayor Pro Tem. Thanks, sir. So, I'm curious, if we go one for one on concerns. What is your thought, what are your thoughts on the foot traffic with the kids so understanding, we mitigate the parking lot, walking across the parking lot, but how do you reconcile, or how do you account for kids walking at the same time, your clients, your residents are walking, and how do you mitigate that protect against that in your mind. I'm not there when the kids are walking I assume that's 330 three o'clock different times. Yeah, I personally don't see a ton of kids walking back and forth in front of our facility, but I'm assuming it does happening if they're heading the train station. I don't know I don't have an answer for that I don't think necessarily someone that's homeless is walking on the same sidewalk as a student that's walking to the train station is there to cause trouble. You know I think if that's your assumption then we're kind of in the wrong game here but there's always going to be people causing trouble, but I don't know that the sidewalk sharing the sidewalk is the issue. Yeah, no no and I don't have a presumption. It's a concern that was raised, and I think it's in this seat. There's not. After a fact, you got to go to fact that your officer does get there really at 530. And so, before checking we are what we have a 16 camera system with two of the cameras on on their lot, and we literally are watching that and someone walks across there a lot to get to us. Second they hit the door if they're new they're told, you don't do that anymore sign this paper, and you that you'll never do it. And if you aren't new you knew it, you're getting one warning and then after that you're suspended from staying with us. So, we watched as much as we possibly can. Okay, got it. Thank you. And then you go ahead. Yeah, so, forecasting with. I have another question that that least minute but I'll forecast and I'll ask my question because they go together. I'm not okay, proceeding until DCT is in place that you know once DCT is in place. I'm okay with that and then my question. Likewise, are you okay mandating that people use DCT a. So, leave our facility on the bus and they can and the bus has got to be there, it could be on demand, whatever it is and we can shape that however we want. So, my ask is, my question is, are you okay mandating that if someone, if one of your clients residents leaves months in your king, they do so through public transportation it's private it's paid for it's, it's, and we get them where they're going, or that sort of thing are you okay or their own car many many people. Yeah, I personally am for that I don't know that I can at this point speak for my mkc organization but I personally for that. Okay, I can't imagine why someone wouldn't take a ride over a two mile walk. Sure, yeah, no, no, I think. And it's just, I'm just, and so to be to be kind of candid I don't. If we're going to invest round numbers $400,000. I think the return on that investment should be something that is tangible something that is able to be communicated to the public a public benefit, if you will, it's no different than if we repaid the street it's so that cars can go more efficiently through those potholes whatever it is we build a facility it's where it's more convenient and, and the fact of the matter is when you talk when I hear here judge talk about the knife thing that really strikes me because when we toured the police facility that houses the stuff for those that are, unfortunately in the county jail and we'll come back to get their stuff in a cardboard box was a machete, waiting, and we have to hold it for them to come pick it up so she says hey, someone had a machete I'm like in the police department waiting to get picked up. And so, these are things that that we should we can mitigate, and I get it that we don't know everything but what we do know, we can then try to make account for those things so that's, that's my look into it I would need DC ta in place. Yeah, let's not lose side of what this discussion is this is a work session that this will be brought up either direction today or during the budget process because it's that's really what it's about. There's no action item tonight on it. I've given the opportunity for you all to speak because it's just, I mean this is something that just needs to be discussed in an open forum so that everybody can understand what what the pros and the challenges but also the benefits are so I don't know if we are at the point of making that kind of decision specifically of what you're describing. But at some point, we will have an opportunity to vote on that. Yes, Councilmember Meltzer. Thank you. If only we could have more influence over DC ta. So, I'm trying to get a handle on sort of the bigger picture I'm not sure if my question is for you right or for staff. Well, if you could, yeah, go ahead and state it because if he if we don't have any more questions for Roy I don't want him to be having to stand up there and take the, yeah, yeah, yeah, you might be able to give insight on this. So my understanding of the goal of spending a big chunk of this budget on case management is because that's the mechanism by which you get people who can transition out of being homeless out. And so I, you know, you've got in this model. So something like 400 people who would still be in sleeping in the woods or in their car or whatever else they do. And I wonder, from your perspective or from staffs based on your research looking at other cities. Do you think that, well, first of all, what kind of success might we have quantitatively getting people, you know who can transition into something more stable. And then do you think that if we do that, that some of those people will come out of the woods and come out of their cars and go through the shelter into case management. That is a question for you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay, well, she's already up there. So, so the reality is having housing focus case management is the goal, making sure that every person who's in our system has someone who's helping them seek housing and I didn't obtain that housing and then stay stably house so that ultimately is the goal. What we learned from Seattle is they're seeing better outcomes because of their enhanced shelter that was there proving it on a day to day basis so we think that's the model to do it. I will put a caveat though that it would it also is conditional on the amount of funding that wraps wraps around them for housing assistance so that will still be a limitation in our system regardless of how many case managers. But do you think that people don't seek shelters now will come. Yeah, because into the shelter to write the work of the shelter work group was really important part of what we did was to survey the folks who are experiencing homelessness to understand what their barriers were why they weren't accessing shelter. We also looked at a lot of research in other communities, and then Seattle kind of framed it in four or three important ways pets partners and possessions those were the barriers that kept people from wanting to go into shelter. And so if we can help overcome those some on senior king already allows people to bring pets in. We're creating a mechanism in this funding that's recommending storage so they can store their possessions and gives them that right of return. So that if they're working they don't have to leave their job to go wait in line to make sure they have a bed. All those things that are kind of creating those barriers will get more people off of the streets and utilizing shelter won't guarantee everyone because for me there's a fourth item which is privacy. So it's still kind of group housing, which is another barrier, but we're overcoming a lot of those challenges with this recommendation. And so some people will choose to go into shelter rather than stay on the street. So if I could kind of paraphrase the big picture. Right, there's the, there's kind of the three things so they have a guaranteed bed, so they don't have to worry about whether or not, and when they can come in and out to that bed. And then they have the extra support that's going around them, and then the seven days a week, so that they don't have to have a place in the woods for the days that they're not in the shelter. And I would just add to your point that is definitely the goal of customer melted to try to provide to try to move more people into the shelters get them connected with our housing navigators job counselors that sort of thing. We're getting we have a lot of questions from folks about why aren't we more aggressively moving people out of the woods and the fact of the matter is we have no place to put them. And we can certainly move them around but they end up just in another part of the community and so we're constantly our teams are constantly monitoring to make sure that we have at least some knowledge of where they are, what services they might need. We've got a team that goes out and tries to connect them with, you know, some services as best they can, but without someplace to say there are available beds here. It's a very it's a it's a circle a treadmill we can't seem to get off of. So at least we're hoping this provides a little bit of a step forward. Okay, so, customer brings you had one more question for Mr. Messer but then we're going to wrap up this presentation. So if you've got you've got a question you'd ask. So, I guess, a while ago in her new business part of the reason I asked for a shelter group or discussion had to do with families and homeless families. But if you could just remind me, because my concern is for family units, not having a place to go. Correct. We have one room that is designated for families or women with children to come into the shelter or anyone under 18 is is in that separate from everyone else. So we're going to try to get a number of agencies to try to place the family as soon as we can. If it becomes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and we still haven't placed them, and then it's Thursday and we're not going to be open, we generally will give housing, hotel vouchers to try to keep the family off the street. That's the solution and we go seven days a week, we won't be a long term solution for families, it'll be more new newly, newly homeless new homeless families that come to us and we help them until some other agency can right but when I, the agencies that friends of the family works with with abuse so if you, if you're you're not in a relationship, an abusive relationship they really can't help you plus they're full. Right. Wheeler house single, single moms grace like rain single moms I'm talking about family units. I've seen I've seen people suggest to women that they leave their husbands, so that they can get help on social media, like this is not something that should be, and I know that, but this is the whole reason I wanted to have this conversation. So I just wanted to make sure that those beds are still going to be available for families, even in this situation if it goes seven days, I didn't understand completely that. The family unit will be able to stay with us. The wife and the kids will be able to stay in the separate unit, and the husband will stay in the main area, not all together, because we might have two or three families in that room at that night. Real quickly, real quickly. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, actually, my question is for Danny but I wanted to see if there was anybody else had any questions more for Mr. That's right. Don't knock the flag over. And maybe you were heading here, anyway, timeline if you can speak to maybe that's more for Mr city manager as far as this kind of coming to counsel, you know when is this going to come to that that that's probably in the presentation so if we could yeah, sorry Danny, if you'll just go ahead and if you'll wrap up the presentation and maybe it'll probably answer that question then we'll have if there's any others but we'll, we'll try to move through this quickly to finish out. So in the one time capital or cost request, and it is arranged from 55,000 to 80,000 for basically three improvements to the facility. The first would be an electrical wiring upgrade that is required. The MKC facility did have some troubles last summer in terms of air conditioning. We want to make that improvement, especially as they go to seven nights per week we need to make sure that stays operational those key systems and wiring. The second is for a portable building, and this is to allow for some office space for the staff as well as some space for case management with clients one on one. I do want to point out I kind of included a picture here in the lower right hand corner. This is one of their office spaces right now being used and it's part of the laundry room. So as you can see, they are utilizing every space of that facility to serve clients right now and we're really in need of just additional space. And then the last item, the third item is for property storage. This would be for locked crates underneath the bunks that would be provided to each client that is staying with MKOC. So if Council decides to fund this request, we would move forward with developing an agreement key to that agreement would be metrics that we would get on a regular basis in terms of reporting to understand how to understand the performance and the housing outcomes. We would look at a number of different factors, including our system performance measures, standards of excellence, and other best practices, just listed a few on the slide here, but we would flush these out further to be included in an agreement so that we can understand how the shelter is helping individuals to decrease their length of stay to increase their income to get housed and move forward. So the last part of this presentation is to go into the other three options that we recommended to strengthen the housing crisis response system. I won't spend a lot of time on these as we've talked about the Barriers Fund before, but this first option is, as we kind of talked about before, the Barriers Fund being divided into two categories. This category is for that diversion or preventionary measures. With $40,000, we believe we could assist up to 50 plus households with diversion. This is the lightest touch intervention and most cost effective. As mentioned, the Barriers Fund is administered by the United Way. A steering committee reviews applications that are submitted by nonprofits on behalf of clients, and then the steering committee decides if they will grant that request or not, and it can be used for a number of different eligible expenditures, including critical documents, employment, healthcare, some of those items we went over earlier. Just as a figure for the current need, we have 94 households that are eligible for diversion on the housing priority list right now. Another second option is in terms of outreach to expand the current street outreach team. So right now we have a cross sector team that goes out every other Friday, and that's composed of representatives from Giving Hope, Denton Police, and it also includes at times Denton County MHMR, Vision Ministries, and Denton Fire. We go out to meet unsheltered individuals, help to understand their need, get them through coordinated entry, provide supportive services, and help to connect them to resources. We have two goals. We would like to have the street outreach team go out more frequently in the community, as well as have more mental health case background, someone on the team that can be that stable function of providing mental health services, as we've identified that as an additional need. So this option would be to hire a dedicated resource for the street outreach team with a mental health case background, and that will allow us to accomplish both those goals of increasing frequency and having more access to mental health care. And as you can see, we do have a need for that. 117 households on the housing priority list are experiencing chronic homelessness, meaning they are living unsheltered with some condition. And then the last option is in terms of our supportive housing category, and this is back to the Barriers Fund. This is the second category in terms of providing deposits, working with landlords, trying to overcome those barriers to open more doors for individuals experiencing homelessness. As Courtney mentioned earlier, we estimate about $5,000 per household. So it could assist about 10 households, but we would bifurcate that and make sure that that stays separate of the diversion and preventionary category. So I will wrap up the presentation with that and kind of go into next steps and direction from City Council in terms of what questions you have on the options or what you may be interested in. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council Tuesday, May the 21st, 2019. It is 2 46 p.m. We're on work session item 3B. And just as a housekeeping note, we've got five more work session items to be completed by 630 and together with the closed session. So just want to remind everybody of that fact. Yes. So as we've just wrapped up on the screen is the menu of funding options that was just presented. I'm happy to answer any additional questions, take feedback or direction from City Council. Councilmember Davis and then we'll just sort of go, you know what, we're just gonna go around the horn and start with Councilmember Davis. And if there's any comments or questions, we'll just take them in that order. Perfect. Thank you. I'm glad we're at the end of the presentation because I'm ready for direction. I appreciate you bringing us all four of these, even though they're each equally important, even though some of them don't cost as much. I might want to even see a little more on the supportive housing side. The I think we're going to have a lot more folks and we anticipate entering into our system with seven nights a week. And so I think we're going to need more places for them to go. I'm ready to see a full on budget proposal at the funding levels you have. I would like to see more details on some of the things that we discussed earlier on, specifically, the DCA DCT a stop or some kind of shuttle shuttle route. That's a great option for us to look at. Also on the security and training piece. This is an organization that's accustomed to volunteers with, frankly, a minimal level of training. So if we're going to paid staff, I think our agreement with them should include what kind of staffing requirements we're expecting for what we pay into it. And I'd like to see a more detailed. I think you've brought us the data on why they need those staffing, those staffing levels. I'd like to see that in a little bit more detail before we actually approve the funding. I think you've given us data on why this is necessary. The places where it's worked, where each of these four areas have been addressed so far and how we can approve. So I appreciate you bringing us things based on facts and data and the data on how we can do better. And no, I'm good. I spoke those key issues for me. Thanks. Mostly just express appreciation for the methodical approach that's been at least as you know, within my experience, a year long and more than that, I'm sure. The goals to strategies to research and that, you know, with the metrics attached. So, you know, just, I think that's great. I would also suggest that there's still room to find someplace where the people who are, you know, for the time being, still in kind of unhousing housing, wherever they are. You know, they could go to, even if it's, you know, we don't have beds, get a shower, use the bathroom, ideally store stuff, just someplace other than the public library and restaurants and restaurants, you know, so, you know, something to look at as another slice. Gosh, don't eat a Twix before you speak. Yeah, I mean, my understanding is this will be brought forward as supplemental funding requests and so we'll have an opportunity to weigh in when we look at the totality of the budget. I would say, which I'm okay with these coming forward on the barriers fund and I mentioned this I think to you all, the top one which is the 40,000. I really would want to maybe, I could agree to that possibly but I really would want to make that more of a matching grant. We encourage the community that, you know, the city will match if people are willing to give in the community. So we can sort of leverage that amount we might even do it down with it with the other one as well because that's that's a very cost effective way to prevent homelessness. We really do want to, I think if we're trying to encourage people to become more aware of the barriers fund, either one of them, and to have that as an opportunity for their philanthropic giving that that could be an incentive to say hey, if you give to these funds, you know we've got this amount of money but we just don't want to put it out there, we want to encourage participation from the community and so we're willing to enter into that kind of arrangement with you so I would just bat that around. Councilmember armature. I support all of these options. And I really look forward to seeing him implemented. I struggle with patients, but I know that nobody's shown more patient than the people who are, you know, living out on the street, and thank you so much everybody for your work on it. I would like, and this is not contingent on my support of this at all but just the staff report for a kind of a breakdown on how need is assessed was mentioned before but and this is something I'm aware of but don't know exactly how how it's needed out that everybody's being given a ranking and a number you know based on how that, how that adds up. You know, because I always thought of it as kind of like, like, with, you know, pregnancy, you're pregnant or you're not you're not just a little bit pregnant you know same for home homelessness. So, how does that, how does that work I think that would be helpful to know. I also want to throw in there, somebody mentioned to me by the way during the break, made the point that when men senior King lets out in the morning. The, the school next door is already in session and when everybody's going in, in the evening to men senior King that the school is out for the day so I'm it that seemed to make sense to me so I just wanted to mention that since these are the last words on this. I am, I am in support of these still my main one of my main goals is a day use facility. And I'm going to keep advocating for that and pushing for that it's desperately something that that we need, you know, it'll be at a different location of course then on senior King but I am in favor of these and like I said before I see the barriers and working for families and those are some of the people that you don't see. And so it's going directly to those families to help them stay housed or get in a house and in a house, and I asked earlier about the, the people who we've helped and I know that we have some data but I just like to see the, the supportive housing how many of those individuals have have taken that insurance for the housing. So the housing navigator began in January and we haven't had a need to have those agreements with landlords for the insurance fund the risk mitigation fund yet. That's what we're looking at now with the hardest house so so far we haven't entered into agreements for that yet. Okay. And so on on that if when this comes back to us during budget if we can have the housing navigator come and talk about her experience and how I think how she could apply that I think it would be very, very helpful conversation, whichever you prefer. The other part of information on that is that the 73 that you've placed from June to March, or without the need for that barriers fund. Because you just, yep. Were you were you finished with your memory. Okay, yeah, I think city manager had a couple comments. Yeah, separate moving with reopening conversations with DC ta. We're also going to continue seeking partnerships to bring more funding to the table, we know that we understand the needs and community we understand where the council like to go in terms of expanding the services and some of the concerns that you've got questions about how we're approaching the funding I mean this was a council goal and directed for me. Last August, and we're currently working on finalizing the fiscal year 1920 budget I guess now sorry 2020 and this will be one of the first items that I recommend in the supplemental funding so you'll see this again, July August timeframe funding will go into effect in, in October and in the meantime, based on what I'm hearing today we will also start working on the on a term sheet with him KOC to. So we're ready to go. Concurrently with the budget proposal so if that's okay with you mayor and council it's kind of our plan to hit that way. Yep. All right. Any other comments or observations. Thank you. Thank you very much appreciate the very comprehensive conversation thank everybody thank our speakers who are from our audience here to thank you all so much. All right, we're going to move on to agenda item F. We're going to skip up to agenda item F which is receive report hold a discussion, provide staff direction on the 2019 development code and city initiated zoning changes. Thank you ma'am or may or members of council. At this presentation. So, want to thank you for the opportunity to talk a little bit about an update on the DDC update and where we're going with the city wide, sorry city initiated zoning districts. Yes, no, not citywide city initiated zoning districts as point of what we'll be covering today on the on this presentation, really the purpose of where we are and what we're doing with the city initiated zoning districts the process, what the outcomes that we're looking for, and how we're going to implement that. So, as you all know, you all were actually part of this the 2019 development code was adopted in April, 23 to be exact, with an effective date of October 1, so between now and then we have an opportunity to address the zoning map. With the adoption of the development code. We also adopted a transition chart. So that transition chart really informs the map that it is today that we have online that's available for the public to view. But we're also looking at improving what we have today and that is we're also looking at some repeal ordinances. We're looking at possible code amendments, and of course we're looking at city initiated zoning changes as part of this overall process. So, what we have planned, and we have proposed, we've got three identified dates for our city initiated zoning districts, as you see here on the screen. We've got the first one scheduled for May 29, with the planning zoning Commission, which will follow that with a June 11 city council meeting for our first groups of areas, and those areas, we've identified 24. There are approximately 155 parcels, a show associated with these city initiated zoning districts, and they're primarily along 35. And you can see the rest here on June 26 will follow that and then July 10 will be the next one after. And at the end of this presentation, Scott will come up and we'll talk a little bit about some considerations as to how we want to proceed after these, if there are additional areas that we need to look at, or if we need to, excuse me, if we need to make them smaller in areas or smaller in numbers because of the amount that we have to cover. We've kind of grouped them, grouped a lot of them in these dates that you see here. But really, I want to just emphasize a little bit of this area here, the second version or second grouping. It says 529. And the reason why you have a lot in this particular grouping is because, as we look at some areas, we're looking at some subdivisions. And in particular, in this grouping, the Ranch of States is within this grouping, and there are approximately 71 parcels, just to give you an idea of how an area, if we're looking at an area or a neighborhood, it can get pretty high as far as numbers. So that 529, don't let that scare you. It's just because there's a lot of parcels within a subdivision. Okay, so looking at the first grouping, we just wanted to give you all an update or a preview, that is, of what we're looking at. The area that you see here along I-35, the ones that are colored, are the proposed zoning that the city is going to be bringing forward to you all on July, I'm sorry, June 11th. You see that a lot of the proposed zonings are highway corridor, which is HC, which is represented here in red. So the areas that, again, you see here are primarily along I-35. They are primarily occupied or currently developed as either car dealerships or general retail, restaurants, which you typically see along a highway. Again, there are 24 areas that we're taking forward. They are grouped by specific areas, either north of I-35 or south of I-35. What particular zoning they're proposed to be and if they share a common area, and that's how we've kind of planned out these areas for you all to consider. Does anybody have any questions on these areas and how we're bringing these forward to council? No, okay. Yeah, so if you could just tell, just fill in the blanks a little bit for me. Sure. So these are areas that, highway corridor is the new designation, right? Correct. So what are they currently now, generally the, let's say the ones that are in the sort of deep orange? The dark ones here are currently MR, mixed use regional. Okay. They were RCCD, Regional Center Commercial Downtown, which transitioned to mixed use regional. But mixed use regional per the land use or the table of land uses doesn't permit, for example, car dealerships. And it should probably be more be in line with a highway corridor such as an HC. Is highway corridor, if I may? Sure, go ahead. Is highway corridor, if you can refresh my memory, where we might conceivably have the high density Class A office space that we've been totally need for economic development? Yeah, that's actually a different zoning district. I appreciate the question. It's a general office is what we're referring those as, zoning to be. Okay, so that's not this. That's not this. That will be further along I-35, but maybe further north of this area. Thank you. Just to kind of say what this is. So when we did the first zoning, it was to match it as close as what was on the ground. The existing zoning. And so this is city initiated zoning, which kind of moves it closer to the land use map, like the proposed land use map. So that's how we're getting here instead of originally up-zoning or down-zoning. So we zone, and then it's kind of just the next step in the process. Why didn't Ron just say that? Thank you, Keely, for that. Councilman Briggs. The next slide, I think, will kind of cover what Councilman Briggs was referring to. So the reason or the purpose in how we got here is we obviously approved the transition chart. Transition chart took us from the old, I guess, previous zoning district to what is currently I'm referring to as a transition zoning. And we are also looking at existing uses and how they fit in with those proposed zoning districts. Where we can address nonconforming uses. Again, the car dealership is a good example. By creating that transition chart, it made those auto dealerships basically nonconforming. By way of city initiated zoning, we are addressing that through proposing an HC, which will make them conforming. We also want to make sure we protect the neighborhoods, the existing residential neighborhoods. So along I-35, abutting those, we want to make sure that there's no zoning district that would potentially impact those areas. And we can propose certain zoning districts that will live more suitable or compatible with those residential neighborhoods. The location of these, obviously this is along I-35. It should be more suited for highway corridor development. Of course, the long specific areas, they're going to be treated differently. We're going to be looking at all of that as well. Land use element, which Councilman Briggs referred to, it's what we have in our comprehensive plan, the Den Plan 2030. We want to make sure we are consistent with that as well. And last, is this area a draw for the neighborhood, for the community, or for the region? So again, all of those play into the criteria and how we're getting to those areas that we're proposing. So the process is we've already selected those dates. We've got three dates selected. And again, at the end of this presentation, there'll be some more discussion if there is a need for additional public hearing dates. We notify property owners through mail, phone call, letters, everything that we can to make sure that they are aware of the proposed rezoning or zoning changes. We also send out 200 foot notifications, 500 foot courtesy postcards. We post it on the newspaper, Denrec Chronicle, on the website. Again, we want to make sure that we let everybody know that we're working on these city initiated rezonings. There is a staff analysis that will come to you as well. If there's any potential conflicts, we want to hear that from you as well as soon as possible so that we can make sure that we do have quorum when it's time for consideration. There will be a staff presentation as this item is brought forward. The mayor will open and close the public hearing. Obviously, between that, there will be public comments if there are any on these items. And then council will discuss and each item will be considered separately. So each item, each 24 items will be introduced, considered, made a motion, and voted on. So that will be, that is the sequence of how we're proposing that these city initiated rezonings come forward. Does anybody have any questions regarding the process? You mentioned being able to move through these pretty expeditiously and I see the need for that. Do you have available, you showed us the example of 35 corridor. Do you have available yet the list for the other dates or something that we can see in advance of the PNZ hearing? Because that's when we're going to start getting the phone calls is as soon as these folks get their letters in the mail. And I'd like to be able to respond intelligently on each of those. We do. And we can provide that well in advance. I've got a slide here that shows generally with the areas, but it's very high level. But I think your point is that we let you know in advance of those so that when you do have those calls there, you're familiar with them to respond. Correct. And we can do that for the council. Thank you. So with that, I'm going to ask Scott to come up and talk about the potential of additional proposed public hearings. Mayor, council, Scott McDonald, director of development services. Just one other component within this is we've worked with legal. We're fortunate to be able to bring these in groups as Ron has indicated, rather than having to hear each individual parcel. June 11th will be the first of the series. And as we go through those, we'll have a better handle as to how this is going to flow, what this is going to look like. The other consideration that we have is that we may have a need for additional public hearings on the non-traditional public hearing weeks. So as we discuss this with DCRC, the question came out as to whether we would do these each week. And if, in fact, we were to do that, what time we might do that. So we really came into the process with somewhere between 3 and 5,000 parcels that we were looking at that we were going to bring forward. We've reduced that number considerably in reducing that number. Again, what will happen on the 11th and if I go back to that map, we've got 24 areas, which, you know, is 155 parcels. This one should be probably one of the most, the least complicated. So it should be the simplest as we get into town a little bit, as we get to some of those more probably, it's not necessarily a controversial area, but it may be more controversial just by virtue of the complexity of what it is. Just looking to get some feedback on what we might do because we have to notice in advance. So as we discussed with DCRC and we talked through it with staff, rather than on the off weeks where you may have a lighter than normal council meeting, and you may be done at 3, 4, or 5 in the afternoon, you'd have to wait till 6.30 p.m. for a public hearing, is that we were proposing that the public hearing time be at 5 p.m. if, in fact, we were going to do that. But before we moved with that, we certainly wanted to get council's direction if they wanted to keep all public hearings at 6.30, or if there was another time that we may do that. And that is in the event that we feel that we're going to have to do that, we're going to certainly try to keep to the traditional public hearing weeks. We're going to attempt to keep them at 6.30 as a posted time. But ultimately, we need to know weeks in advance of doing this, so we just want to at least have a time nailed down if we could. >> Councilmemorometer has it. >> Yeah, so I don't like the idea, and I understand the rationale behind it, but from a practical point of view, having public hearings at 5 because people tend to get out of work around then. So I prefer a 6.30 time. >> Thank you. >> Any other feedback on that particular direction that staff is seeking? Councilmember Meltzer and then Councilmember Briggs. >> Yeah, so I also feel like -- >> That's all right. Go ahead. >> Go ahead. >> Oh, that's not my name, is it? Go ahead. >> I wasn't going to say anything that fascinating. I agree with the point about when people work, and that idea of this light work session where we get off really early is like science fiction. It's so rare. I don't think that will actually come up. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> So yeah, I feel like starting later than 5, my thing has always been consistency. So I feel like if it's 6.30 and then it's 5 and then it's 6.30 and then it's 5, some people may show up at 6.30 and then miss their item. So I would like to keep it as consistent as possible for me, especially when someone is commuting and if they did want to. I know there's not going to be -- hopefully, you know, there's not going to be a lot of people that are, you know, upset, but just in case there is that one, I want to make sure that they have time to get here to speak. >> Absolutely. Thank you. >> Anybody else on this? Sounds like -- go ahead. >> Yeah. So about the letters, so there will be 155 letters going out? >> Oh, no, there are many. >> No, many more. >> Yeah, so that's what I was going to ask. >> There are 155 parcels. >> Parcels, yeah. So about how many letters? >> Ron, do you recall that number? >> Thousand. >> Yeah, it would be -- yeah, on this individual one, it would be -- we did the 200-foot notices for each of those areas. So if we look back at the area, and then we did 500-foot courtesy notices. >> Okay. >> So it is a lot. >> Yeah, so I would love to -- because of the confusion caused by the previous letters, because of the wording, or maybe because they were so long, it would be great if council could see a kind of draft letter. >> We've already sent the letters. We'll be happy to forward that. We've reformatted -- >> You've sent them already? >> Oh, absolutely. We've reformatted those. We've provided more information than what we have to the past. So we've put just more simpler terms, more clear English, and -- >> Wonderful. >> -- not plan or speak one-on-one. >> And I hope you're seeing -- I hope that's meaningless. I know you still work really hard, but I hope that's meaningless. >> I don't know that we've received any calls, and those letters have gone out. >> Well, so there you go, great. So thank you. >> So as far as the public hearing, it sounds like 630. >> That's what I would take it from that. >> And what was the other -- was that it? >> That's really it. Just if, in fact, we needed to do that, that if we do it on the off weeks, if that's acceptable, and then the time would be the other question, I think, that was left at hand. >> Okay. >> So really just need a council's direction on that. >> All right. >> And if they're supportive of the processes, we're bringing it forward. Questions or concerns on the process as presented? Okay. >> We're excited. Thank you very much. >> Was that the end of the presentation? All right. >> Sure was. >> Fantastic. Thank you. All right. Next agenda item is agenda item 3C. Report, hold discussion, provide staff direction regarding the use of the Denton Civic Center and request for the waiver of associated fees. >> Good afternoon, mayor, council members. My name is Laura Barons. I'm the assistant director for parks and recreation. And today I want to provide you with some information on the use of the Denton Civic Center. The Civic Center is located just next door to us at 321 East McKinney. It is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on weekends for events. Some of the events more commonly held there are public events that are free and fee based, meaning somebody can rent the facility and charge an admission fee to enter. And a lot of those public events are done in conjunction with an event or activity that's also occurring in Quaker Town Park. It's also used for private events. Organizations can rent it for a meeting or any kind of event that they're holding, weddings, showers, family reunions and quinceaneras. The Civic Center is used for meetings and trainings. Those that are done here locally by our city and also organizations such as TxDOT have used it for meetings. And then we also use it for City of Denton programming, such as a walking track that's open to the public Monday through Friday. We also hold a summer camp out of the Civic Center. It's used for teen council and also for indoor athletic programs. The use of the facility does have a schedule of fees that is reviewed and adopted during the budget process every year. We have hourly rates for the meeting rooms, the rotunda, the kitchen and the plaza. And then we have some associated service fees for building attendant, police security. There is a cleaning and a deposit fee. And then you can also choose to use the marquee to market your event for a fee of $20. This process may look a little familiar to you as we reviewed it during our special event presentation a couple of weeks ago. But it's not uncommon for the Parks Department to receive a request to waive fees associated with the rental of the Civic Center. That request goes through a process where a letter of request is submitted during the application process or during the rental agreement process. At that time, the event or the rental has to meet all ordinances and legal requirements. And there are some legal restrictions on the eligibility to receive the waiver. And that's rooted in some legal limitations to gifting to individuals and/or organizations and also some limitations to individuals or organizations profiting off the use of city property. That request is then reviewed by department stakeholders. Staff at the Parks Department prepares an agenda information sheet and ordinance and some associated documentation that includes a detailed list of the expenses for an in-kind request. They also sign a legal agreement with the city for the use as an in-kind supporter. And then it comes to you for city council approval. Here recently we've had a couple of requests that are unplanned or unscheduled. They have been all for inclement weather. So, you know, under extraordinary circumstances, they did not go through a prior approval process, given the time limitations and the notice that we were given. For the request of use. So today you'll have two items on the consent agenda for ratification of approval of those uses. And so that approval is being sought retroactively. And those are related to the community market and bridging hope ministries. Just an outline of the use by bridging hope ministry. They've used the facility in January, February, and in March. We have the building attendant cost, the hours that they worked, the actual cost of that building attendant, the rental fee that's per hour and the use of three hours, and then the cleaning service that's associated after every use of the civic center. And then you've got the total amounts of that breakdown of cost that's listed in the ratification today. And what exactly is this the group that on Sundays feeds the homeless? So this is a nonprofit that's feeding the homeless. And what happens is if it's raining, they'll need to bring it inside. Is that my understanding? They are a ministry of a church, of a local church. And so they operate under that religious organization's nonprofit status. Okay. Yeah. Did I see anybody? Well, yeah, yeah, it's a it's a not that they they don't charge for the mills. There's no income coming into them. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to understand is, you know, yeah, so there's the different uses or the different fee waivers or implement weather and what may be some distinctions in those organizations. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. If they had come to us as a scheduled event, we would actually require two building attendants for the same amount of time three and a half hours at the fee established by the fee schedule, which is $14 an hour. We would require one security officer for three hours. The fee established at that is $35 an hour. Then they have the rental fee for three hours. The cleaning service and the cost would be slightly higher, primarily due to the included security cost and also the additional building attendant. Can I ask for security? Do we use this DPD? Yes. Okay. Thanks. Yes. No, I'm just gonna the service fee. So, like, I've been to one and afterwards I stayed in. We emptied the garbage and took it all out. And then the people there clean everything. They remove the tables. We set it up. We clean up. And the only really thing left to do is maybe mop. So that is $400. They come in and they mop. They clean all of the bathrooms as well. And then they they take the if the trash isn't removed from the building itself, they take it out for us as well. Well, it's you have to take it out. Right now. Part of the remove to the dumpsters. Yeah. The community market has recently used it under inclement weather as well. We've had for building attendance to on site for the entire event and they happen to work split shifts. The time for the entire community market is 10 hours to have a couple of hours for setup. The market itself runs four hours and then a couple of hours for take down. We do have one security officer on site just for the duration of the market itself. And those are the actual fees for the last two. One of them was just this is a little this is updated from your presentation to include the market that was just held this past Sunday. We have the $100 rental fee and the $25 Plaza fee. Those are hourly rates for 10 hours of use. We have the $400 cleaning fee, and then the total actual cost. If the event came to us as a planned event. Again, we would have to building attendance there at all times. It could again be split up amongst several building attendance to have at least two personnel on staff are on site for that 10 hour duration at a cost of $280. We have the security, it's slightly lower at our rate it's $35 an hour. Actual cost for an officer is higher than that. The rental rate and the Plaza rate remain the same at 10 hours with the cleaning service also the same. So it comes out to just a little bit less if it were a planned event. So moving forward there are a couple of factors that, you know, to consider when deciding to use the Civic Center moving forward as as a backup location during inclement weather or in any other unforeseen circumstances. The first one is eligibility. We talked a little bit about this also during our special event presentation and told you that we we would be coming back to you in the near future with the sponsorship policy that would establish who is eligible to receive a waiver of fees or a co sponsorship. Given the limitations, the legal limitations, that recommendation would be that the eligibility or those eligible would be local nonprofits. The conditions under which we would allow the use of facility and a waiver of the fees outside of the normal process. And again, the instances that we've had used it have been for specifically for inclement weather. The only no go ahead. The only current policy that we have on inclement weather has to do with warming stations and cooling stations and the temperature parameters for that are below 32 degrees or exceeding 100 degrees. In all of our cases in the most recent uses, it's been outside of that weather condition. So, you know, coming up with an alternate weather condition or following the existing one consistent with the warming and cooling stations would be another option. Councilmembers. I'm just going to just throw this out there for my colleagues, also for you at the last shelter committee meeting. There was discussion, no decision made, but there was discussion about maybe raising the the bottom temperature for kind of what's considered, you know, unlivable. In inclement weather and lowering, you know, from 100 because probably for obvious reasons, but but it's it's possible that of to change that, you know, not only is it applies here, which I would support, by the way, moving it to, you know, maybe 35 and 3595 something like that. But also across the across the board as well. When we when we look at, you know, when it's inclement weather and when when we open our income inclement weather stations. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, I just want to make sure I understood your comment. You said the recent occasions were outside of those ranges. Do you mean, do you mean they fit it? You mean they didn't fit it? They did not fit it. Okay. So, and so, but the reason was something like rain. Yes, for a community markets been rain so it's not temperature related and for bridging how it was above the 32 degrees. Okay, cool. Yes. Yes. Thanks. Okay. And also rain. I think on one occasion it was raining. Under requirements policy consideration would be to still require compliance with all applicable laws, permits and regulations, including health permits to consumer health, any public safety requirements or public work requirements, and also requirement to hold insurance. The availability, it would be a factor availability of the Civic Center itself. And so again we have renters and scheduled programs there throughout the year. I believe that we provided Council with a list about a month or so ago of the current availability and scheduling of the Civic Center. For the most part, all of the Saturdays are rented out there is some available availabilities on Sundays, through the next several months. And so, in looking at the availability when we get a request that is outside of the regular process, prioritization of use, going to the paying or scheduled renters, and the nature of the use would need to be considered and whether or not that rental conflicts with the requested use. Yes. Notice of you. Real quick question when we're talking about waiver of fees. Are you like that chart you showed us the schedule fees. What are we talking about you saying that that that all would be reduced to zero. Not not that but the spreadsheet of building. The specific cost for. Yeah. Which fees are we talking about waving on something like this. We come out all of them in these cases all of them are waived. Yes, sir. Okay. Sometimes we just, I have, we have one special event that asks for just 50% to be waived others only ask for the actual rental of the facility to be waived, but they pay for the staffing. So, it just depends on the request. Okay, thank you. Understanding the you know circumstances of inclement weather. We would like to those still establish a minimum notice of intent. We do have the ability to at least forecast the weather and if there's some thought that this is going to be a location that we'd want to hold the event in over the weekend or any other day just happens to be the weekend on. On these particular last situations, but we would need that that notice to determine eligibility and that the conditions or requirements are met. The assessment of availability of the civic center and any potential conflicts with anything that's already scheduled. And then the scheduling of staff security and cleanup that has posed some logistical challenges for us, given some short notice, and then we'd also like that time to come back and report back to the entire council of that request and approval for that event to be held under these types of circumstances. Under funding we'd like to explore and identify funding options. We talked again during our special event presentation about a general fund allocation that would be a yearly allocation for in kind and this could fall under those in kind services request. We also talked about the establishment of a grant fund or grant type program. Hot funds may also be used in some situations where if we had an event like the community market who's eligible for hot funds, the rental or use of the facility may qualify as an expense that hot funds could be used towards. And then finally, if it is determined that the civic center would be used as a substitute or backup location for specific events that might be identified by the council, then we would ask to enter into a formal agreement or contract with those agencies. And they can serve as kind of a pre approval or pre authorization for use for that organization and then we could outline these factors and considerations as terms for the use under a contract or agreement. Some of the impacts that we're experiencing or could experience if we moved forward with using the civic center as kind of that go to location for inclement weather or unforeseen circumstances would definitely be sitting setting a precedent, we would expect to see an increased number of requests. Once that decision is made. We have funding and cost recovery similar to what we've already discussed and mentioned. This is an unfunded expense, and it is in addition to the in kind approvals that we reviewed a couple of weeks ago, so we have submitted a supplemental request at $250,000 for those in kind services. This would be in addition to that amount. And it does give us a little bit less control over our cost recovery that we try to achieve with the rental and use of the civic center. Council member. Question. Yeah, I'm just trying to get my mind around what the likely tab really would would be. I imagine these kinds of situations are generally on weekends. I don't think there's a lot during the week. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong about that. Most of the special events are on weekends. Yes, sir. You know, and it's not going to be every weekend that, you know, that we get hit with in climate weather. I don't know. I mean, I'm I throw out a guess of a quarter of the time. Maybe it's less than that, but I mean, it's a reasonable number. So maybe you're talking about 13 weekends where you have like a $2,100 bill that was the community market was around that. So that's like, you know, rough math, $27,000. So is the supplemental request the 250 is sort of. That's everything else. That's not this right. Correct. Yeah, that's all the 250,000 is actually what we have already approved in the current fiscal year for in kind services. Which includes the waiver of fees for rental, staffing, personnel, security, actual payment of services for an organization or an event. It just doesn't include the impromptu in climate weather. This does not this. So anything any funding decided or given direction on for this particular use would be above and beyond what has already been given in the in kind. Do you think I'm in the ballpark then that it's something south of $30,000 would likely cover. These, you know, the expectable situations like this. We could definitely estimate some weekends for inclement weather. But again, understanding that it would be under those parameters. And if we set any additional parameters, inclement weather in terms of degrees is one factor. If we're going to include other types of inclement weather, such as rain. Rain is a likely candidate. It could increase. We could be talking about just a handful under the degrees. But that could that could increase significantly if we're talking about rain. Councilmember Davis, I want to call you Councilmember Jesse. So I have a quick question and then a comment, depending on your answer. So the first thing on your first bullet point there is precedent. To your knowledge, have we retro waved fees like this before? And under what circumstances? Well, and let me start by saying that my knowledge with this particular department is limited, but it has it to my knowledge. No, we have not experienced the type of request and the approvals for for this for this type of use. And my comment to that is, I feel like I'm not as concerned about the dollar amount. I don't think the dollar amount is a huge issue, but I don't I don't feel comfortable with the position that this kind of request puts us in because I don't know what representations have been made by staff to these nonprofits that don't have these dollar amounts in their budgets. And so we are in a position where we, we almost have to approve these waivers otherwise we tell the homelessness help group and the group that puts on our wonderful community market. We'd like thousands of dollars from you payable now. And it also puts us in a position so puts them in an awkward position, it puts us in kind of a hands tied situation. And then it puts liabilities on each group they're not compliant with our policies. So we don't know what their insurance situations are at least with the community market, we have a little bit better idea. But this really takes us completely out of the realm of anything we've done before. I like the idea of a pre approved groups that have their other compliance documents and order and all those kind of things. But what Councilman Meltzer just said a moment ago, these are predictable emergencies. We know it's going to rain, four or five times on a Saturday during an average spring probably the same in the fall so I'd rather see this as a funded budget item, then as an ad hoc, going back and do it and over and over again I think at the beginning of a budget year we decide, these are the groups we want to help because they're deserving of our help and we want to have inclement weather facility for them. But I mean even toward the idea of pulling the consent agenda items because I really just don't like the position. This has put us in as decision makers, but money aside, it's just, we're doing something ex post facto there's a process for everybody else to do this. And, and these couple of groups, as well intentions as they are, have completely circumvented that process and on on whose authority has staff told them what is, and maybe you can answer that too. What is the expectation out of these groups do they understand that when they came into the facility to use it that they were potentially on the hook for thousands of dollars if the council for whatever purpose decided to lay them. I would I would kind of jump in, recategorize that a little bit. Councils very aware of community market, you saw the facility and in fact directed me to in staff to open it up so that is one where I think it's a little bit different. In terms of the the bridging hope group. We've had a couple of requests, or the spring to utilize a facility during some during similar criteria to mkc. And I was just uncomfortable, not moving forward without a much more formal policy. I've been given the lecture by our city attorney about illegal gifts in the Texas Constitution so I wanted to have this conversation in front of council have you adopt a policy make sure that we were moving forward and that we were all playing by the same rules. And I think one of the things that staff is also brought up, you know, is just reiterating it's, it's not necessarily a budget issue to us it's making sure that it's completely transparent with all of you, and that we can build it into the budget so this is not unusual for what we've been dealing with the last several years, very informal policies, if they exist at all. And so this was really our attempt to bring something forward to you and say does this make sense to the council because we don't like doing the retroactive issues either. And we totally agree with you in terms of position that's putting all of us in. So, I've asked staff to, you know, that this in front of the council, if you're in agreement with it, the next step is to come back and, and try to work towards a common definition of what climate weather Council member armature made the statement about the, about the temperatures but we really we're going back through it we don't even have a definition of what that means, other than, is it raining isn't too high, is there, you know, poor weather on the cat so we're going to be working this through with you but it's really just our attempt to provide some formality to this and make sure that you all agree with us. So, my, and I appreciate those comments that the retroactive party, you're right, it's, we need to make sure our policies are predictable. And my concern with this is when we start choosing some groups who are eligible that for this and some who are not. And then we're, we're choosing who is a better group to not and I, with the understanding I may. Well, I really struggle with waiving fees, even though they're nonprofits with with organizations that come in and are in our for profit either for their vendors, or something like that and I mean I'll say the community market just because, you know, they're, they're there, they're making money the markets making money they're charging these vendors feed these vendor fees are being paid. They have to pay their fee whether they're there or not at the, at the current site. So, this is a, this is an important conversation, even though the money is very minimal. The money is very very minimal, but let's face it, we say that a lot. The money's minimal. The money's minimal, we're going to find out in the next budget cycle this one coming up in about a month or so that all those minimal monies, they start adding up. So, I support a policy discussion on this. I'm not convinced yet of a need to waive all fees. I want to have that discussion, because then we're going to start choosing which organization is more important than the other. And we can all have our opinions about that. We all have our organizations that we really appreciate and support. So that will be an interesting discussion but for me, one of the lines is, is it an income generating event for a group. And if it's generating income, I don't know why we should be waiving fees for income to be generated in other situations. I understand about the, the homeless, you know, the giving of the dinners and, and those kind of things but if I had to have a line at least starting out, that's where my line would be. So, go ahead. I was going to say historically, we have not brought forward any request for for profit, request a waiver of fees, we've only brought forward those that are that we can identify and verify as nonprofits. So but what I'm saying is some nonprofit organizations are also generating revenue through other means, either for their constituents within within that organization. So, nonprofit is really tax exempt I mean there's a lot of things that are called nonprofit but it just means that the organization can't show a profit. That doesn't mean you don't, you can't spend all the money that you make, you got to spend it all. That's where I am. I mean I just, I get really nervous. But this will be a good conversation. This will be a good the money is not an issue. I mean, you're right, Councilmember Meltzer, I mean $30,000 I mean, or whatever it is. But then you're going to get more requests. Then you're going to have to start saying no to some people. And then that's going to be a lot of fun. So, those are my thoughts. Yes, Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, I just want to say I support this proposal. And I think, you know, this is one of these situations where situations arise in the moment. We have Council and staff respond to them in the moment. And then after it's happened you step back and look at okay now moving forward. What are we going to do to be better prepared next time and I really see every step along the way. I feel like, you know, good decisions have been made on all parts so I approve of this moving forward. And I think, you know, going back to what city manager mentioned, you know, the key is transparency and that I'm moving forward if decisions are made, you know, so, you know, the mayor might have different standards than I do or someone else. We might each have different standards about what we can consider acceptable. But the important thing is we're having these discussions in public. And for me that's that's the most important thing. So I really I appreciate this moving forward. And I will also say we have this great building in the Civic Center. And yes, it gets used a lot. But it's exciting to see it being used for so many different purposes. And, you know, there was so much work done on the City Hall West Committee. This is no substitute for City Hall West, but it is a nice reminder every time we use it for different purposes, or every time it is used for different purposes that, hey, we do have this this great resource or a really neat shaped building. And it is a public building. And so I love seeing public buildings used for things that are open to the public. For me, as far as what factors are, you know, kind of screening factors for me is the event, whatever it is, open to anybody from the public to attend. And as far as I know in the cases of what been granted so far, you know, the answer is yes. So that for me is my that's my litmus test of what I would approve. Yes, customer. So I would like to add rain or storms to to the policy, because that's usually if there's some event that's held outside that needs to go inside. That would be one of them. And if instead of you can't really in the conversation about feeding the homeless, you can't really move that event because people need to eat. And so that's why the this charity organization started feeding on Sundays is to eliminate that going, you know, 48 hours without any kind of mill that's absent in the community. So it's strictly volunteer donation based food. I mean, so there's no money exchanging anywhere. And if you were to say, well, you owe me two thousand dollars, there's absolutely no way that they could they could pay that. So that's that's just that one situation. So grants would be would be good. I'd be open to to look at having grants or, you know, sponsorships, but making sure that these organizations who have absolutely no income have opportunity to apply for these grants or know that they exist before we say, hey, you need to, you know, just making sure the information is out there. So that would be my my request. So just want to clarify what this agenda item is, is to give us some information on the retroactive consent agenda items. And if they're pulled, that's certainly Council members prerogative. And then the other is just to sort of go over some of the policy questions that we're going to come back and have a discussion about to form a more coherent policy, a more formal policy around this whole issue. Is that is that my understanding? Yes. We certainly wanted to understand what concerns you have. I share member Davis is concerned on the precedent issue as well. Council needs to understand when we have these kind of conversations or we talk about any it will any coverage in the newspaper. Laura will get more requests on this. So I think it's going to be are you comfortable with the parameters that we're discussing here so we can bring you the policy and then with us developing a budget for you to consider down the road. And I guess at that point, the question becomes what happens when we run out of the budget for the year. So we've got we've got a number of things. And I just wanted to be sure that we're bringing you along with us because it's something that needs to be more formalized. Well, I mean, I think you're presenting to the presentation presents us with the policy questions. I don't think we're going to be able to resolve those policy questions in this particular work session. I don't know if it was that that's what the function of this was. But to get us aware to get us starting to things. Yes. Yes. And to provide, you know, either some people have made comments regarding directions such as myself and some could probably send them via email. So when we come back, we have a little bit more comprehensive approach. Is that my understanding? Yes, sir. And we can start building a draft based off these factors for you to consider and then work from there. Yes, Councilmember Davis. Oh, Mayor Pro Tem. Sorry. Yeah. But anyway, I'll go. So a couple of things that jump out at me. I'd like I'd like for when we come back to understand what's being utilized. Right. So if it's if it's just sheltering, then let's I think that if what is it is a plugs? Is it shelter? Is it, you know, just generally protection from the wind rain? I just want to understand what's being utilized because we it may be an opportunity for us to make enhancements to the park. And so this is I'm winging it here. I was just I was just doing this while they watch us talking. So don't hold me to it. But wait a minute. Does that mean you weren't paying attention? No, no, I was multitasking. I haven't sketched out. It's like a Denton version of Claude Ben Warren Park, like a little miniature bridge that goes over the creek out here that also is in covered so people can use it. It's a great thing. I'll email it to you. But the just of it is we could if we could add a shelter, something, you know, extend the existing structure, whatever that is, I don't know what the architectural restrictions are. But if there's something we can do to enhance the park that also adds value to the park when it's utilized, but allows us not to be encumbered by that building by those costs, that sort of thing. Then let's do that. And another thing that I'm going to struggle with is when you're talking about weather. I mean, there's just no way I mean, we shut down everything and nothing happened. You know, it's just like you can. I'm not going to be on board with anything that says we're in the business of predicting the weather. I mean, that just is an absolute deal killer for me. And so it because just we don't know what that is. So whenever we come back, that's going to be if that's part of the prerequisite that we take a bet on what what the weather people say, then I'm going to I can't I can't support that. Let me let me clarify that a little bit, because what we're what we're saying is request coming in, you know, a day to three days in advance when we've got severe weather being forecast. And if we are going to open up facility, if that's council's direction of policy to develop, I just want to have a set of criteria we can point to and say, okay, that box has been checked. And this is this is backed by council policy, you know, if it's if it's somewhere somebody's time, we want to type in advance and we don't know that that weather is coming our way. That's fine, but we're getting a lot of last minute requests, and I am concerned about the insurance, you know, and making sure that we've got that we've got everything we need here. And if this council would be okay with staff, approving this, you know, based upon certain conditions approving that use. That's probably the most important part of this. I know you're right, there's sometimes a weather changes but if they have to make a call, they need a policy to rely on that the council's on board with. Right. And to my point, my, my caveat to that is, if that call is the weatherman says, we're going to have hail sleep, and none of that comes. So that I just that that was imminent, they were absolutely certain, and it absolutely let up and we absolutely countered everything, and it absolutely didn't happen. So, so that's if the weather is a component of that evaluation, then that is, I can't support that because you, if we have, you know, it just you can't, it's unpredictable. I mean, I get it, you can get close but but I just will have a chance to further vet that I mean that's why I'm saying, I don't want to necessarily turn this into the next part because we've got some time constraints but Councilmember Melser and then Councilmember Briggs and then we'll wrap this up. Yeah, actually, yes, go ahead. Councilmember Davis sorry. Yeah, you're before me. Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Get used to me eventually. So just for clarity sake I was aware of the conversations, and the Council's briefing on community market, very aware of that. I'm, I do intend to vote for the consent agenda items this evening, I don't want anybody in the nonprofit community worrying about that. My point bring that up was just to say, I don't know that I'm comfortable doing that again. I think staff has an excellent job and anticipating and identifying the policy problems with doing this on an ad hoc basis. We know what the issue is I think we need to fix it before this comes up again, and I don't think I'm going to be comfortable with another, another waiver going forward. Unless we have some of those things put to bed, and we're just kind of asking for trouble each time we do it. Yeah, I think that's sort of the whole point is not to be in this position to have a policy so you know what to do. And I'm looking for clarification, I think on whether we're not talking about predicted bad weather, we're talking about. It's actually falling now. Right, like, it's like, we're trying to do this event and we're rained out, can we come inside right where it's not a question of prediction. And, and is that kind of the situation where we were have been. We're trying to put a little bit that's exactly the situation but then you know, making sure we have adequate time to get staffing there that we've, we've got the insurance nailed down that we've got that we've got your permission to do that is my concern is that. I think, you know, sorry if I can just complete the question. You know if we have this notion of pre approval, you know that so that those things are in place then then you're in a position to act on the spur of the moment. And it's not about predicting the weather. And also, if I might add on the notice, you know what we're specifically looking for even is just, which is still a little I understand a little harder to nail down but if we have forecasted weather, which you know we had some indication of forecasted weather and each one of these situations, but even just the intent of letting us know hey, you know, that gives us at least a head start on being able to see what staff is available might come see if the Civic Center is available. We've had occasions where we had rentals the night before, and had to make sure that the, that the facility was in good proper condition to host the event the next day. Security is another you know getting an officer. They all are performing security at overtime for us so getting somebody that's available to come in and do that so those are the types of things that even if we have an idea that. Something that you're thinking about and you've met these parameters maybe you're pre approved or we've got funding still available all of those things that we can try and put together for you under those conditions say, okay, you know in the next week or so, you know, Monday. We know that we might be having some bad weather on the weekend. And if it pans out, here's what we're looking at, or here's what we would like to do, and then just having that notice of intent. I wanted to comment but I can wait until customer briefed. Just so I'm confused because I'm hearing conflicting statements so these are our options and so what I heard from Councilmember Davis is number two do not allow it because you don't want to come back in after the fact but also what I'm hearing is staff would like to know if we could go ahead and do it because. So I'm just so the rain the rain may have help and so this is like so we say no, but if it is you need two days right because it's going to storm and somebody wants to come and use the facility for shelter for cover. But then it would have to come and get reviewed and approval by Council, and there's absolutely no way for you to get approved on a Sunday, if Council doesn't meet till Tuesday, so it's correct. There's no win here. Yeah, I don't see that. I don't see it that that way. Okay, this is the options, as far as what I'm hearing said is, we want to establish some guidelines yes they need to know whether we want them to continue to do this without any guidelines. Or not to me that's really moving forward without any policy discussion without any policy formal policy guidelines, they're saying do you still want us to do this and come back retroactively, as you had been speaking, or do we what do we not do this right now. We stopped doing this until we get a policy created that allows them to do this without our review and permission, following a set of criteria and guidelines is that is that my understanding of this. Yes, okay. Does that make sense that's why I don't think I mean, because what you're saying is, I don't want them to not be doing it moving forward, but I don't want them to not be doing it even if I want them to be doing it even if we don't have a formal policy in place yet. I want them to be able to make their own decisions and come back and retroactively ask us for approval, until we get the policy and that's what I'm hearing you sort of say. Well, that's what I'm asking. Yeah. Right, I mean I'm in agreement, I think both of them are right, so I just correct so our thinking and presenting the options would be that just in general, you are open to allowing the Civic Center to be used for inclement weather or other unforeseen circumstances, we can come back to you with a set of established criteria for that. But you can also today decide this is not the use for the Civic Center and this is not how we want to use the Civic Center moving forward, without going through the actual process. I'm going to create an option number three. I'm going to say, this is for me because I can't I can't say to give direction for me and there's four of you that do it doesn't matter. But to say, let's continue to do what we're doing that created y'all's need to come back to us, which is unprecedented. So, the way, and it creates a retroactive kind of situation in other words, it puts us in a position, if we don't vote for it then we're saying these people have to pay this money, I would like to reverse that. And that is, if somebody needs to use it for inclement weather until we get the policy place in place. Let's charge them at least on paper, and then the city can come back and say hey we will approve a, if we have a grant or a budget, because that's what we're really asking is, we give this away for no cost or it costs somebody. So I just, I struggle with that. But that's just me. So I'm not gonna. So my option would be number two, if these are the only options, or my alternative options would be, let's create an invoice, and then that invoice can come to counsel and you say it was really the same thing Chris you're still asking whether you want to make them pay that or not. But it's really not because we haven't said, you don't have to pay it. And then we have to say, you do have to pay it's different to say, yeah you got to pay it. Well, we're not going to ask you to pay it. Just a different philosophy for me, Councilmember Armitage. So I have a question that might sound like changing subjects but actually it's related to this. When a drafted policy could come back to counsel because for me, you know, I'm concerned, kind of go back to what Councilmember Briggs was saying, you know, I do, again, I see the need that this is filling and what I spoke to that earlier. But you know, I would hate to see that either of these groups or maybe somebody else who I don't know about a nonprofit who has an event scheduled, inclement weather date, if because of the time it takes. So, you know, that, that's my question. If you have a sense of when this could come back maybe that's more of a city manager question on I think originally we had talked about including some draft comments on this particular topic in our overall sponsorship to make it one comprehensive document. I don't know if we break it up. What that would look like, but we can definitely bring back an inclement weather component to it, and then merge it with that with that sponsorship because it's all dealing with the waiver of fees who's eligible, while it may expand into special events. They're certainly the same we'd like to be consistent and for legal reasons, for some things we would have to be consistent in terms of eligibility of who is eligible to receive a waiver, whether it's a special event, or it's something under inclement circumstances, those two would have to be consistent. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, for me, I just, I'm okay with a temporary kind of an imaginary sign saying under construction, you know, kind of partner mess under construction while we get this sorted out, as long as it means that kind of nobody's going with without this possible I say nobody but I mean those who, whatever, whoever we decide eligible local, which local nonprofits I'm fine with, or even maybe just those that have been allowed retroactively so far. So I'd also like to know, you know, maybe not able to answer that now. And maybe that's in the backup and I'm just not recalling but kind of who if there's anyone else who is approached staff or anybody, you know, about this who has an event coming up, including a private, you know, a private event that may be asked and might feel left out by our policy or something I'm not, I'm not worried about that I just threw that out there as an example but if the answer is no, you know, then it could be a real easy, easy solution of getting anybody out in the cold. I think we can probably bring at least some general guidelines back to you within the next 30 days or so and if you're okay with it, we can include that in the, in the budget proposal just like exactly the same way we just approached our homelessness initiatives and how we're going to handle that as a supplemental but I really would like to get Council on board with us in terms of what criteria we're going to use and if we're going to adopt a policy and not be in a position of picking winners and I, you know, especially if you get a situation you get a weekend where you get two groups, perhaps willing to use it and we have, we still have no policies in this so I really think that's probably the best way to approach this and if you're comfortable move forward if you're not we want. So, that's my answer. I hope there's a way to avoid what strikes me is just to micromanage, you know, like, isn't there some way that we can create a policy that that doesn't require coming back to Council that puts it under, you know under city manager discretion. So we've already said let's say we agree you know it's got to be nonprofit, I can easily go along with the sort of not revenue generating thing. You know and then you put a, you know, establish a budget line. Maybe it's $30,000. So he's got some place to put it. And just let him make those decisions on a Sunday when you want to be at home, not being called. I think that's exactly the approach we're heading. Yeah. Just, and we're going to community market. Oh, yeah, well, yeah, yeah, I wasn't addressing that I wasn't addressing that. Okay, absolutely. And the truth of the matter is, you could still. I mean, you could go ahead and continue to do the practice, which is sort of unprecedented, and then you just put it on an item for individual consideration instead of consent. So, if a council member decides that they don't necessarily want to continue to do the do business that way, they can always vote against it and for people vote for it. It's, that's, that's the process, but I think this is, we just need to get the process in place so it's cleaner, because I don't think you want to be making calls like that with no policy parameters on if you're getting calls or staff is getting calls. What are we going to do. You want this council to weigh in on the policy parameters and like you said and then once those parameters in place. You, you make your decisions for them to questions, just because the in kind part of it doesn't really seem unprecedented to me because we have on consent agenda several different times in kind donation for jazz this in kind donation for blues fest and I don't recall those coming to us as a work session item where we approve that it just shows up on our, on our. It comes to you as a consent agenda item right prior to the event. So if you for whatever reason decided to deny or decline that request, then they are still now responsible for those services that they asked to be waived. Okay, so, say for the sake of an in kind donation of a certain amount for the year could come to us and we could approve that and then that could be handed out as as needed, that would be similar yes to the grant program that we talked about if you want to set, and that's just the whole thing is setting an allocated amount I think there's a lot of benefits to that number one and it gives us the ability then to budget for it. But it also gives event organizers some flexibility if they know they have a certain amount, then they may choose to use that in different ways. You know they could spread it out over multiple events or they might, you know, use all of their funding in one event for one request so it certainly provides some flexibility on both sides, and I'm purposes of I'm sorry Councilman breeze but I just want to make a point for the purposes of consistency we have had organizations asked for in kind contributions ahead of time. And while the event is going on, ask for free solid waste service or something and we've denied it, because we did not have that authority to waive those types of fees so I'm just most concerned with the transparency with all of you and the in the in treating everybody the same. But, I mean, Ethan recently turned down a request I think it was a jazz fest is that right well he actually charged them for it we charge they provided it but they will be invoiced for the additional services that they requested on site above and beyond what you approved as a council for them to receive an in kind services. Last question, is there any plans to have a pavilion, like the one at North Lakes like a larger pavilion with tables built out here at this, at this park. We certainly don't have anything planned for that if it's certainly something that we can look at during our master planning process, as an addition to this to this footprint that might help. Councilmember amateur. Yes, yeah that I mean that's very much like what you know Councilmember or Mayor pro tem. You know husband mentioned, so add me as a third for that idea having. If I know it's I don't, I didn't mean that it's like a vote, giving direction but just, you know, some sort of staff report on that I guess, what possibilities could our director Gary packet just reminded me that one of the things that we are looking for that's in in the master plan is a covered stage, an actual something you know more than what we've got now just a little community stage and that could certainly be an option for use. When it's not being used as a stage, but it would be more of a covered improved, you know surface that could be that could serve as that. Okay, so direction moving forward. I don't know that we're completely clear of the, you know, some weather but I think we can bring back, we will bring back something for council respond to and then sometime in June, and with all these parameters and say you know, if they're interested in those parameters and the policy guidelines we can certainly attach a budget supplemental to it. And if there's some tweaking that we need to do we can do that as well. Between now and that time, if requests come in. For waiver fees do. Sorry I forgot to turn my light on my mic on. I think that the direction for bringing back that policy discussion is, is, is fairly. I think we've got a consensus on that I think the concern is, or the question is, do we move forward between now and that time with making decisions on providing waiver fees, for whatever reason inclement weather or such. And then bringing in the same process bring it back for ratification to the city council yes customer Davis. I mean I seem to be the one who drew kind of a hard line here so I'll be a little more clear and what I'm saying. If we know policies in the works in our organizations that are asking for these waivers can know that there's a policy in the works. I'm fine with with more of these requests coming forward from the kinds of organizations that we anticipate would fall under the policy that we're talking about. But I think they also need to know and I would like to have them sign something that they're doing so at risk that. What if it turns out they're not the kind of organization that would have fallen under this policy, what if, what if we make the wrong call and letting right now we're talking about two organizations that we all seem to be on board with. I want them to know that they're doing it at their risk that the council is not bound to approve their funding request but if it's these couple organizations I intend to approve them and until we have a policy in place, and then we follow the policy. I mean, I agree with you except for, I'm not so sure I can make the statement that I would approve them for each of the ones that we've done in the past. So, but as we said, each council member can vote their position on that as they come forward and something other than a contingent item so what I'm hearing is, stay with the practice at the organization's peril that it may not be approved, and you'll just have to sort of make determination on who to approve for that without council approval or policy in place, and then we'll just bring it forward and deal with it. All right, fantastic. Okay, we'll move on to our next. When did we have our last break. You want a break. Five minute break. Let's take a five minute break. All right, welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council. Tuesday, May the 21st, 2019 it is for 23pm. Agenda item D, E, and G and we have a closed session. And we've got about, you know, a couple hours to do that in. So and I've got to leave at six o'clock to go just say welcome to the participants in the mayor's summer youth job program downstairs they're supposed to be in here at six o'clock which that's probably not going to happen. But, so just giving everybody heads up for where we are. Agenda item D which is received report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the solid waste department's home chemical collection yard waste and brush collection. Oh, comma after collection chemical collection yard waste and brush collection and bulk waste collection services. Good afternoon mayor members of the city council my name is Ethan Cox I'm the director of public works for the city. I'm not gonna lie this is a dense presentation this afternoon, however I do plan to get through it and really quick fashion, we have quite a bit of ground to cover but we are going to be hitting these programs that kind of the 30,000 foot level. Our intent is then to come back when we start talking about our rates changes to the ordinance and have a more in depth discussion on that then to kind of start out this is a carryover from last summer when we had Blue Ridge services come out and do an overview of all the solid waste operations we had a number of recommendations during that discussion council recommended that we do a deeper dive on some of their recommendations and so over here on the right you can kind of see the operations we've already looked at what we're going to attempt to do today is knock out all four of these bullet points right here. We class of all these is basically additional residential services beyond your refuse and recycling collection. A few things that we're going to try to achieve today is, as we looked at these programs there's really nothing pressing on us that we need to change. But, as we're getting into the budget, and we close this off we want to put some kind of novel approaches or other ideas and a benchmark out there for the council to consider. Take that feedback and then circle back with our budget presentation and rate presentation in June. In addition to the benchmark, really what we tried to look at is, as we evaluate these programs are there opportunities to not only maintain a high level of service, but also help maybe improve efficiencies and equity across the rate base as well as continuing to encourage reduction, reuse and recycling. As we've done with the other business case analyses we do have some definitions I'm not going to get into those for the sake of time today but we may circle back if we need some clarification. In terms of the objectives of these programs, it's really all about the proper handling, diversion and disposal of some of our harder to handle items these are items that may not necessarily fit in your cart. In some cases they may not be items we want to go in the car we may want to try to divert those from the landfill. In terms of the HCC that is a federal stormwater permit requirement and when I say HCC that's for home chemical collections. Our goal there in addition to that is to divert hazardous materials away from our waterways and landfill electronics and appliances likewise can contain hazardous waste we want to try to recycle those when we can otherwise we want to try to properly dispose of those bulky items are typically those household items that don't fit in your cart programs like this are often offered to prevent illegal dumping, if we don't provide a means for folks to dispose of these responsibly. That's the type of stuff you'll end up finding in a bar ditch on the side of the road somewhere. Lastly yard waste and brush that is a primary feedstock for our down under products and so we do run a separate collection for that to provide feedstock for for those products. Just a quick overview of residential collections we run Monday through Thursday, daily and quadrants of the city and so as you can see here on this map. That is Monday greenest Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday anytime we dispatch out to a quadrant of the city we go until with several heavy vehicles as well as multiple staff members so about 25 pieces of heavy