Jun 04, 2019 City Council on 2019-06-04 1:00 PM

Good afternoon and welcome to today's work session. Today is June 4th. It is 1.01 in the afternoon. We do have a quorum. I'd like to welcome everyone. Then before I get started with the questions for a consent agenda, I wanted to make everyone aware that on the items for individual consideration, item A and B numbered 19-1137 and 19-1138 have been pulled. Those will come back to us in a couple of weeks. So I just wanted to let everyone know that they can tweet that out, share that for those that would come speak to that, save them a trip. And with that, I will ask if we have any other change, anything else to note? Okay, great. Then we'll look at questions regarding the consent agenda, questions, comments or clarification. None? All right. Then let me see. I should probably check. Oh, yes. Okay. Thank you. So I'm going to go back. Do we have any comments from citizens or cards filled out or anyone wanting to speak? No. Okay. Then that'll take us to request for clarification, agenda items. Let me make sure. Okay. Then that will take us to -- we'll close that out. Next session is -- so we'll start with our work session reports. We'll give the room time to clear, and then we'll get started. Okay. So I will call the first work session item is ID 19-1192, receive a report, hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the water fiscal year 2019-2020 operating capital budget. Good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tem, city council members. My name is Nick Vincent. I'm the city's budget manager. I'm happy to announce that we have started the FY19-20 budget process. We have a series of presentations for you today, and then we'll have presentations to follow this in the coming weeks. So today, water, wastewater, drainage and customer service will be presented to you today. Feel free to ask the directors any questions, or myself, if you have any. Thank you. Thank you, Nick. Good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tem council. I am Frank Pugsley, the water utilities director. And as Nick mentioned, we're having a few presentations today. The water utilities presentation is sort of a two-pronged approach. I'll go through some of the operational sides of the budget, and Nick will follow me with the dollars and cents moving forward. A few of the goals and accomplishments from the past year. We have implemented a detailed construction project scheduling system now, and it's third evolution in the water and wastewater collection and distribution department. It's really helped us communicate more effectively with our streets department and third party utility providers. And we've all kind of adopted this process at the service center and streets and the program management office. It's really enhanced our communication. We also have updated our water distribution system master plan, which is basically our roadmap for modeling system expansion and growth over the next five, 10, 20 years. We've also updated the five-year impact fee program, which you all are all somewhat familiar with. And that is basically our roadmap for how much growth costs the system to expand to support it. We completed some critical repairs to the Lake Louisville 30-inch diameter raw water pipeline. From Louisville Lake, we have two pipelines, one's a 30 and one's a 27. We will follow this with an evaluation and rehab of the 27-inch line in the next fiscal year. We'll begin that. Goals for the next year. We plan to begin construction on the Lake Louisville water treatment plant phase two upgrades and zebra muscle control. That zebra muscle control goes at both Ray Roberts and Louisville Lake intakes. And then there's a significant upgrade to the Louisville plant for major maintenance as the plant's many decades old. That project just bid, last week the bids came in a little bit over budget. So we're going to go back to the drawing board a little bit and see how we can reduce the cost there and re-bid that project in the next few months. We will begin design of the Ray Roberts water treatment plant performance and regulatory upgrades. Again, this plant was brought online in 2003 and it's seen routine plant maintenance, but no major maintenance of the systems and assets. And this will be to help bring that plant into a higher level of redundancy and reliability. We have recently bid and will begin construction of the Allred John Payne Road water transmission pipeline. It runs from Bonnie Bray and Allred down John Payne to our southwest pump station and ground storage tank. It will provide a redundant feed to the whole southwest area of our water distribution system. We have recently secured our indirect water reuse permit from the TCEQ, which allows us to claim up to 12 MGD of water right from the discharge from our Pecan Creek wastewater reclamation plant. And we are able to claim 50% of the discharge of the plant the next operating day. So as the plant grows, we'll continue to gain additional water supply from that discharge. We're very excited about that. The cost we're able to get that at to secure 12 million gallons per day of water right is very significant to us. We are planning to complete our water distribution asset management plan. We have engaged a consultant and we're preparing a computer model to help us judge where and when we need to replace water lines more so than just our condition that we've determined in the field. This will consider risks, customers that are on the line, consequences of failure so that we can put good money after bad pipes instead of only chasing streets projects and digging up pipes that have a high break rate. When we might be digging up decent pipes and then replacing them and wasting some of our money that way, we'd like to really be more efficient with our use of our capital that we have. Budget emphasis items on operating expenses. The water utility and wastewater utility have fully implemented the City Works work order management system throughout all of our field groups. And this allows our teams to all communicate on the same platform. And standardize our work order sharing between groups so that when one team and one department finds an issue and issues a work order, it can be in the same system and we can all communicate more effectively there. We have gone through a study with the help of the finance department to identify less efficient pieces of heavy and light duty equipment. Through that, we have aligned ourselves with some more efficient pieces of equipment to do our work. Capital improvement plan, as I mentioned on the previous slide, the asset management program will provide us really good actionable data where we can target our infrastructure replacement where it makes the most sense. Cost containment strategies, we have a budgeted salary savings in the proposed budget of half a million dollars. The advanced asset management program will really help us to focus our capital construction for our in-house crews so that we are better scheduling and better replacing our water and waste water infrastructure, excuse me, efficiently and effectively. This year we used additional revenue that we received from summer water sales last year to defer bond sales for the third year in a row. And that's going to help us limit our future debt payments. We have a consultant who's just finished analyzing the timing and the size of the capital improvement program for the expansion of the Ray Roberts water treatment plant. Some of that will be in the schedule slide, you'll see it in a few slides. With all of our supplemental packages, we're using a zero based budget where we're evaluating each one for its merits and starting from zero. And we've conducted that analysis of heavy equipment so that we can make sure that we have the proper equipment to do the jobs we need in the most effective and efficient way possible. Process improvements, I think the biggest process improvement for distribution and collection was implementing that construction schedule where we went from basically a one to two month look ahead on a marker board. Now we have a three month, one year, and a two year look ahead for all of our construction projects that we're completing in house. We've also started implementing some cross training opportunities for the staff where we have different pieces of equipment. Different manufacturers may vary, and some of the guys get really familiar with one manufacturer. We now have them switching roles and switching equipment so that we have some redundancies. We have operators who are capable of running different manufacturer's pieces of equipment. Additionally, in distribution and collection, the construction crews began experimenting this winter with having dual purpose crews. We have a water distribution crew construct water, and a waste water collections crew construct waste water utilities. We're now combining some of those projects together where the water crew will do both water and waste water and vice versa. Waste water will construct waste water and water. And that saves us some mobilization time and gains us some efficiencies on some of those construction projects. Reducing that lag between when the crews can show up and finish the job that the other crew had started. Future process improvements, the asset management program has been in place in the waste water group for several years. And we are now fully implementing this in water to help us make some of the same informed decisions that our waste water systems have been making for some time. Supplemental package summary, we're asking for a total of five additional FTEs in the water utility. The first one being a water metering maintenance mechanic, a water metering administration assistant. This is a half FTE, we already have someone serving in a half FTE role. This would take them from a half to a full. Water production operator one, this person is intended to operate our new belt filter press, which is going to be part of the Lake Louisville water treatment plant solids handling facility. This operator would be hired and come on board sometime in the third quarter of the next fiscal year, as the construction won't be far enough along to necessitate having that person on board by then. Utility administrative assistant one and utility admin intern are both for the sustainability group. When sustainability moved out of the service center, they no longer have the admin support we had at the service center. So this admin will provide them their general administrative support, as well as payroll and other activities for them for work orders and ORs. And the utility admin intern will help relieve some of the additional workload that sustainability has seen, especially with the Clear Creek center. We have a water distribution heavy equipment operator two and a crew truck. This operator will be primarily responsible for fire hydrant painting and maintenance. As the water metering department operates every fire hydrant throughout the city every year, they identify hydrants that need attention and this person will be dedicated to providing those services. >> So. >> Yes sir. >> One quick question. Council member, please. What type of water meter do we use? >> The brand? >> Well, is it electric? I remember there was some. >> We use positive. >> We were switching. >> So we use positive displacement meters and they have a mechanical register. What we have heard in the industry is generally that the AMI, the smart meters, that send a signal to the system where we can read it remotely, those have an in-service life of about five years. So we'd be expending a lot of capital to not only replace the meters we have today with smart meters, but every five years, the meters are in a pretty harsh condition and we'd be having to go and spend a lot of money to fix all those registers every five years. Whereas the ones we have now, we replace on a 13 year cycle. So we're getting a really good use out of the money we pay for those meters today. >> Yes. >> So it's an actual individual going to read the meter every month. >> That's correct. >> Or so? >> Yes, that's through DME provides our meter reading services. >> Okay, and so the FTEs we just saw for the meters. >> That's for meter mechanics. >> Okay. >> I have a slide behind the slide, if you want me to scroll over there, we have a little bit of data. >> No, that's okay, I'm just trying to figure, I'm just trying to relate it all together. >> So the workload in the water metering department has increased dramatically over the last few years to decade. They haven't had any real increases in FTEs in about 15 or 18 years. The water meter change out and water meter work orders has gone up enough that an additional mechanic is really needed to help make sure they're able to achieve their work order load at the time. >> Okay, I guess that's probably with the growth of the new neighborhoods and all the homes and everything. >> And we have a projection, as I mentioned, we replace our meters on a 13 year cycle. So we know how many meters we plan to replace each year and that's going to continue to grow on an annual basis as our older meters phase out and growth continues to build. >> And if a homeowner needs a new meter, are they responsible for that or is that just worked into the rates? >> That is just worked into the rates. The meters, yeah, we replace them on a 13 year cycle, but if there's an issue and a customer believes they have a meter inaccuracy will come out and we can actually pull the meter and test it and replace it if necessary in advance of the 13 years. >> Okay, thank you. >> And the previous slide you mentioned in the admin component, you mentioned OR and just so we have a clear record, what is that acronym? >> Oh, someone help me with OR, I'm gone blank, it's from purchasing. Open, huh? >> It's open requisition. >> Open requisition. Order requisition, I'm sorry. >> Great, no, no, just wanted to make sure it was, we mentioned it. >> Sure, no problem. >> You went back and you mentioned MGD. >> Oh, million gallons per day, I'm sorry. >> You mentioned that one, no, no, I'm tracking with you, just making sure, you know. >> Sure. >> So yes, okay, we're ready. >> All right, great. I'm sorry, Council Member Davis. >> Sorry, I just felt like we were on a pause before we move on to something else. A few slides back, you mentioned 500K in salary savings. >> Yes, sir. >> Can you break that down for me? >> I think Nick can probably cover that in a little bit more detail when he comes up. >> Sure, that's just fine. >> And then Council Member Ryan. >> You mentioned that the DME does the meter reading. >> Yes, sir. >> And since DME has switched over to AMI, is there a reason we haven't looked at switching that? >> It seems kind of odd that we've got a department that now does everything remotely that's still sending the person to go door to door. >> It is a legacy service, so to speak, at the time, and we've discussed it in the last several months, but we haven't taken any action on it. It's something we definitely want to look at in the future. There's also third party services that can do the meter reading, so we're definitely going to look at that as we go forward. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> About bullet point number three. >> Yes. >> Have you considered using the revenue instead to lower rates or is there not enough to make a significant impact? >> It would be either issue bonds or use the revenue to offset and to revenue fund capital projects or debt fund capital projects. We elected to revenue fund rather than debt fund this year, some additional. The idea is that it has the same effect, except on a compounding perspective. If we can reduce the bond costs, the P&I interest costs today, you're avoiding rate increases down the road, and we're going to need that capacity to issue debt for the plan expansion. So we're able to keep a 0% rate increase by not issuing the debt. Otherwise, if we did issue the debt, you may very well be into a rate increase situation. >> Got it, got it. >> And when Nick brings up the five year forecast, what you'll be able to see is that we're creating more and more room in the debt service line item in order to manage rates down the road in preparation for that $90 million treatment expansion. So we're not having to hit people with significant rates down the road. >> I understand, thanks. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> All right. This chart you may have seen before, this is a projection of our water demand and treatment capacity. The red line, blue line, and green line signify our projections for a dry year, a normal year, and a wet year. We're obviously in a wet year this year, but should we have a dry year, our current treatment capacity will be reached in about 2027 for our current projections. And we're anticipating needing to have our new expansion, the Ray Roberts, online in 2027 to meet a dry year demand. We use dry year for that planning purpose solely because that is the year that we would need to have the capacity. We intend to start design of the expansion in 2023, the whole project is about a five year process. We need to get that started in advance to make sure we have that online in 2027 or 2028 as said in the slide. And with that, I will hand it over to Nick unless there are any further questions for me at the moment. >> One, while you're there, can you just tell us what a dry year, what constitutes a dry year, what happens, or how is that measured? >> So the dry years will be less than average rainfall for sure, and that really results in people watering the lawns. The irrigation demand that we primarily see is the increase. Right now, since it's wet, we have a really low irrigation demand, so our supply and capacity are well served at the moment. >> So definition of dry years is just below average for an extended period of time, or how does that kind of work? >> Off the top of my head, I don't know the percentage below the normal rainfall, but I can get that information to you. >> Yes, if you would, just serve for that. >> Sure. >> Thank you. Yes, Councilmember Briggs. >> I want to follow up because someone mentioned gray water the other day about our reuse in the city and that we don't allow it. But do we, when you said in the first slide about reuse of water, is that what you were talking about? >> So the reuse is the effluent from the wastewater plant flows down Pecan Creek into the Louisville Lake. And we can actually claim that water that's gone into the lake and pump it to our water treatment plant. Not directly, but just lake water in general that we're replacing with our wastewater effluent. And that's that indirect reuse. >> Okay, but it's not gray water. >> No, it's not gray water, no. Yeah, this is treated effluent that's been discharged to the lake. But gray water, we have concerns primarily over cross connection. If we had irrigation systems on gray water, all it takes is one plumber to make a mistake and we have a connection from a gray water system to our public drinking water system. >> And so that's why we don't allow them- >> Correct. >> Here, okay, thank you. >> It's my understanding. >> Okay. >> And just to be, so gray water is? >> Gray water is water from a household that may be from sinks or showers that does not contain real waste materials that you can collect and then reuse in a residential or commercial setting. Primarily, it's usually for irrigation purposes. >> Perfect, okay, thank you. All right, and I guess if we could start with- >> Yes, sir. >> Councilmember Davis's question. >> Absolutely. >> And the breakdown of the 500,000, please. >> What I can show you is the expense detail for the personal services, a breakdown by HBU or department within water. I can provide it to you at a later date. I don't actually have it today, but I'll show you what we do have today. So this is a detailed expense slide of the water department. And you can see the proposed budget to your far right in this column. This is 2020, personal services, you can see there's 8.7 million. What we've done, we've gone back and looked over five historical fiscal years and looked at the personal services savings and budgeted the 500 based on that analysis. So we've seen through employee turnover through vacancies about a $500,000 average year of savings, so. Does that answer your question or would you like it further detailed, broken down? >> No, that's just fine for now. If you do have a little bit more of a breakdown at a future date, that'd be helpful. >> Okay. >> And then Councilmember Briggs has a question. >> Could you explain the purchased power? Is that something, is that for electrical power through DME? And is that like a transfer that we? >> So yes, to answer your question, this does get billed out. This is electrical power to supply the water treatment plants with electricity. This