equipment about 39 staff members comprise our residential services operation. One of the things we try to look at is how do we put it in context of the scope of this operation and one of the things whenever my son was little he always liked to walk out and greet our trash guys as they went down the street and it was always a huge tree when multiple trucks would come by because you got to wave it several of them and so we started looking at like that and ultimately my son could end up waving at nine different people as they come down the street in our city trucks. So these operations are quite equipment intensive. I think everyone recognizes the refuse and recycling trucks over here on the left these are called automated side loads. We're handling bulky items, you also will see reload trucks where we're loading furniture into the back of these and compacting them for some of our harder to handle items for bulky items we will use what's called a claw truck down here. Those same types of equipment same pieces of equipment are also used for yard waste and brush for ACC electronics and appliances those require special handling so we dispatch a state bed truck. And then for car delivery, we use a box truck standard delivery truck, and then our supervisors and crew leaders are often surveying the area and light duty vehicles. So quite a big impact on our roadways, certainly some opportunities for some consolidation and efficiency in our view. When we look at the program for sorry I didn't know that that's what you. Yes, go ahead. So on on this it's a lot of different tracks so is there a different department with different staffing for each of these tracks, or does does say one department with a few staff, man, a few of these like say bulky items and H's that do you have a few people that that run a few of these different tracks out of a certain department. With maybe the exception of home chemical collection which is his own business unit. The rest of these are all housed out of our residential service line. Great question. Yeah, well me later on we're going to be talking about routing and so I didn't know if each one of these individual trucks have different people routing or if they have just one, one person doing we're moving to centralize dispatch office to make our routing more efficient. One of the things that I share with ceiling when we met the other day is by and large we still route on pieces of paper we draw squiggly lines on maps to tell folks where to go. Is there an area where we can tighten up efficiency on this. In addition to that I do think that there's some opportunities for some consolidation of services, meaning that do we necessarily need to be running bulky and yard waste at the same time. One of the things we try to look at as we go through these programs is what is you know kind of the bang for your buck but also what utility are we getting out of these programs and so one of the ways we wanted to look at this is average daily utilization. On any given collection day, we have about 8300 homes that we can service through our residential collection programs refuse and recycling we see about a 67 to 82% participation rate between those so really high utilization. You've got tonnage over here on the right as well as program cost for yard waste we don't see quite as much participation you're at about 7%, but those folks that do participate produce a pretty sizable amount of tonnage brushes and so again that's feedstock for our composting operation for bulky items HCC and electronics and appliances collection we're seeing about 1% participation on those programs on a daily basis. On the number on the 14 the HCC because we do have pick up and drop off is that for all of those and combined or is that just I'm going to double check I think this is just for collections versus is this both. Okay, so this is drop off in the curbside collection. I know we don't have information now but I'd like to see it, because this is 1718 but I know that we have done some marketing, and I have the impression that maybe it's picked up since now so that more people are aware of it so just some newer numbers. Okay, we can do that would be good. Thank you. In terms of terms of tonnage. Again, this is this column right here. And then you've got your net costs and so in terms of net cost, I know it's not all about the financials but we will be kind of taking a look at that and cost per participant cost per collection as we go through the slides. Simply because that does feed into the rate structure in terms of opportunities for improvement I'm going to go through these quickly because we do have some visuals to illustrate here. When we talk about improving efficiency it's not just about dollars and cents it's about impact on our roadways impact on our equipment if it's not being used efficiently. It's also about preventing unnecessary emissions. There are emissions associated with each of these trucks equivalent to about nine light duty vehicles. We also think that there's some opportunities to prevent some sustainable or more sustainable options. When we talk about improving equity that's one of the things we've got to realize about all these programs they're all subsidized through the residential rate to some extent, there are some physics associated but it's not covering the entirety of the program. So what we want to look at is when we have a situation heavy users versus low users or heavy users versus no users is there a more equitable approach to that. We'll talk about commercial lawn services and tree trimmers in just a moment. As it relates to home chemical collection. Thank you. I just wanted to get clarification. You said it's about 1% on some of these, you know, kind of more exotic programs. Is it that only 1% of the population uses it or is it that a lot of the population uses it just very infrequently. Is there a small group of people that are really into doing household chemicals or something that people just don't. We would need to parse the data to see if it's repeat users. I don't know that we've taken a look at that I'm kind of looking for a head nodder. Right. Thanks. But we can parse that data and see if it's return customers, if that's what you're looking for. In terms of safety and environmental impact. I'll show a couple pictures on this in just a moment. One of the things in terms of injuries for staff we do have a higher incidence of injuries and our yard waste crews simply because they it is much more manual labor. There are some pokes and gouges that can occur I think we have about 20% of that staff exposed to lift injuries on an annual basis and so anything that we can do to mitigate injury risk is certainly something we'd like to take a look at. So kind of going back the slide to the recommendations, opportunities for improvement. I was surprised to see when I was reading the presentation preparing I was expecting to see education on there because of the low numbers you know for some of our for our electric appliances bulky items. I know it that stuff that we had discussed before. So can you kind of speak briefly to, you know, plans for, you know, moving forward for education how that would how that would fit in, in terms of promoting use of the program. Exactly, exactly. That is something that we talked about with our public outreach program, you know, for the last few months we've been heavily focused on the recycling initiatives. We do think there's some opportunities, particularly with HCC to promote that program a little bit more heavily as Councilmember Briggs mentioned we have made some strides in promoting the drop offs, getting folks a little bit more educated about that. As we go through our recommendations that is one of the pieces that is in our next steps is whatever we decide today in terms of program structure we do want to make sure education and communication is a key component of it. So I'm going to go through real quickly. Some of these examples of kind of some of the challenges. We do have some restrictions on hazardous waste in terms of what's placed on the curb. That's mostly because we are not permitted to accept commercial hazardous waste. So if there's no restrictions you do have some intrepid souls out there that may try to set out stuff from their business. And we do run into that occasionally when our collections trucks roll by, as well as folks trying to drop off at the facility. One of the concerns we have here is we do have hazardous waste exposed to elements in the public. This in particular may be a concern if they didn't package this so well, but these are basically light bulb tubes we run over those, it rains, it goes straight into the stormwater system, which is exactly exactly what we're trying to prevent. So I do think if we're going to continue the curbside collection we do need to look at improving some of our restrictions. You know, one thing that I think that would help with both preventing, you can never completely prevent, but at least minimizing kind of situations like this, plus helping to educate about this service would be if we provided some sort of container for, you know, electronics appliances recycling. Of course there would be costs to that, you know, and I would love to see kind of an estimate on what the cost would be or even what size of container. I'm looking at those examples you have right there, you know, what that would look like if other cities do that. But I know that if people receive on their doorstep an actual physical thing that's not, you know, a piece of paper you can toss, but an actual physical thing here is your electronics recycling appliances bin. And, you know, it'll be collect picked up every so and so you know what the schedule is that that would both educate and provide if there's a cover on it, that would help protect from the elements. I think I think we would see our numbers go way up in terms of usage. I think that's something we can explore certainly will circle back, depending on the direction we get. I do know I'm not sure about the electronics and appliances but I do know for home chemical collection there are some collection services that provide that ahead of time, just to kind of mitigate some of the challenges we're seeing so we can take a look into that. In terms of electronics there are some retail take back and recycling options. We understand that sometimes those are going to be vetted and it's just not a possibility, but that is something we definitely want to encourage in terms of our education communication efforts. In terms of the benchmark. Again, I'm going to go through these quickly but I'm going to try to point out. And by the way, awesome job moving forward. So quickly, sorry to keep stemming you but I'll try to be brief about the, the last slide free on can you speak to kind of what we do with free on I got an email about that and I didn't have the answer. Yeah, Brian, do you want to come to the podium and answer that one. Brian burners our director of solid waste he can probably provide a better answer to me. Good afternoon. The free on that we collect through our appliances and that is available we do have registered technicians who actually pull it out of the machines, and then we capture it, and then it's sold or recycled as part of our main chemical management program. Excellent. That's great to know things. So in terms of the benchmark one of the things that we really wanted to do is look at the structure of our program compared to a lot of other cities, typical benchmark cities that we would take a look at. So one of the things we're looking at is collection frequency how often is the service provided. Is it scheduled or unscheduled program restrictions and then how is the cost of the program covered. And so as we look at this I'll kind of go through these quickly and point out a few of the things that stood out to us through the benchmark for our program again these are scheduled collection so it is fairly efficient in nature. The restrictions are listed here in terms of fees and rate impact this is one of our more costly programs it is bundled with the monthly bill, the cost per collection is just north of $250. And so whenever you look at your residential bill each month it's just under $2 goes toward this program in particular. In terms of differences between us and other cities. There's about four other cities that do curbside collection in the region. We also pulled in Austin because they are a bit more progressive and kind of similar to us in terms of service level delivery. What we are finding is most of these services, if they're not doing a weekly collection. They're looking for drop off centers and collection events, and basically they go in mass on a drop off event to a neighborhood collected all there, or like us they're accepting things brought to them via drop off. One of the areas that we can improve upon in our drop offs is right now our hours are Monday through Friday, eight to five. Folks clean out their garage on the weekends and so we need to be a little bit more responsive a little bit more available when our customers need to use the service and so there's some things here that are pretty low hanging fruit that we could basically adopt and I think we would see some some increase in participation. Councilmember Davis, that to 54 per collection is that is that cost that high because the collect numbers of collections are so low so if we saw the number of collections go go up we wouldn't see it kind of increase linear linearly with that. Or is it that just is how much it costs to settle up the truck and got pick up a can of paint. This is this operation is mostly fixed cost meaning it's equipment and personnel to provide that minimum level of service and so as you increase participation that cost on average does go down. One of the things that we will also recommend as we go through the, we talked to council about this some before is pulling in a regional hazardous waste from some of the surrounding and county cities that will allow us to introduce a revenue stream into the program as well and that will offset some of the subsidization that's happening if we continue with collections. On that point one of the things I will say couple more questions Councilmember Riggs and Councilmember Romer. So on that I also had a question about the two. Where is it that to 54 collection so that's hard cost is that for the building because there's an actual building and then their staff at the staff. It's I understand that they also are the same ones who pick up the bulky items, the end of, I mean the people, the trucks are different but I think the staff that we utilize them in tandem with HCC and electronics and appliances to my knowledge we're not using them with book collection that's a different crew correct. So it's at the, it's the electric and the appliances crew that these are bundled together. Okay, and so the 254. That's just the hard cost to those. Does that transfer into any of the other, like the electric and the appliances is that the cost with HCC. The reason why that's a bit higher is there's not a fee associated with collection HCC there is a fee associated with electronics and appliances so there is a revenue stream you'll notice this says net cost. So the the subsidization or the burden on the rate base and general is less with the electronics and appliances because folks that request that service are paying a small fee for it. Yeah, just to follow up for that though there's something missing in this conversation with the home chemical collection and I mean, I completely against getting rid of it and drop off. And how only having drop off when there's not everyone has a vehicle. And we've talked about that before. But for me I think what's missing is the chemicals that we are keeping out of the landfill by, by picking them up and using them and putting them in the appropriate place. Right. That's not in this conversation. I think that's certainly in the purpose of this is that's that's why the program exists anyhow. Yeah, is, you know, the purpose is is without dispute that that's certainly what we want to continue to do I don't think putting any of these programs away is what we're recommending I think what we're trying to look at is this the most effective way to deliver the service. Do we want to consider some other alternatives, and then kind of have that as the policy discussion or direction for us moving forward. Does that make sense. Yeah, I just I just think there's a value to it. And I didn't see the value. That was all I'm saying. I think we tried to state that right here and if that wasn't obvious I apologize. So going back to the slide that you were at last where you had kind of the breakdown. Yeah, yeah, I would like to see. This would come into a staff report, and if you could just speak to it in a sentence or two right off the top of your head of that does net costs, especially kind of for the yard waste bulky items, the chemical collections and electric appliances. How much of that net cost comes from collection, the fees of the collection collecting everything versus the fees of the processing. And I'm not sure that might kind of relate back to question Councilmember Davis was asking. But if you don't know that off the top of your head, probably not in terms of numbers but at least, what is the bulk of the for each of those categories, is it more on the processing. I think in terms of processing for these four items in particular, the bulk processing that is basically your disposal fees for the landfill, which is about $3 a month on the residential bill that's encapsulated in that for HCC there is some processing costs as Brian alluded to with the Freon and stuff, but it's very small in comparison to the actual fixed cost associated with that. And most of that fixed costs aside from the building is for the collection service the vehicles the staff to perform the collection. Same thing with electronics and appliances there are some processing costs there, but they are minimal compared to the fixed cost yard waste processing there that is again feedstock for our Dino dirt operation. And so, basically that's then transferred over to beneficial reuse and they collect on their processing costs through the sale of the product. Great. Thank you. And yeah, I would just love to see when you have to be a full staff report but just even a little graphic on that, that breakdown. Okay, we can certainly do that. So real quick, I think we got through most everything here so we're going to move on to electronics and appliances. And I mentioned that there is a small fee associated with this is basically $20 per collection. These are schedules so we are fairly efficient. The portion of the monthly bill is basically for the difference between the $40 and the $20 here is about 16 cents per month. Things are kind of all over the place in terms of what the benchmark shows. One of the things that is fairly consistent is most cities are not offering electronic collection. A couple of reasons we surmise on that is number one, some electronics nowadays are easy, easier to load up and tote. You don't necessarily need the collection service per se to get it to its destination. The other thing is there are a number of electronic take back recycling options out there best buy comes to mind as being a very prominent one. What you have here on the frequency and the rate, what we did is compared to appliances. What we're finding a lot of cities doing, they bundle appliances in with the bulk collection services. About 50/50, about 50% of the communities run weekly collections, some run less frequently. Austin surprised us running semi-annual with their high student population. And then most of these are bundled in services for bulky collection if that's how they're treating it. In terms of bulky items, we do have a few challenges going on here, a few opportunities. The biggest thing is in Chapter 24 ordinance, there's a vague definition there of what a bulky item is. And so often what we're running into in conversations with customers is, well, certainly a sink is a bulky item. Well, technically it could be, but six sinks is construction debris. So those are some of the common points of confusion that we run into. The other thing is what is a heavy accumulation versus a light accumulation? And I think both of these on the slide here would be what we call heavy accumulations. The way we ask customers to tell us what they have to collect right now is, well, how many cubic yards do you have? And I could survey the council, but I know time's precious. And so just kind of think in your head of how you would define it. And what we usually came up with in customer service was about the size of a washing machine. We talked to the city the other day and they said, well, they define their limitation as the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. So I don't think either of those are very accurate or effective. So one of the things that we want to look at is, can we better define what it is and how much of it will take without assessing an additional charge? In addition, there's also mystery use opportunities. You know, it's hard to see from this photo, but in a lot of cases, furniture like this can be directed to a donation center pretty effectively. And one of the things we have talked about is partnering with another service, another nonprofit that might be able to provide some of that for our citizens. So I was most excited to see to see this and to see changes because I just as a user a while ago, I called about a door and it was going to be twenty five dollars. But a couch was going to be free. I mean, so I was really confused about it and I thought, well, why are we doing that? Because it seems less impactful to throw away a door than a giant couch. So, you know, trying to talk about those in different ways and not, you know, about where they're going to go, but about items, I think would be a really, really great thing for our residents. We agree and we think there's a common sense application to this. I mean, it's not going to be 100 percent, but versus getting bogged down into definitions too much, we think just using a little bit of common sense when we visit with the customer will help. Again, these are schedule collections. Here's the limitations I was talking about. The excess purse is seven dollars per cubic yard. These are somewhat costly on a per collection basis. But again, this is a critical service. If we start charging a fee, you will start seeing a higher incidence of illegal dumping would be my guess. Councilmembrometer. Actually, you just addressed with the illegal dumping. I was about to mention that this is something it might not seem like there's an environmental benefit because, you know, these bulky items getting land filled. But exactly that's kind of that's where that comes in. So thank you. And then there's opportunities to recycle some of this. However, in some cases, these do go to landfill. The biggest thing is keeping it out of the illegal dumping. Frequency is very similar to what we talked about. Again, with the level of volume we're seeing, we wouldn't recommend changing that. One of the things that we did like in terms of what Frisco is doing is they limit it to a per item basis versus a cubic yard. That makes much more sense to us. And as long as we can explain volume limitations or weight limitations, then I think that's something we would be favorable of adopting. Yard waste is probably our most inefficient collection. The reason why is we basically drive up and down every street in the city looking for yard waste and brush. And kind of the analogy that I've used is if I go into Walmart looking for three items and I go up and down every aisle inspecting the shelves to find my items versus knowing where it is and I go in there with a purpose. I've been in Walmart with my mother and it took about four hours using the prior method. The other method took about 15 minutes. And I think that's kind of the analogy that we've used is and also the other thing I'll say is sometimes our drivers misloads and that can agitate a customer is why didn't you see it? And we go out there and said, yeah, we should have seen that. But it's basically just up to that driver's visibility. And so we think there's some opportunities there, but also this is one of our more passionate user bases. And so any change we recommend here is going to be something we want to be very delicate with. We do have the heavy users versus low users. Plastic bags are not environmentally friendly. In terms of the volume limitations, about half of this would be what would be standard in terms of our service offering. The other half would be charged at about seven dollars per cubic yard. I mentioned earlier about abuse by commercial landscapers and tree trimmers. This pulls in that limitation as well. This photo over here on the right, this is an elderly lady that contracted with a commercial tree trimmer. They got done with the job and basically told her, we'll call the city. They pick this stuff up for free. Our staff goes out there, surveys it, and the bill is going to run nine hundred dollars based on our current rate structure. So, number one, we have a commercial tree trimmer that may have already charged for the service. And now we have a broken rate structure that this customer doesn't have any options. And so we feel like whatever we do, we've got to clean that piece of this up somehow. Do other cities have ordinances about cracking down on abuse by commercial landscapers, tree trimmers? You do. I think the challenge that you run into sometimes, and it's not true across the board, is not everyone's going to tell you that it was a commercial job. Our drivers could probably tell you just by eyeballing it that it took a commercial crew to do that. But so long as they're metering that out and providing it to us in bite sized chunks, we really don't question it. It's when we get those heavy accumulations that we hear those types of stories. And that's really where I think from an ordinance standpoint, we look at what is standard service that we will provide and what is a premium service that requires some type of excess charge. And I think when we do that, we've got to be cognizant of what those commercial tree trimmers are charging, because if our charge is less, then they're going to encourage customers to use us instead of them doing the work themselves. Yeah, and that's what I would, you know, as far as abuse is by misuse, whatever, by just property owners, you know, for me, the solution is education. But if we've got, you know, for profit, landscapers, tree trimmers, I would love to see something in place that would make sure that whoever's responsible for the cost is the commercial entity, you know, and not the property owner. So I would be curious to know, again, if other cities have, you know, some sort of policy like that, or if not, oh, awesome, yeah, I would love to see. Again, I know I've asked for so many staff reports on this, but, you know, maybe bundled into any other requests for more information come out of this work session, but some sort of report on that. Sorry to interrupt our goal would be as we get general guidance from the council today when we come back with our rate ordinance and have that discussion, we can bring some of that along with us again we have a general overview of what other ordinances look like, I just didn't put it into this presentation. In terms of the benchmark is pretty standard for most cities to provide weekly yard clippings and leave collection services. What is not standard is the acceptance of plastic bags, you have about half the cities on here that have been plastic bags, and they're accepting only craft bags because they are compostable. That's another thing that whenever our guys go out here to rip these, we have no idea what's in that bag, you do get some puncture injuries. In some cases you get a surprise where there's actually garbage in there now we have a mess to clean up. And so, craft bags is what a lot of communities are going to. When Blue Ridge was here last year they recommended going to cart service for worth is one of the few local cities that have adopted cart service. My brother in law lives out there he loves it. It's not an all in proposition I know one of the concerns we heard with committee in the environment is, we have a volume limitation there and what Fort Worth does is, you can use the cart as well as craft bags and we'll pick up all of those. The cart is kind of there as a convenience factor for the consumer if they want to go there. In terms of cost per collection we do have hefty numbers Councilmember Davis has a quick question. What was the basis of their recommendation for cart service but why did they improve safety and improved efficiency is the two biggest ones. You know it helps negate some of those lift injuries. So even if we're running with a rear load truck like this right here. Right now our guys are loading all those bags and manually they're tearing them open. It's a lot of manual labor if you're in a cart there's a lift assist on the back of this where you roll it to it, and it lifts it for you, so it doesn't cut down the risk of injury completely but it does help negate that. If you go completely car service and completely automated then you have some pretty big gains in efficiency was their recommendation as well. Do we have any idea how many plastic bags, like after a couple of days of service, or a week that we end up putting in the landfill. We counted that at one point but the number escapes me Tina do you have any ballpark figures curious I mean because it has to be a lot. It's a large quantity. Yeah, without a doubt. I think Mr. Burner wants to make a comment. Going back to the cart service. You know one of the reasons why I think city of Fort Worth went with the cart service in addition to craft bags is based on the size of a lot of the lots or seven, seven and a half units per acre of land so if you mow your yard you catch it all. You basically get your entire yard plus leaves and everything else in a cart or to cart to craft bags and the costing was based on the fact that if you used to craft bags to the entire growing season basically paid for the cart so you bought basically a year's worth of bag equivalents for one year and then the rest of 20 years that you can use a cart, you basically getting it for free. So that's what that's the whole mindset behind going to the cart system, as opposed to, you know, the craft bags and the craft bags are when you have additional trimmings or, you know, something else happens and you can use those but that's why the cart system was was preferred in Fort Worth. And that's bundled in Fort Worth, an additional fee in it depends in Fort Worth if you if you, if you limited the size less than 25 pounds, less than four foot and you bundle it you could throw away up to 10 yards but if it was just thrown in a big pile then there was a size size limitation, and it was a cost plus system. I mean that is called the third cart the yard waste cart correct that was included in monthly or that is an additional no you bought that out right on the front end. Got it. And that was your car if you move if you move from Fort Worth to the city didn't you could take your yard cart with you. Thank you. On the craft bags, when the. Do they just throw the whole bag in, instead of ripping it open. Since that would be the idea. Okay, we would probably want to do some randomized tear it open and see if we've got contamination in there but I think the working idea would be that if someone's gone to the trouble putting craft bags out there. They're typically responsible. So, yeah, it would cut down on the labor. I like that idea. So brush. The results are a little bit all over the board one of the things that I will say here. This is one of the bigger fees on the monthly bill for residential rate payers is just under what we pay for refuse and recycling collection. But as we illustrated earlier this is one where we have a small group of citizens probably some neighborhoods that are using this and getting great benefit great value out of it. We still have other residential customers that are paying this fee and not necessarily utilizing that. So anything we can do to improve efficiency or rate equity is something that we wanted to consider as staff. To that end we mentioned earlier about the the $900 accumulation of, you know, brush here. One of the things that we found with other communities is instead of billing on a volume basis they bill on a per job basis, meaning that if we had a commercial tree trimmer call out there they're basically going to charge an hourly rate to come clean that up and haul it off. Plano or yes Plano and Flower Mound employ something similar. If we did cost recovery on an hourly basis this $900 job turns into about $100 to $120 job which is pretty similar to what we would have if we were a commercial tree trimmer. So a comparable rate. So we do like that model in terms of the excess charge. I'll try to summarize all this. Again this is kind of laid out like the benchmark you got the program service name, the service model, the rate structure and then a few notes. Anywhere we see a red font that indicates that is an option that we feel like a staff we can support and would get behind in terms of recommendation. For home chemical collection again we're currently providing curbside collection we can continue doing that. We also think the drop off service and collection events model like other cities are employing would work as well. If we did that we would look at weekly or monthly collection events in each area of the city. We would alter our weekend hours for drop off service and as well as expand the program to accept regional hazardous waste. For electronics and appliances there's really two different options here. We could discontinue collection like many have done for electronics. If we continue collection you also have the option to increase the fee to completely cost recover based on our expenses. That would be a $40 fee. In any event we're going to promote the donation centers and retail take back options. We would certainly prefer to be the recycler of last resort on this if we can. Bulky waste, really no recommendations here. We think that's working fairly effectively. A couple of things we would like to do, I believe the mayors brought this up before, is we do think that there's an opportunity to increase or introduce commercial bulk collection. We can introduce that in the rate structure coming up next month. We think that will also knock down on some of the illegal dumping we're seeing. We certainly want to revise our restrictions and rate structure to be a little bit more common sense though. >> Yeah, I'd be curious to see a cost comparison to see what the savings would be that could maybe go elsewhere. If the bulky waste, and I'm not mentioning this as direction now, I'm just generally curious, is reduced to bi-weekly. If that would be a savings that would, given that this is as far as environmental impacts, I realize there's an environmental impact with that of illegal dumping. But given that this is stuff that's being land filled, if that makes sense to just know what the cost savings would be. And then also, kind of piggybacking on that, one concern that people have is when they put an item out, if it doesn't get picked up if they missed the day, is code enforcement going to nail them, because if it's a real big bulky item that you can't move yourself, then you're in trouble. So I would love if there could be some coordination on the bulky item issue with code enforcement and maybe kind of easing off on. I shouldn't even say that. I'll just say kind of just some sort of coordination. >> Okay. >> Thanks. >> One of the things I will say, I don't know that we would recommend bi-weekly given the volumes we're seeing, so this is on a daily basis. So multiply this times four, you see about 160 different items, 160 different collection stops each week. Going to bi-weekly, I don't know that you're going to see the savings. One of the things we could consider, we're going to be looking to implement modern technology to run our routes. We may be able to consolidate four days worth of collections into one day. We don't want to promise that just yet, but that's one of those things that once we start implementing technology, I think we're going to see some meat on that bone to make some improvements. If that's the case, then you could definitely see some cost savings on collections like that. >> And I'll add that if there's no significant cost savings to reducing to bi-weekly, then I would remove that even from the table because it is such a convenience for people. >> Sure. >> Councilmember Meltzer. >> Is the behavior that for these items that people just put them out on the regular day, or is the behavior that they don't know when to put them out and they call and ask and we tell them when to put it out? >> Aside from the brush and yard waste, these are all scheduled services. And so there is an opportunity to interact with the customer either through engaged in or verbally to say here's the parameters to Ms. Armenter's point. For code enforcement, I know customer service essentially has a script that says don't put it out before 7 p.m. the day before. Make sure it's off your curb by such and such time if it wasn't collected on the next day. And so there are some restrictions there to try to help folks avoid running into those types of entanglements. >> So my guess would be that, you know, you're going to look and find out, I guess. But my guess would be that while there may be some heavy users of these particular categories, that this is the kind of thing that everybody needs to do, but maybe, you know, several years in between each time. You know, looking for a bulky item or maybe it's a major project, you know, a chemical thing. So I think it's very expensive and possibly almost impossible to market your way out of it, because you just can't buy share of mine for something that people only care about when they have that need and they only have that need years apart. >> Right. >> So what that suggests to me is that when they have the need, they just need to be told the answer. And if the answer is it's April 29th, that's an answer too. You know, I mean, I like very much the information you've created that there might be some way to group up your, you know, group up your collections. But if it ends up being monthly, I don't know that that would be perceived as any less convenient. As long as I go, I have this stuff, what do I do, and you tell me when, you've solved my problem. >> And that's certainly a model that as we go through those benchmarks, you see other cities doing different variations of that. I can't say that all of them follow the data to make those decisions, but I think you could certainly look at something like home chemical collections. If you want to continue with a collection service, you could certainly target a date, like you're saying, and say we collect this monthly, it's on these dates. Try to, to Ms. Armender's point, get more volume to justify the collection route. And then if you don't want to wait, you can bring it into a drop off. And so there's certainly opportunities like that as well. >> Might be able to save enough to fund the seven days Monsignor King thing. I guess that's a different budget. >> Councilmember Davis. >> A question, and then I think I'm ready for a little bit of direction. On the carts, two questions. Has Fort Worth seen any kind of contamination issue with having it in a closed, beyond just the problem with the trash bags, sometimes making it in with the leaves? And the second question is, you have underlined pre-consumer vegetative food waste. Does that mean I could put my banana peels and coffee crowns in there and now we have a curbside composting service? Or is that more restrictive than I'm reading it? >> Let me run through those real quick. So I'll jump to yard waste and I want to come back to brush as well. So in terms of yard waste, the carts, my understanding that that's helped knock down the amount of contamination that Fort Worth is seeing. A lot of the reason why is they're running those rear load trucks and so they're actually lifting the lid before they dump those. And so there's almost a quality assurance aspect to it. So they've knocked down a lot of the contamination by doing that versus tearing up the bags. In terms of the pre-consumer vegetative food waste, the answer is it depends. And so the term pre-consumer means if I've taken a bite out of it or it's hit a plate, it really can't be accepted by our current composting operations. However, if I bought a zucchini and I didn't need it, I had good intentions, but it ends up out there, then we can certainly do that. Obviously, from a contamination standpoint, that's going to be really hard to enforce. I think the biggest thing here is that we're not putting animal waste in there like chicken carcass or something like that. The Thanksgiving turkey that didn't get eaten, those are the types of things that can't really go into our existing composting operation. That would need to be something separate. Does that help? Real quick on the brush, one of the things that we would be recommending versus driving around kind of bird dogging for collections, we would like to move that to a scheduled collection. That is one of those things that is fairly infrequent even for folks with heavily wooded lots. It would give us a lot more purpose and direction there, and I think it will also allow us to cut down on some of the inefficiencies. To that end, we also recommend, like we said earlier, revising the restrictions and the rate structure so it's a little bit more common sense, a little bit more cost competitive with what the commercial tree trimmers are doing. For yard waste, this is probably the most radical, and Mr. Davis hit on a couple of these things already. One of the things that we'd like to do versus driving up and down every street, going up and down every aisle of Walmart, we'd like to be able to put a pin in the map and say we're going here to collect yard waste today. That would probably be the biggest gain in efficiency that we could see on any of these programs. That being said, how do we get there? And one of the things that we come up with the staff is we have a subscription kind of opt in, opt out program. It doesn't have to be a big fee. It could be very de minimis. We put a dollar up here for illustrative purposes, but that allows us to know exactly where we're going to collect it. It also helps us to kind of balance that rate equity as we know who's participating and who isn't. And what's the point of the dollar fee just to kind of get like a collateral? It's basically just someone saying I'm willing to pay for this program. I'm going to opt into it. It doesn't have to be a dollar. We could even go without a fee if we wanted to do that. However, I think that is something that everyone's going to opt in if there's not a fee potentially. But we can certainly experiment with that. I think the idea would be that we have a planned route to go collect versus kind of going out and looking for the waste. Yeah, I definitely am for the -- instead of just kind of going around looking for it, I totally understand why that model doesn't work, but I don't like the idea of a fee, even if it's one that's so affordable, because it's just kind of one more thing you have to do. But I'd definitely be open to other options, and I do understand the problem. Again, I think like with so many of these things, kind of coordination with code enforcement so that especially in the early days of implementation, if people get the day wrong, they put something out that makes sure they don't get dinged. I mean, I see that would just involve just a kind of a simple intra-departmental coordinating effort. So the next page is the Committee on the Environment Recommendations, but there's the -- I didn't see the PUB here in our -- I added them in. That was kind of a last minute. So PUB agreed with all the COE recommendations. They also added in introducing the yard waste as a voluntary adoption. One of the things I'll say is switching away from plastic bags, there's all manners of going that direction. Their direction was just have the carts available for folks that want to try that voluntarily. So that's really how they differed from the COE. What about the craft bags? Did they have comments on the -- I think there was one member that commented that they felt like any type of change was going to be pretty radical, and they wanted to kind of ease into this over a couple of years was their direction. I have a suggestion about the craft bags. It might sound kind of silly, but if you've ever seen kind of around Halloween time where -- now this is about plastic bags, but sometimes they have ones that look like a big pumpkin, I think, and they look kind of cute and it's noticeable. I'm against plastic bag use. But if there were craft bags with some design on it where people would notice driving down the street, oh, hey, those are cute, I want one of those, that that could be really effective in getting people to use them and getting that out there. I think on the craft bags, typically what we would see other cities do is it's basically the homeowner will purchase that themselves, much like you do with plastic bags. And I'm just wondering if the city would provide something that's cute -- anyway, again -- We can provide the cost on that. We would really have a hard time kind of gauging adoption on folks that would take us up on that. Council Member Davis. Can you back to the previous slide? Yes, sir. I think -- I mean, just scanning back over those again, I think that I'm generally on board with your recommendations there. I think there's some real cost savings in each of those that you're talking about. I'm also really concerned about our folks. You mentioned the injury potential and contamination potential on yard waste. The only thing I might add to the craft bags is they are a little bit more expensive and they are a little bit harder to get. Not all your Aldi might not have it if that's where you get your trash bags, all that kind of thing. So if y'all could look into city distribution, not at city's cost, just that you could buy them from the city. They drop -- Basically, we source a bulk of those and you can purchase some of those. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, when fall comes around, the city has those available for purchase and they add it to your bill. But I think -- I know that home chemical collection was a big item for the two committees. That's an enormous collection expense and some of our best benchmark neighbors don't do it. I think we might even see an increase in the amount of chemicals we divert if we have well-publicized periodic events. So I'm in favor of ending the curbside collection and going to a weekly or monthly collection event, something that -- it's in the paper. You see it on Facebook. It's time to take your paint down to the collection event. And otherwise, I think all of the recommendations on this slide are -- I think that's the direction I'd like to move in. Okay. Okay. Let's go back to the next slide, the recommendations. So what is up here that wasn't on your previous slide? In other words, does the Committee on the Environment and/or PUB have a recommendation that staff is not recommending? So there's two up here. Let me double-check. The first one is introduce electronic service requests. I think that's -- we agree with that. That's part and parcel of the new system, which we're going to be trying to procure next year. We definitely think that's appropriate. Introducing commercial bulk collection, that was one of the things that we recommended that the COE and the PUB agreed with. They agreed with the schedule service. The one thing that was new that was introduced was introducing commercial brush collection. And the only concern we have with that is how do we distinguish which business gets that service and which doesn't? I think we can establish a rate structure that is fair. I don't know of too many other cities that are doing it, but it doesn't mean that it's not possible, I think. I'm not sure even what that means. Okay. So if you're saying that there's a tree trimming service that has a particular building and that's where they take all of their brush and their tree -- That would be our concern, and I'm not sure how often that would happen. So you're talking about when you say introduce commercial brush collection, remember that one slide, that picture we saw where it looked like three huge trees had been cut down. If I saw that picture correctly, the whole front of that house was four, five, six feet tall. I don't know how much deep with trees. Tree remnants. So what exactly -- I don't know what that means. Commercial brush collection from a residential property? From a commercial business? What does that mean? That was John's suggestion. I'm not sure. Okay. All right. Yeah, I would be -- I mean, and he's not here -- he may be here for the 630 meeting, but I don't -- that's going to be very hard to determine. Like, I'm thinking of that one thing you saw out there where the big tree was at the front or a couple of trees. Okay. We're going to charge somebody for that. What are we going to charge them? And then what you're going to have is this, finger pointing. So I just need to have a little bit more information on that. Well, one of the things that we've talked about internally is whenever we set a restriction or an excess volume rate on brush and some of these other services is should we be less costly than a commercial entity to do this? And I think if we step into that arena, we need to make sure that our prices are such that it's more beneficial if you have the means that you bring it to the landfill yourself. Because if you're paying us to do it and we're more cost effective than your actual tree trimming operation is to do it, then we're going to be very busy with that type of brush. No, I mean, just like on the Introduce the Commercial Bulk Collection, what happens, in fact, it happened this week around a dumpster. There's five or six or seven pieces of furniture, whatever, that did not come from that particular unit that may be servicing that. So I think people would pay, I think commercial people would pay to say, hey, can we schedule it? Number one, you're not driving around looking for it. And it may be just on a specific day. You can only request it on a certain day. But yeah, there is a cost of convenience to having to find somebody to haul that off to the landfill. So my hunch is you could probably, because what you're saying is if you have it less, if the cost is less than if somebody loaded it up in their own truck and paid the fee at the landfill, whatever that price is, that it would be less than that. But that loading up, that taking it there, and the time. That's the convenience cost. I mean, yeah, and that's probably more so than what it is that you're actually paying out dollars at the landfill. It will vary. Yeah, certainly. Councilmember Amartya, do you have a question? Okay. Yes, Councilmember Riggs. Yeah, I just want to, I'm good with these recommendations. I'm not okay with the first one and I am absolutely not okay getting rid of the HCC curbside pickup because what you're doing is you're saying, well, not everybody wants to hold on to something for months at a time and where that's going to go is in your green bin. And then you're going to have paint, you're going to have chemicals, you're going to have, because when they want it gone, they want it gone then. They're not going to hold on to it. So it's going to be completely going to the landfill. It's an environmental nightmare. If you can have somewhere where you can call and you can put it out and someone will come get it the very next day. I mean, I think that is the one thing that we need to make sure that we maintain along with these others. And I will just say that, I mean, I appreciate all of the recommendations and the consultants' work. They did a thorough job, but what they were looking for is efficiency and savings. They weren't necessarily looking at what was best for the customers, what our residents want and what is best for the environment. So that's what we tried to look at as we were going through some of the suggestions on COE and came up with these suggestions. So you said two things. One is you were opposed to the cutting the curbside collection of home chemical collection. But you said that you weren't for the first recommendation. What recommendation are you talking about? For that one. Oh, so I thought you had two different ones. It's the same one. Okay, so there's the slide first of staff recommendations and part of that was... Can we go back to that? And it talks about the fee and... Okay, no, that's fine. So it's one and the same. Right. Go ahead, Council Member Davis. Oh, I'm sorry. Were you finished, Council Member Griggs? Well, yeah. And then I just wanted to say that and also I feel like a lot of this stuff that we found out about the solid waste is that we're unorganized and there's inefficiencies. And I feel like it would be fair. It wouldn't be fair to go ahead and start cutting all of these services that our residents are used to before we attempt to organize and do things the right way first to make sure that it's not something that we can fix on our own before we just start, you know, randomly taking away services that our residents are used to. So, I agree with you philosophically. I think the goal is to keep the paint cans and other stuff out of the green bins. I think more people will utilize this service if instead of periodically we have to remind them there's a phone number that you call and there's a service that's available. I think if they know that there's an event coming up or we're advertising, there's a weekly event or a collection or whatever, I think more people are apt to utilize that than the folks who are the 14 per day folks who are utilizing our $3/4 million pickup service. So, I don't think it's an either/or. I think it's just a better way of catching some of the same folks. And then to your other point about efficiencies, it's harder to design a more efficient system when you're also changing the wheels on the car as it's driving down the road. I think some of these we can do and introduce the efficiencies as they make the changes. You know, if you're redesigning the whole routing system based around an electronic thing, maybe it's just as easy as clicking a couple of boxes and you change your structure. But at the same time, I feel like it's better to make the changes ahead of time and then introduce the efficiencies after you've redesigned the rate structure and all that. So, what we talked about doing in the conversation was that having a customer profile, a customer account where you can go on to and say, I have a bulky item, I have a home chemical collection today, I have -- so it's efficient and it routes into their routing so that the people in the neighborhood, the drivers know exactly where to go and what to send. So they're not driving around that the people picking up the carts aren't radio in, oh, hey, there's something here and something here. So what I'm just suggesting is instead of just eliminating something that benefits the elderly, benefits those with disabilities, benefits those who have no vehicles, benefits those who can't make it to a drop off location, anyway, that's what I'm saying. That's where I'm coming from on that one item. >> Okay. Councilmember Armitage. >> Yes. And I just want to throw in my support for also for call service for home chemical collection. I love that idea about having something that would coordinate, you know, some sort of software program that would coordinate with routes. So using the, you know, engage denton app, you know, which people really like that might be another possibility. But I worry that and I understand, you know, councilmember Davis, what you're saying, you know, people don't generally like having chemicals around their house. I know that we even were lucky to have a house with a lot of space and we have in our garage, there's kind of a section of the garage where we are kind of stockpiling all these chemicals for my husband to eventually bring over. And it's kind of creepy and if we weren't so, you know, environmentally conscious, I mean, it would be so easy just to dispose of it so much easier. So having something where if people want to dispose of it, making it as easy as possible, I would love to see that possibility explored without preventing, you know, the option for those who want to go and drop it off. And I will kind of, I'll throw this out here too now that, you know, I've heard stories of when people go to drop off stuff at the landfill that sometimes people get kind of turned away and maybe they're there for something that the landfill doesn't do. You know, but I've heard several stories about councilmember Armitage, if I could. I mean, I appreciate this. We're running short on time and we're trying to get some direction on this. So customer service at the landfill at the point of entry, something to look into. Thanks. Councilmember Nelson. I just don't personally believe that someone who had bothered to call, if it wasn't going to be the very next day, would then go, well, heck with you and toss it. If they're going to toss it, they would just toss it. So, you know, I'm cool with the idea of having an answer for them and the answer doesn't have to be, we'll be out there tomorrow. And if it's, you know, whatever is kind of an efficient way to route, certainly love the idea of knowing exactly where the pickups are going to be. But, you know, if that's less frequently than every day, that's okay with me. So real quick on the chemical collection. I mean, if there's a few people who are using that service a lot, if we have that profile, then it may be something we just have to look at. If you want to come drop it off, it's free. You collect it, you call in schedule service, there's a predetermined charge of what that should be because And I think to that point, that's kind of how Louisville is running their program. Yeah, that's how they're doing it. Because, I mean, we've got to understand that sometimes when the entire city through its rate structure is paying for the convenience factor of a few, then, and I understand about the disabled, I understand those without cars, I understand all those things. They can still get it picked up at the curb. But if we're spending almost a million dollars for a small subset of people for this particular type of service, I'm not saying you have to bill it all. I'm saying it's worth looking at what would that charge be that this council could then look at and make that determination. Because in my understanding, that's what you're saying, is we're spending a lot of money on that program for, I don't want to say a few, but it's not predominantly used by most people, is that correct? That's correct. And I think maybe we can kind of meld a few of these things together. And so we're talking about frequency, we're talking about having access to curbside collection, we're also talking about introducing a fee. And so a couple of things, especially for like disabled and folks that have challenges getting things even to the curb, we have a program for that already. Basically, we do kind of backdoor service if you will. We actually get out of the truck and pull that out. And so if someone prequalifies for that, then if we have a fee structure in place, we could look at waiving that for that type of situation. Gotcha. Okay. So I think these are all good ideas that we can kind of take back and look at. And again, I think with a program like Home Chemical Collections, if we charge $254 for a collection, no one's ever going to take us up on that. We can introduce a nominal fee like Louisville has, look at the frequency of that and start redefining how we deliver that service to make it more equitable and more efficient. Councilmember Riggs. And so what about people who do have cars and they don't want to put their kids in their car with lots of chemicals and all of these opened paint cans that can spill out in their car as they're driving out to the landfill? I mean, I'm just trying to think of everyone who could use this service, and I don't know that 14 people a day every day is a bad number. And I'm also curious if the reuse store is included in this $254 cost because that's a pretty cool thing that we have. And we haven't talked about that when people, when they come to pick up the chemicals or come to pick up the paint, we have a reuse store where these go into and they can be resold. So that's, is that included? One quick point of clarification, we don't resell, it's basically free to anybody that's a resident. Okay, I'm sorry, it's free, it's a free store, which is even a better service. So I don't know, is that part of this cost in that collection? We haven't included that because really what we've looked at is we're focusing on the collections. The reuse store also focuses in on the folks that are coming out there and basically taking this away. Our goal is to divert it, and so if we can't divert it through the reuse, we divert it through other means. Sounds like what I'm hearing is everybody's okay with everything, but there's still some question about the home collection, home chemical collection. We've heard anything from do away with it, which that doesn't seem to be the consensus, but how do we make it more cost effective given the service? And we can certainly come back and have a discussion on that. Obviously Councilmember Briggs doesn't feel like there should be a charge and it should be collected. Councilmember Armitage, some of us, but I just want to hear the data. Right. Because people who don't want to stick kids in their cars with chemicals, are you saying that if it was $5 or if it was $10 that somehow there's going to be an objection to, I mean, if you want to get rid of chemicals, because, who was it, Mayor Pro Tem said or somebody said, Councilmember Meltzer, if people are going to dump illegally, it's not going to matter whether we give them free curbside service or anything like that, because that's about going to the conscious or the value system of an individual. People who are responsible stewards of their environment will work with the system reasonably. I mean, we want to make it easy, we want to make it convenient, but does that mean that we don't also, for some certain types of issues, want to recover some of that cost? So I don't think that's an unreasonable discussion to continue to have, but, I mean, it sounds like we're not just going to discontinue curbside. We're just going to talk about is it scheduling, do you schedule it? Sure. And then if any, if there's a cost associated with it. Right. And that gives us enough parameters we can come back during the rate discussion and provide you two or three options to take a look at. Okay. And we can say no rate. Sure. Absolutely. All right. So you have your direction. I'm going to go ahead and call the closed session meeting because we've got dinner waiting and we need to get through that before 630. And then if we have time we'll come back with agenda items E and we can probably do E and we can do G probably in the council chambers during that item for individual consideration. However, if council member Ryan, he stated to me before the work session started today that he doesn't know, he thinks he'll be able to make the 630 meeting. If he can't, he would like us to, you know, just take that in consideration depending on how that moves along on that particular agenda item because he'd want his voice heard. So let's go ahead. I need to call the -- we will now move into closed session at 530 to consider the following items, which is deliberations regarding real property under Texas Government Code Section 551.072 and consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code Section 551.071. Let's go ahead and grab it. Okay. Here we go. In five, four, three, two. Thank you. And welcome back to this work session. It is -- we're back on an open session. It's 559 and we are item B in the work session report on today's agenda and it's item I, ID19-1108, receive a report, hold a session, and give staff direction regarding the solid waste department's recycling program. Welcome back. It is now take two at 6 o'clock and we are on item ID19-1108, receive a report, hold discussion, and give staff direction regarding the solid waste department's recycling program. And so with that, thank you. Thank you, counsel. My name is again Ethan Cox, director of public works for the city. I have a brief update for you on our recycling program today. It's an unfortunate bit of news, but I think we do have some good news and some progress to share. Quickly, because I know Tom is of the essence, we did send out a May 10 staff report to the council detailing some issues that we've run into with our material recovery facility, Pratt Industries, most notably their inability to sell certain recyclable materials and having to landfill those materials. So real quickly, I'm going to go through the contents of that staff report and then give you a little bit of additional background in the next steps. So March 26, 2019, we learned that Pratt is landfilling glass, plastics three through seven. We as staff didn't have any prior notice of that and immediately we initiated a contract review. I'll go into more details on the next slide, but ultimately in reviewing the contract, the lack of communication was an issue. Ultimately, we did find the other activities were in keeping with the contract and the permissions that that provides. Following the review, or actually during the review, Pratt was able to secure another buyer for plastics three through seven in Louisiana. They started resuming shipments of those and stopped landfilling those items on that date, and that's continued to the present date. On April 29, following the contract review, we issued a written notice to Pratt requiring that they provide us a formal written notice requesting to landfill these items. And on May 7, they issued that prior request. On May 14, Pratt was able to receive a verbal commitment from a glass recycler in Houston to purchase the glass that's being produced in our system. My understanding is that the first load went yesterday. We have two additional loads going to that facility this week. So it does look like the prospects are good that we have a secure buyer for the time being on both products. A little bit of information on the contract itself. It involves a land lease as well as processing agreements. This agreement, both agreements expire October 2, 2027. So we do have a few more years left in the agreement. The program materials are listed here, which is very comparable to what most agreements were whenever this was secured. A few of the key provisions, ownership of the recyclables. Pratt has the, basically the city has the obligation to deliver all recyclables that we collect in our curbside collection to Pratt Industries. Upon delivering those to their facility, they purchase the products for us and ownership immediately transfers to them. At that stage, they own the recyclables as well as the sole responsibility for marketing and the sale of those recyclables. Pratt's been decent to work with on this as we provided recommendations, bounced ideas off of them on different avenues to approach, but ultimately the sole responsibility is theirs to sell these products. If they're unable to sell any of those recyclables or the market prevents them from moving those in any fashion, they also must pay us for the disposal of anything that goes in the landfill, which for them, they receive the lowest published rate that we have, which is $24.50 per ton. One question, Ethan. Is that right in their contract, that disposal rate, or is that just something that, is that unwritten or? No, it's actually, it's not written with this price point particularly, or specifically. Basically what it says is they're obligated, or the city's obligated to offer them the lowest published rate that we have for landfill disposal. So this is our wholesale rate of $24.50 per ton. So and that is for other cities? Wholesale extends to others, help me out with this, other outside haulers that we accept. These are not contract basis, it was basically in the past done on a volume basis is how those were determined. Is that the fee that we recently raised? It is. A little bit? It is. And I had an earlier question, so you said you recently found out about Pratt and you didn't know before, how did you find out? So we had a citizen concern that was brought up to me at the State of the City address, put that citizen in contact with members of Pratt, he escalated to one of their senior vice presidents, he found out about it and informed me, and then I made the call to Pratt on March 26. Okay, thank you. Thank you, citizen. Thank you, okay, Ethan, go ahead. I'm sorry. Just to round out our understanding, how would the citizen have been aware? Excuse me? How would that citizen have been aware? He actually made contact, escalated through the chain of command at Pratt, with specific questions, and sometime in that discourse this came about. Okay, thanks. Thank you, go ahead. A little bit of information on the impact of the landfill, so obviously this is stuff that we would ordinarily be recycling and moving away. We included a pie chart here for regional waste composition. This is based on the north central Texas cog. So glass typically accounts for about 7% of the residential rate waste production. Plastics are about 16%. Keep in mind that plastics three through seven are a subset of plastics. Typically what you see is about a third of these materials get recycled from a residential customer. Based on that information, as well as what we see from past shipments through Pratt, we estimate that about 50 to 100 tons per glass per month is produced and recycled in our program, and about 10 to 20 tons of plastics three through seven are recycled per month. The landfill, just for context, receives about 24,000 tons of waste per month. We're not downplaying this. We just want to make sure that that's in context. One of the reasons why we didn't see this coming is we do monitor waste received at the landfill from all of our various customers, particularly our large customers that are on the wholesale rate. We really did not see an uptick in the waste being received from Pratt Industries. Part of the reason why is in response to the market, they've stopped accepting a lot of recyclables from surrounding communities, simply because it doesn't pay. So we didn't really see an uptick in the landfill disposal from Pratt, but what we did see is a decrease in the amount of recyclables they're accepting from other haulers. Just one second. Go ahead. I'm just having a hard time digesting this, because when I look at the waste composition, paper and plastic is some 40%, but it's such a minuscule portion, the recycled component. So minuscule, so are you telling us that the vast majority of recyclable materials don't make it into the blue bin? Or, well, yeah, how do I reconcile the pie chart and the table? I think traditionally this is waste generated by a standard customer. We have some customers that recycle very, very diligently. We also have other customers that don't recycle as much. Typically what you will see with glass is about one-third of the glass produced as waste is put in the blue bin. That basically breaks out to that 50 to 100 tons a month. From a residential standpoint, we see about 68 tons coming into our system on a monthly basis. You see a little over 30 tons coming in from a commercial basis. Okay, sorry, I guess I'm just still baffled, because actually if I had a paper, plastic, and glass, it's 38 and 7, 43% of the total volume. And even if you say that only a third of it goes in the right stream, I realize a lot of that is commercial, not residential. That seems like we're at, what are we, like 1% of the total volume is the recycling tonnage? This doesn't get straight down to your point, but typically if you look at just residential refuse versus residential recycling, you see there are about 20% is being recycled. So there's opportunities to recycle more of that. We just don't necessarily see it in the blue bin always. But the bulk of what we're seeing in the numbers reflects the fact that commercial doesn't go into recycling at all. No, this pie chart is based on residential waste production, residential waste composition. We wanted to provide that as context just to say this is what folks typically produce. Right, but the fact that it's such a, I'm sorry to go on, but I'll wrap it up in a second. But the fact that it's only, what is that, say 75 and 15, 90 tons out of 23,800, that's like a half a percent, less than half a percent. The 23,800 is basically representative of everything that we process at the landfill. Well, that's my point. So the reason that it's only less than half of a percent is because the vast majority is not residential and doesn't even touch the- Residential is about 10% of what we process at the landfill. Okay, all right. So it's a little bit, you know, could be a little bit confusing to people to see that your recycling is so little, it's so little because residential is so little. I think relatively speaking, residential has a better recycling rate than most of the other categories, but again, residential is a fairly small amount of what we actually dispose at the landfill. Yeah, that's important to understand. Thank you. Okay. One of the things we reviewed when we provided council an update on recycling back in February was basically this flow chart. It's kind of a high level review of the kind of the value chain of what happens to recyclables after we place it in the blue bin. So over on the left hand side you have our collection vehicles which then transport that to the MRF, which is Pratt Industries who sorts transports that in destination to processors to make it ready for in market. Like we mentioned last time, Pratt is vertically integrated so we can be reasonably assured that all of our paper and cardboard is going to be recycled as long as that's clean. They have their own paper mills where they are exposed to some of the market fluctuations however is for plastics glass and metals where they have to contract with third party recyclers. So what happened in this situation is the processors that they were partnering with and act as stricter quality controls on both of these materials or just stop buying them outright. That is in response to some of the volatility in the commodities market. So I'll get into more details with that in just a moment but this is definitely in reaction to some of the market volatility that we've been seeing. A little bit of more information on the specific types of materials we're talking about. Plastics three through seven, I know we've had some questions on the numbering system of plastics. The numbers are basically just corresponding to the types of polymers which are these little abbreviations that are used to make those materials. So what that really tells a manufacturer or recycler is here's this type of material I'm dealing with, this is the other type of material I can make out of it when it's recycled. Some of these are easier to recycle than others. Plastics one and two like this, they're moving very fluidly in the market, prices are low but there's a ready supply and ready demand for it. Some of your other plastics are harder to recycle, some of that is like plastics number seven, those are mixed polymers so it's very difficult to recycle that. Some of these others are brittle, they don't do well with the separation and sorting process. Yes sir. If I may, I just want to say this graphic is fantastic, I've been on that about who looks at the bag to look at the numbers. So I appreciate this and I'd like to see it utilized more just so people can begin to kind of form what goes where, what's recyclable, what's trash, that sort of thing. I appreciate you putting that together. Certainly. And I wouldn't be here if I didn't take the time right now to say that we know that recycling isn't necessarily going to save the planet. We need to do it, it's going to help keep the emissions down and stuff out of the landfill, but we have a plastic pollution issue, not just in our city but everywhere. I mean there's islands of plastic floating around, it's taken over. And so I'm glad we're having the conversation about recycling plastic, but I really would like for this council or the city to start talking about ways to reduce uses or just to think of other things to use besides plastic. And our city policies, and the municipal policies, just anywhere that we can to start getting creative because it's, you know, we may find it, you know, that eventually it gets easier to recycle them but it's not going to take care of the ultimate problem. So I just wanted to take the moment to say that. Appreciate that. Right now. Okay. And then, Councilmember Arbiter. That's a perfect segue into what I was going to ask which is for a staff report on looking into what other cities have done to incentivize, and I use that term meaning either financial incentives or any other form of incentive reduction of plastics, especially plastics, three through seven. And reuse of glass and plastics. Because, you know, if there's one thing that this Pratt fiasco has helped kind of my household think about is where we are reassessing what we buy and trying to reduce our use of those things and trying to reuse glass which is such a reusable material. Thank you. So a couple of challenges here beyond just the, the types of materials. This is a very volatile market with very few regional buyers, our understanding is there's basically two buyers in the southwest region, one of which is in Louisiana, that that was the price loads after they found that they couldn't move it or sell it on the end markets. The other thing too is this is an example of a bail these types of plastics. We go through multiple sorts or progress or multiple source even with this buyer so even though this bails being shipped to that processing facility only about 50% of what's in that bail can actually be manufactured into another product. And so I think those points are well made is we do need to try to reduce and reuse as much as we can and try to avoid that. In terms of glass some of the challenges that we have here. Glass is very easily recyclable the biggest issues that we have a glass or quality, and that's not specific to us that's pretty much throughout the industry. So a little bit of background on glass is it basically has to go through two different sorts there's different colors of glass. So what Pratt does is they basically sort the materials away from other recyclables contamination their facility. And it goes to the processor they sort based on color. And so they have these little bitty color size pieces of glass here they need to be separated by color. If there's contamination in there and makes that process extremely difficult. And ultimately that's what led to their decision is, if you got contamination here, we don't need it. Nothing changed with our process nothing changed with Pratt is just their quality standards tighten because of where the market is right now, and that's ultimately what led to their decision. So quick update on our dent and program plastics three through seven are currently being purchased by a firm in Louisiana glass is currently being accepted by eco glass recycling in Houston they're a new processor to the region. There's no guarantees that these facilities will continue to accept the materials but we are hopeful that that does continue will provide updates to counsel if that changes. Quick update on the market in general, foreign markets. The outlook is still shaky India similar to China banned plastic imports recently in March. Right now Southeast Asia is really the only backstop in terms of what China was accepting at one point. I would encourage you if you're interested Google plastics in Malaysia, and it's really, I think it's a matter of time before they start imposing similar bands of their own. That puts more pressure on domestic markets, but we do have some good news there. We are seeing domestic investment, foreign investments, notably Chinese manufacturers are basically putting some investments domestically to try to start picking up some of the supply that's being flooded into the market so we're hopeful that that continues. There's also legislation being pushed at the federal and state level to try to incentivize manufacturers to use recycling feedstock. Having said we don't expect the focus on quality to change. I think the way I would put it to you all is, is there ever a market for dirty material. And that's really why our focus needs to be we need to recycle responsibly and do what we can to make sure we're providing clean product that's easier to move in the system. We've added a little bit of price points here. One thing I do want to note is glass is most certainly not profitable for any recycling facility, you actually have to pay for a processor to accept your glass and so certainly from press standpoint there were definitely needs to be an improved communication on their part. But ultimately they are taking a loss on any glass load that they ship. I'm not a good partner to work with I'm not sitting here defending their decision not to communicate this but I do think that they are making efforts to try to move this material in the market. In terms of next steps residents and businesses we don't want anyone to change their behaviors I know it's easy to get discouraged when you see news like this. We want folks to continue to recycle responsibly, put the same things in your blue bin that are program materials we definitely want to see that continue. At this point we do have about 12 to 18 months of education efforts planned out to kind of target some of the things that we're seeing in the market, try to cut down on some of the confusion and misinformation out there. In terms of Pratt they have committed to 48 hour advanced notice of any changes impacting our program I believe that was in the letter that was provided with the ISR. We're also meeting with them monthly to receive market and program updates. We do meet with them regularly this should have came up during those discussions. I think they're regretful that and we have their basically obligation that they'll continue or improve communications on it. From staff's perspective we're taking the approach of trust but verify. We appreciate that they're committing to communicate with us, but we are going to be auditing the loads that are going into their facility, making sure that things aren't being counted as contamination when it shouldn't be, that it should be recycled that is put on the proper truck. We're also going to be monitoring the loads coming out of the back of the facility. It's easy to say we should have seen this on the backside, but again to the earlier point glass is a small piece of this. What we would typically do is this is an example of a waste load inspection. We would fan this out and basically look for any types of recyclables that should have been sent to market in a higher quantity. Those are the steps that we're taking in terms of next steps and I'm happy to stand for any questions you have. Thank you for this. My question is were there actually loads that were not contaminated being called contaminated to be thrown away just because there wasn't a place to send them? I'm just wondering not like as an intentionally deceptive, but what we were thinking was extremely contaminated and not being able to be recycled, but ultimately just they didn't have any place to put it so it was going into the landfill. Is it possible that our contamination rate isn't? I think the contamination, so going back to this, there's two legs of this, I want to make sure I don't confuse everybody. So the contamination by contract is a visual inspection. So basically our trucks back up, drop all the recyclables on the floor. There's a visual inspection that says this is 20% contamination. So when we do an inbound audit, what our staff is going to do is we're going to be side by side with the Pratt employee. And they say this is 20% contamination. That's because of this mattress and this wood waste over here in this. We're going to calibrate what the contamination rate is. So I don't know that I can answer your question and say for certain that that's not happening. What I can say is that on the other side of it, the waste coming into the facility, that was waste that they were paying for. What Pratt shared with me and what we've seen on auditing their contamination inspection is they were not counting glass or plastics 3 through 7 as contamination. The loads that we've inspected with them in the past, we were pretty much in agreement with. That's 30% contamination. It's reasonable to expect that. Does that make sense? It does. I just know that there's a lot of, you know, community awareness right now and people are working really hard to do the right thing. And so I just wanted, you know, to make sure that for them to continue to do the right thing and that we'll get it right. Just hang in there with us. And we're going to be documenting this and basically what we're doing is kind of a blind calibration. So they make their assessment, we make our assessment, we compare notes, we document. And so if there are differences of opinion on that, the idea is that we surface those, whatever those loads are hitting the ground and make sure that we're seeing things correctly and that they're seeing things correctly. So that kind of information is shared with the public and that we can confidently say 20% contamination is exactly what we're seeing or 30%. And Ethan, so before Councilman Meltzer's question, frame for us, what do you need from us? So what direction do you need anything or is it just an update? We really don't need direction. We just wanted to provide you an update. We knew that this is a topic that is near and dear to many hearts and we were disappointed to get the news, but we do feel like perhaps making some efforts so we just wanted to give you an update on that. Perfect. So Councilmember Meltzer and then Armature. So if we had sterling contamination rates, low contamination rates, that would be good for Pratt and it would be good for the City of Denton, yes? Yes. So when I asked for best practices, you know, I got a response like, well our practices are really quite good and here they are. What I'm really after is who has sterling contamination rates better than ours and what do they do? And is there anything that we might be able to learn from? The availability of data is hard to come by and part of the reason for that is you're dealing with a lot of third party contractors that deal with waste in some communities. So the information that we have that we talk about here, contamination rates, what gets landfilled, what doesn't, in a lot of communities all they know is I put it in the cart and it disappeared. And so it kind of narrows the field in terms of who we can talk to about what's working and what isn't. I think in most communities, I'm not trying to skirt the question, in most communities they're catching up like us. The veil was kind of pulled back whenever China stepped out. Contamination was not a big topic of conversation with recycling until that point. So I would love to tell you that I found someone with a silver bullet solution. What we have found, the folks that are weathering this pretty well do have inspections going on on a regular basis. They do have some form of compliance and enforcement measures to get those big contaminators out of the system. Folks that are taking it a step further than us are going out in a regimented fashion lifting the lids not just commercially but also residentially and being a little bit more forceful in terms of changing behaviors. I think that's something that we really want to see the fruits of what we've done so far over the next few months. We just started our compliance measures in February. We're already seeing some improvements. It's just we don't have enough data to say is this good enough yet. Could we call the ten biggest Murphs and ask them what cities have sterling? We can certainly make some phone calls on that front, absolutely. Okay, and then Council Member Soave, you can close us out three or four minutes and then we'll have the slides. Yeah, I'll try to be real brief. Just kind of wanted to go through my bullet points for the whole presentation. I already mentioned about the incentivizing, reducing reuse, raising the cost of landfill use for other cities. I know that's something we've talked about, but maybe that needs revisiting and then given the latest news. Better bin design, you know, we'd love to see a staff report on that could be bundled in with other staff reports on recycling. You know, bins that commercial bins that lock lids that, you know, to avoid rain, you know, contamination caused by rain. Different size bins, you know, whatever the options are. And third, sorry, fourth, it would be great while we're not recycling glass and plastic three through seven. I totally understand you want people to continue to just put in the bin. That makes sense to me. But it would be great to see kind of feelers sent out into the arts community to see if maybe somebody has any ideas, maybe to the Public Art Committee, Greater Denton Arts Council on a reusable, repurposed glass art project of some kind. And also with plastics, I did a little looking into that and was learning a lot. It's much more complicated than it sounds, but there's stuff you can do with repurposed glass. It's not going to solve the problem, but at least to show that we as a city, you know, we're not just turning a blind eye and throwing it away. And if there was a place where people could, the city could be involved and say, hey, donate your even wine bottles, you know, and we turn them into those things you can melt down in a kiln and have City of Denton on it, you know, something like that. OK, thank you. And just real quick, I don't want to get people the false impression that we're not recycling glass and plastics now. We are recycling glass. We are. Yes. They got buyers. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, it's still all good. But when does it kick in? They're they're moving loads for both materials right now, so it's being recycled. Yeah, I apologize. That's the update right here. OK, OK, so awesome. Plastics have been recycled since. Learn to have more traumatic deliveries. So sorry, no, no, the one thing I missed on that was kind of when that actually is starting to happen. This was late April for plastics. Glass started shipping this week. So this, OK, so anyway, thank you. That is hooray. I will say this, though, the reduce and reuse side of things, again, to the earlier point is if there's opportunities to get this before it hits the recycling bin, we would definitely advocate for that. Yeah. So still good idea. But thank you so much for correcting me. Sure. Thank you. So thank you. Great presentation. Appreciate your time on this. And so we will close out. So we will leave item G. Are we going to take it up and take it up and be combined with the individual consideration? Yes, we'll take it up. So we'll take that up in there. So we'll close out this work session at six twenty seven and we'll reconvene in council chambers. Welcome, everybody, to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It's May 21st, 2019. We do have a quorum. I will call this meeting to order. Our first item on the agenda is to pledge allegiance to the U.S. and Texas flag. Please stand with me if you're able. I pledge allegiance to the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I pledge allegiance to the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Our first is a proclamation about concerning the Christchurch mosque attacks and our remembrance of those. If anybody wants to come down to participate in this, please feel free to come down and I'm going to allow you a chance to introduce yourself. So anybody that wants to join us down front, please, please come down. And Councilmember Armature, I believe that you had sort of spearheaded this, so I wanted to give you a couple of minutes if you wanted to sort of say a few words. Oh, gosh. Well, I won't take a whole couple minutes, but I could take you in much longer than that. Just wanted to say the idea for this was born out of a global tragedy, but ultimately it's about something that preceded and will continue ever after that tragedy. And that is just kind of recognizing what amazing contributions our very diverse Islamic community gives to the city of Denton. And I just wanted to have a way to to recognize that again. So it's the the context was born out of tragedy, but in just a very positive way, just to say thank you to really important element of our our community. Thank you. If you all wouldn't mind, if you'll turn around here so you can face the people if you go ahead and introduce yourself. Imam Mohammed, Islamic Society of Denton. My name is Khalil Khan. I'm the treasurer and acting president of the Islamic Society of Denton. Assalamu alaikum, Donovan Wesley. I'm a brother at the Islamic Society here in Denton. Hello, Faraz Qureshi, a member of the Islamic Society of Denton. I would just like to add that the mosque here in Denton was the first mosque in the state of Texas. So it's had a long presence here in town. And I think that under the imams leadership in the last 10 years. It's been trying very much to increase its outreach in the community and just kind of expose itself to members of the community. And just get to know people better. And I concur with Councilmember Armitage that this is this is a way to celebrate our diversity. Unfortunately, it comes in the wake of a very, very tragic happening and just the loss of life is just horrendous. So this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton. Whereas to honor members of the Islamic community who were injured or lost their lives in the March 15th, 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. And whereas the Al Noor mosque and Linwood Islamic Center in Christchurch, New Zealand, were attacked by gunmen during Friday prayers on March the 15th, 2019. And whereas the attack resulted in the deaths of 50 innocent people and shall forever impact the lives of the wounded, the families and friends of the victims and both the New Zealand and international Islamic community. And whereas acts of terrorism such as this with the goal to frighten and intimidate law-abiding citizens from the unfettered practice of their religion have no place in a free and equal society founded on basic human rights. And whereas those who follow the Islamic faith are an integral part of the fabric of the city of Denton by making significant contributions to our community and sharing our collective desire to build a better future for all Denton residents. Now, therefore, may it be proclaimed that the mayor of the city of Denton seeks to remember the victims who were lost or wounded during the Christchurch mosque attacks and offers its condolences and to express its continued support of the greater Denton Islamic community. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Did you want to say a few words? Okay. Assalamu alaikum. In the name of God, most merciful, most gracious. On behalf of Islamic Society of Denton, I'd like to say that we value this proclamation and appreciate it. And it gave us opportunity to be more involved and cooperated. We are glad we are members of city of Denton. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Wonderful. Okay, this proclamation is for the concern for the hungry day if Tom will come down and anybody else who would like to be here. Hopefully. Okay, don't be shy. You'd like to introduce yourselves and then just share a few words about what we're proclaiming here. I'm Tom Newell with the Denton Community Food Center. I'm Vicki Oppenheim with the Denton Community Market. I'm Rachel Weaver with the Denton Community Market. I'm Wendy McGhee with Our Daily Bread. Brianna Durden with the United Way of Denton County. Michael Pertle with Vision Ministries at Denton Bible Church. Kandace Wallace with Our Daily Bread. Tell us about the day of hunger. The mayor's day of hunger is patterned after a national trend on a number of topics where the mayor in that particular city takes on an issue and tries to kind of highlight that or spotlight it. So the mayor's day of hunger in this case of concern for hunger is the issue here. According to United Way study, 21 percent of our local population is hunger insecure. That means they don't know where their next meal is going to come from. Forty-four percent of the students in the DISD are on free and reduced lunches. We are a booming community. There's a lot of growth going on here, but all segments of the population are growing. There's a lot of people coming here seeking jobs, a lot of laborers building buildings, and the challenge today is not unemployment. It's underemployment. It's making a living wage in today's economy. Unemployment is down. Wages are rising, but they have not returned to the 2007 level, and a lot of families struggle because of that. So, again, hunger insecurity impacts childhood development in terms of their growth and healthy nature. Their attention in school and learning is affected, and then adults are affected by their impact in the workforce. So spotlight on this to make us a stronger community. Well, thank all of you for what you do to help alleviate that need in our community. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton, whereas the city of Denton recognizes adequate nutrition as a basic goal for each citizen, and whereas no parent should have to send a child to school hungry, no baby should be without the comfort of feedings needed for mental and physical growth, and no elderly person's health should be jeopardized by a lack of appropriate foods. And whereas each day more than 159,000 people in Denton County struggle with food insecurity, that's the 26%. You were talking about 159,000 people in Denton County struggle with food insecurity, which means they do not know where their next meal will come from. And in the Denton Independent School District alone, there are more than 14,000 students or 46% of the student population, almost half that are eligible for free and reduced priced lunches. And whereas the Denton Community Food Center, Denton Community Market, Denton County Friends of the Family, our Daily Bread, NCTC Corinth Campus, Vision Ministries, and United Way of Denton County are working together to stem the rising tide of hunger in Denton. And whereas every resident and business in Denton can help address in our community by donating food to these organizations, by dropping off donations, I'm going to repeat this one more time after we get through, by dropping off donations June the 15th through June the 26th at participating locations which are available online at unitedway.org/mdoc or through an online donation. Now, therefore, I, Chris Watts, Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas, do hereby proclaim June the 29th, 2019 as Concern for the Hunger Day in the City of Denton and ask the citizens of Denton to join in donating food to or volunteering for these organizations within our community that are serving those in need. So I really want to thank you all for what you do in our community. And I'm going to read one more time how you can find the places to donate food, and I believe the website probably also allows you to know where you can donate cash or do it online. And I think it's for every dollar, is it three pounds? Is it three pounds? That's a good memory. Yes, that's a good memory. So if you want to donate monetary, you know, some money, then for every dollar, it equates to three pounds of food that they're able to purchase. So again, it's unitedway.org/mdoc. So thanks again for all that you do in our community to help us alleviate food insecurity in our city. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you. I'm going to come over here. Who gets the proclamation? Okay. One more shout out while we're here. Virgil Strange is in the audience with us tonight, and we want to give appreciation to him because he's providing the space that we're storing all the food in at this point, which space is a shortage to us right now. We're working on that on another project, but he's allowing us to use the old covered grocery store right now, and we appreciate that. Thank you, Virgil. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you all so much. Councilmember Armitage has a comment. Just wanted to make a comment real quick, following up a little plug for our next meeting coming up, our June 3rd lunch meeting in response to the comment about our problem with underemployment and living wages. There's going to be a discussion at the June 3rd council lunch session about living wage for city contractors, which would be something that would be just a dent in this big issue. But relevant nonetheless. Just wanted to mention that. Thanks. All right, we're going to move on to our next agenda item, which is agenda item three presentations from the members of the public. We do have one scheduled presentation. So if we could review the 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. Our next agenda item will be 3B, which is the scheduled citizen reports from members of the public. We have one. Nell Yaldell regarding Social Security tells her she owns property on the wrong block and city records are wrong. Is Miss Yaldell here? Don't see her. OK, well, we'll move on then to the next agenda item, which is agenda item four, which is the consent agenda. I don't believe we had any consent agenda items pulled, did we? No. OK. All right. Chair would entertain action on the consent agenda. I'm going to have to start getting used to a different title for Councilmember Ryan. Councilmember Ryan. Move approval. Councilmember Davis. Second. We have a motion and a second for approval for agenda item four, which is the consent agenda. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries seven zero. We'll move on to agenda item five, which are items for agenda. Excuse me, items for individual consideration. Agenda item five A is consider approval of a resolution appointing members to the board of the Texas Municipal Power Agency, a joint powers agency representing the city of Denton, Texas, and declaring an effective date. Is there a presentation on that or is there? Not that I'm aware of, Mayor. OK. Mr. Quintez here. But this agenda item would recommend that Mayor Watts be reappointed to the TMPA board for a term that would begin July 18th of this year and expire July 18th, 2021. Councilmember Briggs. I was going to make a motion to nominate you back to that board since you've been there from the beginning. And there's a lot going on and finishing up. And I think it would take anyone new in that position just a lot of time to try to catch up to figure out what's going on. I move to approve. Mayor Pro Tem Husspeth. Second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries seven zero. Agenda item five B. Is considered option of an ordinance of the city of Denton, approving a revision to an interlocal agreement between the city of Denton and the University of North Texas for a bike share program owned and administered by the University of North Texas and providing an effective date. Just want to reflect that Councilmember Armitage and Councilmember Meltzer have left the chambers on recusal. Council. My name is Mark Oliphant. I'm the bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the city of Denton. Going to give you a very brief presentation about this item, which is the approval of a bike share interlocal agreement on the consent agenda. You just approve the continuation of the bike share program. And so attached to that, this is UNT's portion of the bike share program. In the last academic year, we have had a pilot program in place, which has had more than 50,000 individual rides of bike share about a little over 90% of those have been students on UNT. And there's about 2500 riders registered in the city and more than 11,000 miles have been ridden during the past during the academic year, which I appreciate very much because those are miles that were not undertaken in the vehicle or something like that. And we are very briefly asking for the City Council to please make two updates and reauthorize this interlocal agreement with UNT. Currently, UNT is permitted up to 250 bicycles, and we would like to request that that increase to 400. And also, there's a current expiration date under the pilot program of May 31st, 2019, so 10 days from today. And we would like to request that there be no expiration date, that we just have a continuous interlocal agreement. And we do have measures in place in case something is not acceptable in the program, so we have enforcement powers within the Transportation Engineering Department. And we've been very pleased over the past year with this program. We have some UNT representatives, I'm sure, nodding vigorously behind me that they have been pleased as well. And that is our request that you please reauthorize this interlocal agreement with no expiration and increase in the number of bicycles. Councilmember Briggs. So on that number, if the number were to go beyond 400, would that come back to us on the bikes? Yes, ma'am, it would. Okay. Well, I would like to make a motion to approve. And I'd like to thank everyone for their hard work on this. It's obviously proven a success for UNT and UNT students with 11,000 miles ridden on the bikes and just this time for the pilot. So you made the motion to approve. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. Did you want to speak as well? Sure, go ahead. So, no, I just want to thank you for the work you've done, thank the responsiveness of the vendor and just the issues that have arisen and also just the data, right? That's very helpful when we're talking about UNT, TW, and just kind of where to go forward as these programs continue to have that solid data. And it's just night and day being here when the bikes disseminated on us the first go around to now is dramatically different. You know, it's just, it is easy to see the management different in approach and it's appreciated. The only question I have just for clarification from the city attorney because I know it was mentioned that it's perpetual, that it doesn't have to be brought back to be renewed, but that there is a provision where if there's circumstances that warrant a termination of that, that that's built in. And so I just want to make sure that if this is the part of the contract or the interlocal agreement that describes what was presented in the presentation, says this agreement may be terminated by written agreement of the parties. That's paragraph, I believe, if I know my Roman numerals, 13, that I could be wrong. Is that the extent of that provision on that? I read through it pretty quickly when I was looking at it earlier. That's the only provision in there that this would allow for both us and UNT at some point in the future just to terminate it by entering some type of written agreement adopted approved by each governing bodies, each entities governing bodies. Yes, sir. I was just going to say this is governed by the bike share program that was just adopted. And so within the bike share program, each vendor has a permit and and there are stipulations and if they violate those, we can. All right. All right. Okay, good. We have a motion and a second. Somehow it disappeared on the. There you go. Councilmember may pretend you want to hit your second. I believe you second. Yeah. All right. So let's vote, please. On agenda item. Oh, we also have a before we vote a white card, which is means not requesting to speak. It's Suzanne Romer is in support of this. The comments are veal ride has been much better managed in the previous bike share company, though I own a bicycle. Their rental bikes have come in handy a few times for me would like to see veal ride continue. So I appreciate that comment. So we're ready to vote on the board, please. Somebody not. Okay, there we go. All right. The motion carries five zero. Someone could retrieve Councilmember Melcer and Councilmember Armitage. I'll go ahead and read the caption. Agenda item five see consider adoption of the ordinance of the city didn't the Texas Home Group Municipal Corporation authorizing the mayor to execute an interlocal cooperation agreement with Denton County, Texas, a duly organized political subdivision of the state of Texas for the installation of bridge guard rails, a roadway safety improvement along Hickory Creek Road in the amount not to exceed thirty five thousand dollars. Oh, and Councilmember Davis has recused. Good evening, everyone. Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Council members. My name is pretend they smoke. I'm the deputy city engineer and a really brief presentation of what this agreement is all about. Wanted to go over quickly go over the existing conditions for Hickory Creek Road. As you know, this is the western most end of Hickory Creek, where data ends into 1830. It is a two lane undivided roadway, lots of horizontal curves, it curves along the creek bed, and it is literally at the edge of the Hickory Creek. There's quite a drop there. So as part of some safety improvements, we work with the county, a portion of this particular roadway segment is within the county and city has part of it. So we work with the county to improve safety along this particular stretch that is right next to the Hickory Creek. So as part of that, the city went ahead and installed pavement markings, race permanent markers, as well as additional signage with LEDs. So they flash as soon as a vehicle is detected. So they're located right at the curve where it is curved. And in conjunction with the county, we actually also installed guardrail along this entire stretch, starting from where it curves all the way to FM 1830. These are considerable improvements compared to what was done in the past. So as part of the interlocal agreement, we, between the county and the city, decided to share the cost. The installation of guardrail was estimated up to $70,000. So that's the total amount on the agreement. A cost sharing of 50/50 was considered. So our city share is about $35,000 and it is coming through the street maintenance fund. I think that's it. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer. Let's see, can you turn back one slide? So, yeah, anyway, I just wanted to thank a staff for just working so quickly. It might not have felt like quickly, but it was, I know, and working with the county, you know, towards this end. And I asked you to move back to this slide. I just wanted to make, point out the attire and the interlocal agreement. I take out, oh, you skipped over that. Yeah. Two little naked guys holding a briefcase and not naked with a tie. Anyway, I just thought that was cute. So anyway, thank you very much. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem? Move approval. Councilmember Meltzer? Second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 5C. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-0. Somebody could ask Councilmember Davis to rejoin us. That would be great. Agenda item 5D is consider nominations appointees to the city boards, commissions and committees, Board of Ethics, Committee on Persons with Disabilities, Health and Business, excuse me, Health and Building Standards Commission, Historic Landmark Commission, Special Citizens Bond Advisory Committee, and the Zoning Board of Adjustment. I believe, do we have a presentation or do we have, so I believe that was received in our backup with the list of the nominees. Did we have any nominees that are not included on that list that have come in late? So they're all on the list? Okay. And I guess we've got Ms. Hayworth on there as well. Yes, okay. All right. Mayor Pro Tem? Husspeth? Yes, sir. I had a question for staff in that presentation, in that list. Did we originally calculate former Councilmember Duff nominating two people and Councilmember Davis appointing two? I thought it was. Well, and I had a question that I received some clarification on that. Is there someone here on staff that can answer that? He was going to answer it, Mr. Puentes. Sorry, I couldn't make it up here earlier. Tony Puente, Chief Financial Officer. When we had that discussion with the City Council regarding nominations, the decision was made at that time to go ahead and allow Councilmember Duff at the time to make the nomination for two people. And there was that discussion for when the new Council was seated. But certainly, if the Council wants to proceed, I'm trying to look at the City Attorney to see if the resolution that formed the committee would allow that. We may need to look at that resolution that formed the Bonneville Advisory Committee to see if we may need to revise that to be able to expand the number of individuals that are on that committee to allow Councilmember Davis to be able to make nominations. I don't have that resolution in front of me, so I couldn't answer that definitively for you. So I just don't typically something like that. We don't include it in a resolution. But again, we would have to look at the resolution if the Council wishes to postpone this item until at the end of the individual consideration item that will allow us and Tony to look at that and verify that if that's one possible option. All right, Councilmember Briggs. Yeah, I hadn't thought of that before, but that would mean that the District three seat had nominated for individuals as opposed to everyone else just nominating to you. Is that what I'm understanding? Yes. Okay. Councilmember Davis. So not trying to, you know, accumulate more power into District three than is strictly necessary, but this decision obviously was made before I was on the Council. It was brought to my attention kind of my orientation that I ought to make some appointments to this board. If my nominees that I've put forward, which I'll just kind of state for the record, one of them is not a District three resident, the District four resident. But I would think that those two spots would then go at large to the Council for the Council to nominate. And if that's the case, then I would still put these same two names in front of the Council and then we'd need to kind of winnow out whatever the slate is left. And these are folks also mentioned both of these people submitted their applications at large to the City Secretary without any one person nominating them. They asked to serve. I was told I had some spots and I thought those people who asked to serve ought to be allowed to. Okay, so I think what we need to do, I mean, I've got a couple of requests to speak, but did you do you have an answer to your question or to his question? I looked at the resolution that was adopted on the 23rd and I know that there weren't any amendments to that. Looking at that resolution, the issue as to whether or not former Councilmember Duff and the new Councilmember for District three would have each two separate nominations is silent. It's not there. So the way I would construe that is whoever is if the previous Councilmember did not make those nominations or maybe just didn't complete them, then the incoming Councilmember, it's his decision in this case, Councilmember Jason Davis to add an additional one if necessary. So I want to I want to summarize what what I'm hearing. First of all, has former Councilmember Duff nominate and two people and that they were approved by this Council. Okay, so they have been approved by the Council. Yes, interject real quick. What the Council had originally discussed was to two nominations per Councilmember plus also adding the members of the bond, the existing bond oversight committee. Those were five members, only three members chose to to seek that nomination and they were appointed by the Council. So there could be two additional seats, if you will, from from those original five, just as a as another option for for the Council. Okay. Okay. I see two requests to speak. Councilmember Davis where you is that just because yours didn't roll offer to you. Okay. Councilmember Briggs is that because yours. No, it's it's because if there's two additional seats that are at large, then then I'm okay with it that way, then you get your own nominations, since stuff with did not withhold those for you. I'm okay with I know both of those people I mean I'm okay with. So I, I don't really have an issue I was just, I didn't know that there were extra seats available, and that we were going to have to go back in and do some maneuvering and kick people off so that that would have been my concern. Pro Tem. No, it kind of basically same sentiment that I'm okay with with Tony is proposed, but sliding Councilmember former councilmember ducks appointments up to that other position to allow Councilmember Davis to appoint to. All right. Wonderful. Okay. We have a customer you made a motion to. Yeah, I did make a motion to approve these nominations and I withdraw my request I don't know why it didn't just go away. Looking for a second. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. All right, we have a motion and second for agenda item five D is in David let's vote on the board please. Motion carries seven zero. Thank you all for that that's a good resolution to that I appreciate everybody's cooperation and just city attorney getting to the resolution very quickly I appreciate that agenda item five E is consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton. City Council of the city of Denton nominating Tyson sales and distribution Inc to the office of the governor economic development and tourism through the economic development bank as an enterprise project. Me. Find my presentation real quick. Good evening Jessica Rogers director of economic development. That's the first time I've gotten to say that to you guys so feels a little, little special tonight. I am here to present on the Tyson sales and distribution nomination to the Texas enters on enterprise zone program. Quick background on Tyson, Tyson sales and distribution provides the refrigerated warehousing and distribution services to the Tyson foods incorporated companies. These companies generated $38 billion in sales and fiscal year 2017 and employee 122,000. And the local projects that we're discussing tonight is a 350 350,000 square foot, highly automated refrigerated distribution center that will ship an estimated 700 million pounds of product annually and employee 100 employees. The city or this project will be located at 65 acres at the southeast corner of Western Boulevard and gem crystal. For your reference, this is Jim crystal right here. And this is Western This is the wind code distribution center. Tonight, we'll be seeking a nomination recommendation regarding the nomination of Tyson sales and distribution to the Texas enterprise zone program. So some background on the enterprise zone program. It is a state economic development tool to promote job creation and capital investment and economically distressed areas. Applicants are eligible to apply for state sales and use tax refunds on any qualified expenditures as determined by the comptroller. The program provides state reimbursement category levels related to the level of capital investment made by the company and the number of jobs created or retained for economically disadvantaged individuals or veterans and I'll break down the formula for you in just a second. What is the economically distressed criteria that's required by the program? That's a poverty rate of greater than 15.4 percent from the latest decimal decimal census, an educational attainment of equal to or greater than 25.4 percent of the adult population that have not obtained a high school diploma and unemployment rate that is greater than 4.9 percent for the last five years as determined by the Texas Workforce Commission. The project itself is located in an enterprise zone. So this is the project right here. Location again, it's kind of hard to see, but Jim Crystal's kind of right here and Western is right here. As I mentioned, there is a formula to determine what they're eligible for because they are creating 100 full time jobs and they're located in an enterprise zone. They're eligible for $2,500 per job that they created. So they're eligible for up to $250,000 and to dent in 25 percent of the new jobs created or the existing positions retained will be filled by positions. Excuse me. Positions that are turned over are filled by people who either meet those economic disadvantaged criteria or residents of the enterprise zone within the city's jurisdiction or our veterans. So some key points to keep in mind is that nominating Tyson to this program enables them to have access to state tax refunds and it has absolutely no fiscal impact to the city of Denton and staff recommends nominating Tyson and sales as an enterprise project and I'll stand for questions. Council Member Armitage. Yeah, really more just of a comment just when I vote, I'm going to vote no and I vote no on something I like just to let the public know why. And, you know, I voted against the Tyson incentives package, you know, primarily because of their labor issues and so while I support enterprise zones, I think it's really unique opportunity in general. I'm going to be voting against this because, you know, not all jobs are necessarily valuable jobs and I don't want to approve of this because of the history of labor issues. I'll call it that. So anyway, that's why I'm going to be voting no on this. Any other questions? Council Member Meltzer. Yeah, I don't know how I'm going to vote yet. I just want to understand the case. I get that it doesn't have any impact on city of Denton fiscally. They've already decided to come. So I don't want to be like just denying them a benefit that they could conceivably get, but it doesn't seem to me that it will affect their behavior, or am I missing something? They've closed on property and didn't, as we communicated earlier, so I don't know whether yes or no has any impact on that decision. I couldn't speak for the company and a representative from Tyson is not here tonight. And there's no way, you know, I'm not, I'm really not trying to make a case for against I'm really trying to see. In fact, I'm happy to find a way to yes. You know, is there a way that this will help those employees will make them a dollar more will make it one more job I mean I would like to hear, you know, the case. Sure. And the benefit in this case is that the employees are required to meet those economically disadvantaged criteria or be veterans. In addition, the financial benefit goes to Tyson for a reimbursement of sales or use tax. Typical qualified expenditures would be things when they're buying machinery or equipment or any type of building materials. So, so if they didn't have this incentive which which does have requirements on it. They might hire people that didn't meet those requirements. And then, is there any is do we give up anything in the in the sense that is there a limited number of, I feel like I read somewhere that we can only have four. Yes, we can submit for per biennium. So we've submitted one currently and that was the Tetra pack nomination that we made in 2018. So, do we have sort of others on the list we have more than two others on the list. I don't believe that we have any applications pending at this time. Okay, thank you. I'll listen to other comments. Councilmember Briggs. For me, I was the one no vote on the Economic Development Partnership Board and it was because when we're talking about the enterprise zone. That was one reason say Tyson could when we were looking at initial incentives. That was a reason why they would choose our location because we are in that zone, which means they could get other incentives. And so, there's no guarantee that they're going to hire the economically disadvantaged because it's an either or so it could be veterans, or somebody who just lives in this whole zone. Right in the eligible census tracts. Yes, right. So, for me, it's if it was like so 25% are going to be economically disadvantaged that this has to meet that criteria, then I would have felt differently about it. But since it's, you know, an either or a 25% have to live, you know, just so that that's why I voted no originally and I'm going to continue with that tonight. If you could put up the financially distress that slide that shows the conditions. But this isn't these aren't the condition this is just so go to what the conditions are 25% or. Yeah, sorry. This one. Right there. It's a slide that says benefits. All right. Okay, so the point of clarification that came up at the Economic Development Partnership Board is that what is categorized as economically disadvantaged and it's not determined at the individual level. It's determined at the census tract level so it's a resident of a economically disadvantaged census tract or area meeting those other criteria that I put up. So it could be somebody doesn't live in Denton, but lives in another economically disadvantaged census try. It has to be in didn't okay. Okay. Councilmember Melter. If you don't mind. Could you show us the map like where where is it exactly they'd have to be from. That's the sort of easiest criteria to meet right if they just live in that area. Yeah, so it would be in one of these areas. Can you help me understand what I'm seeing this is this is loop 288 on the north side, this is 35, this is the split right here. So, this is sort of the, the southeast quadrant within the loop. And this would be the southwest quadrant within the loop with UNT being located right here. So they have to live in the orange is that they have to live in any of these zones. Okay. Is Southridge in that Southridge map it's over here, but I don't believe it's okay. Sorry, it's actually right here under the measure, there's Southridge right there can see the circles. It really does. I guess this is a question, does it conform to these areas conform to a common sense understanding of, you know, relatively lower income areas for den. That information is determined in the, in the census it's the data that the people that the individuals living in that area report during the census so. That's what's missing. Thank you. I saw your name up there did you withdraw your name to speak. Yeah, okay. Mayor Pro Tem. Just want to put a bookmark here that the area in which the employees are coming from, and their financial status are factored into some of the council members deliberations and thoughts. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions for staff. Mayor Pro Tem. Sorry, move approval. Councilmember Davis. Second. We have a motion to second fridge into item is this five e. Let's vote on the board please. Oh, I did have, well, I did have one question. Let me just make this question before we, and if we need to read recalibrate we can. How are these conditions monitored, do they have to turn in a report once a year to the state they're required to file report and if it's somehow they lose that eligibility, then they lose the benefit. Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. Let's vote on the board please. Motion carries for three. Move on to agenda item five F, consider adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton, the city of Denton, a Texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with JL public for the construction of the PEC for drainage improvements one and two and Elm and locus water and sewer improvements phases one evening mayor and council, I promise we did not intentionally make that the longest project name in history but it is. Okay. So this project is actually has multiple phases combined into one one, the prime purpose of the project was to take 61 acres out of the floodplain and the first two phases of that drainage project or this line and read. The two around it are subsequent water, wastewater, other stormwater improvements that have to be made to relocate utilities before text that actually comes in and reconstructs the element locust corridor all the way up to the downtown area. This is the precursor to another project that will be coming out to construction later this year, which would do everything to the north so that text I can reconstruct all of locust and then reconstruct all of Elm, and then those will be turned over to the city upon completion anyways, so this is the utility relocations and then the stormwater piece of that this red line here this is the stormwater piece it is, it actually brings the flood way out of a condition of redevelopment in the downtown area. The floodplain won't actually come out of that zone until phases three and four which extend beyond and all the way up to Mulberry get constructed. So we have three bidders on this project Jay go public was the lowest bidder at 10.9 million and two other contractors that also bid this project. And we're recommending approval of a contract new amount of $10.9 million to go public for phases one and two. Councilmember breaks. Thank you. My question is about the person who won the contract I understand that their local company and, but it seemed like and for me and I messaged ahead of this meeting. It's every meeting it feels like we're approving a contract for this one company and for me I wonder what we have, it's $29.7 million to awarded in the six projects and that's really great for them but is it. Are we not getting enough beds, can you just kind of explain to me. Sure, there's going on there are a variety of factors that go into saying a smaller number of bidders one is the economy is booming. From the standpoint of construction contractors their projects are plentiful within the Metroplex area. So it is not uncommon for a project of this size, especially when it's specialized to utilities work to be a smaller subset. So, three four contractors is not unusual in the current market. When the economy is not quite as plentiful as it is right now, a lot of these contracts are a little hungrier. You combine that with text on doing so much work in the Dallas Fort Worth area. A lot of these contractors are obligated to do other work. So, sometimes the timing is an impact. Jay go public also was the low bidder in just the impact that they are on the eagle drainage project right now so mobilization for them currently is an opportunity that just happened to work in our favor, they're there now, so they would just move over into the next segment just down the street literally, whereas these other contractors would have to mobilize a much further distance. And so for looking at the six projects though and if you're already on one of them, you're going to continuously to be the low bidder because you're going to be currently working. The potential is there. Absolutely. But the potential is also there that one of these contractors could have come in lower there were three options as to methods of construction provided for this project. Just happened to win this one. Well, thank you for for the information. I was curious. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Councilmember Davis, can you go back to the previous slide. Yeah, thank you. I'm playing a little bit of catch up kind of new kid. But the red line. Yes. Am I correct and recalling that a portion of that is currently the the sandstone lined. Is it WPA or civilian conservation Corps. It's actually on the north end right over in this area right here. Yes. And it is it again, not being familiar with this project from the beginning. Is it simply that that is inadequate to handle. Yes, it's undersized. Those WPA projects while historic in nature and they certainly a huge part of our history. My actually grandfather that did some WPA projects as well in that time frame. So while an important part of the history, they were never intended to handle the flows that we're putting in there today. So as the downtown area has developed, other alternatives had to be explored. And this is the best possible place to drain these the floodwaters that are coming through the area impacting multiple businesses and homeowners. Unfortunately, this was not designed to handle those flows. So we are replacing it. Have we invited the Office of History and Culture, the county historical commissioner, anybody similar to come and photograph document, make sure their archives have record of it. We have we have done some of that I don't know specifically with the county, but absolutely we can before we start undertaking any construction. And then last question. If now it's an open to the air culvert. And it's going to be a box culvert replacing what is the surface going to be. And what's the, what are ownership rights of that surface are we going to give up surface easement, are we going to have just flat surface we can use for some other purpose left behind. So it's still currently on private property in a drainage easement, it will stay that way. But yes, it will have a flat surface on the top, the flat surface itself may be a combination I'm trying to remember off top my head if it's a combination of asphalt going back in as a parking lot. But there is sidewalk as well that goes over that and around it. Okay, does our and maybe this is a legal question but does our drainage easement. Does that allow us to make use of the surface for non drainage purposes like a sidewalk that's not currently there. Could we extend a sidewalk through our drainage easement. If I remember correctly it depends on the specific use of the easement so if it's a drainage easement it is for drainage, otherwise the rights refer back to the property owner. Is that correct. That is correct. Thank you. Councilman breaks. So, I'm a little, a little disappointed I heard you say that because I originally when this first started our conversation I asked about the old channel and you mentioned that it was possible to keep some of it. But what I think I just heard you say is it's all going away will preserve what we can, but I can't make a commitment that will be able to save any of it. The hard part there is that it is a maintenance hazard for us as well as long term, it just does not serve the needs. So, we can look at preserving the materials that are there and other ways we can look at photographic memorabilia there's other ways we could do something there but keeping the channel itself is more of a detriment to the area than it is retaining it. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, I just wanted to comment for the benefit of Councilmember Davis that there's a, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. There's a pending staff report on the possibility of possibility and advisability so I don't know the answer will be released it's a request on seeing whether we, whether there would be interest in the part of the folks who currently have given us the drainage easement and allowing us to have an easement for say, you know, bike or pedestrian paths. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, I just want to comment you know I really appreciate that this, you know, concerns about, you know, the historic value are being raised I think those are so important, and I'm going to be voting yes to this. Because of, you know, weighing these, these two issues of the, the historic value and the public safety issues just public safety will always come first for me and my personal flow chart but it's is not this is a decision that for me is not without a sense of, you know, sadness and loss and anyway I appreciate the attempt to preserve what can be preserved and, but that's why I just wanted to be clear that's why I'm voting yes on this. Councilmember Briggs. Are you, was that just left over from your last time. Councilmember Davis. I'll also be voting yes I just can't speak for the rest of the council but I would ask that we do take efforts to photographically preserve what's there. I know, DJ Taylor, who works with the county quite a bit he's been very interested in this project, and we do make some some effort to preserve materials and find some useful purpose for them. And then also to the extent that it's possible I agree with Councilmember Meltzer, if we have the ability to speak with those landowners and these conversations ongoing with the project about surface use I'd be very interested in that. We have surveyed the property owners that have impacted this segment and an ISR is coming. It's been a mixed bag of results, and we'll be able to bring that forward in the ISR but we have surveyed each of those owners. Thank you. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, I think I know that the answer to this is, is yes but is, are these phases necessary precursors to phases three and four that will bring, I think it's 140 parcels out of the floodplain and this doesn't do that. Right, but phases three and four do, and this is this requirement in order to do those. Yes, so when we work drainage projects we work downstream to upstream because if I work the other way around then I'm letting more water into the system than the downstream system can handle. So we have to work this way and then back up to phases three and four. Again, the floodway which is an absolute no to construction that gets removed through the red line segment, which does allow some redevelopment already, they just have to flood proof structures to make that happen. Now when phases three and four are complete, then the entire area down here comes out completely from the floodplain and all floodway restrictions are gone. Okay, and just, you know, this is like potentially reshaping downtown dead and tremendous unleashing of economic potential in an area where I don't think people would object to development. I'll be voting yes. How big were the easements? How big is the easement? I would have to go back and look. I don't remember off the top of my head. I believe the initial drainage easements are closer to 25 or 30 feet wide. It's a big box that's coming through there, but I would have to go back and double check the actual number. Is that the bigger easement than what the current drainage channel required, or is it still within the easement that we acquired originally from the property owners for the current? Correct, it is. So, yes, that's 15, even if you split it down the middle, that's 12 to 15 feet for each property owner. Yeah, I can see where that's going to be challenging. Okay, I think these are repeat requests to speak. So, any more questions for staff or comments? Councilmember Amater? Yeah, I wanted to move approval with the condition that care be taken to have constant communication with those documenters of the history of this and that the photographer mentioned by Councilmember Davis, I'm forgetting the name right now. That individual and the property owners, although this is a matter of public safety, we've gone so long like this that I wouldn't mind moving a little more slowly to make sure that every step along the way there's communication to those chroniclers of history mentioned. So, however, that would be written into the ordinance. I realize it's a little loosey-goosey that included my justification for it, but I'll repeat that I motion to approve this with a condition that there be kind of continual communication with those documenters of the history and preservationists of the history. Can I add one thing to that? So, we do have time, like we were talking about a minute ago, we start on the downstream end and work to the upstream end. The stretcher channel we're talking about is actually right in this area. We have time to work through some of those issues and we could make up some of that time while we're constructing on the southern end and then find some way of making a tribute or doing something with that area, whether it's visually, through photographs or something else. We could take a look at that. Yeah, that would be wonderful. I don't want to find out that, you know, get the call from somebody that, "Hey, I'm looking out my window and there's concrete being poured here." It won't happen until much later in the project. That won't happen for at least a year. Excellent. Okay, Council Member Hopcroft, I believe you made a motion. Council Member Briggs. So, I'm going to second with hopes that maybe just a little bit of it can be saved near the neighborhood part of it. Just because it fits in with the neighborhood a little bit better. I mean, I know that the whole thing can't, but it is a little special thing that we have in our community and it makes us who we are. But, I'm also going to second with the selfish reason for the future part of it and the Quaker Town Park discussion that we had a while ago. So, I will be making a second. So, you did make the second. I did make a second. I stand by my second. Okay, all right. Well, we just lost the... Okay, so Council Member Armitage moved to approve with the condition of, you know, working together with those proper authorities to preserve photographically and so forth the historical context and nature of the project. And then Council Member Briggs seconded. So, we're ready to vote once we get the screen back up. Thank you. Motion carries, 7-0. Moving on to agenda item, and just as a heads up, probably after this agenda item, we'll take a little quick break. Agenda item 5G, which is considered adoption of ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, a Texas home rule municipal corporation, authorizing the city manager to execute a public works contract with Ray Mar Construction for the construction of the Hickory Creek lift station. Good evening, Mayor, members of the Council. My name is Kenny Banks. I am the general manager of utilities for the City of Denton. I'm very excited to bring this project to you. It's been a long time coming. This is regarding the Hickory Creek lift station replacement. So, the Hickory Creek lift station is located off of Old Alton Road and basically pumps wastewater flows from the entire Hickory Creek sewer basin into our plant at Peconcrete. So, this lift station was put into service in about 1983, and you can imagine the vintage electrical and electronics components of this station are getting a little bit old and outdated. The station design, when it was installed, also creates a backup in the interceptor that leads up to it, and that makes for some pretty inefficient systems. We did a cost analysis on this that indicated that repairing the existing station would be more expensive than constructing a new station. We have had some service interruptions at this lift station, and then we've had a couple of sewer overflows, one that occurred in February of 2018, where we had one of the pumps impellers blow out through the side of it, we suspect, from a piece of concrete getting entrained, and then we had the fourth main section of this, which I'll show you in just a second, that had a failure on it in December of 2018. And on February 2017, the council authorized a design contract for the Hickory Creek lift station, and then we've got funding for construction included in the FY19 budget. So this gives you kind of an idea of where this facility is at. It is right by the area where Old Alton Bridge goes across Hickory Creek. It drains the entire section of the Hickory Creek basin to the east section in the red on this map. The lift station itself, or the pump station is more accurate, is there with the green triangle. There's a fourth main where that sewage is actually pumped uphill, up into Wheeler Ridge, it gets over the other side of the ridge, and then gravity flows into the Pecan Creek facility, which you see at the northern and eastern portion of that map. So the project was advertised for bids in November of 2018. We sent to 317 prospective contractors and received two bids back. The low bidder was Raymar Construction at about $3.4 million. Our design engineer for this project helped us evaluate Raymar to make sure that they had the professional expertise to be able to construct this lift station appropriately, and found that they did. And our total budget for this project was around $3.7 million, so we came in a little bit under budget, which is nice, and our recommendation is approval of this contract with Raymar Construction to complete the lift station. Councilmember Briggs. So, what is the life of the new lift station? I would expect with the pumps that we're putting in there, we should get at least 30 years out of this lift station. Councilmember Ryan. I move approval. Councilmember Meltzer. Second. We have a motion to second for agenda item 5G. Let's vote on the board please. Motion carries 7-0. We'll power through this next one, then we'll take a break. That one didn't take as long as I thought. Agenda item 5H. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, a home rule. Well, I cannot say that tonight. Home rule. Municipal Corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with DDM Construction Corporation for the construction of the North Bonnie Bray Street and Scripture Street roundabout project. Council Mayor Todd Estes, City Engineer again. You can see I am not the pre-TAM, so I'm giving the presentation not pre-TAM. So last year in September, council approved a roundabout to be constructed at Bonnie Bray and Scripture. What we have done is actually broken a couple of components off of this project, specifically the roundabout and some of the improvements that need to occur at that intersection for opportunities. The opportunity being timeline. The University of North Texas is out of school. If we can focus activities on the intersection, we can get the intersection in while traffic volumes are lower at this intersection. So just as a reminder, the entire corridor for Bonnie Bray phase four, which is the intersection of Bonnie Bray and Scripture, is the northern extreme of this project. That intersection borders, if you're facing north to this side of the screen, to the right side of the screen, there's a lot of commercial development going on in that area and it's heavily under construction now. Traffic volumes are low compared to what they will be when all of that development is in place. So what we tried to focus on with this project and have succeeded in is move forward with this intersection. We intend to close this intersection. We would have to anyway during construction because we're lowering the intersection six feet. So if we tried to keep half of the roadway open and half closed through that segment, it'd be next to impossible to make all the connections. The other advantage here is if we go to construction where we completely shut the intersection down, we can be complete in 10 to 12 weeks and have it back open to live traffic. If we don't do that, then we're phasing in construction. It could take up to 40 to 48 weeks to complete that same construction in that intersection. So the advantage here is the entire area is at its lowest traffic volume in that it's in construction in the area. Schools are out. We need to get to construction this summer. If we're waiting until next summer to do that construction at the intersection, I know I'm getting an incredulous look right now. It can be done in 10 to 12 weeks. I'm still trying to figure out what you're saying. I think I'm hearing it, but I'm going to save my question, but go ahead. So what we're asking for tonight is award the contract for the intersection itself, this roundabout, so the limits would start here just south of Scripture, include improvements to Scripture, improvements on Scripture on the east and west side, as well as realigning Bonnie Bray and the big curve adjacent to the park. We would be closing this entire area down, except to local traffic, so we can get construction completed and turn back to live traffic before school starts this next fall. So we had four bidders on this project. We had DDM construction as the lowest bidder at 2.9 million. That was a half a million dollars under the engineer's estimate for this project. Now, one item that was left out of this project, because there was a change, and I'm going to go back to the map for just a second, there was a change in the alignment of a water line. There's a 42-inch water line that moves up this street and then ties into the water tower at McKenna Park. The alignment was changed for a variety of reasons earlier this spring, and that alignment pulls that major water line back over this direction a little sooner and then gets it up this direction. Because of that change, we did not have that piece of the water line and all the water line adjustments in the roundabout bid when we went to bid. So we will have a change order shortly here after for the water line adjustments, and they are minor, but they do have a cost associated with them for the water line adjustments in this area. There's a 16-inch water line that needs to be changed up to a 12-inch, and there's a 20-inch water line that has to be moved. It would have had to have been done either way, but there was zealousness on our staff to try to get ahead of that curve, and we weren't able to get there in a timely fashion. So we will have a change order tied to this in the next two weeks. That cost was originally covered in the project. It was intended to be there. It just did not get into this project as quickly as we wanted. After evaluating early estimates on that change order, we see that change order being around $400,000 to do the utility line relocations that would be added to the project. Again, still included in the original project cost. It's just in a different phase, a different sequencing of the actual expenditures for the project. So what we are asking tonight is to award the original contract for DDM construction in the amount of $2.9 million, and I'm here to answer any questions. Councilmember Davis. So you said, what, 12 to 15 weeks? I'm sorry. 10 to 12 weeks. 10 to 12 weeks. Yes, sir. And what is the suggested or anticipated detour route? So the detour routes, I need a better map. I will show you. The actual intent for the detour map will take traffic to Oak as you're moving north and then push it out to the frontage road and utilize the frontage road. Another reason why we need construction now this summer so that we can take advantage of lighter traffic. I'm not saying it won't still be heavy, but it will be lighter than it is when school is in session out on the I-35 service roads and I-35 itself. On the southbound side, we will have message boards pinned all the way up at University Drive that informs the motoring public that this roadway is closed to through traffic. It's only open to local traffic to try to get their attention to move away from that area. You also have development of the Heritage Trail Parkway through the Razor South development. That piece of roadway and panhandle just to the frontage, it's not connected all the way over to Bonnie Bray. So from the frontage to Heritage Trail is another diversion that allows traffic to move north. We are working, we've gotten approval from TextDOT currently to put in a signal at Heritage Trail and University Drive. So we are anticipating putting in temporary signals initially at Heritage Trail and University Drive to help offset some of this traffic. With the full design going forward on the permanent signals shortly thereafter. Quick follow up to that. So I'm looking at your other smaller map and so Bonnie Bray would be closed somewhere south of panhandle? Yes, it could also divert panhandle and then east to other through streets. It could and that's why we're trying to post the signs as far north as University Drive, especially the big illuminated vertical message boards at variable message boards that sell traffic. This route is closed through traffic and give them as early a warning to try to stay in University Drive and take an alternate route. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you Todd. Have we spoken with the fire department, so assuming they're coming from the north south to the hospital? Yes. What is the, what were their thoughts on how to best manage that? Because if it's shut down there, it sends you I guess Thomas or? There are a variety of routes for emergency services and they get updated periodically as all of our road closures come to them. We're talking to them consistently about where this is coming from. Our concern here was trying to get this in the ground as fast as possible so that their impact when they're trying to address emergency services is minimized on the timeframe. If I can have an impact on them for 10 weeks as opposed to 40 weeks, that's a lot less time for them to worry about rerouting around traffic backups. Okay. Yeah, so if I could just get an email from from staff on kind of what that game plan because that is that is tricky because the service road, you know, it's one way, the other way and then and so then it becomes. It is, it is not an easy fix for something where minutes matter so I just want to understand what that plan is best. Absolutely. And just for your information we meet by monthly so every two months we meet with all the local EMS as well as the hospitals to let them know what projects are coming. Police fire. EMS is all invited those meetings as well and we let them know what projects are coming what's coming two months from now six months from now. We get there, we try to get their feedback on that so that we can better understand how best to work with them work around them let them have as much advanced knowledge of those impacts as possible. Yeah, no, that's great and I would I would even advocate for if there's a dirt path that they could get around to go straight, you know, and that obviously would be barricaded for others but they could get through I mean, I don't know, I trust you. Thanks. Councilmember Ryan. Thank you, Mary. Does this contract include penalties for delays and or incentives for early completion. We were not able to get that into this contract. No, but there are considerable concerns on the contractor being able to complete this without having to do that. We're working with them to make this go as fast as possible. They have already just in our conversations right now with the contractor and our concerns, they've been very helpful and us understanding what exactly their game plan is there a lot more upfront about what I've seen in other contractors as we're working with the apparent low bitter on when you go to construction, what's your timeline, they want to be done as quickly as possible as well. And I think this sits where they're trying to keep an intersection closed the more pressure mounts on them as well that we have to have it open as they're feeling that just from the real effects of traffic moving in the area the complaints the pressure we'll put on them. There are other things built into the contract that we're using as a mitigating factor until we can get an incentives contract out. I don't even know what incredulous means. I understand the goal and the desire. Yes, sir. And first question how are the businesses on the west side of Bonnie Bray and scripture you know that medical office building. Yes, sir. So, they're still going to be able to get through some type of construction, there's going to be some path, it's going to be closed to through traffic but correct. So really my concern is this and it's not even concern except it's about managing expectations. Yes, sir. How many projects do we have going right now that we think will come in on the stated timeline that we've expressed. That's not saying anything about staff is not I mean you got rain you got equipment breakdown you got contractors going out of business. I mean there's all kinds of things that can happen. And this is a big ask. And when you shut down one of the major north south thoroughfares especially since we're doing construction on the water line, but that's way down past the, the, the interstate. So, I think it's, I mean, once people get used to it hopefully by the time they get used to it, it'll be finished. Yeah, but I think Councilmember Ryan asked a really good question and that is how do we, for better lack of a word ensure. Because you're saying, we want to do take this extreme measure, and I don't mean extreme in a way we shouldn't but I mean this is this is this is a, but it's to avoid a four times the amount increase in the construction time. Yes, and so there's there's a variety of things in that contractor when he has full control of the site. No traffic he's having to deal with safety is better for the contractor, he can move faster he can work quicker, but he can still achieve the better quality. If we have to maintain live traffic is not as safe for the motoring public as well as for the contractor contractors a lot more motivated when he can get in and out, because he's still going to put the same amount of work into it. But he gets done faster so he's not committed his resources any longer than he absolutely has to get. Okay. You were, you're anticipating a few little smiles from up here when you were going to say hey we want to shut down but you know come on. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you were. Yeah. Okay, all right. Mayor pro tem, are you requesting a speaker is that an old one. That's okay. All right. I don't see any other requests to speak. So, the chair would entertain an action on this item. Mayor pro tem. I'll move approval. Councilmember Davis. Second. We have a motion and a second for approval of the project. And that's to as staff recommend which is the closure of Bonnie Bray for the 10 or 12 week time period. Yes, sir. Okay. Okay, let's vote on the board please. We have a motion carries six to one. Now we will take about a five or 10 minute break. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on May 21 2019 it is 805pm. We're moving through our agenda items. We're on agenda item five. I, which is considered option of North and so the city of Denton, a Texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with brand stutter Carol Inc for the expansion of police headquarters and public safety dispatch area. Good evening. Mayor members of the council Mario can is our deputy city manager. I'm here tonight to request your authorization to approve a professional services agreement for the architectural services for the police station public dispatch and a public safety substation, or she me police station to give you a little bit of background as to why we're here. The police department, along with dispatch and several other departments are located at City Hall East. 150,000 square foot facility. The facility was built in 1947 and then a number of years later was expanded in 1990 that facility was donated to the city, and then the city went through a major renovations, shortly thereafter, for about a year and a half, two years to remove asbestos make the facility ad accessible do a complete renovations of the site to house parks administration police department which is what we're focusing on tonight city jail technology services human resources number of city operations. In 2013, a portion of the side that was a shelf space was renovated even further to create the, the public safety training facility which is shared with police department along with the fire department. These are some pictures that we had taken over the last number of months to show you. And again, if you remember, most of the council members here attended the tour back in early February the site and so again these are just some pictures pictorial depiction of just the location and and the interior of the police facilities as they are today. Those first two two pictures are where our criminal investigations Bureau is housed. The second one is the break room. Third one is a staff briefing room. And this is some of the ticket writers, folks that work patrol or work traffic in part, where they do their report writing. The hallway is considered their locker room area so this is one of the things that's a problem with the current facility that there's no locker room facilities within the police department these lockers are traditionally the size which you would see in a typical middle school, not in a full fledged modern day police department because of the equipment that they utilize this next picture is is our dispatch center. It's small if it's about seven consoles maybe eight with supervisors and trainers, but from the standpoint of where they are today they are at capacity so as the city continues to grow, as we need additional services for police and fire. There really is no room for growth in this facility. You got a request to speak Do you have a question. So, again so here's some of the issues that come up last summer. The police staff had asked the city manager's office to do a tour of the facility again to show some of those, those, those sites and rooms that I just showed you in the, in the pictures. One was again, outdated broken furniture. Some computers that were outdated that were very slow and not meeting the needs of the department. Very, again, not to read all the list the entire list but just mismatch space, inadequate work spaces, just was not flowing properly for the department. Again, as mentioned the lack of locker room space for employees and in restroom facilities. The other component to was a lack of parking. What we did assume thereafter is, we worked with tech services and facilities to replace several pieces of furniture especially chairs things that nature that are using on a daily basis, a number of computers were replaced and upgraded. So that can be more efficient. We were actually going through the process of renovating. With the bureaus along with public safety dispatch. We actually put a halt to that, knowing that at some point we may be coming to you all and making a request to do a much more holistic or complete renovation so we didn't want to just go in do the renovations and then have some requests. So, city manager authorized contract with a local Dallas firm to come in and do a number of interviews with staff to understand what the needs were. What are the trends as far as past trends of staffing growth. What are the future trends what they're looking like, with the intent of bringing to you all in early February, a concept plan so that we can give them get direction from city council as to how do you want to proceed and we couple that with a tour that that all of you participated in or most of you participated in. At the conclusion of that of that work session. You all directed us to to go through requests for qualifications to select an architectural firm to get us to 30% drawings are basically schematic drawings. And so we were in that process we started in early March to start that process. As a result, we received five statements, or five submittals from firms from around this from around the state around the area. As a result of that, there was a city panel that was established to evaluate the five proposals and the proposal, the employee panel, which consisted of representatives from the fire department police department, public safety dispatch tech services and facilities made a determination that branch editor Carol Inc. was the most qualified firm. So, over the last number of weeks, we've been in the process of negotiating a contract with them. And so, we are here tonight to ask for that contract to be awarded. Give you an idea of the proposed timeline. Our intent. Our hope is that that gets awarded tonight. That allows them to begin the project in full and earnest, they've been working with us already to do some preliminary work, but this would allow us to get going with the project. And it's, and it's not quite to his entirety but certainly to do the 30% process that you all directed us to be able to work with citizen bonds advisory committee throughout the meetings that they're going to be having this summer, that those meetings kick off next week. And they'll be busy meeting, just about every week for the next number of next number of months. The intent is for the schematic design to be completed in July, which we would then bring that information to counsel, so that you can then call the bond election in mid August which includes the other propositions that you're considering for that for that November election. If the bonds are approved by the citizens, then they would continue with the design process with the intentions of completing their construction documents later next summer in 2020, and then start construction soon thereafter with a full completion of both the substation along with the complete renovation of the police department City Hall East fall 2020. So with that, the direction that we're asking is for you all to approve an ordinance to award a PSA to branch every Carol, and the amount of $3,085,830, and open up for questions representatives from the architectural firm are here. And if you have any specific questions about the design their, their methodology, etc. We're here to answer any questions you may have. Councilman Briggs I think you had a request to speak and it just disappeared. I had some questions I think you pretty much answered them. It was more about the, the bond committee and this will be used right as as a rendering, so that the citizens know exactly what, what we're getting. And the intent would be to again to as a, as a great floor plans or floor plan options that they can see those and have a better understanding of kind of what's expected, and the process and the methodology in which we would proceed with that. That's great instead of just having, you know, words, there's something that you can actually look at pictures. Thank you. Actually I had a question for the design firm, but if you sell some Councilman Ryan, if your concern was, if your question was for for Mario, and I'm happy to let you go so he doesn't have to go back and forth. In order. Yeah. Okay, so you had a question for the design firm. Yes. All right. Okay, so my question is, it comes from this value system of design that that design should be involved full participation of the people who are using the facility and so wondering kind of if you could speak to, you know how you plan to get input from the staff members at, at all levels who are using the facility in your design process. Actually, I'll just, for the record, my name is Eric chambers, public safety architect for brands that are Carol. We've actually begun that process and completed staff interviews with the police department from each bureau. And then we will continue through the design process going back to those bureau representatives and reviewing their specific areas to make sure that they are meeting their intent and what they're thinking of. And from a design standpoint, it needs to be efficient for the police department, making sure that their operations aren't hindered by anything we do from a design standpoint, but it also needs to be effective for the community needs to be inviting to the community from a public and from a safety standpoint so all of those are factors that we take into account as we move forward through the design process. Thank you. That's wonderful to hear. Thanks. Council member Ryan. Thank you, Mary. Maria, can you go back one slide. Sure. The question on the timeline because it doesn't really break out startup construction and completion of construction for the new substation versus the, the reconstruction of the current. I can go in that level of detail I mean we can certainly provide that in the future staff report, but that's the intent would be to try to build and again if I'm wrong but the intent would be to work towards building the substation first. So that way we can move a portion of our staff to that substation while the other facilities being renovated because it's going to be very difficult to renovate a facility that's fully operational. We're going to have to shut a portion of it down demolish or, excuse me, go to a demolition phase and then rebuild and move staff over. Right. And that's the way I understood that's what I'd seen in the past and I just want to make sure that it wasn't that we were going to be starting construction simultaneously that we would do as much on the new substation first so that we could make it go much smoother at the existing police well and that's the intent. Councilmember, but one of the other things that we're doing and we'll actually bring forward a subsequent work session talk about construction manager at risk, which is a construction or construction methodology for for for construction of facilities and so the intent would be working with the architect, and a construction teams, almost simultaneously and and glove basically, and try to get what is the best because what is the best construction methodology so it's not only cost effective but also operationally effective for for everyone involved. Councilmember Davis, can you give me just a very brief overview of what kind of services are going to be at the substation, I mean, is it simply workspace or they're holding cells is there public access lobby area. Yes, sir. Patrol. Basically it's just a miniature version of the police, the police department, think the only thing that may not be there would be the jail facilities, but just about everything else will be there as well. One of the other reasons that with the substation reason why the fire departments involved is because of an emergency operations center that will be there as well, it'll have a hardened component to it. Thank you. This is generally specific to this topic but just. I'm curious, and maybe a question for you Mr city manager. Why are we seeing a savings almost or lower price when we're rebuilding or building new. The fire stations, but then when you get a police station I think one of the bids we are one of the projections for the police stations around 11 million fire stations coming in around 6 million. So, you know, have you seen kind of why those those differences are there why why that inconsistent 6 million ballpark for both of those for the fire stations. Yes, sir. Six or eight thousand square feet at the most, a lot of it's that got it in the substation also remember is as Mario alluded to is at a hardened facility to operate as an emergency center. So that's going to add some cost as well but obviously well worth it if we have a disaster. Thank you. All right. Any other questions comments. Seeing none, customer Brian, I will happily move approval on this item. All right, customer breaks. Second. We have a happily moved motion. And a second. Mayor pro tem you had a sorry one more question. Yes. Do we have a look at the future, as far as the, when we will build or have a need to build a new police station downtown ish. Have you have you kind of projected that forward and look at those kind of staffing numbers and when we get there. We are looking at staffing numbers in the police department just based on staffing needs going forward with Chief Dixon. One of the benefits of having the substation, it does, it does actually give us some additional useful life of the existing facility, because we're in essence, say day one we're splitting our hat the staff almost in half. So it gives you capacity at the, at the, I would say at the old site the renovated site, and then it gives you, you know the appropriate size for the new site, the substation, and that's also scalable as well. So, again, long term, it's hard to speculate but I would imagine that long term years and years down the road, something will have to be done with City Hall East and that requires discussions of where do you relocate the other operating functions of parks admin. Human Resources customer service, because there is space there but they're occupied by the other city operations so they would have to move out so that, in theory, police can move over, if that makes sense. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Okay, we have a motion and a second for agenda item. Five. Which one was it all of my place. Five. I. All right, yes. Bye bye. Let's vote on the board please. Motion carries seven zero. Our next item on the agenda is agenda item 5j consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton of the, of the city council of the city of Denton appointing primary and alternate representatives to Denton County Transportation Authority Board of Directors, etc. Good evening. Mayor members of the council Mario Ken is our deputy city manager here to present you all and get direction from from the council as far as didn't representative to the DCTA Board of Directors. As you, many of you know all you know, our current representatives former counselor Sarah but Gary she was appointed in December of last year, after the resignation of Richard Huckabee. Donna bloom who had been the, the alternate representative resigned last November and that position has been maintained has been vacant this entire time. So you may ask why are we here. Why are we bringing this forward to you at this point. Well, as you recall, the city of Denton along with city of Highland village Louisville Denton County and DCTA were working together to to endorse legislation to make changes to the board of directors at DCTA to go from a 14 member board to a five member board. Those changes that that that bill became Senate bill 1066. It went through the process through both houses of the state legislature. It was approved. One of the things that had happened though the reason why we're here in sort of a hurry fashion is because the original legislation that was drafted and approved, recommended that are stated that if the law passed it would go into effect 60 days later, but the council at the state legislature made the change to basically go to 10 days after the bill was approved, which was basically last Saturday that May 18, and also the governor signed it. So, the fact is, there's a board meeting coming up next next Thursday. And so it was under the old auspices of the 14 member board so so that 14 member board had its last meeting in April so the new constituted board will be meeting next Thursday. And so that's why we're here is to is to a, let you know, update of where we are with the legislation. And number two to get direction from you all as to who should be our, our board representative for the city of for the city of Denton city of Louisville went through that process. They meet on Mondays they went through that process last evening, and I believe in county also is is has made her made an appointment for alternate representatives for alternate representatives. So, and again, each member city city of Louisville Denton and Holland village will each make an appointment, and then an alternate appointment, if you also, if each council members so council so chooses and didn't county will also have to primary representatives in the Senate. I would just say, from the perspective of mobility committee, you know, I didn't vote for Sarah initially because I reserved my vote for someone outside nominated but I think she's just really done a very professional job and I understand she's willing to continue. So, I've been inclined to. I've been kind of support, having her continue. And I would tee up the guy I nominated before Rick will focus alternate. Councilmember Armitage. Councilmember Davis. Yeah, Councilmember Briggs different cues yourself as well. Yes. Councilmember Davis Davis I'm sorry, Councilmember Davis. This may be a question for the city attorney but I believe section six of the, of the bill provides for currently serving board members appointed by founding municipalities to continue in their term until the end of their term. So I think if we were to, if we were, if we're going to nominate Sarah, or if we were going to nominate someone besides Sarah. I think we'd have to the motion would have to be phrase that we'd be removing her and replacing her if. Am I correct there. That would be one way to go about it. I would agree. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, I just, I just want to second what Councilmember Melzer said about Sarah Sarah but Gary's job in this in this role she's really done a terrific job of communicating with Council on what goes on at those meetings that we don't get to attend. So, I think she does the city of great service, and I'd like to see that continue. Councilmember Ryan. Thank you Mayor. It's, I don't know if anyone has talked with Sarah or not but it sounded like she was thinking she was going to step back at least part way on this. And so with that thought in mind, I believe she would probably willing to serve as an alternate. And one of the things that the change in this legislation does is allows us to appoint someone who is currently a member of the council. And the mayor has been instrumental in getting this legislation passed so I would like to move that. Chris Watts be our primary in Councilmember former Councilmember Gary be the alternate. Councilmember husband, or may I pretend I'm just kidding. Yes, no. Well then I'm going to echo. John's sentiment. Yeah, so just to answer Councilmember Ryan mentioned. Sarah Sarah but Gary had least reached out to me to say she would love to continue serving, you know didn't say anything about to me about wanting to be in an alternate role instead I, I definitely support I'm fine with. You know unless there any any other nominations going out there but fine with the mayor, also being on there, but I would like to see her continue in that, that capacity is in the primary role. Unless anybody else has heard from her to the contrary subsequently. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, I also heard from her and she said she was interested in continuing to serve. I have no doubt the mayor would do a crackerjack job as well. I mean I think there's some, there's a question that consider structural first of all I don't know if you want to do it, but this question to consider structurally which is like you couldn't come to a committee meetings that would be a council meeting, you know, I don't know if that's a serious problem or not but something to think about. I talked to Sarah on this talked with her yesterday, and two or three days ago let her know that this agenda item is going to be on there Sarah obviously has done a good job she she'll do a good job whatever she's doing. The primary reason and so I was going to have the city manager sort of tout this but I'm just going to share it. We were pretty instrumental. The city of Benton was and and moving forward this legislation and really trying to get it off the off the ground and that was precipitated by the conversations that we had I think it was out at the airport actually. When we had the conversation about DC ta out at the airport when we were meeting out there about the amount of money that we're paying and what exactly we're getting the riderships and things such as that so we really spearheaded that. And they specifically put in and as we had a working group together to look at the bill. The three member cities county representatives DC ta to look at the language that would allow elected officials to serve with the thrust of that being that that was something that for the member cities they wanted to have the opportunity to do that. So no I don't mind serving in fact I would I would want to serve on that board because I've taken a special interest in that over the last six months or eight months during this whole time with with the discussion and I did share that with Sarah on a couple of occasions I mean of course she you know she's been instrumental we've got a meeting with her tomorrow. But that that's my desire is to serve as the primary member and of course she could could serve as an alternate and truthfully I mean I think the next board meeting next couple I mean it depends on scheduling conflicts but this just came up literally within the last week I think is that right Mr. C. Manager the 18th yeah the 18th. So I have had some conversations with I don't know when she reached out to you all knew that she had but yeah so she shared with me that it's up to the council but that she certainly enjoyed her role there I'm not going to say that she said no Chris go ahead it doesn't matter mayor. But she didn't express a large amount of of opposition but if I could even categorize it as that and I asked her if she's going to be here tonight and she said she wasn't able to because it just we were going to go so long with agenda item J. So this is nothing about her at all. I mean she's appointed her to you know I recommended her appointment to that and I also pointed her that didn't housing authority board so it's more of I think getting on the board to continue to affect the direction that has been talked about over six to eight months so it's not some kind of power play or power grab or or anything like that it's just a matter of trying to ensure that we have the presence on the board that understands all the issues that we're trying to accomplish moving forward not saying Sarah doesn't understand that at all she was I think appointed when December December December so sort of at the tail end of all those discussions but she certainly caught up to speed on that so if she's listening I hope none of this is construed as me saying anything about her competence or ability because it is not that at all it's it's merely trying to continue the work which I started in the beginning which quite honestly I think the city manager can attest to it. Sometimes I wasn't the most popular person in the room let's put it that way. So, those are my thoughts and I just wanted to be upfront front and transparent about that. Mayor, if I may, they DCTA just similar to cities, their, their budget year is into beginning begins October 1 so they're in the process of their budget conversations like we are they are going through a bylaw revision so there's a number of key decision points that need to be made with the agency because of the complete change over the board from five fourteen to five so. Lots of key meetings happening over the next number of months with with the agency. I think during the just for the council's education I was asked very clearly back in December, you know what what an interim appointment men and at the time we felt that it was going to be a six or seven month appointment based on how the bill was written. The idea had been with both Louisville Denton and most likely Highland Village that we would all try to get our elected officials who had been there driving the legislation at first year to make sure that the bylaws mirrored in the intent of the of the legislation and then the managers and also form a different committee to start taking a look at the finance and the the action plan of DCTA so both of those items have been contemplated to move in unison as they're working on the new. Budget for the upcoming year and there was a very specific and purposeful that elected officials be allowed to serve on this on this initial board, particularly those who are driving legislation that commissioner eats. I think that was pretty much the last deal point that we had is that you know. Felt that the customer service needed to be amped up significantly there and the accountability and they wanted the elected officials the extent possible drafting those bylaws. So that was a negotiation in the room back in November through really February and the intent of this and you go back and see that we are on the record saying that we needed a six to seven month placeholder until we got this legislation kicked off that the timetable just got moved up a little bit. Thank you so much Mr Mayor and I am totally I concur take it to a face value I definitely don't think there's any kind of power play or anything like that I also wanted to to to thank you and thank everybody who was involved, you know in the legislation we were really underrepresented and these two boards it just makes that so much more sense so I'm really thrilled with that and the work that went into it you know still going to be just because I and I've been checking for messages to see if she's watching serious watching. But, you know, because I had mentioned that, yes, I will will agree to continue your role, and I, I, you know, still would like to see Sarah and the official role but I'm also open to definitely not going to be disappointed if the decision is that that the mayor should be in that role instead and I would, you know, based on what you said it makes a lot of sense to me that that the mayor be on there too. So, you know, my vote is going to be for for Sarah to be in that efficient that the called it primary primary role. And, and a mayor secondary role I would expect that, whether it's that way or the reverse that there's collaboration, you know anyway between whoever those those two are. I can't have to, but you know maybe that would go to all the committee and have a voice and all the meetings at the same time but that would maybe create a big committee. Anyway, so I hope that's clear kind of what where I stand on that. Kind of my original point a moment ago about what what's in order, and what may not be for this agenda item. I have a question about the term that we appointed, Sarah to fulfill and when that term because I think if I'm looking at section six correctly. That's the term we go back to not the new terms under the bill. I think that. So when would her term expire as of today. Her term, and this is coming from memory her term was to complete the term Mr Huckabee. And so I believe it was supposed to end 2020 2020. So, beginning of the year end of the year, because if we appointed her in December 4, it would have, I believe it would have been middle part of 2020, but we can verify that. So, I'm looking at and I think they're, they're two clean ways to do this. Alternate spot, or I think it would have to be a motion to remove and replace with a nominee, and then subsequently appoint Sarah to the alternate spot I think it would have to be one of those two options. But not, but not a nomination so there's been two so far there's been two nominations to the primary spot, and I don't think that either of those are in order the way that I'm reading the Senate bill. I'll take my question my answer off the air. Comment on it. I think that the interpretation that Councilmember Davis has described here where the person who was who is serving in this position which was Sarah big airy. The statue or section six allows her to continue to serve for the remainder of that positions term, we don't know when that expires. She filled in the term for Huckabee so she's just basically so there was one year left. She's got one year left as well. And so that's what that provision is saying she's allowed to continue to for the remainder of that term. And that's consistent with what you have what you have there is probably a new appointment being made, which would be separate from this provision. This provision only applies to somebody who was who was currently serving on this DCT board. Before the statute was effective, so you're not saying that this council couldn't make a decision to, as you put it, quote unquote, remove Sarah as the primary and nominate her as the alternate and appoint somebody else as the primary you're saying that it would have to be done in that fashion instead of the fashion that we might have approached it here. I, I'm well, I wasn't saying that was to the first question. No, I wasn't saying that I'm this council can appoint somebody new tonight. The, the earlier question that Councilmember Davis asked me about the removal being done first before an appointment that is tied to our chapter to actually goes back to the charter that all your appointments can only be removed for cause, and that involves. And that's only to city boards and commissions. So in those instances, you do have to have a separate agenda item to remove them before you appoint. So that the procedure described by Councilmember Davis as I interpreted would follow that format. DCTA is not a city board of commission. It is it is a separate legal entity and we just appoint a member and an alternate to that board. With that said, the, this council should wish to do so by making a motion appointing if they wanted to appoint the mayor as the primary and Sarah Baguerre as the alternate. In effect, what you've done is you've moved her and you have basically removed her from the primary and put her back to the or put her to the prime, the alternate position that can be done in one motion because this is not a city board or commission. Okay. Councilmember Barmatr you have, you're looking at request to speak. Is that old? Oh, yeah, that's the old one. Okay, Councilmember Meltzer. So, I'm happy to put it to vote and I don't think we lose in any situation. But for, let's say, for Sarah to continue, there's no vote needed because she's already in the role. Is that correct or does there need to be an affirmative vote for that outcome? For her to remain in that seat. If there is a consensus in the council, I don't know what there is, but just in terms of, is a motion required? No, if the council decided to take no action tonight on the primary, no, nothing is necessary. She can, under the statute, she's allowed to continue. If you want to have, because there has been a vacancy in the alternate, that motion would have to be made tonight. Okay, so if there's going to be a change, that's what requires a motion. Yes. Okay. So, you're saying that if it's the council's desire or somebody's desire to change the primary, then a motion would have to be made and seconded with a nomination. Is that correct? That is correct. Okay, all right. Councilmember Ryan. Well, in that case, I will make a motion to move former council member Bagary to the alternate spot and to have Mayor Chris Watts as the primary representative of the city of Denton to DCTA board. Okay, we have a motion. Is there a second? I'm not going to second it, even though I can. So, is there a second on that motion? Mayor Pro Tem? Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries four to two with one abstain. All right, let's go ahead and take a five minute break and then we'll start with our public hearings. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on May 21st, 2019. It is 851. We're moving now through our agenda items. Public hearings, which is agenda item six going to 6A. Is this one been postponed? This has been postponed. Is that right? 6A? Okay. We'll move past 6A to 6B. Hold a public hearing, consider adoption of ordinance amending the newly revised development code. Oh, well, there you go. Okay, C. All right. We'll go to and we do have some cards on that as well. Agenda item 6C, which is hold a public hearing, inviting citizens to comment on the citizen of Denton's 2019 action plan for housing and community development. Evening Mayor, Council, Danny Shaw, Community Development. We hear on our final leg of our citizen participation process for action plan submission to HUD. We do have some final days for our public comment period so people can still respond by email and writing to us or come into our office. Council did see a presentation on the Community Development Advisory Committee and the Human Service Advisory Committee recommendations for city council that are included in the action plan. We are having our public hearing this evening and then if everything goes as planned, we will submit that action plan to city council for approval and then submit it to HUD as required. So within the action plan, just wanted to highlight these are the funding recommendations from those committees that were presented on May 7 and then open it up to council to open the public hearing. So we're going to take questions for you first and then all right. Mayor Pro Tem, you have a question? No, sir. I'll wait. So I'll remove that and then come back. All right. Any questions for staff at this time? All right. So I will open the public hearing and we have some cards, but this is a public hearing so anybody wishing to speak who did not fill out a card will obviously be able to speak, but we'll go through the cards first. I'll go ahead and go through the Well, the white cards. Yeah, the white cards are cards indicating that they do not wish to speak, but they have indicated either support or opposition. So I'll read those Rudy. Is it Garza? Didn't affordable housing executive directors in support. Michelle Connor 350 Sunflower Avenue is in support. Debbie Jensen 2915 Bristol Street is in support. We've got some blue cards here. David Johnson. If you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. Good evening, David Johnson at 3617 San Paula Drive in Flower Mound. I am here this evening. Thank you, by the way, for having the public hearing. I'm here because I'm the president of the board for Habitat for Humanity in Denton County, and we are very appreciative of the consideration that the city of Denton is giving for grant. We are increasingly challenged to find lots of to build homes here in Denton as real estate prices climb, and we really appreciate the support to help us with that challenge. So thank you. You bet. All right. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem question. Yeah, I have a question for Mr. Johnson. Oh, Mr. Johnson. Yeah, we have a question here. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So I appreciate you being here and I'm sensitive to the pricing market and would ask simply, would you entertain working with the city to find lots outside of where 90% of your where habitat homes are built currently clustered in one area. Well, we have to abide by the federal mortgage laws. And as you may know, the redlining is was out done a long time ago, as far as limiting where you can build homes. So we are open to whatever suggestions are available. However, the mechanics of how our last come together to keep our homes affordable are very important. And if the real estate market has had created certain elements of in certain areas where the lots are more reasonably priced and others, then we have to be obligated to that as well. So we're open to all ideas, but we have to stay within the confines of the law. So that's your question. It does. And so I want to follow up on that because I've heard that a couple of times. So redlining was the practice used to keep African Americans from particular areas. And that's your understanding of what it would be to expand outside of the area where African Americans are. I believe it is. I don't know that it was specific to race. I think it was specific to minorities in general. I'm not schooled on the physical law. I'm just familiar with lending practices in general. And I'm also aware that we as a not chartered nonprofit apply a formula to our homeowners across the board, regardless of race. So we can get into a deeper discussion if I have time to research the actual ethnicity of the law. But generally we are open to helping anyone that needs affordable housing. Certainly. No, you cited it. So I thought that was the purpose. So I my my my apology. I was just going off your site. And so but I will ask you can consider as you're purchasing property. The city just experienced a unfortunately or turn a tornado in one area. So that strategic advantage of buying property in one area could be a tremendous disadvantage if we were to have an emergency event in that same area where 90 percent of your homes are that low and moderate income area because it houses all those homes. So I think it's important as an institution to maybe focus on diversifying for safety sake as well. But that's just that's just my commentary not asking you to respond to that. By all means, you can. But those are concerns that I have about clustering. Our homes are probably insured and that's part of the regulations that we have. So any concentration of loss that we would have would be diverse across the home. The insurers that we are homeowners have and the loss would be for the city of Denton at large, not just for Habitat Home. So there are there's all types of elements that should would be considered in that type of loss. Indeed. And also, by the way, there are I realize that I'm not 100 percent certain with how the housing authority works. I think they're a separate entity from you all, but they also have a concentration of lots that we would be very interested in an inventory of lots that would be very interested in. Maybe we can take the grant money and turbocharge it with another government entity here in Denton and everybody could win, regardless of where they're located. But that would be my thought as well. So I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, don't go away, sir. I I I I I share Mayor Potem's inclination toward making sure we don't ghettoize low income housing. And I and I acknowledge the challenge and your your task requires getting low price lots or, you know, to make the total package affordable. And I ask you, as well as just other members of council who are more expert in local real estate market, are there other areas of town that also offer, you know, very affordable lots potentially like maybe even maybe further out. And, you know, maybe it's harder to find low cost close in, but maybe further out. Well, we have a we have a land committee of six members that are dedicated to look for buildable lots for us. They scour the entire county. So we are we are like we look for lots in anywhere. We're currently building in Sanger. So besides, I'm I'm a little confused. We build a brand new house that is up to standards. Great houses. And and I believe it is often an attribute, a positive attribute to the neighborhood. So maybe there's some message we should have offline about why you're concerned about where we're building. But I believe what we put into a neighborhood is an actual benefit. I think I think you're sort of saying the opposite of your implication. So, you know, just the concern is not not to put them in other places. It's to encourage you to put them in other places. Right. Right. Well, that's why we're talking about the streets, you know, right where I live, where I think they'd be awesome. But, you know, but I know that the price of lots would be a deterrent. So it's more market based than anything else. So, you know, I'm just really asking, like, are there other places besides the same neighborhood that offer compelling places? We have lots of building in Sanger currently. Excuse me. I didn't expect to be have a full presentation here. We have lots of Sanger. We have lots in Louisville that we're working on. We have and we're actively pursuing lots and other parts of the county. We are Denton County Habitat for Humanity, not Denton Habitat for Humanity. So what we work on is very broad based. But regardless, back to the original reason why I want to speak was we do greatly appreciate the city's endorsement with considering a grant for us. And we will use the funds the best way we know how, which is to provide affordable housing for folks that qualify for our program. So thank you. Appreciate it. Councilmember Armitage. Let's see. Well, you might want to respond to this. I don't know. I know you're tired. I wanted to kind of open it to respond to what's been said, but also in a way towards opening this up to the larger subject of this discussion, which is, you know, so many different kinds of proposals, you know, I wanted to recognize, you know, the concern about, you know, concentration of affordable housing in certain neighborhoods. It's I don't quite see why habitats being singled out for that. But I do and I do recognize that that's an issue. It is my view. I'm stating that my individual view that because, you know, as you mentioned, you're working with the market. All right. And a lot of other nonprofits are that do so much good. I personally believe that the market alone, and I've seen evidence for this, you know, cannot solve the problem of income inequality and the unaffordability of housing in throughout the city. That's a huge citywide issue. I do believe it's my belief that that governments can do a lot to change that. I don't think nonprofits can do that. I don't think the market can do that. So, you know, when the and I'm saying this is a way to kind of put a positive spin on it to open it up and and and to move on to different discussions. But I hope to see there's a as you may or may not know one thing that will be included in the budget proposal for next year or will be considered anyway will be a proposal for a citywide housing assessment. And I'm excited about that. I'm also hoping that that will include inclusionary zoning assessment and kind of recommendations as to what the city can do about that this is just a hope we haven't decided on that. Anyway, I'm not so much saying this to you but the public and not just to you but the public but but really to I don't see this as just a habitat issue it's a citywide issue it's a nationwide issue and you know I applaud what habitat and our other nonprofits are doing working with the market with all its limitations, I would almost say working against the market. So, anyway, that's what I had to say. Thank you. Appreciate it. Forgive me to end on a positive note we're very excited to partner with the city to find lots wherever we can with the grant money that you're considering thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you, sir. Next speaker will be Jacob Moses. Jacob you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin. My name is Jacob Moses live at 615 West Oak, apartment C. I'm a member of a board member of the debt and affordable housing corporation, and let's take a moment to tell how thankful we are for you all to consider and giving just over $84,000 to the debt and affordable housing corporation. And knowing we as a city think about what we can do to support our lower income residents, help them live healthier more successful lives. The first thing we have to consider is housing. You know whenever we have residents spending 50 60 7% of their income on housing is difficult to do much else it's difficult to find transportation to get to a job is difficult to be able to afford to purchase healthy food. Thank you very much of you for acknowledging that I wanted to do your job to provide more affordable housing and then like to share with you what we at the DAC plan to do with data for grant. We have four units that are currently occupied by physically disabled tenants. These units are getting really run down. So we'll use the money to get those back up to good shape. Future tenants will be thankful for and then future tense as well. So it's one to speak on behalf of my fellow board members and Rudy guards our leader and executive director would say thank you for considering us for this fund. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is Ray Hernandez. Come down state your name and address your time will begin. My name is Ray Hernandez 2365 bar Hill Boulevard in Highland Village Texas. I also am here in support of this item. I want to thank the committee for all their work. I know there was a lot of deliberation and a lot of conversations and to get us to this point, and I know the impact and the leadership that you're going to provide today by a positive is definitely welcome will make an impact. You know when I'm looking over the, the, the percentage of folks that live in Denton, 20% of the population live below in the needing affordable housing or are below the poverty level. It's important, and I speak from someone from experience so I'm one of, I always say a small family of 11 with nine boys and two girls on this. My dad was a sharecropper son. Back then they, I think he bought the property for $250 in the house for $250 so the market is definitely on an up screen upswing here in North Texas and it poses many challenges for us. Specifically for Habitat for Humanity, the $220,000 will definitely go a long way in helping us address the need to provide affordable housing in a respectful manner for the citizens that are needing that here in Denton. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is John Montoya, please come down state your name and address your time will begin. John Montoya, my address is 3113 Briery Trace Court, Denton, Texas. You can move that mic up. Thank you so much for for this grant. This is a huge deal for us we're going to be able to purchase land and four lots, hopefully, if not more with this with these dollars. What does that mean for us that means that we have purchasing power. We have the ability to take that and turn that into homes within a short period of time, having capital to buy land is one of our major obstacles, and then looking for affordable land is another obstacle. What we run into is, is the, the more valuable the land, the more valuable the house on appraisal. Okay. So we're always going to be opportunistic in our land purchases, even if we do have capital to buy because we're concerned about that appraisal and what that's going to do to impact that family. It's about an affordable home affordable monthly living costs for that family so right now 60% of renters in Denton pay over 30% of their monthly income toward toward housing. That's unacceptable and we have to find a way to increase the access to affordable housing so for homes is is a drop in the bucket really, but it is a huge start. It is a great start with regard to diversifying and looking into other areas and seeking out other areas to buy. We already do. We're already very opportunistic and also very much in favor of seeking out other areas. We also, again, are fighting market forces that drive us to those that are available and those are that are affordable. And then there are other forces to because we can buy land but the infrastructure costs could be substantial. If we buy large pieces of land in areas that are not developed, there's also access to public transportation, access to schools, access to, you know, grocery stores, we try to consider all of this when we're building. So it's not just about choosing land and buying a chunk of land. We also have to consider that family and the needs of that family. So that's something that we were holistic about our approach to purchasing land because we're really all about building those homes and building those families future. That makes sense. But I just wanted to also just express just that gratitude and also a desire to continue to partner with the city of Denton on affordable housing issues, on affordable housing education. We're working on developing our education initiatives as well and likely in conjunction with other nonprofits like United Way and the financial coaching initiative over there. We're going to try to maximize and expand our education opportunities to really bring in others that are not just our habitat families but others as well into homeownership and preparing for homeownership as well. So just want to let you know about that kind of things to come. But again, very grateful and very thankful. Councilmember Briggs for clarification. So the previous gentleman said what this is didn't habitat didn't county and that there are several bills going on all over and in singer and so that the money that that this grant is awarding you is for the city of Denton. Correct. Yes. Yes. Yes. Only for purchases within the city of Denton. Just just for clarification out there just so that anybody who was confused is not anymore. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. This is a public hearing have no more cards but this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak please come down state your name and address your time will begin. Council my name is Willie as with 116 23 Newton. I live in the area where all houses are being built. The elephant that's in the room is why. Let me just throw out some suggestions. It's red lining. A form of it. Here's the definition of that. We're going to keep your kind. Whatever that is economically color of skin language, whatever in your place. Here's something you can do and you can say that to the gentleman from habitat for humanities. He didn't answer the question, what he question he answered was. Are you finding affordable houses and why. He continued to talk about that. Yes, we are. We're doing the best we can do. We're in affordable housing. The question is why when you put those homes that you have built on a map, they run just as straight as you can imagine right across the tracks where you've always kept my people. Guess where I build my $450,000 home. Cross the track. I like it. But don't sit here stone face and give me this business about, oh, we think you're great, great, great and not answer the question question. Why are you building all these homes in this one area. Answer red line. I think you could see what I'm talking about. Grew up with this. When I grew up, I could walk to my school. No one practically and South East didn't can walk to their school. Their bus to Woodrow Wilson and Newton razor bust. They live right by the school. Did you grow up in a neighborhood school? That was probably nice with second thing. You get the feel of what I'm talking about. Try to build one of those homes in some areas in this city where you can afford the land. Try. Just try that. Watch what the neighbors do and how they behave. That's what I'm talking about. You need to address your address that quit sitting here thinking everything is great. Again, look at where the houses are. Just look at the map. Then answer the question, which he didn't answer. Why are you building the homes right there? I can tell you. White privilege. You stay where you are. We free Joe. Stay where you are and stay in your place. Hogwash. I'm not staying in my place. Well, I am. Heck, I moved over there. I want to stay over there. But there are some people, if you just put us together with some other people, the country would be better. The city would be better. Dern, I'm sure tired of the excuses. Well, we're doing the best. And another thing. Answer this question. How many African Americans are on that board of Habitat of Humanity? How many? How many African Americans work on the board of Habitat of Humanity? Well, guess what happens when you own the board? You tend to do what is best for your family and your race. That's normally what happens. I don't care where you put the houses. They're new. I kind of like them. But answer the question. Why? Right across the tracks. I'll tell you what it is. Rent mining. You want to keep us in our place, wherever that is. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, I just wanted to just to lift up what, not Councilmember Hudspeth, Willie Hudspeth, what you were just saying about segregationary zoning and/or segregationary realities, put it that way. You know, I think, and correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth that aren't there, but my sense is that I think the one thing where we differ is I'm placing the blame for that on, I'll say on me, on government, this thing that we are. And I don't mean individual Councilmembers or even us as a body, but just the history in this country. And I'm saying that not to make it abstract, but to say that this is where I feel that the changes need to come to make housing affordable, to make it possible for a group like Habitat, for a government to do public housing, which we're not even having a conversation about, and I wish, I hope we do someday, all over the city of Denton so that we can really do away with segregation, which was the whole purpose of the Fair Housing Act was to, as you know, to combat segregation. It's a very real thing. You'll be surprised when this board says you're not going to put those houses in some other areas and see what happens. I want, I hope, yes, in my backyard, everybody, I really hope we live to see that day. I'm going to fight hard for that, but thank you for what you said. Thank you. All right. This is Councilmember Husband, or Mayor Pro Tem. No, I'll let you close the session and then I'll wait. Okay. All right. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak? This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak? So I just want to clarify, there's no action required on this item. Is that correct? That is correct. All right. So when I close the public hearing, we can still have discussion until we close the agenda item, correct? That is correct. Okay. All right. One more time. Anybody else wishing to speak on this agenda item? All right. I'll close the public hearing. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. I would just ask my colleagues to not support this or push for Habitat Humanity to accept the $220,000 with the understanding that we have expectations. It is not money they've raised. It is federal grant dollars. And so I'll support that briefly with these things, but I'll ask for a little latitude, Mayor. I'll direct you. I won't call out the speaker specifically, but I'll tell you one of the speakers tonight, according to the Denton County property records, lives in Wellington subdivision. The wellingtonhoa.net is the website. I'll direct you to page 24, section 9.12 of Article 9, use of property lots. And interesting enough, that particular subsection, the title of that is Garage and Servant Quarters. Interesting. Well, so one of the speakers advocated for Habitat for Humanity tonight, lives in that subdivision, lives under these guidelines, lives under that title, and it says you can't have a property there without a garage. So the person that would advocate for Habitat and tell you how great it is can't have one in his or her neighborhood. That's interesting to me. And so that's the source of consternation for me, is when is this council going to take control of our city and lead and not live under guidelines titled Servant Quarters. And so I also looked up a few articles. I provided you with the map. I provided you with the, you don't have to predict the future. I gave you a picture of what happened on Scott Street when they built all houses together, bringing the house down. There we go. And so you can still hear me. And so I gave you the map. Look at it at your discretion. I gave you the map where they're concentrating the homes. I just encourage you to, in your time, as we prepare to approve these dollars, that you search your heart and see if you're okay with that. And there's an article also I'll direct you to, Article of Journal of Public Policy. Mayor Pro Tem, let me see if they're checked to make sure that the recording is still going on, that the power surge didn't, so we can get this on the record. She went to check real quick if we can. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, still record. All right. I'm sorry, pardon the interruption. No, no, I'm going to try to hustle. So Article of Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, it's dated May 2013. Yeah. Well, can you bring that up? I mean, we don't have to stop the proceedings to do that, do we? Do we have to stop the proceedings to bring up the software? I don't think so. Well. Yeah, but so we can videotape it. Is that right? Yeah, there's nothing to be taken on this. Yeah. So let me just, first of all, are we recording, is this being recorded? Sure. Okay, we'll take a two minute break. You bet. Yeah, two minute break, two to five minute break. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Dent City Council on May 21st, 2019. It is 928 p.m. We're on agenda item 6C and Mayor Pro Tem was in the midst of some commentary. So if you could resume Mayor Pro Tem, that'd be great. Yes, sir. So just one article and a couple excerpts from it. The article is titled, it's the Article Journal of Public Policy and Marketing. It's dated May 2013. The subtitle is Living on the Other Side of the Tracks and Investigation of Public Housing Stereotypes. I understand that it's not exactly on point because we're not talking about public housing, but I thought the points were salient. It talks about diversity and seeking tendencies and tendencies can be altered in response to external or situational stimulus. And that's what I'm asking this body to do, to stimulate change. And so when you talk about that, you talk about the psychological and social benefits of being amongst people that are different from you, different cultures, different learning, that sort of thing, different schools. And so that's important to me. And I'll give you a quote from there that says, "The ideal home is not solely the dwelling in which the household resides. It also includes the neighborhood in which it is located in the surrounding areas." And so that's key to me is that it's not just the house. It's the surrounding areas that I think the homeowners benefit from doing things differently in a different mindset. And I'll close with this. A home can mean membership in a social group or a school system. And so I know those not -- those that are listening or watching online can't see, but my concern is there's -- I have -- the staff will have it. There's a map of seven acres that's in Southeast Denton that is -- my concern is that they'll just continue to add on to that. And the other graphic that staff will have is what they did 10 years ago -- more than 10 years ago. I grew up in a neighborhood probably 25 years ago, and it has a row of houses that Habitat built, and the static rate is $120,000, and it has not changed. I've circled the blue houses that are not Habitat houses that have grown exponentially to show this is forecasting. We don't have to guess what's going to happen if we don't act as a council. So I'm asking this council to seek ways to protect those families that would be benefited by the homes, and I want to stipulate -- I think the homes are fantastic. I think the group is fantastic. I've never said one bad word about that group, about how they build houses. Heck, I'm the only one on this council, I bet, that has my entire street -- I have one Habitat house across the street, one at the end of my block, and two right next to me. And so I'd ask you to listen to me before you listen to the person that lives in a neighborhood where they can't be built. I can't be against them. I absolutely will tell you they -- the homes are well built. The people that are in them are outstanding. I wouldn't change my neighbors for the world, but I'm just asking you to come to 606 Wilson Street. I'll introduce you and just take my word for it. I live it every day, and don't take the word of someone that does not live it, and they can't build one in their neighborhood. That's all I'm asking. So thank you. And I don't remember who was requested to speak, so if you're requesting to speak, just raise your hand. Yes, councilmember, I'll return. So, you know, not to drag it out too much, but just to say, you know, I, councilmember Hussbeth, agree with you on what the problem is, disagree that it would help the problem to deny this money to Habitat. I fought for -- well, I'm calling it fought pushed for, you know, more inclusionary zoning every opportunity I got. I'm not saying this is just a zoning issue, but that's a big component of the issue, a big component of the history of redlining. I pushed for that in my neighborhood and all neighborhoods. I want to see -- I'm okay with duplexes, triplexes in my neighborhoods. That's not very popular. You know, I voted for mobile homes, and I lost votes over that. People wrote and said, I voted for you, you know, because you're for the environment, but you voted for mobile homes, so I'm not going to vote for you again. I'm okay with that, because I believe in housing diversity citywide. I'm not sure, you know, who you were referring to, and I'm not asking you to name. I realize you were being discreet, but as far as, you know, living in a HOA, I certainly don't live in a HOA. I don't like the zoning restrictions that are in my neighborhood. I think they're too restrictive. It's a very unpopular position for me to take, but I'm doing it because I feel like it's my job. But that's where I feel the burden lies on government to open things up everywhere and also to invest in housing and land, including public housing, everywhere throughout the city, not to divest from nonprofits like Habitat. Okay, anybody else? Councilmember Davis. I have a question for staff on this one. So not understanding the HUD and block grant process and understanding that there are certain timelines that we have to meet and public hearings have to be held, all those sort of things. If Mayor Pro Tem Hutzbutt is proposing to attach strings to the Habitat portion of this funding, is there still an opportunity to attach those strings under this draft action plan, and where do we attach them? Right. They wouldn't actually happen in the action plan. The funding would be approved in the action plan, but then you would have the opportunity, when we are drafting the agreements, to have that input. Those could be brought to you, especially with this amount of funding. You'll be approving those anyway. So if council's direction is to include other stipulations, we would include that in the agreements with the organizations that are receiving funding. So when June 4th rolls around and it's time for us to consider approval of the action plan, we can do so just as it's written, adopting anything else we need to from public commentary that still happens, and then later on continue this conversation. Correct. All right. Any other questions? This isn't an action item. Council Member Meltzer. I am asking the city manager to remind me if you've got this more at your fingertips. Just when is the work session coming up that I requested that is to start the process of having a comprehensive, affordable housing plan that includes among its objectives deconcentration of low-income housing using all the tools in the toolbox. That was the famous phrase. So let me go ahead and see if you can recall. I know I've seen that it's coming up, and I thought you might have it more at your fingertips than me fishing through my mail. I don't have it at my fingertips yet. I think it's still on the to-be-scheduled list. Right. We had it planned for the 21st, but then pulled it to add some additional information. So it's imminent? Part of the conversation is imminent, yes. I think, you know, comprehensive look at how to approach that is important. I don't share the objective. I don't believe that Habitat goes through all that trouble to build houses just in order to redline. I don't think that's their goal. But I think that you're still pointing out, you know, a challenge that we have to take on. We would benefit from that as well. This summer we'll begin drafting our five-year consolidated plan for the next five years and being able to incorporate incentives or neighborhood revitalizations that would help us incentivize that behavior as well. Okay. Any other requests to speak? All right. Seeing none. We've closed the public hearing, so we will conclude this agenda item. We'll move on to agenda item 6D. Hold a public hearing, consider adoption of an ordinance amending the Razor Ranch Overlay District to provide standards and criteria for the residential development within the Razor Ranch South Campus. Is the podium computer working? It is. Okay, good. All right. All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Haley Zagorski, Senior Planner. This is item Z1826. So a little bit of background. The Razor Ranch Overlay District is a zoning overlay that covers 410 acres located on the north and south side of US 380 between Bonnie Bray and I-35, first approved in 2007. The specific request before you is an amendment to that overlay district to provide standards and development criteria for the residential uses that are permitted within the South Campus, which is highlighted in yellow on this map, specifically within the South Mixed Use District. So to break it down a little bit further, I mentioned 410 acres total. That's the marketplace on the north side and the South Campus south of 380. If we look at the South Campus specifically, there are three primary areas. What's known as the RR1 District is the town center, shown in red on the map. The yellow areas are the South RR2 District. That's kind of the perimeter, more intensive commercial uses. The standards for those have been in place for several years now, which is why we've seen development in those areas. The other colors represented on this map are what's called the South Mixed Use District. Specifically outlined in the light shade of blue there are the areas of that South Mixed Use District that would permit residential uses, multi-family and single-family. Most of this district does not have development standards adopted for it yet. The one portion here that's under construction with apartments had standards adopted in 2016, so this is a continuation of that effort to create standards for the other residential areas. All of the commercial areas have placeholders left in the overlay, so we'll be back in the future when they're ready to look at the non-residential portions of this Mixed Use District. Looking at the base zoning, RAZR has a split of NRMU and RCCD districts on the south side, so the red being the NRMU along Bonnie Bray. That's intended to provide kind of this transition area with lower intensity residential uses to transition us from the high intensity of the town center to the existing single-family neighborhoods on the opposite side of Bonnie Bray. This is the general development plan that was approved in March of 2018 by the Planning and Zoning Commission. North is oriented towards the left side of your screen, that's 380 on the north side, scripture on the south. The lots or tracks that are highlighted in blue are those where single-family uses are permitted as part of the base zoning of the overlay, as well as within the GDP specifically. And then the areas in red are what the GDP targeted for multi-family development. So the standards that are proposed here are of course provided in your backup and in the draft ordinance. I won't go through those in great detail, just hit some of the highlights. So Exhibit C2A that was provided to you all is the proposed multi-family development standards. It contains site design, architecture, landscaping, parking and sign standards. Overall, the standards they're proposing are generally consistent with what we've had in the Denton Development Code since 2002. There are a couple of primary differences I wanted to point out. One is the proposed parking standards would follow what was in place in the 2002 DDC. So that's what is already in place for the other residential portions of Razor Ranch. So the existing multi-family that's being built, as well as the residential that was recently approved on the north side in the marketplace. So that would be consistent with the rest of the overlay district. And you can see that breakdown here. So the DDC, as of our 2018 parking update, switched to a one space per bedroom for everything above one bedroom units. They're proposing to go back to those old ratios that would range from one space per unit up to one space per bedroom for the larger size units. The other primary difference for multi-family is an enhanced masonry standard. The DDC is a minimum 40% overall. They're proposing 60% minimum on street sides of the buildings that would have to be brick or stone, 40% on all other sides. In terms of open space, landscaping, minimum unit size, they're consistent generally with both the DDC and the standards in place across the rest of Razor Ranch. For single family, exhibit C2B is what would provide the similar standards for single family and townhome development. Again, generally consistent with the DDC, but there are a few key differences. One is a reduction in the minimum unit size from our citywide standard of 900 to 800 square feet. Parking, again, they're proposing to follow the 2002 standards that were in place when Razor was first developed. So that would be the two spaces per unit as opposed to four. And then, again, enhanced masonry standards. DDC currently does not have a minimum masonry standard in the 02 code. They're proposing 40% minimum brick or stone facing streets, 80% minimum masonry overall on the building. And then they're also proposing to reduce the side yard setback on one side for single family down to zero to allow for a zero lot line cottage home style development. So some of staff's findings, we found that the standards they proposed are consistent with the other standards in place at Razor for commercial and residential development in terms of landscaping and building materials. So we'd see a continuation of the theming that's in place. Their standards are generally stricter than the DDC in terms of required architectural details and minimum building materials. We found that although the single family uses are not typically permitted in RMU, that was something provided for as far back as 2008 in the Razor overlay. And as they've proposed it on their GDP and with these standards, it would provide us a smoother transition from the high intensity of the town center and the high intensity multifamily that's permitted in that area to the existing single family neighborhoods. And in terms of the parking, you may have noticed with staff's condition, we did have a little concern there at going back to those old standards that we just recently changed. However, what they've proposed would provide consistency in parking across all of Razor Ranch so there wouldn't be certain portions that have to switch between versions of the DDC. It would be consistent. There is a significant amount of parking existing in the south campus. Razor is exempt from the parking cap that we have citywide. They're allowed to provide excess parking as it is and we've seen in almost all of their developments that they do provide that excess parking. However, staff does recommend that the mixed use parking reduction allowed for in the DDC and referred to in the overlay district not be allowed to apply in that NRMU area that we saw on the map earlier. Notifications were sent regarding this. We received one favorable response from the owner of the marketplace in the town center. And staff's recommendation I wanted to provide a point of clarification on. I've highlighted in red some language that was intended to make it into your backup and I think I inadvertently left the old recommendation there. This is what was presented to P&Z and it's revised just to include a little more specificity. So that recommendation is approval with the addition of the following language that section 35-7-15-10A be updated to include a statement that says subsection 35-14-7C mixed uses shall not apply to residential uses with a base zoning of NRMU district that are located in the south mixed use district east of Heritage Trail. And so far as a parking reduction beyond the minimum required amount shall not be granted for any residential uses. And with that, I'm happy to stand for any questions. Council Member Briggs. I have a few. So I think the DDC that you're quoting here is, was it the brand new one that we just? 2002. So it's 2002, okay. So I would be interested in say for the masonry, what was proposed, how that would match up to what the proposed one is that we just passed. I believe the 2019 DDC maintained the 40% masonry for multifamily and added, I believe it was a 25% minimum masonry on single family. So they're still above and beyond that requirement. Okay. And so my concern, I'm glad to see the one here about the parking. I'm not going to the NRMU district because my concern would be that some of those residential spaces would fill up and start becoming an issue for some of the commercial spaces. So you did mention the other side has extra parking and that's correct. But the side that the newer side is has less of it. And I've experienced some of that already in certain areas. So I just want to make sure and I know that they don't want to do anything to harm the businesses that are in there. But just so that we take careful consideration so that we're not pushing residential cars in parking into the commercial area. Certainly, and the intent with that is to clarify because I know you all don't always see the site plans that go on at Razor, but they always provide excess parking on almost every site. So that was just to point out that they still have that provision in place that they can go above and beyond their minimum that they've established here without it having to be pervious or have any other special consideration by PNC. But certainly, that's a fair point. Is it me? Is it hot in here? Okay, I'm just checking because I'm starting to. That's okay. So if I get a little informal, please forgive me, but it's a little warm in here. I think they just turned it on. Yeah, I hear it. Yes. Any other questions? Yes, Councilmember Briggs. Are any of the proposed residential SROs? Not that I'm aware of. There is some age restricted that would be 55 and over housing, but I've not heard of anything that would be oriented towards students or single room. Okay, thank you. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. I emailed. Could you speak to I'm concerned about the on street parking, because I think oftentimes there is parking on the facility, but it is just absolutely more convenient to park on the street. So my question was, how would that work? Do we have to work with the developer or is that something the city can do to restrict on street parking? What would that look like? Certainly. So I guess it may help to look at where on street parking is permitted. Their civil plans for this are already approved by staff. Parking would be permitted on this is East Park Boulevard here that would run between Panhandle and up to this point and connect with Heritage Trail. So parking is proposed to be allowed on the streets there. There's specifically striped parking spaces. This is a privately maintained drive here that would also have some on street parking. And then I believe it is Crescent Street. So this here, the street is specifically designed to allow parking on either side of it. The other streets throughout here do not have on street parking permitted on them. And then specifically within the standards that are proposed here, the multifamily uses are precluded from counting that on street parking as their requirement. They have to provide the required spaces on site. And then within the single family subdivisions, they've provided for a statement in there that they would have to widen the streets if they wanted to have parking allowed on both sides. Otherwise it would be signed one park or parking only on one side of the streets. But that is certainly something if you had concerns about a specific area that we could look at. Okay. No, if I could just get an email about the width of the street and maybe give me a sample, direct me to a place where I could go see. And then that will let me know if it's on a contention or not. Because that just, I'd rather do it before than after the fact if raise that issue and see where we fall. But thank you. Any other comments? I just want to echo Mayor Pro Tem Hudspeth's comment on the width of the streets. If you're talking about parking on both sides, because I know, I'm sure if it's a newer street, it's going to be built out so that, you know, safety vehicles can cross or that two cars can pass at the same time. And so that would be helpful information to have on the width of the street. Okay. Is there certain streets you're concerned with? Well, I think Crescent, whichever one you said, which would have. I may actually have that number here. Not all of them have parking on both sides, but it's the ones that that do and where we kind of have to go back into later on. And if that's a private street, then we won't have that option. I don't think to. It looks like Crescent is designed to have two 11 foot width travel lanes, then there is a two foot gap with an eight foot parking allowance on either side. So plenty adequate space there. Thank you. Any other questions? I've got one that I'll probably save it for the applicant when they come up and speak. If they're going to. Yeah. All right. Okay. Any other questions for staff? Seeing none. All right. Now open the public hearing. So I don't have any cards. Wait. Yes, I do. They're hiding. Gerald, is it Lukey? Yes. Are you the applicant or who's it? Yes. Okay. All right. Yeah. Okay. If you'll state your name and address, your time will begin. Sure. Mayor and Council, thank you for opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Gerald Lukey with Hodges architecture 13642 Omega in Dallas and we're excited to bring before you some additional guidelines for raise a ranch. We've had the privilege of working on razor for over a decade now. So it's it's it's been a great run so far and hope to continue the quality development. We were bringing forth these development standards in addition as Haley had mentioned in order to further define our standards on the south campus. And we believe that they're consistent with the remainder of razor ranch and continue to move forward with that. So besides that, we're just here to answer any questions and appreciate your consideration. The question I have is on the residential part. So you're there's a desire to go down to 800 square feet, which means, you know, there's obviously a potential. There's at least the thought that there's potential for those small kind of home developments for either retirees or whoever wants a little bit smaller home. I would like to see an increase in that masonry and stone requirement just on the fronts, because you really if you have an 800 square foot building, if it's a structure, if it's a home, you really don't have a whole lot of street facing frontage on that. And so I understand the cost on a large structure that could be prohibitive compared to either cement fiber board or stucco. But I'd like to see if we can do something a little bit better than the 40%, especially because we're we're reducing the size. So those are some of my thoughts. I mean, the parking on the multifamily, I would really like to see the one parking spot per bedroom start at three bedrooms instead of four bedroom. I don't know how many four bedroom or three bedroom apartment and four bedroom apartment units are going to be built out there, quite honestly. But I'm not, I'm not just, you know, rock solid on that. But I think that that would that was where we really had our concerns primarily when we changed the parking was when we had three bedroom units, they were only allowed to two parkings but I only require two parking spots. So what happened was people were building all these three bedroom units, people having three cars, and it got real quick how little parking there was and then it spilled out onto the street. So those are just sort of some observations that I had in looking at it. Councilmember Armitter, just wanted to kind of respond to that just put my two cents and you know I would mean stone looks really nice, you know 40% seems like a lot to me and you know I would be opposed any requirement that any further requirement that would end up, you know, trickling down to the renters, the tenants and passing the burden on to them. So, kind of just consistently I'm opposed to that and, and, you know, and I would ask that, that, that, you know, that, that colleagues who are for more affordable housing citywide would kind of pay attention to these issues, these kinds of issues to they seem small, but the cost does end up it has to go somewhere and, you know, tenant often ends up paying for it. That's all I want to make sure I clarify, I wasn't talking about the multifamily. Okay, I think you were talking about I'm sorry, sorry, I misunderstood. Yeah, all right. Well, so okay, so so the occupants the price of the housing. Well, it'll be interesting, just to make a comment to that to see the price of the home with either 40% breaker stone or even none compared to 60% on something that small so I hear what you're saying conceptually, those costs may get passed on. But I think when you look at the costs, compared to how it looks, but I'll let you guys decide on that. Yeah, that's why there was an if in there it's a conditional you know if I'm opposed to that, if you know. Okay, any other questions. Yes, customer Davis. Don't understand that these are age restricted and can you tell us about the target, target market for these. Yes, just one of the multifamily developments is age restricted at 55 and over. Is that the one to the, to the south of the property tracked 14. Or, do you know, it would be tracked in this location. To know age restrictions on the others those are open market tiny homes at this time, cottage homes. Well, the multifamily development is is in the red or pink. And right, the blue is the single family, so that 800 square foot homes are cottage style. Correct, garden garden homes. Correct. Thank you. Go ahead, customer brings just on that point so that is that all the blue is that cannot be all 800 square feet comes on the in the all the regulations are meant to apply to all that we don't yet know what the plan is for those. Do you have an idea of I mean are they going to be for sale or for rent or yes. And the single family developer is here tonight also they can speak to some more detail if you'd like. Sure. Okay, good. One clarification on the age restricted multifamily. Looks like you're asking for one parking space per dwelling, regardless of the bedroom count is that correct. That's correct. In the age restricted most of the units will be smaller units in response to the number of bedrooms, and that that one parking space per unit is again consistent with the previous parking requirements for age restricted. So that would only apply to that. Is that is that is that correct. I mean in the old DDC, not the not the 2019. That's correct. The 2002 DDC has a an age restricted multifamily classification that's allowed one space per dwelling what is that still the same today or what's our current regulation on age restriction for parking. And that's the 2002 to Okay, I want to make sure yeah that we didn't change it because we've changed some of the parking requirements. That was not part of that to update. Fair enough. All right. Thank you. Okay, you know the questions for the speaker. Councilmember Meltzer. Don't take a lot of time at this late hour, but I, I love hearing, maybe one minute on the just just had a curiosity on the market assessment for the market for the small houses, just, you know, why and why why will this be successful. If you wouldn't mind. One minute. No, no, the developer is here. So they're going to come up and I'm going to call their name. So yeah, there you go. And just in order to answer a couple of questions, if you don't mind on the 40%, the 40% on the single family homes is restricted to brick or stone. So it's not the overall masonry definition that's in the DDC now understand so so it is a higher restriction in relationship to the single family than the overall masonry sure sure just want to address that and then for the on street parking. As Haley explained, there's only a crescent drive that has the parking on both sides, the remainder of East Park and the private drive or plan to just have a parking on one side and we have widened the right of way in order to accommodate that parking. So one real quick question on the blue with the I think that's the single family. Yeah, on that map. So let's just look at this square. I can't really read it. It's right in the middle. It's sort of the largest one. Are those drive, are these individually platted lots number one, and then number two or the if so are those drives, private drives, or is that you got the roads getting to it but inside the actual square. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, we're going to call him then right now. Apologize. You bet. No problem. The next big any more questions for the applicant. The applicant. All right. Next speaker is Mr Strange. Oh, oh, she's coming up. Okay. Are you are you gonna want to speak. Okay, after okay. Amy visit if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin. Good evening mayor and council members any visit to 12 south Elm didn't 76201. If you don't mind, I'd like to drop in a flash drive so I can show you some renderings and the site plan a little more up close on that specific track that you asked. I hope it works with our little electrical bug. So while I'm pulling this up just to kind of cover a couple of questions that came up the intent here is to flat these lots individually. Right now we have a we have a preliminary concept plan that is roughly 36 or 37 lots on roughly six acres. Here we go. Let's look successful so far. They will be homes that are sold off to to individual homeowners the the actual home sizes are roughly going to be 900 to 1100 square feet. They will all be one bedroom. Some will have an open loft area. The intent there is that the market would be retired couples single professionals. We're not marketing to college students. Well we will not provide multiple bedrooms and we're not necessarily marketing to families where you would need lots of parking which is why we are proposing to off street parking spaces per lot. Let me pull up the site plan and the renderings for you. This is a zero lot line development so true garden style homes which essentially means that the home will sit on one lot line on the side and then there will be a six foot side yard on the other side. Let me rotate this for you. It's trying. How many acres did you say this six point something to one. It's I think it's just under six acres. I'll show you on the site plan in just a moment. So here's some of the renderings that our architect has done today as you can see there to a cottage style and homes that with a garage on the back side of each one. And here is a little bit closer up view of what we have we're proposing one garage space per home plus one off street space per home we have provided for some guest parking along street a here as well as and this is a park area in here. The street system interior to the development will be private but it will be constructed to city standards and I think I covered all the questions that were asked but if there are any others I'd be glad to to respond. This customer breaks. Will there be an HOA for each individual. I mean for there will be an HOA in fact, the way we envision this development is that they won't primarily be fenced yards, unless if somebody wants a fence it will be a small, a short wrought iron fence something that maybe to have a space for a dog to run around in. But the intent is for an HOA to maintain all of the green space. So on the we heard earlier I just want to clarify that there's not in the multifamily in the four bedrooms are not going to be geared towards students as well student housing. I represent the developer of the single family only so our intent here is traditional single family and cottage style homes. And the this is phase one, which is between 900 and 1100 square feet. There are a few that fall just a little bit below that 900 feet without the garage, which is why we've asked for a reduction to 800. And the other phases will probably be a little bit larger homes but we have not actually designed those at this point in time and I'll refer to Gerald with Hodges to answer the multifamily questions. Yeah, Councilmember Melzer. So yeah, I just want this is just kind of a comment, you know, I just want to say that there's, I'm happy was happy to see in preparing for today that we've got these small also try not to say tiny homes because that's a thing. Small homes on the market, there is a big need for that, especially with our seniors. Not everybody wants to live in some retirement. Well, not everybody can afford to live in a big fancy retirement community and everyone wants to live in a kind of basically a big apartment building for retired people. So anyway, they look really nice and there's there's definitely a need for that. I appreciate that and the buyer of this property has entertained multiple calls from interested individuals already even though we're nowhere near breaking ground. I'm not surprised at all. It's pretty rare. I hope it doesn't continue to be rare. Agreed. This, the streets that are private. City streets. Yes, sir. That's correct. So, and the streets, if any of them are contemplated to be wide enough to to park on both sides, we'll have to meet the city city's requirements on width to still have plenty of space for emergency personnel and to, to not have that problem that's caused in some of our older streets near the universities. I believe all of these are only going to be constructed to the width to be able to park on one side, with the exception of street a which you can see here has parking on both sides. So, you'd mentioned that these will be one car garages and typically one bedroom. Yes, all one bedroom some will have an open air loft. Because my only concern is I mean I get that and that's why you're asking for the parking reduction but it's just a, this is an approval for these, these overlays so would there be any objection to putting in there specifically that, because I don't want to change the parking regulation. If there's not a commitment and memorialized for the bedroom count of the cottages because that could really mess things up pretty badly. So, having had multiple conversations with the buyer developer and architect, I would say that there's no objection to restriction that there's only one bedroom, as long as there's room for an open air loft which could not be used as a bedroom and is not doesn't have a closet doesn't have privacy, but he is here and I'll let him confirm that. Okay. Okay. And, all right. Any other questions. Yes, customer. If you don't mind saying that we need to know to decide this just curious. What range you expect them to sell in. And I would, I would venture to say we're looking at roughly 200 to 25 at this point in time, but I will let Mr strange answer that more directly. Okay. Any other questions. Thank you. Appreciate it. Mr strange come down state your name and address your town again. My name is virtual strange 531 North Logan Street in Texas. I am will be the developer of the subdivision and got building on planning on building on those houses, too. So, right now we have that plan for 36 cottages on for roughly four and a half acres of develop a land. I think you've heard the standards that have been put before you for approval. Amy's done a good job of putting up a few of the examples. These are going to be unique cottages, a lot of street, a lot of street appeal. We are targeting them for I would use the term empty desks, people who are tired of large houses large lawns at quality home these will be very high end 10 foot ceilings credit countertops with with flooring where it's appropriate. So, it is going to be a very niche product but we think it's something that's, I know it's something needed and I've been getting calls for two years on this. Single car garages and then, and then one space to driveway so actually get to have two parking spaces per house. Then, you can see on the site plan we've also planned for some on street parking near the amenity area. Should not conflict with any of the adjacent uses and the other neighborhoods. If there's any other questions, I'd be happy to answer those questions. I think Councilmember Briggs had asked question earlier about in you might not have this information just to sort of ballpark. What do you think the price point on on these type of homes are going to be or do you have any idea on that. That's hard to say we construction costs are moving but my target still somewhere in the 225 range. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Any questions comments. Do you would you oppose if there was a memorialization of the one bedroom condition on on these. As we had mentioned, I would not have a problem that with the size we're planning to do and you feel because poor plans for these you could not get two bedrooms in there and it's not really the market we're after. In fact, I think that opens it up to a clientele that we're not interested in so we're going to be single bedrooms. Okay. All right. Mayor pro tem you have a question. Yes sir. Thank you. Yeah. So interesting. This helps this presentation helps see you know kind of more detail what's what's coming in and I think just a comment I think it flows well with the existing apartment community that's going in the high end entire end as well going in next to the hotel and Alamo draft house so this is helpful to understand kind of that component and I think just the look and kind of staggered looks I appreciate your, your, your attention to detail in that regard as well. So, thank you. Thank you. Any other questions questions. Seeing none. Thank you. Thank you. No, sure. Thank you. Somebody asked a question and you needed to respond to that. I think you were asking about a four bedroom, and whether it would be college student type rental, and in the overall razor ranch overlay district, two things. Number one, we're, we're prevented from renting by the room. So that kind of takes out the college rental, and also, we cannot have more than three bedrooms per unit. So that's already a restriction within the overall razor ranch overlay district. And that again is why we've asked for the previous parking requirements on the entirety of razor ranch and the multifamily is because we have some other restrictions. And when the original densities were approved during razor ranch overlay all that work together in response to some of these restrictions and the parking requirements. Okay. All right. All right. Yes. Yes, that's it. Thank you. All right. This is a public hearing anybody else wishing to speak. I don't see any more cards. That many people left. So, anybody else wishing to speak. If not, we will close the public hearing. Oh, we're, we're back up and I'm not sure. I'm gonna, if it'll anyway. My board is down as far as either making a motion or request to speak so if somebody's got a comment. Yes, customer monitor. I moved to approve. Okay. Good. I'm sorry, customer, you had a comment. Just ask whether customer barbages intention is to approve with the conditions that were discussed. Yeah, you know, I should probably have somebody else make the motion because then I'll have to ask what exactly where they can have it rehearsed to me again. And unfortunately, John is just have somebody who's got that fresh in their memory. Yes. Okay, it's trying to be helpful ended up not being helpful. Sorry. All right. Anybody else. Yes, Councilmember Davis. Let me give it a shot. I move approval of the request with the addition of the staff recommended the staff recommended condition. That's in our presentation and the one bedroom per property requirement on the single family. Just trying to be helpful. Wasn't wasn't there also discussion of increasing the masonry requirement on the front of the small forms. You know, I didn't name a percentage and I mean, these are I saw the rendering and so they're small enough that I mean, you're going to have almost half. Very attractive. Yeah. So I'm not worried about that. I'll second. Okay, so we have a motion to second Councilmember Briggs. Oh, well, okay. Yeah, this will be a clarification public hearing is closed, but come on down for a clarification question, a question of clarification. I would like to clarify our plan here. We really are going to have three phases of housing on this as you can see by the three blue boxes we started with. Phase one, which is what we outlined here as a site plan and the cottages is what I'm speaking to is one bedroom homes. Phase two, which is farther south, more down toward scripture. Those houses will probably twelve to fourteen hundred square feet. And those possibly will have two bedroom, but we will accommodate the parking as it would be required for that size. I don't anticipate anything larger there than a two bedroom. In phase three, which will be back farther north behind the detention pond, closer up to the opposite center. We'll go back to a cottage style housing. So I just wanted to clarify that here tonight, primarily talking about phase one, which is what we'll be working on in the next year, year and a half. Phase two will come after that. And I just only have a conflict when I come back for phase two that I'm eating my words because I've really directed that toward phase one will be single, primarily single bedrooms. Phase two could possibly go to two bedrooms. OK, I've got some questions about this. I'm going to go. I'm going to reopen the public hearing. Can I do that? Yes, Mayor. That didn't sound too enthusiastic. Typically when we close the public hearing, we never reopen one again. And so but is there anything that prohibits you from doing that? No. Well, my only rationale is because I think based upon what I've heard, there's there's some questions that I have. So if we can still do this under the auspices of clarification of the motion and maybe his. Nothing prevents you from asking these questions after the motion. I know there's discussion, but this board or this council traditionally has asked for clarification questions during your discussion of the applicants. OK, all right. And so I think that might be the better way. OK, I appreciate that. A couple of questions on that. So what we're what we're voting on is these. What do we call them? My mind is gone. No, it's the different hold on. Let me just look at the no, the amendments to the city of zoning for the conditions or the regulations, the DDC, the regulations. So we're voting on them for the entire space, not just phase one, but phase two and three. So my concern about that on the parking regulation for the residential component is if we're providing just two spots, if you're if they move into two bedroom or three bedroom units, then I don't know what kind of accommodate when you talk about parking accommodation, whether it's on street or off street. What I don't want to do is not have enough information to work because what we passed today is what's going to apply to all three phases. That's why you came back up, because you didn't want that one bedroom applying to all three phases, because that would have been that would have been a concern. So help me understand. Are those are those phase two homes that are the larger homes? Are they going to have two car garages or are they just going to have one car garages? You know, I would think at that point we would have two car car garage to accommodate two bedrooms, right, which would not be in in in line with each other, but they'd be adjacent to one, like a regular two car driveway. Is that okay? All right. Because the regulation is only two off street spots for the single family. Is that that's the maximum that's the regulation. All right. Okay. So then what I'm hearing is the motion that was made on the bedroom, it would need to be restricted to phase one, phase one and phase three and phase three. Correct. Okay. All right. Okay, good. All right. I'm glad you came back up that way. Yeah, yeah, I thought you shot up like, you know, like. So, okay. All right. Fantastic. I do appreciate that because that that's certainly very, very helpful. Yes, Councilmember Davis, could I ask a clarification question so I know and maybe staff could could better answer. I'm not sure. So I know how to best amend my motion. Can we refer to these phases by track number in the presentation or is there some better way to identify them so that it's phase one, two and three doesn't have any kind of definition in our materials. Yes. So is this exhibit part of the ordinance that we're approving. And we were trying to think of an easier way to tie this down but I think there's some concern on the owner's behalf of tying this to tracks that haven't been closed on yet. So I'm not sure which way they want to go with that. Oh, okay. I was going to put specific tracks. Yeah, and that's helpful. I mean that's that's detailed information we need to understand so that yeah you're not wanting to put conditions on property that someone's anticipating purchasing, but if they don't go through it that the conditions are still on the property. Yes, and perhaps a minimum garage size based on the number of bedrooms. I don't know if that would get what you're wanting to if you for one bedroom units, it has to be a one car garage two bedroom units would require a two car, but I don't that may get the same end result that you're looking for perhaps. Yeah, yeah, and that's fine I think it was the one bedroom I think the bedroom count probably is as much of a concern. Okay, on on I mean if, because it's a different interest you've got the developer doesn't mind because they're good that's what they're going to do but if it hasn't closed yet then anything can happen and not that I'm just saying so. So my question still stands is this site plan with these color codes. Is this part of the ordinance is this an exhibit on the ordinance. Okay, all right. Could it could it be made one just for identification purposes if we're talking about. Okay, so I'm going to stop for a minute because we're. So, there needs to be some kind of understanding between the applicant and the developer, because now you got sort of a diverging interest on what would be acceptable to one and what's acceptable to the other. And I don't want us to get caught up in the middle trying to figure this out here up on the dais trying to craft something. So, if we could, if we need to take a recess and let them, you know discuss it that's fine. What do we have after this. We only have one more right. Yeah, let's take a five or 10 minute recess and see if there can't be some discussion maybe we can find some some resolution on this. Welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Denton City Council May 21st 2019 we are on agenda item six D. And so, we've had a break, who would like to staff would you someone sort of brief us on where we are and sort of what the thoughts were, and if there's any enlightenment on the direction we need to go, because we have a motion on the floor. I don't think it's been second I haven't called for the second yet. Did I call for I didn't call for the second. Oh, did you okay. All right. No, no, we got but we got to follow the process so if we need to change it we'll either have to amend the motion or withdraw it and start over so let's hear, let's hear staff's report. Okay. So as it's drafted all three phases of single family would have to minimum parking spaces no matter the bedroom count. The intent that we say that one more time, the minimum of two parking spaces per unit, as it's written for the single family. For detached single family. The, what we were discussing is that what's what they referred to as phase one so the middle portion here and phase three or the intended one bedroom. We can break those out by lot and block number if you wish to make a motion that would just restrict those two that they've said they intend to do one bedroom phase two they intend to have larger size units, as it's written, even if those were two bedroom units they would still only have to have a minimum of two spaces. Okay. So when you say line block Do you mean listing out each individual lot and block it's just they're currently plotted as large individual lots, they'll have to be replanted when they, once they get a site plan nailed down to split out the individual residential lots. Okay. Oh, you're saying it's a large it's like a lot one block two. Okay, so it's not been planted individual lots. Do you, for the, for the purpose of the motion. Do you have those descriptions for phase one and three. Okay, if you could either write them down for the movement which is meant to Councilmember Davis, just so that I think we would want to incorporate that in the motion. So, what are, what are those. So phase one is lot one block B, and phase three is lot five block a. Of what edition. It is the razor ranch East edition. Okay, so a lot one block B, and the second one was five block a lot five block a of the razor ranch each East edition current Texas. Okay. Councilmember Davis, would you like to to further things. One, if I could. Can I just withdraw my motion, you can to start. Yes, second. Can you help me remember what restrictions we're putting on these lots we just delineated. I forgot. I think it's that they, they, they're restricted to one bedrooms to have restricted one bedroom single family, no, nothing on parking we're just restricting them to one but I think we're accepting the parking as staff recommended with the two on site and then no matter what the bedroom count is, at least for ones and two bedrooms. Okay. Okay, then if I can restate my. If I can make another motion. Yes, sir. I move that we move approval of the request. Along with the recommendation of staff that's in our presentation, the recommended condition that's in our presentation. And the additional restriction that each unit be restricted to one bedroom in lot one block B, and lot five block a of the razor ranch East edition to the city of Denton. Because my mother, I'll say it. And from me I just wanted to make one clarification for that restriction. Haley that restriction, the restriction on the one bedroom would appear in exhibit C dash to be is that correct. So we know where to insert that condition. Correct, that would be in C to be section. G. Thank you. And that motion did include the recommendations by staff, as far as recommendations of the staff presentation plus the one that you added. Correct. Is that right, and that's your understanding of the motion. Again, please. I just would like to hear again just because the motion or for my, my comment. Well, let's, you know, what's the totality totality that could you motion Councilmember Davis please. Sure, my motion is to approve the request. And include the staff recommended condition. And I'll refer to page 11 in our presentation. And the restriction of one bedroom per unit in lot one block B and lot five block a of the razor ranch, East edition, the city of Denton that corresponds to phase one and three. Yes. Okay. And then what did you want to add to that. That was it. Oh, okay. Yes, I'm fine with that. So we have a motion in a second. Let's vote on the board please. And I don't see anybody else wanting to speak so we'll vote on the board. Motion carries six oh, moving on to our agenda item six e hold a public hearing and consider adoption of the ordinance of the city of Denton Texas regarding a change in the zoning classification from a neighborhood residential in our two to an R four. All right, bear with me. I know it's been a long night. Good evening. Good evening everyone. My name is Karina Maldonado assistant planner with development services. Gotcha. It's way past my bedtime. Today I'll be bringing a request for project number z 19 dash for Prairie parcel. The request is to rezone a single residential lot from an R two to an R four on approximately point one, one acres of land which translate to approximately 4500 square feet. The project property is located north of Prairie Street, Jason to Oakwood Cemetery, and approximately 610 feet west of South Bradshaw Street is outlined in the yellow box. The proposed construction is for a single family dwelling and an accessory structure. Adjacent to the zoning is DCG to the northwest and our four to the southwest, and our two over the Oakwood Cemetery and Fred Moore Park, and then a pocket of NRM you 12. And so the request again is to rezone the residential lot to an R four. The criteria for approval is that the rezoning conforms with the future land use element of Denton plan 2030, and that the proposed rezoning facilitates the adequate provision of transportation water sewer schools parks and other public requirements. First, there are four overlaying future land use designations on this parcel, them being downtown Denton downtown compatibility area parks and open space and then of course low density residential. So this parcel is within a transition area close to downtown but further off, and the immediate or the adjacent surrounding area is an R four so it is designated as low density residential and therefore is compatible with the existing, or the future land use designations. And then this particular parcel was plotted in 1920 and existing subdivision. So it does have adequate improvements of water sewer, and there does not appear to be any major increase in trips to this property. So the rezoning was sent out as notifications for the 200 foot required area to six property owners. And then again, within the 500 foot courtesy notice boundary to 29 property owners. Up to now, we have not received any in opposition, or in favor with the exception of the property owner. One sign was posted on the property and no neighborhood meetings were held. The staff recommended approval to the planning and zoning Commission on May 15, and the planning and zoning Commission did approve the recommendation to city council, six to zero. Any questions from customer Meltzer. Thank you. So is the point of this that it wouldn't be buildable at all without the change in the zoning, or is it that it wouldn't be buildable with the accessory unit. So what are you trying to accomplish with the change. Yes. So in the staff analysis that the proposed of the proposed path by the applicant was to go through the variance procedure to ask for an extension of lot coverage, and then to reduce the setbacks on this property. So the property under NR two would be buildable however the lot coverage would limit the property, and the impervious area on the lot. So, based on the 2002 code, they would need to provide the accessory structure and the primary structure would be included in the parking lot coverage, as well as the impervious area so they wouldn't be able to conveniently provide for the required parking, based on just the dimensions of that lot. And so, it was recommended that they go through the rezoning procedure for a couple reasons one that you would probably be more appropriate for them in the future when they come to develop their building inspections, and then. That the way that the personal was zoned in 2002 was not really consistent with the area. So, just going back to the overall map. This individual parcel was the only single family lot in the subdivision that was zoned to that inner to district. The staff was on board with, you know, making sure that that are recommending that that property be rezoned to NR for with the surrounding neighborhood. Does it a but directly to the cemetery on the east. Yes. Okay, thank you. Any other questions for staff. Seeing none. Okay, thank you. And this is a public hearing so I will now open the public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak please come down state your name and address your time will begin. Anybody wishing to speak. It's awful quiet in here. Okay, we will now close the public hearing Mayor Pro Tem. One one quick I have the answer I just want to make sure I understand it right so staff one question. So, just by right, they could not do a town home. Under the 2002 code I believe that they can. I, I'm not sure if you're referring to your question from earlier about the L3 limitation that would be specific to duplexes. So duplexes would be allowed on this property. However, each dwelling unit would need to be on its own residential lot. And then they would a but on the property line on this case that the property owners just wishing to construct a single family home on the single property. Okay, and, and walk me through the parking. Because I'm looking at it. Will it be alongside it because I better say it, the, which parking requirements does it fall under the new one, the two, four spaces, I mean it can't be that they would be required to have four spaces for single family home. So they would fit that on the property. And so, in the original concept plan that they submitted, it would be a long driveway and then the accessory structure, they were proposing to fit either a garage or a carport. But they were attempting to put their parking along the side. No. Yes. Okay, thank you. Councilmember, it was kind of along my, my question was, this is the second parcel I think that we've seen instead of normally like doing an SUP or doing something where we can fit. What's being requested on the lot we actually up the zoning, which means that other things that normally wouldn't have been able to go in there can go in there. But so, so if, if the duplex or anything else that was allowed, they could just go ahead and start building that or would they need to come through a different process. So under the 2000 code they would be able to do a duplex but they would have to first purchase the parcel immediately adjacent to them before they would be able to construct. The parcel that we are approving is not large enough to do that for code regulations. No. Yes, because the current requirement would have each dwelling unit on its own residential lot. Okay. So, is it my understanding that if we wanted to put a condition on here that it'd only be a single family lot or a single family home, then we could do that? Is that right? Okay. Well, first of all, I believe this is your first presentation. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. Very good job. Thank you so much. Sorry that you had to wait till 1050 to do it. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's a good way to throw me in there. Yeah. So I will say tomorrow is day will be the official four months that I've been with the city of Denton. So, good. Yeah. Well, congratulations. And it did good job. Thank you very well. Council, Mayor Pro Tem. So I'm going to move approval of this item with the stipulation that only a single family dwelling be allowed here. Well, yes, and then accessory dwelling, just not paired with the lot next to it. Councilmember Davis. Second the motion. All right. We have a motion to second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries six zero. I believe that concludes our public hearing agenda items. We now move on to concluding items. Councilmember Davis. So we didn't have concluding items on the agenda last week. We had kind of a brief meeting and I have some lined up. So if you'll be patient for just a second. I've already communicated these to staff, but for the benefit of the record, I'm, I'm requesting a few staff reports. The first is I'd like to see a summary of all city funds provided to outside entities to fund either personnel or real estate leases, as well as city personnel that we share with outside entities or city space that we that we make available to outside entities without payment. I'd also like a staff report on comparison of our employee gift policy with other Texas cities, especially regarding police and fire employees. I'd like to see what other cities do and what they allow. I'm especially focusing on de minimis kind of appreciative gifts to those to those folks. Third, like to see a summary and timeline of the traffic control devices plan for the intersections of Windsor and Bonnie Bray and Windsor and Hinkle. And then I know we have a matrix for work session items. I know that's those are there's a lot that goes into those. But out of tonight's meeting, I think we we benefit from a work session item at some point in the future on commercial recycling and reduced waste plans. We have a food diversion item coming up on the twenty third. I heard from Mr. Cox. We may need to push that back. So if we push it back far enough to wrap in commercial recycling, that may be a larger area of discussion for that work session. And then also, I think it'd be prudent for us to sometime sometime over the summer have a work session item on the DCTA and provide direction to our new appoint board appointee and kind of all get on the same page with DCTA and the new structure and where that's headed and some opportunities we have now as a city. Councilmember Meltzer. Okay, I'd like an ISR please on what it would take to support Miracle League Baseball, which Miracle League, which accommodates disabled youth partnered with able youth and whether we could do it in a way that doesn't necessarily require dedicated, you know, use of space or just how we could accommodate that. I'd like to see an ISR on potential proposals for electric rebates for electric lawn care equipment, including an estimate of the potential environmental impact. Regarding Oakwood and IWF cemetery, where fencing has obsolete interior roadways that don't go anywhere anymore. Like to see whether it'd be feasible to add, add plots there, you'd add capacity, and also be interested in hearing an opinion from staff could just be a note on whether those would be suitable locations for tree banking, downtown tree banking. Just, just a few more. Just as a suggestion, I know that as part of the master planning on parks, that part of the plan is focus groups. And I'd like to suggest that that, you know that the director consider having that sort of a focus group among the, the park board. So that we learn their points of view. Just two more quick. I'd like to hear options to keep North Lakes Park gym open on Sunday mornings. Since people who work during the week may well only have weekends to pursue their health. And lastly, I understand we have like a two year warranty on our road projects. I'd like to understand how, how that benchmarks against against other Texas municipalities. Cast member breaks. So I would like to confirm, or just actually keep requesting and make sure that the discussion during our budget season for parental leave for city employees is is an option for us to continue to talk about. I would like to explore landlord incentives, such as this is separate from the barriers fund this is something on the city side for reduced taxes. So, if a, if there's something that we can do to give an extra reduction in property taxes for landlords who make their units available for transitional housing or permanent supportive housing. I want to add industrial sites to the noise ordinance, we heard about that today as as kind of a thing that our noise ordinance doesn't touch. And we're going to continue to have problems and we're not going to have a way to, to help our mitigator. If we don't, if we don't add those at some point. The last thing is kind of just a, maybe a dream, but I'm very sensitive to the conversation mayor pro tem had Smith had earlier in his comments. And so and then we know we had a developer come up right after that and they have this nice little plot of land and they have these individual homes and I don't know if it's okay for us or possible at some point to say hey look if you can you partner with the city with habitat and maybe have a reduction on this one, if we can build this habitat home here in your development. So just as a creative way to instead of trying to do all the zoning I mean we have the opportunity as we hear and see all these new developments coming up. I don't know if it's within our right or not but we can, you know, suggested or, or figure out what what we can do. And that way, you know, it's just, it's a suggestion, I thought about it so we can explore that a little bit more would be great. Thank you appreciate that. And so thank you very much. Mr city manager can we look at designing and purchasing for our citizens, a slow kids sign you know kids playing something like that. That would maybe have the city logo, I get that request often for neighborhoods, and instead of asking pre tam or staff to kind of investigate that maybe if there's something that we could allow manufactured allow citizens to pick it up and pick up a yard sign something like that they put in their yard and it's kind of, it would be a sense of camaraderie around the neighborhood and kind of serves that same purpose without us having to maybe lowers the sense of having to put the digital sign out there you know just kind of draws attention to that so I appreciate your thoughts and best way to do that. And then, can we explore a, I was talking to a business owner down on Locust Street, the issue becomes, as we're doing these construction projects can we have a fund or some sort of break for those business owners so for example, if we use Hickory Street example that street is shut down for a while their businesses down, and then we send them a utility bill as though we're not out in front of their, their business, slowing their business down, you know, and so I don't know if there's a way to try to give them some relief as we're doing construction projects in front of their property that would affect the money they have to pay the bills. So I don't have that nailed down succinctly I would just ask for your thoughts on that. And then I want to mention our neighborhood suffered a loss of Reverend Reverend Anthony Pullen passed away last week. He was buried at National Cemetery I didn't realize he was in this, he served before but great guy he was the pastor at St. Emmanuel Missionary Baptist Church so condolences to his congregation and his family. Outstanding guy again, and then lastly, on the 24th so a couple of days, the last dragon 7pm will be playing in the park at Fredmore Park so I invite everyone out. If you're not familiar you got to see it as Bruce Lee Roy the glow, all things, all important things in a movie so that and that'll be great. I went last year when they had to move in the park and you and T and Carla do a great job of putting that putting that event on so excited about that. Thank you. Councilmember armature. Okay, I'll try to make this brief as I can. Two things the second one that was divided into three parts. First, I'd like to see a discussion is a work session. There's a possibility of having a resolution from city council to ask the county to wait on the 2019 census results to do their redistricting for accuracy sake and for representation sake, which is the point of the census I know this issue has been really politicized but it shouldn't necessarily be a political politicized issue just about accuracy representation. The second item was divided into three these are three, three issues that are not uniquely women's issues will one of them arguably is but that can utter about women in the city. Number one, this I don't even need a staff report on it just an email or a thumb or an okay. And, and this is about, it would be nice to have in the bathrooms here city hall, old basket of tampons. This is an item, and just you know replenished every once in a while. It's kind of you know people are here all day, and it's you can't start to just duck out. And also, you know, it'd be nice to have something like that it facilities like the basic services center which are also pretty isolated. Something that, again, it's just a very little cost and nice thing to have. It's kind of women's well issue that's about women and men really but affects women too. I'd like to see a staff report on what it would take for child care at work sessions and meetings. You know what, what the costs would be, or what we rather I should say what we could do to do it at minimal cost while still, I know liability, you know, but, but I think that would be something that could really just increase our participation in government. And then finally we saw that, you know, who brought kids and kind of had to leave because, you know, kids had to go and do something and we're, you know, being a little noisy so. But anyway that I think that would be nice and then the third I'd like to see a work session on in, I believe it was 2017 a while ago before I got on council council member Briggs had asked for a staff report on paid sick leave and parental leave for city staff and I, you know, asked for that. This year's we've had those two staff reports on that. There are other cities that have started to do that I'd like us to have a work session on paid parental leave for city staff again something that affects both women and men, it would really make a big difference for our hardworking staff. And that's all. I've got about 10. I have one and it's an announcement. I've got a friend, a longtime friend who's an artist that lives in Arizona, and she and I were talking and she's got an exhibit. I said why don't you call the Patterson Appleton Art Center and see if you couldn't get a display and so she did a year or two ago and so she's here. The grand opening is May 30 through August the 31st her name is Crystal McConnell she's got her piece is called play hard or go home. So, it's runs through May 30 through August the 31st so just want to give a shout out to her and congratulations and, and would invite everybody to come out, come out and see it grand openings on May 30 from six to 8pm. Any other questions comments. I just want to acknowledge all the members of the public who stuck with us to the bitter end. Yes, yes, they're watching. Yeah. Okay, with no further saying no further request to speak, we will now stand adjourned at 1105.