is what they spend annually for that service. >> Okay. >> So it gets billed out just like a utility bill would and they pay the electric department for it. >> Okay, one other question. >> Yes, sir. >> Councilmember Armitage. >> Yeah, you mentioned employee turnover. Can you speak to that a little, what the employee turnover has been, just in terms of numbers? >> As far as historical turnover, probably as Frank come back up here to talk about the operations side of it, we'd look more at the fiscal information, the financials. Frank, could you come back up here? >> I don't have turnover information on me today, but we can definitely provide that to you. We've seen a decrease in the last six months to a year, for sure. >> Okay, and do you attribute that to anything? Because you mentioned that you're kind of building in some protection against turnover. >> Some of it has historically been pay and benefits or other municipalities who are having compensation changes and luring people away. That's primarily what I think we've seen in the past. >> Yeah, so you mean other municipalities who are offering higher pay to turnover? >> Correct. >> Okay, thanks. >> Yeah, we've gone back this past year in both in streets, in all the utilities making sure that our compensation was comparable. We actually had other cities sending our employees job announcements because they're tied on, especially with the water treatment plant operators. So we've gone back and adjusted several of the construction employee salaries, which has really slowed it, but we've also had several folks in management positions retire over the last year or two as well. So, and there were some areas out in the field as well as in the water treatment plant where we had to go in and make some mid-year adjustments to salaries because we were fine, we were well below market. >> Can I just say just one more, just so I can thank you for that. >> Sure. >> At what level, I mean you mentioned at management too, but does this apply to kind of all levels? >> This, primarily our turnover that Nick's referring to is primarily field staff for the most part, yes. >> And what's the hourly? >> It ranges from the $15 to $16 range up to $28 or $30 an hour, depending on their level of experience. >> Okay, great, thanks. >> Thank you, okay, thank you, Nick. >> You're welcome. I'm going to back up to the overview side really quick and then we'll proceed to the slides in order here. So I'll be reviewing the financial portion of the proposed 19-20 budget with you. First, we are proposing to change the way that impact fee revenue is used in the water fund. I'll discuss that with you in further detail in the next two slides coming up. We are not forecasting rate increases to the city manager's point earlier. We do have some plugged in in 22 and 23 in anticipation of the water treatment plan expansion. And I'll point that out to you on the pro forma here shortly. We are projecting a decline in GPCD, which is gallons per capita a day. This is water usage. We do see that going down to 152 by 2024. And as I said, the water treatment plan expansion is pushed from 24 to 25. So we are proposing to change the way that water impact fee revenue is currently used in the water fund. This matrix table does explain both the current method and the proposed method. So you can see currently, we apply about $6.6 million worth of impact free revenue towards debt service. Moving forward, we're proposing to fund both eligible debt service and upfront project cost. So you can see over a five year period, we would apply about 21.7 million towards eligible debt service and about 11.2 million towards eligible project cost. And this new approach does save the money of interest. It does save the fund money associated with selling bonds to this portion of this cost if we fund them upfront. This slide summarizes the total impact fee that can be recovered in the water department over a ten year period. And you can see here on the first column, we can recover about 66 million in impact fee revenue. Of that amount, about 17 million could go towards cash funding of projects and about 49 million can go towards eligible debt service. These amounts were identified in the recent completed impact fee study that was completed in January this year. This is the five year forecast, you can see the adopted budget here in this column. So we have $45.7 million in revenues. We were budgeting to draw down reserves about 4.4 million. We are projecting to finish the year a little bit better, about 46.8 million in revenue, with a draw down about 3.2 million. In the proposed budget column, you can see it here, we have $48 million in rate revenue, a draw down in reserves about 2.8 million. Expenses are about 50.9 million. Moving down the page, we are not proposing any rate increases in the current fiscal year. We do have some plugged in in 22 and 23 in anticipation of the Ray Roberts water treatment plant expansion. As you move down the page, the fund balance does stay above the minimum reserve requirement in the current fiscal year, and it does in the future year. The major growth in the fund balance is attributed to, like the city manager said, the debt service dropping from 12.6 million to 10.3 million in the five year period. And this is mainly attributed to as we continue to revenue fund projects, our debt expense does go down. Also, we are planning to transition about $9 million from the impact fee reserve to a new capital reserve. We do plan to use this money to cash fund an eligible project at a future date, in the future. >> Yes, sir. >> I have one question. Council Member Davis. >> So I can't help but notice that our draw down of reserve coincides with a planned rate increase, or at least an anticipated rate increase. Could you tell us about the minimum reserve and why in those years we would look to a rate increase? Or why an additional draw down of reserve wouldn't be adequate to meet our needs for expansion? >> Absolutely. So the rate increases you're talking about, one's in '22 and one's in '23. We're not intended to draw down reserves in those years, but we're looking at the 10 year forecast, and I'll pull it up here shortly. So our main goal is to look and see when is the Lake Ray Roberts plan expansion coming in line? When is the debt service going to hit the fund? And what do we need to maintain above our minimum reserve requirement? So those two percents are based off that assumption. Let me pull up a 10 year pro forma here for you. Okay, so this is a 10 year water pro forma, it takes us out to 2031. You can see the two rate increases, one in '22 and one in '23. Let me scroll down here and make sure everybody can see it. Okay, so yeah, in '22, the reserve is 28.3 million. Our minimum is 14.8. As you go out in the future years, you can see the debt service for Lake Ray Roberts come in line in 2026. When that does hit, the reserve goes to 34 million. In the future years, it goes to 7.4 million. So we have two percents plugged in now. There may be a possibility for efficiencies in the operating budget where we can maintain the minimum reserve out there in 2031. With all the utilities, with particular water and wastewater, they're so weather dependent, as is DMA, that we showed a very similar slide last year and then ended up pushing the rate increase out again because there was a little bit warmer year last year. But one of the longer policy discussions we had last year was how do we start planning for that $90 million plan expansion and not put our residents through rate shock in 2025, 2026. So this is one way to get there. We'll evaluate it again next year. You're seeing that we're not anticipating a rate increase for at least two years. Depending on how this fund does, that can continue to get delayed as long as we are sure that we're not going to be putting our residents in a 5 to 10% rate increase position in 2025, 2026. So that's been the goal is how do we manage that strategy long term, even if we have to build up some additional reserves. And 2% may not be the proper approach at that point either. But we will continue to take a look at this each year and revise those forward looking assumptions. We know with certainty that if we continue growing at the clip we are, we're going to have to be in design in 2023 in construction a few years later. So those numbers can move each year as we close out the fiscal years. Just so our residents know too, correct me if I'm wrong, but when we're looking at building and you've got money in the bank, those fund reserves are related to bond ratings and solvency and all those kind of things. Those are fiscally responsible minimum reserves to have on hand even if you're doing big capital projects. That's exactly right and what some cities will do, I think to your point, and we just chose to not show it this way, but they'll put a capital plant sinking fund in here and artificially suppress their fund balances. I didn't really feel like that was an appropriate way to show it. We'd rather talk about the strategy above the line. But that is the other way that you'll typically see cities handling that, is they'll simply reduce the amount that they're showing in reserves and essentially start sequestering it off as a big savings account. And we're just basically taking a little bit different approach trying to layer in the impact fees and reduce that debt load moving forward. Anybody else? Any questions on the five-year forecast? All right, so this is a detailed resource slide. I do want to point a couple of things out. We have itemized the impact fee revenue that will be going towards revenue funding of projects. Let me get the mouse. 3.8 million. You can see that number right here and the amount that will be going towards debt service in the future. So we have separated them and then you can see the drawdown in reserves about $2.8 million in the proposed budget. This is a detailed expense slide that we saw earlier. So you can see personal services on here, purchase power, operations. I do want to point out this does include the supplemental packages that Frank reviewed with you shortly ago, $304,000. It's the five-year capital plan for the water department. In the proposed 2020 budget, we have $29.2 million in projects scheduled. Of that, 3.8 will be funded with impact fee revenue, 9.2 will be funded with revenue funding from the operating budget, and then $15.9 million will be funded from bond funds. This is the position summary for water. In the adopted budget that we're currently in, we have 105.5 positions. If the supplemental packages are approved, that would add five positions to water, bring the total to 110.5. That concludes water. If anybody has any questions. >> Councilmember Ryan. >> Thank you. The supplemental -- >> Yes, sir. >> Is that included based on how you presented here that we would have a zero rate increase, including the supplemental? >> That is correct. So if we go back to the five-year forecast, you can see the supplemental amount, the $304,000 here with a zero percent rate increase. >> Okay. Thank you. >> And just for easy math, so 2% that equates to -- >> We did the calculation the other day, a 1% increase in the water rates would be about $300,000. So if that puts it in context. >> Okay. Got it. Any other questions? Nope. Okay. >> That concludes that presentation. >> Okay. And so then I'll call the next item, which is the wastewater, and that is item B, which is 19-1193. >> Good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tem Council. That's correct. Nick Vincent, the city's budget manager. I'm going to turn the podium over to Dr. Banks in a second, but I wanted to kind of kick us off here and get the stage set. So wastewater is being presented today. Drainage is included in the wastewater five-year pro forma. Wastewater will actually be a separate presentation that Mr. Daniel Kramer will come up with after Dr. Banks and I get done presenting wastewater. Just want to kind of lay that out. Thank you. >> Good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council. My name is Kenny Banks. I'm the general manager of utilities. I will be handling the wastewater presentation. So talk a little bit about goals and accomplishments. So we have submitted the final annual report for the EPA administrative order. Those of you that have been around here a while have been through the administrative order. It was a regulatory issue related to sanitary sewer overflows. We did a number of actions to address those issues over the years and were able to work through this administrative order and filed our last report at the beginning of this year. So we were happy to do that, and we fully intend to continue those efforts going forward. Frank's already talked a little bit about updating the five-year impact fee program. We completed construction of the Cooper Creek phase one and phase two interceptor sewer projects. Those are two very large projects in the Cooper Creek basin. You may have seen those around the intersection of the loop in 380. A very large in-system storage facility, as well as a upgrade to the line system that goes all through the Cooper Creek area. We bid the Hickory Creek and West Peak Flow detention facilities. Those are two large projects. The Hickory Creek one is off of Country Club Road near Bent Creek Estates. It's a in-system storage capacity of about 3.5 million gallons. And so when flows increase due to inflow or infiltration, it's able to accommodate those flows, hold them for a period of time, and then release them when the flows go back down again. It's all part of that Hickory Creek system, and basically all of that material ultimately ends up into the Pecan Creek treatment facility. The West Peak Flow detention facility is on the Pecan Creek property. It's a large open system, and it performs a very similar function. It essentially is a way of diverting waste water flows during periods of very high flow into a storage facility, and then eventually releasing those back in for treatment. The Hickory Creek pump station came before you a few weeks ago. We have a large system in place that's by Old Alton Bridge. It is a combination of a force main and a gravity fed system. And it basically takes all of the waste in the Hickory Creek basin and conveys it over to the Pecan Creek treatment plant. So that pump station was put in service in 1983, and we are very happy to see that getting bid out and under construction to upgrade those facilities. We completed design of the sludge handling project at the concrete wastewater treatment plant. This is a very important project for us because it allows us to take some fairly inefficient gravity thickeners offline and use a much more active system for concentrating the solids out of our treatment process. Essentially, these solids are dewatered, so we try to reclaim as much water as we possibly can. And then they are actually conveyed over into the beneficial reuse section for conversion into compost. So this will make that system, I'm sorry. >> One question. Councilmember Riggs, sorry. >> It's about that. So that the compost will stay the same. It's not going to affect that with the upgrade of the system. >> I actually think it'll be better because we'll have less liquids in there and we'll be able to monitor and control the moisture content in that more effectively. >> And so for any of us who have been on a tour, this is probably the most exciting section that we can go through. >> I agree. >> So is that going to still be just as exciting or will it just kind of take some of the drama out of it? >> I hope it doesn't take any of the drama out of it. I think it's going to look, it'll look very similar. What you're seeing there is the end product of the belt presses. And so this is the front of that system. It actually will still convey the solids into the belt press system and then ultimately convey over. So I expect it's not going to look much different on the beneficial reuse side. So all the drama will be there. >> Okay, thank you. Thanks, Dan. So that is an important project for us because we are able to, we're working through a process right now where we're looking at chemically enhanced primary treatment at the Pecan Creek facility. When we spoke with you all last year, we were looking at that system but we talked about the need for a plant to be located in the Hickory Creek basin. And that plant would need to be sized at about, ultimately at about eight million gallons per day. Plants for wastewater treatment are incredibly expensive nowadays. They tend to run about $10 a gallon, so that's about an $80 million plant. By looking at the chemically enhanced primary treatment, we're able to deal with a more efficient process so that we are able to use the existing Pecan Creek plant, including the existing Pecan Creek plant footprint, to be able to increase the amount of throughput we can get in terms of a million gallons per day by we think somewhere around five million gallons per day. That will probably be about a $10 million project, so that gives about $0.20 on the dollar in terms of the actual cost to increase that capacity with this new system. So it'll be a great cost savings for the system as a whole and for the rate payers, and we're really looking forward to that moving forward. We did also update the wastewater collection system master plan as a part of the five year impact fee program. So 1920 goals, we're going to complete the construction of the sludge handling projects at Pecan Creek, complete construction of Hickory Creek in the west weather flow, begin the bid and construction of the phase one and phase two interceptor projects. Those are two very large projects that convey the bulk of the wastewater out of the Hickory Creek system to the old Alton station. Submit our performance data to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for our chemically enhanced primary treatment process. And we'll have to prove that process up that will take about a year and then we'll move into a full scale implementation. And then we've been in front of you about the Robeson wastewater diversion project. Robeson has a small batch plant that treats right now about 350,000 gallons per day. We're going to essentially take that plant offline, turn it into a pump station and then move all that waste over across I-35 ultimately near Crawford Road to be picked up in the graveyard branch system and then ultimately conveyed to the concrete. So that's a good project for the city because it allows us to decommission the plant at Robeson. It's a good project for Robeson because it allows them to have a means of treating their wastewater without having to increase that small batch plant. They would have to have about a 1.6 million gallon per day plant at full build out. Like I said, that will probably be about $16 million plus to build that. So that allows them to not build that project. As a condition of that, they are paying for the infrastructure to convey the wastewater. And they will also begin paying wastewater impact fees. So in terms of budget emphasis, we, Frank's mentioned this already, but we fully implemented city works through the field groups to standardize our work order management system. And we have been working through the equipment inventory that we have to identify pieces of equipment that we can replace. The whole idea there is efficiency, for example, in our particular type of infrastructure installation. An excavator, a smaller excavator, makes more sense than a backhoe. So we've now systematically started working through that, convinced ourselves of the efficiency, and we're cycling those backhoes out over time. We still want to get the full benefit of the asset, but at the same time, we want to get a better, more efficient piece of equipment and going forward. In terms of our capital improvement plan, we've used our asset management data to target infrastructure replacement. We've got a very extensive asset management program within wastewater. Every line in the city has been cameraed. We have information on all of our pipes in terms of depth and age. We've got the ability to really look at that system, target our replacements based on getting the full life out of the asset. The project that Frank had mentioned earlier is an attempt to try to get water up to that same level so we can be as efficient as possible with the management of our in-ground assets. So we have enacted infrastructure solutions that lower our asset life costs and reduce environmental impacts. We do a lot of maintenance in our system to ensure that the pipes convey wastewater effectively, prevent sanitary sewer overflows and the resulting environmental impacts. We've used a lot of technological approaches to try to be proactive in terms of our system maintenance. We now have robotics that we can go in and actually do small scale repairs and lines. We have a lot of in-situ repair options now where we can do pipe bursting, for example, where we don't have to unearth the pipe. We can simply pull a new piece of pipe through it. We also have a lot of liner technologies that we're experimenting with to ensure that we can rehabilitate those pipes instead of replacing them. Those technologies are good from a cost effective standpoint in most cases and then also very good because they minimize the disruption. We don't have to tear up the street. We don't have to have services offline for a long period of time. And then again, we've talked a little bit about proactive operations that we're doing to ensure that we maintain our system as effectively as we can and reduce those sewer chokes, sanitary sewer overflows and make sure that we have a highly efficient system. In terms of cost containment strategies, the budgeted salary savings for this particular year's budget is about $400,000. We did reorganize the Beneficial Reuse Department to streamline our workflow and we've reduced costs there by about $53,000. Nick will talk a little bit more about this, but we've reduced revenue funded capital in FY20 by about $3 million to try to level $3 million to level out our five year contributions through our five year capital improvement plan. I mentioned our asset management program already. We're looking at our feasibility study to increase our treatment plant capacity. Of course, we're using a zero base budget with supplemental packages and then we've also conducted analyses of heavy equipment to improve efficiency. So in terms of process improvement, some of these have been touched on already. Water distribution and wastewater collection crews are experimenting with that dual purpose crew that really helps us with our mobilization time. We look at our trenchless technologies, we're continuing to do that where we can rehabilitate a line in place. We've also enacted a program to put together emergency response plans for all of our wastewater lift stations that exist within the city. That's very important, every lift station is a little bit different, how you respond is a little bit different and so we are creating individualized plans so we'll be able to go out and respond to those on a per lift station basis. And then the asset management plan continues to be built up and has really helped us to make sure we get the most life out of our system. So the solids handling and chemically enhanced primary treatment facilities is really our next big thing that we're going to be looking at. And hopefully we'll get the green light from TCEQ and be back in front of you in about a year to talk about actually implementing that program. Supplemental packages, just real quick, we're looking at a few changes that we'd like to do. The heavy equipment operator one for the wastewater collections group, we're proposing to hire two people within that particular group. Those maintenance crews are best served particularly in confined space entry of having a three person crew. And so that way you can have two people performing the work and one person topside for safety purposes. One of our crews has just got two people on it right now so one of these positions would give us a full suite of three person crews. The second position would actually add to an existing three person crew to give a four person crew. That will be deployed in situations where we've got a little bit heavier workload and then that person will also be able to cover if we have someone out on paid leave for sick time. The HEO2 heavy equipment operator two, we're proposing a single position there that's on the construction crew side. And basically we have a five person crew and a six person crew right now. We've done a lot of study across the industry and a six person crew is the norm. We're wanting to get this heavy equipment operator two in place to standardize the level of our crews to have two six person crews. And then we also would have someone that the HEO2s are more skilled and have the ability to run multiple pieces of equipment. This person would also be able to serve as kind of a floater position to keep our crews going and also would be the person in charge if the crew leader is not on site. >> Okay, I have one question, Council Member Tom. >> So as for the advantages of this six person crew, are those advantages in both safety and quality and time or is it some more than the others? >> It certainly is about productivity. And so the ability to get the job done, get a certain amount of feet of pipe installed over a certain period of time. I do think that when you have a six person crew, you've got an opportunity for enhanced safety. You've got the ability for people to be in observational roles, helping guide equipment around. And just what we have found overall in looking across several other organizations that do work similar to ours, it seems like they've all kind of migrated to that six person crew. So it's a combination of skilled equipment operators for certain types of equipment, spotters that can help them move that equipment around effectively. And then just the overall ability to do that linear construction and install X number of feet in a certain period of time. >> Thank you. >> Sure. >> So the flushing truck crew leader, right now we have a field service supervisor, so the way the supervisory level works is you have a field service supervisor, then you have crew leaders, and then you have various levels of field personnel. The current field service supervisor that is over the flushing truck crew is also over three additional, I'm sorry, the three additional crew leaders. And as a result has a total of seven direct reports, which is a lot to keep up with. Keep in mind that we have to record the number of feet that we have flushed with the flushing trucks. Those are basically the trucks that are out that are cleaning the lines out, cammering the lines, and all of that has got to be recorded. All of that has got to be reported to the state. Having the ability to have a flushing truck crew leader will give us a little bit extra horsepower in there. And it will change the reporting structure of the field service supervisor from seven individuals down to four, which is a little bit more manageable given the workload and the coordination that has to happen to get these systems put together. Real quick, this is the capacity for the Pecan Creek plant. This is the wastewater analog of the graphic that Frank showed you a little bit earlier for the water plant. We have what's referred to as the 75-95 rule on the wastewater side, when you get at about 75% of capacity, it's time to begin design processes for expansion. And then when you get to about 90% capacity, you need to be involved in construction of that new plant capacity. So right now, given where we're at in space and time, it's looking like we're going to need to enter in design sometime around 2024. We'll be looking at plant construction sometime around 2026 and that construction being finished by 2029. Where our hope is with the ability to get that extra capacity through our chemically enhanced primary treatment, that we'll be able to implement the construction site faster and kind of right time this a little bit. It's always a bit of a guess on where you're going to be. There are a lot of factors that go into the amount of wastewater flow that you get out of your plant. So the trick is to get as, the closer you get, the more certain you are, but you start to run out of time on design and construction. I think that if this process is successful for us, we'll be able to be a little bit more accurate in terms of our time, which will make us be a little bit more efficient in our overall expenditures. And I believe that's all I've got before I turn it over to Nick. Can I answer any questions for anyone? Yes, Councilmember Riggs. I have a question on the slide, wastewater and cost containment strategies. So the first two bullets there, is that reduction in FTEs? No, no, it's basically budgeted salary savings from turnovers or a position that may not be filled for a while. But it is not related to a reduction of FTEs. And then the reorganization of beneficial reuse was a reorganization from the management side. So basically, everyone below the manager's level is still within that program. Okay. Thank you. Sure. I had a couple of things I was going to ask you. So regarding, you touched on a few different figures on gallons, but average household gallons per day, what would you estimate? On the wastewater side or on the water side? Wastewater. Okay. I think we are looking at about roughly 6,000 gallons a month of wastewater on average. Per home? Yeah, on a typical residential. Okay. Thank you. And then on the Robeson kind of takeover transition, if you will, I guess I'd like to see a graphic if you could, you know, this for that type thing to make it kind of easy to understand. We're assuming this, like you said, they're putting in this infrastructure, et cetera, or paying for that infrastructure. Just kind of want to see that some sort of chart or visual. Cost comparison is paid for what? Yeah, we have that information. I can get that to the council. Okay. And then two things. The flushing truck, is that pressured? I just want to understand that process better. Yes, it is. Those trucks are, I believe that this is still accurate, the most expensive piece of equipment that we purchase as a municipality. And essentially, it's a very large truck. It's got a long hose reel on the front of it. And you send down a large hose with a pressure head on it. They have cameras as well. And essentially, what you're doing is you're flushing the line with a fairly high-strength pressure water, and then pulling that line back through the system and collecting the debris that's washed off of the inside of the pipe. So that's essentially how it works. It's a quite complicated process. You've got the speed at which you travel can be influenced by the size of the pipe and what's in the pipe, the age of the pipe, et cetera. So it's fairly sophisticated. But basically, it's pressure washing the inside of the pipes. Got it. And then last, a request for me. So understanding the line repair, I just want to understand that one, I guess the preparation process, does it have to be dried? It doesn't, you know, I don't understand what, and that could be less words, more pictures are always better for me. But just understanding, I mean, because that'll be that's helpful if we're saying, hey, we have to shut down the road for a period of time or whatever that is. It just kind of helps to understand what's going on. Yeah, I think I can address that a little bit. And then if more information is needed, we can certainly follow up. But essentially on the wastewater side, most of the time, your pipes are not going to they're not going to be fully occupied with with wastewater flow. And so we've got a variety of different things that we can do. For example, we can go we can put in an inflatable upstream of where we need to put the repair and then actually access a manhole and pump the waste from that area to a manhole downstream before we need to repair and then repair the line segment in between. So there's a lot of tricks that we can do and methods that we can use to repair a wastewater line. Unfortunately, on the water side, it's a lot more difficult because it's under pressure and the lines fully occupied with with water. But on the wastewater side, we can run our robotics up the line. We just are simply going manhole to manhole. If we are diverting for a large construction project, we may have that diversion going on for quite some time. The liner liner replacements, we do water, we'll pull the liner on the inside, robotics will go in and cut the holes out for the service line. So it's it's a whole lot easier to contend with on the wastewater side than it is on the water side. OK, thank you. Sure. Any other questions? OK, thank you. Good afternoon again, Mayor Pro Tem, city council members, Nick Benson, city's budget manager. I'm going to walk you through the financial portion of the wastewater presentation. Let me get to the slide here. So similar to water, we are proposing to change the way that wastewater impact fees are being used in the fund. I'll review that with you on the next couple of slides. We are projecting a two percent population growth in wastewater customers. We are proposing to maintain existing wastewater rates in the five year pro forma. And then the wastewater treatment plant expansion, as Dr. Banks has said, has moved to twenty twenty six. This matrix table does summarize our proposal of changing the way that impact the revenue is currently being used. So currently, you can see wastewater uses about four point two million dollars a year to fund eligible debt service. Moving forward, we are proposing to fund about three point seven million of eligible debt service and five hundred thousand of revenue funding upfront project cost. Over the five year period, we would fund about 20 million of eligible debt service and about one point three million of eligible project cost. Similar to water, this does save the wastewater department money associated with issuing bonds for those project cost. Thank you, Councilman Briggs. So is that eligible debt service is up for existing debt or is that for are you talking about for for all that even new debt coming online? This is for existing projects. It could also be for new debt coming online. Usually there's a year to lead time before that debt starts hitting the operating fund. But this is for projects that are in the ground that are eligible for impact fee recovery. OK. And then in the debt service. So if we're paying less to that debt service, it's not going to affect us negatively as far as the interest rates or anything like that. No, because they're still being paid for through the operating fund. So instead of using more impact fee revenue to fund or to offset that service, we're funding it through the operating fund itself. So this table summarizes the recently completed impact fee study that was done in January. And that study did look at all the projects in the city for a 10 year period and identified how much we could recover through impact fee revenue in the Wastewater Fund. So you can see on the yellow bar here, about 49 million dollars can be recovered over 10 years through wastewater impact fees of that amount. About 19 million can go towards revenue funding or projects and about 30 million can go towards eligible debt service. So we did take the consideration when we put the recommendation forward. This is the five year forecast for the Wastewater Department. You can see the adopted budget is here in this column. We have 32.7 million dollars in rate revenue with the drawdown about 4.7 million dollars in reserves. We are projecting to finish the year a little bit better, only drawing down about 4 million dollars in reserves. As a reminder, we did do a five percent rate decrease for wastewater customers last year. You can see that number here in the proposed budget column. We are projecting no rate increases and we do anticipate drawing down reserves about 1.7 million. The reserves do stay or does stay above the minimum reserve requirement in the proposed budget year and also in 2024. We do dip slightly below in 2022 to 10.2 million with the minimum being 10.8, but we feel comfortable with this number. I do want to point out that drainage, we do show the drainage reserves separate than the wastewater reserve. There is a dedicated 1 million dollars for the drainage department that is included in this reforma. This is the detail revenue side for the Wastewater Department. You can see the proposed budget here in your far right. Similar to water, we have shown separately how much of the impact fee revenue we'll be using for revenue funding of projects and how much we'll be using for debt funding of projects. So for a total resources of 38.3 million. It's a detailed expense side for the Wastewater Department. Ultimately, since the drainage department does roll up into wastewater, we are showing the supplementals for both drainage and you can see the number down here for the drainage department. You can also see the supplementals that Dr. Banks had covered with you shortly ago for 297. So total expenses of 38.3 million. This is the five-year capital plan for the Wastewater Department. In the proposed budget, we do have 23.2 million dollars worth of projects scheduled to be done. Of that, 500,000 will be funded with impact fee revenue, 6.8 million will be revenue funded, and then 15.7 million will be bond funded. This is the position summary for the Wastewater Department. So the current budget, 18-19, we had 113.5 positions currently. In the proposed budget, if the four supplementals are approved, we will have 117.5. That concludes the wastewater presentation. Like I said, drainage is next and Mr. Daniel Kramer will come up here. Okay, any questions? Yes, Council Member Briggs. Just clarification on what I'm trying to find the slide. I'm in drainage now, but there is a section where it says drainage fees on the budget here that we just saw. Will Mr. Kramer go over that? Is that the same or are those different? They are the same. We can cover it here or we can cover it in the next presentation. Well, as long as it's going to be right there, the drainage fees. Yeah, the drainage fees of 4.8 million, and these are from residential and non-residential customers. Right, yes. I've noticed on my bill, my fees just seem to get higher. They're going up my drainage fee. Okay. So we're going to talk about this number that we see is going to be transferred over equally into the next presentation on some point. Yes, this number does line up with the next presentation. You'll see, absolutely. And one other question, Council Member Armitage. Can you speak just, and this is a question I could have asked with the earlier presentation and maybe the one coming up, but can you speak just briefly to what extent do you factor in, say, for wastewater in budgeting for the following year, projected future growth? Could you just speak a little for that process? So we'll probably ask Dr. Banks to come up here for the projected future growth. I think we've got programmed in about 1.8% per year on future growth. So that's based on what we've observed in the past and then the projections going forward. So you've got to keep in mind that it definitely tracks with population, but it's not necessarily aligned because we're dealing with both the commercial and the residential side. Yeah. So for instance, so something like Coalhunter Ranch, which is a, you know, there's going to be commercial and residential there. Are you kind of specifically looking at that or is it, it sounds more like just kind of tacking on another, what did you say, 1.8%? For something like that, we'll just have to simply look at the growth projections and the expected use, and that will just be added on to the current growth projections for the city. That area does have some growth projections in it, but not at the level that's being currently, that's being projected in the Hunter Ranch Coal Ranch plans. In that particular instance, though, it's going to be more of a self-contained pro forma where they would actually put in all the infrastructure required by the city, and then the O&M would be recaptured through rates, and then they would be subject to the higher impact fees. So that's exactly why those impact fees were put in, is if they started stressing the system, at some point their residents are contributing to the next plan expansion. Thank you. And is now a good time to take a break or is it, how long, drainage is coming up, but how? Total presentation, 20 minutes. Yes, so we'll take a break at 2.08 and we'll come back and discuss drainage. Thank you. Okay, welcome back. Good afternoon. It is now 2.17 and we're continuing item B, which is 1.193, and we're on to the, we've just finished wastewater and on to the drainage portion of this conversation. Good afternoon, Council, Mayor Pro Tem. My name is Daniel Kramer, Deputy Director of Operations. I'll be going over the drainage budget presentation. So a few of our accomplishments that we accomplished this past year, we got Rockwood Lane and Mistywood Lane. We've also been working on the McKinney Street widening project, which is about 95, 90, 95 percent done on our side right now. We'll be finishing that up here in the next few weeks on that. And then we'll move into the Hercules drain system, which will be around in July. A couple of the ones we're looking at for next year are Oak Tree and Choctaw. And also some of the ones that I really want to point out is, you know, getting our drainage master plan updated. We have about 25 percent, which will help us with the overall planning for the systems throughout the city. And also we want to increase our storm drain inspection. We have 7,800 inlets, which we're trying to hit about 25 percent per year. Some of our budget emphasis is the increase the mapping productivity to assist in our stormwater master plan. Again, this goes with engineering and everybody else to help them develop our whole drainage plan for the whole city. Make sure we don't have any more issues like we had back in 2007 when they had the floods and get all that taken care of. We also looking at upgrade the system for the FEMA floodplains, which there are continually working on right now going through and. Maintain our existing drainage system to make sure that we can get everything taken care of and get it cleaned and gone. So our cost containment. So as you can see, a recurrent theme of updating our mapping system, working with our system requests within 24 hours. We've had a bunch of those that have come up here recently with all the rain events and we have and we've got on 24 to 48 hours. Try to get back to every citizen to make sure we've at least got a response out and try to get out as soon as the water is receded and being able to stop so we can get out and verify the situation, make sure nothing's going on. We're also looking at outsourcing a few of our small mowing areas and we already have that contract working and are going through that and we're working on our inland inspections. So when we go out and do some of the inspections we have going on, we're making sure that we get all the information that we need as we go out there instead of having to come back a few times here and there. So some of the process improvements, data collection, we're making sure we utilize our work order system that we have to its full potential and going through that, making sure everything's in the system, making sure that we keep our records up to date and all that going forward. Our future process improvements that we're looking into is for aerial impervious surface mapping. Currently right now the drainage fee as new commercial properties come up, we'll have to go out and we'll have to measure the square footage and everything that's laying out there for residential that's based off the DCAD information that comes in for the square footage of the house. So what this does is we're looking at a pilot program right now kind of over in the Western Boulevard razor ranch area. They fly over, they use LIDAR. So what that does is it will give us a reading of what all the impervious area is there and we're going to compare it to what data we have now and see what the increase is and see that and look at if we're seeing an increase and it's cost effective we can look at doing across the whole city and doing that to verify that we can get everything up to date and get all the fees that we need to get through our commercial mainly. And then also we're looking at more of a proactive maintenance. Currently what we want to get up to is a hundred percent inspection on our channels and ditches. Currently we're right around about 20 percent. Most of those are from our normal concrete channel cleanings and our mowing areas that we have to mow and maintain but there are a lot of roadside ditches, bar ditches that we do not get to unless there's complaints or as we see them as we're out driving around but we don't have an inspection long that we check every single one of them every year that we go through. Also for our inlet inspections we are currently right about about five percent that we inspect every year. We know there's quite a few of them that have issues so we'll go hit the main areas but we also want to make sure that you know we have about 20 percent so we can start cycling through all those every year and get any issues before they come major. So one of the options that we're looking at for our supplemental is we're asking for a new crew of four FTEs and one vehicle. Now what this crew is going to be focused on is running these inspections. Right now our crews are mainly mowing cycles and a few construction projects they have throughout the year and just the basic channel maintenance. Now these crews right here will be finishing up our mapping for the drainage system throughout and we also have the inlets that they can be able to excuse me be going through and inspecting so we can keep on top of this. One of the main things that came up was a Wall Street when we had to tear out the drainage and fix that this past year. That's one thing that could have been found a little earlier if we would have had more inspections going through normal years. The only reason that was found is because a truck had driven around the corner and hit it and busted it up so when we came out to fix it and repair it we actually found that there was issues in that drainage ditch up under under the road and so we had to rip that out and do that as an emergency repair. One question. Councilmember Armitage. So when that happens I'm mentioning this now because this is the kind of behind the scenes work that when it's going on unless you live right near it you might not know there's an inspection happening. I would love to just to kind of put a pin in this to be invited to tag along for an inspection to see what happens. I would love that I know that that's down the line but I'm mentioning that now because we might not be notified about it once that begins. Yes ma'am we can definitely look into that and get you out there. This is one of our focuses I wanted to throw out there for our supplemental crew. So currently right now in our drainage ditches we have about one hundred and fifty five miles of drainage ditches in the in the city and we're really only getting about thirty one miles per year is where we're getting nobody really has a problem with them or anything like that until we have these big rain events that we've had these past few years here and there. Our goal would be able to stay on top of it and actually be able to hit these every year be able to do a visual inspection and maintenance while we're out there to verify what's going on if they need to be clean you'd be doing something if it needs some more in depth maintenance we can schedule that for upcoming or while they're out there they can do some of the small maintenance is coming up. Also with our curb inlets we currently have seven eight hundred inlets in the city and that's where we're at right now as we get more and more of these new subdivisions coming on will be more and more added but we really only get to about five percent which is about three hundred ninety inlets per year on a normal inspection unless they have issues and then we'll go out there and do those but we'd like to get you know about fifteen hundred sixteen hundred a year to be on a normal rotating schedule so we can get to everything within five years. So and Nick here will take over from here I have yes Councilmember Davis sure can you help me understand how the current crew other than just you know time spent going out there and visually inspecting you can you help me understand what the inspection process is and how the current crew is inadequate you know what it is that that takes their time and makes it not possible for them to inspect more. More miles or more inlets each year yes sir well with what we go in we have currently right now a hundred I'm not saying I think it's about a hundred and sixty miles worth of mowing that we have to take care of now this isn't the small areas that we've contracted out these are the bigger ones back where we have to mow the channels verify those and those guys run those about five to six cycles a year so they work on those we also have usually two to three. Construction projects that we run throughout the year small ones here and there and some neighborhoods that come up which are you know installing some drainage pipes. Just for different areas where they've had some flooding some small projects that are usually under about five hundred thousand or so that are harder to get out and get contractors in so we do those in house for those small crews like that and then you know the. What else we got going on that and so we got the mowing we got the construction and then also the. Sorry I lost my train of thought. And then you know this the they do run some inspections like I said you know we had the five percent and then we have the twenty percent of normal hit and most of those inspections will be they'll go out to a an inlet inspection and. They'll be able to take a little make sure there's no blockages in the front they'll also check down in the inlet and verify in the box itself that is there is nothing being. Nothing obstructing the flow because it's a box with a pipe coming out of it so verify there's nothing down there we found mattresses we found bikes we found all kinds of stuff that you can ever imagine that gets shut down in there. So whatever time it takes you know they'll either go down there they'll clean it out while they're down there get everything cleaned out make sure it's good to go. They'll inspect all the joints in the in the pipes that connect they'll be able to shoot down the. The inlet of the pipes and be able to see depending on the diameter if they can see any issues or anything like that we'll also get with either our internal camera crew and see if there's anything that we need to get them out there if we think there's any issues going downstream we can have scheduled them to come out and run the cameras down there and verify if there's anything else coming out on our normal inlet inspection. Now on our our drainage so just kind of summarize so you don't have any crew members right now dedicated to inspection they've all got laundry list of jobs to do beyond inspections and adding inspections at a higher rate kind of adding to their portfolio what they need to get done correct. Our goal is to try to get out in front of this and be proactive instead of reactive on it. Councilmember Braves so this is going to be a silly question but so the drainage ditch what's the difference between that in a curb inlet inspection so you're the two differences. So your inlets will just be on your normal curb and gutter street where you have the concrete flume and it'll actually go into the inlet down there which they'll be collects in the boxes down there. Now on your drainage ditch is like out here that would be section of a drainage ditch or if you can look any of the roads without curb and gutter they have the ditches that run all along the street and all those those are your ditches in that aspect and off the beaten path. Okay so I made a mistake the other day and called it the curb inlet a ditch so I noticed that one of them was completely filled with leaves and so that the water after the rain was not draining properly. Correct and so somebody needed to come out and clean that out so that would be a curb inlet yes cleaning okay yes ma'am so that's that's good to know and so do you also handle the the development like the drainage pods that the new when a new development comes in and then they have to affect the water flow over to the pond area. Some of those we do a lot of those are written into the HOA rules as for them to be they maintain those as with that it just matters on which ones they are and all that most of the new ones it's up to the homeowners to homeowners association that's part of their management to take care of that. And last question on the drainage ditch and mowing because there are some drainage ditches in parks but in parks has separate mowing so does drainage come out and mow the ditch and then parks most all the way around the ditch just not the ditch or is that no I mean or is it no we work together on that these are outside of the parks so parks does take care of a lot of the ones inside and help us out on that but we also worked with all the ones that are outside the park areas and everything on that so we do work together and that we don't double our forces on those okay and so the ones in the parks are not on actually the list of being inspected or are they are just not maintained they will be inspected they are on the list but they're not ones that will be they don't get as much inspections because we also work with some of the parks group because they're out there and if there's any issues or stuff like that we do work with them to be able to get out there and take up any of the bigger stuff but they do keep out some of the smallers okay thank you yes ma'am council member Ryan has a question thank you sir uh do you do the uh the silt fence in fact inspections as well for construction sites or is that a different department that is a different department okay and then just to close out so help me carry the message forward so drainage ditch inspections if a citizen sees what they should let staff know or use their engage app is what what what triggers a there's a problem with this ditch or what what would be visually kind of a clue that maybe something to miss okay so when we come out for an inspection our main thing is making sure we verify the flow of water um so there's you know there's there's branches down there's trees down um there's certain areas if there's there's ponding water and it's not moving through that means there's usually a lot of silt built up and it's not actually moving through so we'll come through and do that um the goal is on the the ditches and everything they have a certain percentage grade depending on that so they're made to um get rid of you know 90 95 percent of all the water is supposed to be flowing out of there and not be sitting um after a few days after a rain event but if there's build up if there's ponding water sitting in there if there's trees if there's brush debris we will come out and take care of that okay thank you sir and nick has the the rest of the correct okay thank you good afternoon mayor pro tem city council members if you didn't know my name before you do now all right so financial assumptions for the financial budget for drainage um we are proposing to maintain existing drainage fees um as i stated on the wastewater pro forma drainage does maintain a fund balance of one million dollars um and then drainage revenue can only be used on drainage related expenses i.e. o n m debt service related expenses so the five-year forecast for the drainage department um miss briggs when we get to the point we can talk about the drainage revenue um but you can see in the proposed budget we have 4.9 million dollars in revenue 4.9 million dollars in expenses this does include some auction proceeds and some funding from other departments to fund uh the watershed department it's the drainage revenue detail um so you can see the drainage system resources here for a total of 4.9 million dollars in total resources it's the drainage expense budget detail um you can see the personal services this does include the supplemental packages that daniel had updated you on just shortly ago so total expenses of 4.9 million dollars council member riggs can you talk about the one line item that says bad debt right there i can um so what this is this is bills that we send out to customers for drainage fees that aren't collected um so we do account for those and the budget is an expense item okay so it's it's separated so somebody can pay their whole utility bill and opt not to pay their drainage no there's not the option to not pay it we just show it as a separate line item in the budget we can track historicals we can see what the historical bad debt amount has been so okay so but this is just for the drainage part of that bill that is correct water and wastewater have their own bad debt component this is just for wastewater okay i'm sorry for drainage this is just for drainage absolutely okay thank you this is the five-year capital plan for the drainage department um the major projects that they have is channel rehab some of the projects daniel talked to you about shortly ago the chalk tall drainage and the vehicle replacements and they do have a few vehicles in ready to replace this position summer for drainage so in the adopted budget we have 24 positions um if the supplemental packages are approved add additional four positions for a total of 28 any questions or comments that you may have councilmember davis on the capital revenue plan yes i have a question about and this may be an answer for somebody else but i'd like to know more about the channel rehab and uh what that'll include going forward yeah absolutely so daniel come back up here and address that question thank you okay the uh channel rehab is like our it's kind of where we keep our money for our capital projects so that's just the the drainage fee after operationals everything else that we put in to do to run the rest of operations any of the small projects that we have going on here and there anything that comes up as an emergencies and that goes on with that okay so that's not i mean even we see that number kind of climbing in future years but that's not a predicted large set of projects that's just kind of your ongoing yearly maintenance stuff there's not a big channel rehab project in the works with no sir those run through engineering and through that for cip just making sure yes sir and then if i could give you one note to follow up with me on please mingo between redwood and shawnee okay the opposite ends are improved and so i'm curious about that stretch if it's on your list since your Choctaw is not too far from there i think so i'm just curious yes sir we'll do and then councilor riggs yeah and so the on the Choctaw drainage does that include and anytime we talk about drainage because i have i'm totally against concrete channels so i'm just trying to make sure that any projects that are coming up or funded aren't going in and turning natural channels into 50 feet of concrete are either of these that i'd have to look back at the plans but i know we've gone through with everything else and looking at the different rates and everything the engineering plans are either at 90 percent or just finished so i'll have to go back and look but as far as i know we've been going forward as much as we can with everything is all natural line that we can do okay thank you yes ma'am okay then council member retards question council member riggs can it raises a good point about this concern about paving over of natural drainage ditches and can we have a policy where you know anytime something like that is is being considered or rather anytime there's an issue with a natural drainage ditch that at some point that it goes through committee on the environment that be feasible typically in those types of situations we'll bring it to council through the cip there's only been one that i can think of recently where there was an objection raised i think it was mockingbird is that right and tidus just went back and redesigned it and tried to keep it as much natural as possible but we'll bring those forward they're few and far between but we'll bring those forward to council anytime that happens okay just that was um hinkle for the good sam oh you're right good sam village that right and nice enjoyed and will area there yep so we're aware that that's the council's goal we'll try to adhere to it as much as we can thanks could could we go ahead and could we go ahead and ask for an isr then on the uh or some kind of update even just an email on the chalk top project just so we can kind of check that one off as preserving natural flow absolutely can do okay all right thank you very much appreciate it gentlemen thank you and uh so that concludes item b will take us to item c which is 19-1194 receive a report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding the customer service fiscal year 2019-2020 operation operating budget good afternoon mayor pro tem council tiffany thompson director customer service happy to be here today to go over our budget presentation so customer services mission is to help serve and educate our customers we provide customer service for all five utilities and act as the general operator um phone system for the city so just a snapshot last year we calculated and produced 642 000 bills filled at 195 000 phone calls assisted 64 000 customers in our lobby and we collected and reconciled over 287 million dollars worth of revenue so some of our accomplishments we did uh launch the pay as you go prepaid metering program in february we did a big public push we have a 250 customers on that program right now we signed up 140 of those just last month so it's really picking up speed and we've got a lot of great compliments and satisfaction based off that program a lot of our customers are able to either not be charged a deposit when they're coming into the utility system or they're being able to use their existing deposits for the program right now so again we're getting a lot of satisfaction and feedback for that program we also launched a customer service survey in our lobby operation we added this about a year ago with our call center so if you call in to us or come in you're provided a three question survey to be able to give feedback and also there's a question where if you would like a call back from a supervisor based off your experience or transaction that will call you back we've had about 25 000 surveys taken and 75 percent of the customers who are wanting a call back or wanting a call back to really give the staff praises and accolades for the experience that they had and the other 25 percent is opportunities on what could we have done better how could we improve that experience and is there any process improvements that we can make we also did a study with navigate consulting on our credit collection practices that we brought forth to the council on how we were doing late march we did a internal audit of the customer service department we spent about 400 hours with the auditor making process improvements and just really seeing how we could further enhance that operation we also implemented a self-service disconnect and transfer capability online so if a customer wants to transfer their utility services or disconnect they can do that online now without having to contact us so some of our goals for next year is we want to continue that adoption of our of our prepaid metering program and also we're going to be adding additional locations for not only our prepaid program customers but our postpaid 18 additional locations here in town to be able to pay that's going to include cvs 7-eleven and family dollar we're going to be launching that soon and then we're going to be doing a navigate consulting they did our credit and collection review they're going to be helping us make sure that we're meeting our standards for a call center operation and performance metrics as well and then increased funding for our prevent loss of utility services and continued program enhancement so we're going to talk a little bit about potential increasing funding for that here in just a moment and then a specialized representatives for hardship counseling so we want to be able to focus on the customers that are experiencing something challenging in their life needing extra time what resources are available to them we want to have a dedicated core group of customer service reps that can really work with them and provide a holistic solution for that so those are some of the goals we have coming up in the counselor just a quick just on the back on the first slide because i was in kroger the other day at the customer service and i had a big sign that we're not accepting uh debt and utility payments here right now and so i meant to ask about that is that um is that is there a reason for that and is that location going to be added in our um payage in our local payments so kroger was operating under a fidelity express contract and our understanding is they may be doing their own thing now and so based off of that we have a contract with fidelity express and that's why kroger was able to accept our payments for us through that um we need to reach out to kroger to see what we did initially when we found out that they weren't taking payments for us to see where they're at with it they kept saying that they were working on it to be able to to bring us back on board with it so that's a great point to get a status update on that they are not included with uh this list right here this is going to be done through pay near me and they have certain contracts with retail location and it helps us mitigate any costs for us to go in there by ourselves we just piggyback on their contract with these different retailers so cbs 7-eleven and family dollar is one that we're pretty excited about as well to be able to offer additional places to play but great question about kroger okay and the one at kroger is you don't have to be on pay it um pay as you go that's just you could just bring your regular utility bill correct right and correct any fidelity express location money gram you can go in and pay um if you're postpaid now those are options available to all of our customers thank you for that i was curious so our budget emphasis is to maximize the value while trying to contain costs and so some of the ways we do this is focusing on our performance measures and some of the ones i want to focus on is bad debt so after 180 days after the final bill has been produced if we haven't collected those funds that's what's considered bad debt we did make some changes to our current collection policies that was implemented in january of 2018 so we are still seeing the impacts of that we do need some more time to be able to understand what the true impacts of those changes are so we are seeing a little bit of a slight increase for this fiscal years coming up bad debt our self-service adoption we want to make sure that we're investing in options for our customers to be able to do business online and not have to contact us or come into our operation and then first contact resolution i'm going to speak about in here just a moment but this is making sure that we're providing a solution the first time that our customers reach out to us and not creating a duplication of effort for our customers and for our staff and then average speed of answer that's how quickly we answer the phones with that and so that results in a very productive staff we have a goal to answer that phone call within 60 seconds or less so the key drivers in our budget is our customer volume the behaviors of our customers and how we respond to that volume so we want to make sure that we're focusing on reducing volume improving efficiencies while increasing our customer satisfaction so investing in those self-service options about two years ago we did implement the new payment portal 46 percent of our customer base is utilizing that portal to be able to set up one-time payments reoccurring payments to be able to sign up for electronic billing a quarter of our customer base is using the electronic billing options so they do not get a paper bill and then approving efficiency so leveraging the feedback that we're getting from our customers so we're finding out what's important to them what's creating frustration and we have some things that we've implemented based off of that feedback so these are just some results of our cost containment strategies and just our customer behavior so we continue to see about a four percent increase in our customer base our lobby volume has decreased continually over the years that's a direct reflection over the self-service tools that we've implemented for our customers and so they've gone to self-service or they call in so you can say our call center has increased in their adoption quite a bit with the calls that we take so our cost containment strategy how do we respond to that behavior previously we used to have lobby representatives that would just handle the customers walking into the lobby now what we have is a dual dual purpose representative so our our personnel in the lobby can do either people coming into the operation or phones so they're utilized in both of those types of capacity to be able to address our call center volume that's increased and then average handle time we have a goal of 300 seconds or five minutes or less whenever we're talking with a customer we have a continually to see that increase as well and that's primarily because the complexity of their requests that we get we need to take a little bit more time with our customers with that so as we continue to see that increase that's influencing some of the decisions that we're we're making as well and then average speed of answer or even though our customer volume has increased and how long it takes us to work through that customer situation we're answering that phone call within 29 seconds so that continues to be a very productive measure so it's a great thing that our customers aren't having to wait very long to get assisted by one of our staff so some of the process improvements that we did we developed over 300 standard operating procedures for this department this last year we also have enhanced our training of staff and then also our training program we are consistently in a training program for new staff coming in previously a couple years ago that was almost a 12-week program we've got it down to six weeks and just this last year we've got it down to five weeks and we also launched or pardon me added the Spanish option to our payment portal this is feedback that we got from the survey from our Spanish customers there was frustration that this option wasn't provided to them in Spanish and so we took that feedback from our customers and now there's a Spanish option for them to be able to do business so as an internal service fund our cost allocation for our budget is allocated back out to the utilities and the departments that utilize our services so that means if they're represented on a bill if we take a phone call for them or take a payment they get a portion of that budget back out or our costs back out to them and so this is how this is broken down between the five utilities and for general government some of the things that i wanted to note as cost contributors we did make a mid-year change for an addition of a director of customer service position we have some supplemental packages that we're going to talk about for 2.5 fte's also over the last several months we've had discussions with the public utilities board and with council about potentially increasing the funding for the prevent loss of utility services right now we fund that at about 125 000 we're putting in our budget based off of your direction for 50 000 if you wanted to approve that to be able to help more families and then contingency preparation we are under a contract right now for merchant services an extension contract through may 2020 and what that does is allows us to take credit and debit card payments online we are going to need to make a change on if we can charge or how we're going to be able to charge the commercial fee of 2.7 you're about to hear a presentation right after this and seek your direction regardless there is going to be a budgetary impact based off of that direction and since that's going to hit mid next budget year we need to go ahead and talk about those funds in that in that budget customer breaks has a question so has on the last um slide i didn't see animal services didn't animal services get moved under customer service or is this just specifically for utilities and that'll be something separate that we see later this is the director of customer service does oversee customer service municipal court and animal services i'm just talking about customer service for utilities today but if you want to adopt an animal we can definitely talk about that afterwards so so will all those other items come to us separately yes ma'am we're going to be coming forth in july for those two departments because i know that you have like a list this long of under so thank you okay yes follow up to that question will the t-rex be presenting that one when we get to animal services or no i'm hearing that's a request accepted okay just checking if that helps me get my money i will put whatever costume on you want me to put on council member davis doesn't know what we're talking about we're going to have to catch him up yeah that's probably for the best yeah it really is we'll talk afterwards i've got pictures it's all for the animals okay so this is our expenses um this does include this total budget right here does include our supplemental packages that we're going to talk about here in just a moment but it doesn't include two of those baselines that we just discussed which is the increase in plus one funding 50 000 and then the potential 200 000 for our merchant services so for our supplemental packages we are asking for 2.5 fte that's a full-time and a part-time position for a customer service represented oh i'm sorry i'm like going very fast here position summary let me back up a little bit so and we have over the last couple years have eliminated and reduced positions um just to get better efficiency and redundancies in our positions so this is the first time that we're asking for some additional positions in quite some time so right now we have 43.5 fte's and we're seeking 46 so that 46 um the additional we're asking for is a 1.5 csr that's a full-time csr and a part-time position uh that's just going to be able to make sure that we're maintaining our service levels that we provide right now and then also just the complexity of the requests that we're getting and then a quality control specialist this was a recommendation that did come out of our audit um someone that can focus on auditing and quality control for our billing operation our training and then also for our first contact resolution our quality assurance program so this person would have a couple different disciplines but quality control and auditing is the primary function for that one question councilmember armature so about the question about the first category position and the second um the first uh this is just people people answering the phone managing individual yes front-line operations for our customers and then for the quality control i take it because it has an auditing function a good part of that will include the debt management and uncollected debt is that correct so we have a credit and collection specialist who does that and a revenue assurance supervisor so that's not specifically tied to this this is going to be for our billing function just our bills and the accuracy and our rate application making sure that we're we pull a sample of bills and audit it um during the audit they found everything to be great we're applying everything appropriately but this is just how do we continue to make sure that we're um doing what we're supposed to be doing with the the quality control of that function okay got it thanks so with that being said i just want to thank our customers and the council for their continued support and happy to answer any questions that you may have regarding our budget yeah councillor armature um well i i have a number of questions about um about uncollected debt and i'm wondering if now is a good time or if this issue specifically issue specifically of debt collection is going to be um in the various um uh options and and considerations mentioned in the backup if that's going to be coming back to us at another time so we did provide the informal staff report in addition to this because we've been talking about bad debt and bad debt was incorporated in the budget presentation so i'm glad you brought that up that is part of the backup we do have our customer service manager here krista foster that did an outstanding job preparing for all that and doing the research so she is prepared to answer questions for that if that is um what the council would like to do but i'm happy to answer any more budget questions if there's any other budget questions yes yes if you let's take those well first are there any other questions about the presentation and we'll take that up if that's the case uh i think i have one ask before we move on and that is uh the quality control on billing we outsource the billing or is that done in house all done in house by us our team got it okay thank you okay so yes and then uh thank you very much and then so i would this will be krista's first coming up before council i know you have a some type of ceremony yes yes council members good afternoon i'm krista foster customer service manager and i would be happy to answer questions that you have regarding credit collection wonderful well first i want to thank you for the you know extensive backup on on credit collection really helpful and useful um so i'm just going to kind of go down a little uh a list and um you know some of these are just just comments um and you know and others are uh questions sure um can you group the can you do the questions first and then because that may spur other people's thoughts and then while you're doing your comments they can load up their questions but yes okay so questions okay okay i will try to do that sure i've got them written down organized differently so if it if you're spending time looking then that's why i'm trying to reorganize but good idea so one question is um how much of the or do you keep track of um how much of the uncollected debt in each of the different categories very the various categories of residential and commercial how much of that is from late fees and deposits um i don't believe we keep that separate it's going to be based on that total balance that is going into a write-off status after 180 days it's just the total of that account yeah and and and that that was my um understanding and i would love to see moving forward uh that data tracked you know how much of the uncollected debt is is from late fees and deposits uh because that would be hell for a number of reasons it's just it's good to know but you know also would be helpful in looking at um the effect of of late fees and and deposits and people's ability to pay those specifically especially deposits versus um you know their ability to just pay off their all of the uncollected debt together so that was the uh let's see one question um let's see uh and well i guess that that's the um yeah i guess that's the that's really the one question uh question uh the the others are more comments i suppose um that uh you know i would like to see um a uh okay actually i will word this as a question to get that in in here um if you could speak to uh the uh navigate report on the on late fees and i know that last uh we had discussed i'll mention this especially for um council member davis um there was a uh discussion the last time this came before us about whether to have a percentage late fee or to continue with there's a kind of across the board fee um i happen to be in favor of a percentage late fee both because i think it's it's more fair and also it would uh my sense is it would assist better in um uh debt collection especially from some of the larger larger users um but i was wondering if you could just kind of speak to that sure um based on council feedback and wanting a little more information related to late fees we actually went through and did an analysis that's in that backup information and what you could look at is right now the average fee if it were a five percent late fee the average fee for a multifamily user would be at the five dollar mark the five percent fee for a regular household residential user would be at a thirteen dollar range and the commercial user would be an average of eighty dollars on that late fee and currently it's a 20 currently the fees are flat at twenty dollars yeah which is um obviously much smaller amount than 80 and can you define what is it the commercial account because we've got our various different kinds of a commercial account is going to be classified based on the type of metered service that they receive so and we've got those the different categories three categories i believe uh we have been we have for the purposes of some of the credit and collections have looked at those based on the average annual consumptions to classify them as to whether they would be small medium or large size businesses and so would now be the time this is a question i guess but for you for tiffany also for city manager uh to uh to deliberate on kind of the question of of changing to a five or ten percent uh late fee or is that something that i should uh request for a work session i think i think it'd be more appropriate to move that into july or august work session when we have all seven of you here excellent well so i i would i request that i would i would prefer it that way too so thank you i request that um because i think it's an important discussion to have um let's see i was wondering if you could speak to um uh the uh the the part in in the the backup about um uh how when transferring services a customer may be required to pay a new deposit it was it had been my understanding that uh that customers are required to pay a new deposit when they move so i found that interesting that that there's that may may be required correct um anytime a customer moves into a new location anytime we set up a new account at a location the customer's credit is assessed and we look at their credit scoring either within the city from their previous history or if it's outside coming in we're going to do it through a credit score check but obviously from moving from one location to another we are going to look at their internal credit score and if they are that d or e status then we are going to assess the either one or two month deposit and of course any deposit that's on their current account is going to be credited to make sure that any outstanding charges there don't follow them to the new account putting them further behind or if there's a credit we're going to bring that credit from the old deposit onto the new account and thanks for explaining it absolutely so i'd like to see added on to their work session request because i think that the topics go well together uh a discussion about that policy that the uh the the policy of paying a new deposit or the the potentiality for paying a new deposit having that deposit reassessed with every move it's something that i i know anecdotally uh impacts renter apartment renters especially hard because they move a lot uh and i i'd also like to see included in that um a comparative uh data on uh both other municipalities you know that have credit-based deposits whether they they do that on each move uh of address within the utility and also for co-serve uh because it's my understanding anecdotally that co-serve doesn't charge you uh when you uh move to a new address but i might be mistaken in that it's and i've also heard anecdotally that that that other texas cities not necessarily all of them but i've heard a number of cities uh don't do that so i'd be curious to know that data also and i wanted to to thank you for um your uh uh work on what other cities have done for for debt relief working with um income-based qualifications and i was wondering if you could uh uh speak to that particularly because you know it used to be in the past uh we were told um that uh it was you know impossible to do to have income-based qualifications you know for assistance because of privacy issues but but now we're seeing that uh that other cities do that so i was wondering if you could speak to that particularly i was interested in what you had to say about grand prairie and austin energy okay so one of the things that we were tasked to look at was to evaluate what some of the other municipalities were doing in relation to uh lower income residents and the cost of utilities we are absolutely unable to do something that we would tier rates we have to keep those things consistent across all customers and but it looks like what most other utilities that do this are doing is they're using some type of a qualified discount program the qualified discount programs range anywhere from about 80 a year to about 650 a year of relief a couple of programs will actually reduce deposits or extend payment periods for seniors who are on assisted or you know fixed income or over a certain age but that's the thing that most of them do they do that through a series of qualified discounts they have to meet federal and state guidelines and they're not being assessed within that city they're showing that they're being assessed with some other agency specifically grand prairie they are the one unique organization and what they have done in order to work within the guidelines and they're not doing it with a discount is they take that basic amount of electricity that or water that they consider essential for all households and that particular rate is very discounted so that anyone who's using beyond that where it would be considered beyond what's necessary to run your household will pick up a slightly higher rate yeah and that was fascinating to me to learn that i had not known that and i i would like that a consideration of you know what the impacts of pros and cons of adopting the grand that grand prairie model you know particularly because you know for obvious reasons it it also reward you can look at it either way rewards low consumption or it there's there's there's an additional cost for larger consumption so i would like added on to that work session request consideration of you know what would be involved in it possibly adopting the grand prairie model also the in austin energies deposits for veterans returning from deployment and that's a group that's really gets hit hard by not just by our utilities cost but a number of issues and also for residents who can prove medical indigency and the senior discounts i'd also like that that to be included some consideration of senior discounts again all based on this great research that you've done and and i'd also like included in there a some report on the possibility of using dentin housing authority voucher lists as that an independent data collection you know whatever you call it that that because we can't as a city collect that information using not only who's on vouchers currently but also who's on the waiting list if that would be reasonable means of assessment and and and that that was pretty much my questions and comments so thank you all for your patience in that thanks so much for your work and and i look forward to that that work session summer in any other questions regarding customer service okay oh council member question just to thank you thank you for your work um with all the customers that have called and needed help i've heard really positive feedback um and from your department i just appreciate it i appreciate it thank you thank you very much well done outstanding okay so that concludes uh item c that'll take us to item d which is uh 19-1202 receive report hold discussion and provide staff direction regarding uh fee change to commercial accounts when utilizing the online phone payment channel mayor pro temp council members good afternoon again afternoon still krista foster with customer service um so what we're going to look at this afternoon are some changes in credit card regulations that will affect the way that we are able to assess fees for commercial payments so we're going to look at a little bit of history on this we're going to look at some of the current performance what those changes are then i'll present you some options and i have our recommendation and we'll be seeking guidance for this as uh tiffany had mentioned we are currently on an extension contract that is set to expire now in less than a year uh so we will be asking that you guys provide us direction today please so that we can continue to get things moved through without interruption of service to our customer base so in 2011 we did charge a fee at that point it was a four dollar and 95 cent flat fee it went to all customer credit card payments by telephone or online we received many complaints both from residential and commercial customers regarding this fee so in june of 2011 it was reviewed and we determined that we no longer wanted to assess that one of the positive impacts was that our credit card adoption rate doubled but we found that the growth of credit card processing expenses was outpacing the other and we found that by september of 2014 our monthly credit card processing fees had risen from about thirty thousand dollars a month to fifty eight thousand dollars a month and 58 percent of that was because of commercial accounts paying large bills with commercial reward credit cards that was thirty four thousand dollars a month of our processing fees so in december of 2014 as a cost containment strategy customer service recommended and council approved a 2.7 percent fee that was charged only to commercial customers so that we could assess that it was very successful fees have decreased they decreased by about 28 thousand dollars a month at the time of implementation a 2.7 percent fee on a commercial payment would have equaled about 31 dollars in the last 12 months that same average payment would assess a ten dollar fifty cent fee on average so currently this is where we are today we run about three hundred and twenty thousand dollars annually for the cost of processing credit cards and debit cards no residential customers are assessed any form of a fee commercial customers can use our online e-check options free of charge but those who are choosing to pay by credit card do pay the 2.7 percent that is about four thousand customers a year who are currently doing that between the commercial credit cards and the commercial e-checks that is about 99 percent of them being small business customers those are our customers who want to do this okay councilmember riggs has a question have you received negative feedback from that from that fee since it's increased to about ten dollars um on the bill for the commercial are you receiving any feedback from that there is nothing in this that's related to us receiving complaints everything in here is related to as we are ending our contract with our merchant services provider and needing to transition to a new contract the credit card companies have changed their regulations and it will greatly impact what we're able to do okay all right so as i had mentioned our contract is going to be ending in may of next year we have always been able to charge that 2.7 percent because although we were recognized as a utility provider we were able to be given a designation as a general government service which gave us more flexibility in the types of fees that we charge what we have learned is that is no longer possible we will be recognized as a utility provider we cannot be designated as government so we will have to follow the regulations of any other utility provider who accepts credit card payments we've confirmed both with um our current merchant service provider as well as wells fargo merchant service provider who is the provider for the city that we will have to change that when we move so how old is this contract i mean how long have we been in this contract we have been in a contract with elevon since 2006 okay so from at that point from 2006 to now which is a pretty long period of time we've gone from uh in their eyes just a governmental body or entity that can charge to a utility correct okay correct uh we even went so far yes no go go right ahead and then i have a question okay we even went so far as to make sure you know if we went out to rfp would this change our outcome and we've confirmed that we can continue to do it on the contract we're on but if we were to start a new contract or change providers that those regulations are going to apply we even looked at if this is a visa regulation can we even potentially look at dropping visa and this is something that mastercard also uses so we're going to be fairly set yes sir and so along those lines that's my question it's a was it some a substantive change or just a as far as the rules changed or is there a process the city the rules have changed okay yeah because we're providing utility services and we're accepting payments for utility services we are being impacted with this okay thank you all right so we can opt to charge no fee but if we choose to charge any form of a fee we also happen to live in the state of texas which is one of 11 states which restricts utility providers to one form of fee model so we would be restricted only to be able to utilize the convenience fee model what that means for us is the fee must be a flat fee we cannot cap the total amount of payment that can be accepted for that fee we cannot tier a fee we can't use a percentage base it has to apply to all of our convenience payments so that's telephone and online and it has to apply to all of the different fees or payments in that channel so we have to charge both credit card and debit card as well as e-check if we charge a fee then we also would no longer be allowed to offer recurring payments through our online portals so any customer who is currently set up to pay recurring on e-check or with their credit card would no longer be able to do so as you can tell these are very restrictive regulations we've gone through and reviewed all of the different options i wish i could tell you that there were great options unfortunately we would consider none of these to be favorable but we do have four of them for you option number one we can absorb the cost of all credit card processing no customers would be charged a fee that is going to be a cost of about a total 1.1 million dollars a year or eight hundred thousand dollars greater than what we're paying annually currently we have to assume that with cost containment strategy removed that payment behaviors from commercial customers would return to the same patterns of behavior they were in 2014 and that's what accounts for this increase we would still be able to offer all customers recurring payments we would be able to continue to use the existing web portal and this is what is consistent with area municipalities right now 11 of 32 area municipalities that we surveyed are actually absorbing the cost of all credit and debit card processing fees only five are actually utilizing the convenience fee model option number two if we move to charging a fee only to commercial customers in order to be consistent with the fees that we would be receiving today that fee would need to be ten dollars what that would mean is the mom-and-pop donut shop where they're making a hundred dollar payment would pay the ten dollar fee as would the corporation who's paying paying a hundred thousand dollar bill they would pay the same ten dollars one question councilmember armator so question you mentioned that five cities uh don't adopt this don't absorb the fee what what five cities are they you know i will have to return with that okay that's on me right yeah that's fine i was just curious i prefer absorbing the fee but thank you um if we move to charging a ten dollar fee that means that we will lose eleven hundred payments per month that commercial customers have set up as recurring that is about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month right now that we receive off of recurring payments this only will save about two hundred and eighty thousand dollars over the cost of absorbing all of the fees and it will have a longer implementation time because in order for us to do this and not affect residential means that we will have to have a new web portal and all commercial customers will have to re-register in order to use any of our online services again the impact here is going to be 99 of the customers negatively impacted our small businesses option number three is if we reduce the amount of the fee but we have to charge to both residential and commercial customers we could reduce that fee to three dollars if we were as high as four dollars at that point it would become a revenue producing fee so we opted to keep that lower the cost increase is only seventeen thousand dollars over what we're spending today however it would cost us over 8600 recurring payments from residential and commercial customers and 90 of the people that would be negatively impacted in this option are our residents our actual residential customers the um let's see the cost of all of the monthly recurring payments right now for commercial and residential is 1.3 million dollars monthly option number four is if we choose not to accept credit cards for commercial customers we absolutely have an opportunity to do that if we so choose it does mean that we would only see a ten thousand dollar annual increase in processing credit card fees over what we do now it will stabilize our credit card costs but it will damage our relationships with our customers 90 of the people who would be impacted by this are small businesses because this is what they look for it would put them at a disadvantage they would no longer be able to use a credit card to get that little bit of extra time where they may not have that cash flow okay council member davis it seems like the appropriate time to ask we've been saying credit cards does this also include people who are using a debit card processing it as a credit card so there are some businesses who are paying cash they're just using the web portal and being able to do it their debit card as opposed to writing a physical check and sitting that is correct okay yeah or even setting it up as a as an e-check just easier to do correct yeah for the purposes of processing if it is going through that credit card gateway and being processed as a credit card it would qualify so just to be clear some of these are our business customers who may be using one of the rewards cards or whatever some of these are business customers who can't take out you know payroll loans and those kind of things and they're floating the business on on a card from month to month and then some of these are folks who are simply using a debit card as the most convenient form of payment that is correct the other thing that we did discover with this is this is very inconsistent with any other area municipalities we identified no municipalities which restricted credit card use to only one class of customer so from here let's look at what kind of recommendation we would make customer service after looking at all of the options we are recommending that we absorb the cost of all of these fees this is considered by most of our customers as a reasonable and customary expectation and a cost of doing business so the rate impact is negligible it is eight hundred thousand dollars but that accounts to 0.25 percent of the budgets that would be have the allocations receive those funds back we look yes ma'am yes so the eight hundred thousand dollars that is going to the credit card company so what we're saying that is going to our processors right which is a conglomerate of several different places but yes okay thank you we're good okay so when we're looking at this that rate impact is fairly negligible when what we're talking about doing is cutting the access to be able to make convenient payments from a lot of our small business users and we're restricting their ability to have some flexibility with their accounts this also would be minimal implementation time it will allow us to be able to be ensure that we can get through the end of our extension contract without interruption of service to any of our customers or the ability to take payments and believe that it will actually benefit growth of area business because they're going to be more inclined to want to bring their small businesses into the Denton area as well as large businesses if they have that flexibility as well is there any other questions um yes so council member armator see well just um i i'll say that i uh approve of the staff recommendation as the definite uh as far as i'm concerned no-brainer less of the are are several evils which are our only options so i i appreciate the way that you define the choices you know i i couldn't tolerate um having that burden passed on to either our small business owners or our residents many of whom are the same people maybe our small business owners are our residents so um uh but uh so that's my recommendation um and and i would like to put in a request uh if our if uh overturning this policy could be made part of our legislative agenda for um uh for for next year if that is something that you know i don't know um you know what what or not next year the next two years from now um but uh it you know to what extent the texas state legislature could change that if there's a movement to change that um but it you know to me it just seems kind of fundamentally unfair but i realize it's something that we at the city don't have control over okay council member bricks um so i'm okay with this for now but 800 000 is a lot it's a lot to absorb um when we're talking about um just just adding on to adding on to um our our budget it's a lot to take in and i feel um i feel a little bit angry that this is the only option that we have to do um and i kind of i want to i want to give you the comfort to to continue and say yes okay but i also feel like we need to continue exploring other things that may be possible um like there's you know apple pay there's paypal there's i mean you know maybe maybe we're not actually a utility anymore i mean i'm just we're still part of a you know another just a governmental department so um i i want i'll say yes for now but i'd like for us to continue and explore other options as we go down because 800 000 um continuously every budget can can seem you know like a lot council member ryan now i think i'm good with staff's recommendation but i would like to kind of say on the previous presentation we had how the costs are allocated between the different departments what how that would work out when we added this 800 000 how much more each one and whether that would affect the rates in those departments i actually do have that information so if we looked at each of those divisions this is where the allocations would be broken down so you'll see the increased allocation amount to make up the 800 000 as well as because we wanted to have the information in the event it was asked if the rate if it did impact rates what would be necessary in order to accommodate it and a half of a percent of rate increase would more than accommodate this amount but for any one of these divisions it is the equivalent of less than 25 000 dollars per million of their budget that is the overall impact of this of this change yeah and i think the way that's certainly one way to look at it i think the way that you know we were looking at this as well during the dry runs was just simply you know what what is the opportunity cost of having this service available i totally agree with everyone this is unfortunate policy we're having to deal with but you know if we had to add staff in order to you know increase collections that sort of thing there is some mitigating factors here without question and and i do believe that she's correct in terms of the relationship with with the some of our larger commercial customers but that is really the difficulty here in terms of how we had it set up before with only our larger customer commercial customers paying it and residents not just simply not allowable in the rules anymore so we can certainly take a look at other other options i'm not sure if some of those other options are just going to make any difference because they tend to be credit card backed but we can certainly continue to look at those options but at this point all those funds are healthy enough to absorb this cost but you're right when we start adding increasing the grant program to these departments increasing the utility assistance to these departments we're not looking at eight hundred thousand dollar increase we're probably looking closer to a million dollar increase by the time we're done this year fortunately all three of those are all four of those funds are in good shape at this point though and i'll just add this is just to me this is just a part of trend of society of credit cards years ago there were a lot of companies that charged an extra fee if you were using it or a lot of them that didn't even take credit cards and nowadays there's some that look at your money when you hand them cash they can't figure out what to do with it so it's just become the way our society has moved and to and to have an extra charge does kind of throw people off councilmember davis just a few questions so what i heard a second ago is that currently the funds can absorb the 800 000 that we're talking about now without an increase or that with the built-in in a rate increase that we already anticipate they can without an increase and then when we were looking at the hypothetical was that uh point zero five excuse me half rate half percentage point rate increase can you tell us what that amount would represent for the average residential consumer or the average we kind of had different numbers in different slide presentations earlier that together i could do the math but i'm right we actually did this as rather a combined number i can provide that back to you because it would actually impact several different rights so right i can go back and work that for you if we could just get those those numbers for future discussion and then i don't know this seems kind of intuitive but do we have any evidence that allowing recurring payments the auto pay option reduces our bad debt that we are we are better at collecting our payments if they have the auto pay option residential or commercial or both i would say that tiffany you may want to answer i can tell you that with auto payments that once an account has finalized that final payment drafts so there is no outstanding balance that could go down to collections okay then with that information i still would like to know kind of what the impact is of a hypothetical rate increase in future budget years for your average customer commercial and residential but i agree with my fellow members of the council i don't know that we have another options the expectation it's just the cost of doing business now it's unfortunate position to be in but here we are okay so that that that's consensus on going forward this direction i would echo what's already been said add to it yeah i i'm with councilmembers brig there's we need to i don't know if it's consultant or attorney driven but there's a path forward where someone can consult with the city to say if you structure the business this way or if you manage it that way or there's a brokering house that then processes payments and pays the city there's there's a methodology out there that we just have to reverse engineer it so there's there's a i think there's a path less traveled that would be advantageous and and i you know i don't know where that law firm is or that consultant is but we need to seek them out but that being said that that so the window is this time next year round numbers correct okay about 11 months yeah um just as one addition for councilwoman brig where you had some of the concerns with the rising costs of not being able to keep things in check obviously we will also be looking for other cost containment strategies to help with mitigating some of those costs when we met with councilwoman parker our council chair parker pardon me she did mention that in some of her past experience when they found different utility payments that were being made like that on very high dollar rewards cards that they could make a courtesy call to that customer because oftentimes that customer has no knowledge of what the actual impact of that payment is to to the supplier so they may be making that payment and getting their free airline miles but they don't realize that it's costing the city at the end of the line thirty eight thousand dollars so we would be looking at some of the containment strategies such as that councilman riz so are those the types of credit cards i think councilman davis earlier mentioned or asked the the separation they um so there's the regular credit card and there's the the reward card and then just the debit credit is there a way to know um as we go on to separate those out there is not easily a way to know okay yeah all right thank you okay very good thank you great presentation all right so we will uh take a short break before we take up our last work session item uh so we'll take a break at uh 334 and come back to take up that last item okay welcome back we are continuing to work through our work session it is uh 343 and we are uh up to or down to item uh 19 1205 receive report receive a report hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding an internal audit of the police property room uh good afternoon afternoon sir uh mayor protem and council members umesh dalal city auditor uh we have completed an audit of uh police property room uh this property room uh holds about more than 100,000 property and uh the property room receives property from a variety from a variety of sources uh for example police officer confiscate drug guns and other valuable properties uh in the field and they are brought to the property room uh evidence matter collected on homicide or other investigations are brought to the property room uh fraud i mean the found and uh abandoned properties are brought to uh property so are the inmate property are sent to the property room the property room includes several uh properties which has got very high street value and that makes those properties vulnerable to misuse and uh basically misappropriation uh this is the reason why we should have a good controls over this property to ensure security and accountability uh during this audit police department cooperated and we really appreciate police chief for being uh cooperative and receptive uh we work together very well to complete this audit uh this audit was completed by one of my auditor uh madison and uh she will share with you the observation set that she has hello hello mayor pro tem members of the city council i'm madison rorschach i'm a staff auditor and um as mr law said um the audit focused on two major areas um which were general controls over property and evidence items and then we focused specifically on high risk items which included drugs guns and money because those have the highest street value and we used the international association of property and evidence as our criteria throughout the whole audit um and so basically we compared what was going on to what they say is best practice so um we have i'm going to go over two major findings um the first one is the property room is not really adequate for the size of the inventory of property and evidence items that we have i believe you guys went toward the facility um it's overcrowded and um we expect that the inventory will double in the next 10 years so that's one area and um as overcrowding as it continues to get more and more crowded um the risk that an item will be lost or misplaced or can't be found when it needs to be found increases um in addition when we compared the property room facilities to um the iope standards we found that there were some weaknesses um just physically some of the doors and windows could be broken into more easily than the standards suggest um and in particular there's a cage where they keep evidence that can just pretty while it's alarmed it can be cut into pretty easily um the these deficiencies are compensated for uh because it's in the police station which um is good but then also because of the overcrowding we found that there couldn't there the iope suggests that um those high risk items i talked about guns drugs and money be stored in areas with higher security than just the regular property room um money is being kept in a vault which is meets that criteria but drugs and guns are not so but there's no there's no space in the room to build some sort of cage or extra uh security measures for that so um we anticipate that the the new police station will fix these issues um but we recommended a few temporary actions to be taken uh that i believe the police police chief agreed with our recommendations so the next major finding um is an issue with the segregation of duties um ideally what you would want is you'd have a police officer create an item or you know collect evidence in the field they bring that to the property the property room and the property room technicians store the item and then um a third party such as a judge authorizes that disposal um and this is what's happening physically so we have proper segregation the property technicians aren't going out picking up evidence that's not happening um however because of the way our system works property technicians can basically create the item in the system and they store the items um so essentially what that means is that a property technician could omit an item from the system and take it out without anybody noticing that it was missing so that is the risk um with the segregation duties issue um staff believes that uh a new rms system record management system will correct these issues um and we would like to say that if they want to discuss any way that proper segregation of duties um could be implemented that we're available for consultation um but these two major issues are kind of compounded by some some internal security weaknesses um and in particular the security footage of the property room is only stored for 60 days which if an item is discovered to be missing later hinders an investigation um so despite these kind of integrity issues we did conduct an inventory of high risk items um so we found about we conducted an inventory of 270 items um and about half of these were currently still in the property room um we i we could find all but one um and we received a notification a few days ago that this item has actually been destroyed by the fbi so we're not actually missing an item anymore um so but we think that's that's a good sign that means that the despite the overcrowding um the property room's organizational system is effective you can find items when you need to um the other half of the items had been disposed um so um we reviewed the documentation of this disposal to make sure that it basically had three key components that had been authorized appropriately verified that what was being disposed of was actually disposed and that somebody had witnessed the disposal so somebody was testifying that it had actually been disposed um so since 2014 we found that for all of the types of disposal that are listed on the the table um there was adequate documentation except for drug destructions and um for those destructions um they had all the elements except um they weren't there wasn't documentation that the that they were being verified um the property technician people oh do you have a question yeah go ahead oh sorry the property technician um technicians told me that they were verifying it i saw some evidence of that but it wasn't consistent um and and it should be verified by a third party as well that's part of the standard that um so even though they were they are probably verifying it there could be um still increased risk there okay one more question councilman romer 12 uh yeah so i was wondering if if you could just define some of these categories and i mean just so i understand exactly what this is um the so the money deposits with city versus with county um you know how is that assessed uh and and then with the um uh that gun releases gun diversions i know what gun destruction is but with releases and diversions exactly what's that what happens there um so uh i'll start with the guns gun because they're easier gun releases um that's just somebody comes their gun was seized for some reason somebody comes back and is able to recollect their gun um a gun diversion is it was seized and rewarded to um the police department basically so that goes to the officers there's a process for that that it gets authorized and a judge basically awards that to the city i believe that's correct yes so um does that make sense those guns yeah okay awesome so then um the with money deposits with the city and with the county um the that's authorized the different ways that that's authorized is that's authorized by a judge as well um i don't know the exact regulations off the top of my head do you but that's authorized by a judge does that answer your question the different divert okay yes so so a judge would decide and so and like a certain percentage would go to the county and another percentage could be deposited by the city okay yeah and and i it varies based on uh where i mean what what would lead to that i wonder what would lead to that determination if there's anyone here who could yeah i'm not really sure do you gabby sorry hello my name is gabby more and i work for the city of dentin police department in the evidence section so i'm here to answer your question uh you said something about the county versus the deposits with the city city is more like for found property stuff that has been unclaimed if the stuff has been unclaimed we'll forward that to our city account if it's going to be seized it'll go to our county got it okay thank you and that makes sense um and then and maybe so you can answer about the um gun diversion you know i'm i was i'm surprised to know that there's i'm not surprised that it makes sense gun release gun destruction i'm surprised that there's uh that there's a gun diversion category but it looks like i mean there's just one of them so it seems pretty rare if you could kind of just speak to what would cause a gun to be um you know kept and used by the police department versus destroyed or returned to the uh lawful owner okay because some of those are old firearms and they just want to display them for their little museum that they have okay okay thanks all right and one question um councilmember davis i guess for for clarification sake too when we're talking about money deposit the county curriculum if i'm wrong these are civil asset forfeitures where the office i work for the da's office files a civil action against the property the property is seized by the county and then it's divvied up to the different law enforcement agencies whether it's the county the the da's office the feds if they participate and all that money has to go some certain place regardless of the amount the judge sets all that up correct okay chief good afternoon uh mayor pro tem and council frank dixon chief police for den police department i want to go back to the diversion of the guns if a handgun has been awarded to the police department we typically do not put that firearm into service unless it is a high-end firearm that meets a lot of criteria that we could actually stand behind its functioning if not we either destroy it or if there's a historical value to it we can keep it and display it as miss moore talked about so it's not commonly practiced in any police department okay thank you that's really helpful and elaborate we're elaborating thank you and council member rates have a question so if you add up all the three that releases diversion in the in the um i guess the diversion and the destruction um is that how many guns are are taken or have been taken since i guess in the 24th or is um no so this is a um sorry this is a sample that we uh a statistical sample that we took of the population of items that had been um basically stored in the property room between 2002 and 2018 so this is is a representative sample but it's not the amount of okay okay thank you so any more questions no thank you proceed awesome um okay so then that was that's the the summary of our findings um but staff brought to our attention about 90 sexual assault kits that were collected prior to 2010 that had not been tested um the these um so for assurance these control there are controls in place now that um make it so that gets always get tested the that's not happening anymore um but these kits we don't currently have funding to test the kits because um the partner our current partner laboratory um won't accept the items because of the backlog um so basically we're saying if that was so the police department is trying is applying for a competitive grant um to fund the testing of these kits but if they don't receive that grant um we're recommending that you fund the testing of those kits because it's a state law okay and uh counselor breaks has a question yeah so so on these kits does that mean that there's that many um cases that have not been solved that are waiting on these on these kits too i don't believe so but and and also i think wasn't there just recent legislation that addressed um these assault kits so there was actually legislation back in 2014 that addressed sexual assault kits in the state of texas so with the 93 kits that we found you know it was actually found prior to the odd beginning immediately upon learning about those we started sending those out january of this year we sent out 10 initially and we're sent them to the tarrant county medical examiner's office and we are sending five per month since the the initial 10 so we started out with 93 kits were down to 68 some of that was prior to 2011 there were some certain stipulations that some certain practices that were in place that were being followed that probably should not have but we have corrected that moving forward every sexual assault kit that comes in immediately goes out for testing there is no backlog of any kits after 2011 and how much can i yes by all means how much does each kit does it cost so right now it's dependent on the sample that we send the testing that we want done in the process of by which they have to go in and do it so it uh it varies depending on what we get done to them but is there like a low level like a minimum amount or max i think the lowest cost we've had for one kit was 90 and the average is about 300 per for these kits because they're so old the newer kits they vary in price from you know they can be three hundred dollars to a thousand dollars a kit it's really all depending on how much we want done with the kids what evidence is salvageable salvageable and a number of other things and so again to my earlier question is there there are unsolved cases or still um information from those backlogs that people that you know women are are waiting on so they're not unsolved cases per se because some of the practices were if a survivor didn't cooperate years ago and these are way up well past 2010 um there was no good suspect information if there was um not complete information for the report the kits wouldn't be tested obviously that's not good for us in our profession or for us as a community so once these kits are tested the dna profiles will be inputted into CODIS which is the nationwide database and if there has been other offenses done by someone that matches that it will come up in the database okay so just the follow-up yes so just i guess a couple years ago there was an individual who was arrested here who was you know attacked several different women so just say for instance some of those old ones or recent came in and then that would match and so that would just be added to that person who had already been arrested for previous assaults is that how that would work if one of these dna profiles came back and match an offender that's already in the justice system that would have to be staffed with the district attorney's office to see if they would want to bring forward new charges based on that okay thank you yes ma'am councilman robert so um the the cost is the uh greater cost for the older uh untested kits these 90 kits before 2010 or is some of the um or is a good part of the funding that's needed to keep up with the um uh you know current and future uh testing as well so the current kits we're lucky in the sense that the department of public safety has several laboratories throughout the state that will test them and input the data in the quotas the older kits they will not go back and retroactively do that the bad with using dps is their service in the entire state of texas so we don't really have a lot of say in how fast those kits are tested which ones are prioritized where so one of the things that we did we applied for a sexual sit sexual assault kit initiative grant from the department of justice that will allow us a certain sum of money to test kits to improve equipment renovations and training all associated with sexual assaults that is excellent and i'm so glad for that and um i'm gonna ask a question i've asked before um but it's i think for the public kind of worth asking i had when i toured the facility um and heard about the need for um uh sexual assault kit uh testing funding i had asked well uh what would it take to what would what would be the pros and cons of having a testing facility uh in house and you had explained as i recall you know that that's not really feasible but if you could just explain both to kind of remind me and the public why um that might not that would not be feasible or desirable so the two different things that one of the things that we talked about was standing up a full crime scene laboratory which would go into being able to analyze blood dna firearms everything across the board so the fiscal impact to the city would be huge into the millions of dollars not just for the equipment for the training to hire on staff that would be um certified to be able to do that type of testing we'd have to get approval from a number of different um governing bodies to be able to do that so that's really one of the reasons why most cities don't stand up their own labs because all the costs associated not with standing them just standing them up but also with keeping the accreditation so it would be your um significantly more than the estimated cost i'm i'm thinking of the the bond uh package in in process um under committee uh significantly more than the estimated cost for the uh shoot the the indoor shooting range which is that's flexible the cost of this would be yeah that's my impression too um so thank you and i'm i'm i'm convinced of that but but i want to just to um you know it to be known that you know that question's been considered and that y'all considered it as well um and uh just kind of one more uh you know since we're talking about um all right the uh sexual assault kits and the need for more funding do you see as far as keeping up uh with with current sexual assaults um any need for uh additional victim services counselors you know to to deal with um uh our you know our current uh sexual assault situation here in denton so not actually just for sexual assaults hold on chief erin go ahead i think we're starting to get beyond the scope of the actual audit and getting into questions i know i've been monitoring and i think you know if if those questions whether if the council member may wish to make a request uh for a staff report or uh a future work session item to discuss that but i think we're starting to stray away from the audit itself okay gotcha thanks and thank you uh so and actually that's something i had already requested it as a staff report on so anyway thank you thank you so much that's question yeah while the chief is here um in regards to the audit backing up a little bit so i think this is the last slide or almost to it yeah so um it was mentioned that the footage was only kept for 60 days of the um of the room and yes is that is why is that and is that still 60 days or have we changed that is that what other departments do and is that a um like a departmental policy or is that a council policy what how um is that addressed normally so we have been working with city it to to expand because they store all the data that's not stored in house in the police department now we aren't able to view the cameras from any computer within the police department but we do not control the data storage so we're working with them to get them to uh expand that so generally it's just been a space issue or like a you know data data storage issue for the city okay so would that be like uh okay i'll leave it at that as far as this goes but maybe is that something that we'll see later on as a council or no in the design of the facility we're in a budget supplemental yeah it's supplemental yeah we will uh we're working with chief right now and uh going through the budget supplementals for the the upcoming year so uh what i've asked him to do the department is pretty far behind in serial areas i've asked him to put together a two or three year plan so we can start stepping in some and catching up with some of their needs um and we'll be putting the budget proposals together um this year and your recommendations with that kind of a strategy in mind okay thank you thank you and so while you're there chief i want to i want to highlight and spotlight to to so that the 90 number is not the narrative so you said 63 is the actual number so we're down to 68 right now 60 68 68 and you've been sending out five a year five per month five per month just since the initial 10 yes got it okay so i just wanted to make sure that's clear uh and then um for you mr city manager my thought is i bet you there's a path forward uh for texas work workforce grant to then be in conjunction with one of the universities in conjunction with probably at least one million square feet of medical offices out by med park station i'd love to see us try to pair those three together somehow if staff could take a look at incentivizing a lab that would want to come to those office spaces subsidizing that they're all empty and also asking one of our universities to to partner with texas workforce to develop a curriculum i'd love to try to bring someone a lab here local because there's an absolute need not i mean that's as in the news uh all over and so maybe an opportunity for us to to leverage that need one serve our community better and two um uh serve other communities so just a thought for what it's worth let the chief weigh in on that yep so one of the great things about the grant that we're waiting to hear on right now from the department of justice is should we get that grant and i'm hopeful that we will we will actually be pairing with someone very close where we can literally drive our samples over drop them off they will test them input them in the codus and do everything from start to finish oh great great it'll be a great and if they need office space med park has lots yeah councilman davis excuse me i have a couple things first on the the kits that we've been talking about and then kind of back to the audit as a whole but um one of the things i know that's been an issue with um department standing up their own labs like you said the expense but also we have tcme the the medical examiner's office is a full service one-stop shop for testing um fully staffed and works at a decent rate but then also we have swifts down in dallas dallas county so the need and denton county we see this on the medical examiner side too the question whether denton county should have its own medical examiner has been revisited a number of times and again and again it just doesn't make a lot of fiscal sense for us to be doing that also unt and the sheriff's office looked at a crime lab program because they've got a criminal justice school that's pretty solid over there and again it just hit the question of well we've got these enormous resources directly to the south of us that for any kind of big project it didn't make a lot of sense to do a big capital outlay to to lay out a whole new lab so the sheriff's office actually cut that program off some time ago on the the audit proper i'm a little bit concerned not not at all concerned i've known gabby for a while we've emailed quite a bit back in my dwi prosecution days i have no concerns right now about current staff and my bigger concerns are with the timeline of the rms system and the the segregation of duties that the auditors talked about down in lewisville just a few years ago dan rochelle lieutenant rochelle at the time now captain spent thousands of man hours with his staff cleaning up a problem that was basically haphazard staff there's a little bit of theft involved too but just folks not not checking all the boxes and it forensically caused us a huge headache because even if it was just currency then went messing or a couple laptops or a bicycle or something it called into question every time a piece of our evidence ended up in the courtroom there was a question of well who handled this and where did it go and was it those guys who got fired last week because they weren't handling things correctly so i just want to be very clear i have no concerns whatsoever about current staff but from a procedural standpoint i do have concerns that we don't have this safeguard in place that's that we know is best practices and what can we do first of all what's the timeline for the new software that will help us do that and then two what can we do in the interim to have you know confidence in our process so in the interim some of the things that we did immediately i started a accreditation and compliance unit first with the detective elisa howe who started redoing and recrafting all of our departmental policy from top to bottom additionally with that in april of this year i hired dr richard williams who was a retired staff lieutenant from the new orleans police department to be our civilian accreditation manager and they're working together not just to recraft and redraft our policies but we're also entering into the texas police chiefs association best practice recognition program where we'll have to meet a series of 168 best practices throughout the state it'll be a state accreditation process which will fix some of the same items additionally we have just brought in the state's leading expert in property and evidence room practices and miss coling dean from tape it came in and already gave us like she came in and did an inventory of our evidence room we're looking to bring her back on a contract at some point between now and september to do a couple different things one to help us clean up things much like you talked about that lewisville went through because we fully recognize all the traps that lie in the practices of the past so shoring those up is foremost in what we want to do moving forward additionally with between tape it between the accreditation standards between the socke grant and redoing the policies and then when the rms system comes on online in october of this year october 1 is the go live date for that we're looking for some additional software strictly for gabby to use back in the evidence room to help bridge that gap in the meantime we have reverted back to paper for those stop gaps until we can get our technology up to where it needs to be yes sir i just want to say thank you for that response and thank you for the responses that you lined out in the the backup information the letter that was included with the audit report i just want to express thanks for you taking the attention necessary to wrap this up now because like i said the guys i work with we catch it on the back end and it's never it's never a pretty scenario when something goes wrong in the property room even if it's minor so i appreciate your attention to that yes sir okay and i would like to clarify one question i think there's been a lot made about the cost of these kits and the direction of the chief is as quickly as they can be absorbed we budget contingency each year for situations that we don't fully anticipate this is tailor made for that so it's not a budget issue at all he's got all the resources he needs he's been trying to go after the grant dollars and i think there's also a capacity to process them issue also that he's dealing with so he's got the resources he needs to get this caught up it's just a matter of how fast can he get it done thank you um council member armatron then question right that actually and that answered my question i was going to ask about if this would go into the bond funding or but nope so thanks councilor bricks so my my question is about the um the slide that says the facility is inadequate and i know that we have the police um well in the bond coming up for the new facility but what are we going to do in the meantime so there was an inventory has it been is it is it organized now so that and i'm just going back to when i went in um and how overwhelming it was stuff on the floor all the way to the ceilings you know it just it um i know there's a lot of stuff and are we is there room for new items because if i recall we were kind of just going down this night spilling out into you know other areas so um what are we going to do in in the meantime on the inadequacy of the building and like organizational wise so one of the big reasons for bringing in tape it is to put together staff we're going to assemble a team to work directly with gabby for the span of 30 to 40 days every day to do nothing but go in and put into destruction those items we can dispose of legally and then rearrange everything to make it more user-friendly we're looking to really um free up a lot of room in the existing space we've also ordered more camera systems or more cameras themselves to be put throughout because of the auditor's report and some of the things that miss dean brought forward as well we're looking at how we can shore up the security of the cages outside some of the hinges on the doors that they talked about both miss dean and the auditor's report so we're working to do as much as we can with the existing infrastructure that we have available to us keeping in mind that we need to be fiscally responsible and not go out and put a large ticket item while we're looking at doing some major renovations which will really set us up for a great deal of success moving forward but then you know if the more that you could do now with cleaning out and organizing that will help as you move into your new facility right which is why we're doing that we're taking that part of it okay and the last question on the um integrity aspect of it it was mentioned that the segregation of duties um and so third party kept being mentioned and my question is who is that third party is that just a third person so or someone from outside the police department correct so what we would like to do moving forward and once what we will do moving forward is when we transport narcotics evidence specifically to be destroyed we'll have a third party that's not tied to the police department to go along and we have a great um ability to do that now with the strike team members that have been assembled with the city we can take one of them along that can verify the destruction of the evidence and we'll have it uh documented properly okay thank you for clarifying that yes ma'am okay thank you chief thank you okay any other questions for the chief or auditor's office council member davis thank you so um from an overall standpoint you've uh you had the original audit report and the chief's responses and the things there even seems like there's been supplemental information that we've gotten even after the chief's responses that we saw in the letter um how does the auditor's office feel now about having taken in some of those responses from the police department and moving forward in some of the timeline do we feel satisfied with that do we feel like there's more that needs to be done or more that needs council attention or do you feel like the police department is moving in the right direction i think it is the latter one uh they are moving in the right direction and uh we really appreciated the cooperation and the way they work with us and again i mean we are open we are available if they need further help in their any control issues or any other issues that come come up but we are really satisfied how they are handling it excellent thank you okay great great on both ends thank you very much outstanding report thank you and then yes we've seen the the the working conditions and that is that's dynamic it just reaffirms i kind of kind of what uh council member davis has said is we do have an excellent staff and want to work hard to to and better that environment just because they deserve it but even working in in current situation is fantastic so thank you very much thank you madison right yes got it so thank you great job and so with that we will conclude our work session and we will adjourn at uh 421 and reconvene in council chamber at 6 30 good evening and welcome to tonight's uh city council meeting today is june the 4th it's 6 34 and well the first thing on tonight's agenda is to pledge allegiance to the u.s and texas flag please stand and join me if you're able invisible with liberty and justice thank you and thank you for everyone that's here and thank you for everyone that's watching online the the millions and millions that are watching online i'll come down and we have a few proclamations to start with uh so um mr timothy or tim what you what you okay tim got it well tim i want to present you with that plaque first and then i have a proclamation here but i was going to give you an opportunity to say a few things before we get started if you would okay sure yeah um you may or may not know me but my name is tim fisher i moved to texas in 1983 the city of denton hired me as the very first water wastewater engineer for the city of denton i left the city in 84 came back in 89 and stayed a little longer so i worked a 30-year career with the city of denton ultimately as the director of the water department uh throughout that time i really enjoyed my career i always thought the water department was the most important department for the city and i certainly appreciated all the fun men and women that i worked with over the years that part of retirement i'll miss but i'm certainly looking forward to retirement and then who do you have here with you uh this is my lovely wife jacqui jacqui you want to stand up jacqui worked for about 25 years as a school teacher for the chrome isd and she's been retired also outstanding outstanding thank you very much so so i have a proclamation for you here to read and it reads timothy fisher timothy fisher has worked whereas timothy fisher has worked as the director of the water utilities of the city of denton from october 2016 through may 10 2019 where he had supervisory responsibilities for three divisions water administration water production and water metering cross connection control and whereas tim fisher has hired as was hired as civil engineer in the city of denton's water department from 1983 to 1984 was rehired in 1989 where he worked as a civil engineer and then served as assistant director for 18 years until being promoted to director and whereas tim fisher holds a bachelor of science and masters of science in civil engineering civil environmental engineering from the university of iowa hers nicest time of year is registered professional engineer and has a great a water certification great a water certification from texas commission of environmental quality pceq and whereas tim fisher has been active in many associations and professional engineering groups such as the american water works association and the texas society of professional engineers and whereas tim fisher has served as the city of denton's representative on the upper trinity regional water district board of directors the north central texas council of governor government water resources council and regency water supply planning group representing municipal water suppliers and whereas the city of denton has benefited from tim fisher's dedication knowledge and efforts to make denton a better city and whereas tim fisher has performed the efficient discharge of his duties and has earned the respect of his fellow colleagues and the citizens of denton now therefore the council of the city of denton hereby resolves that that this sincere and warm appreciation for tim fisher felt by the citizens and employees of the city of denton be formally conveyed to him in permanent manner by reading this resolution in the official minutes of the city of denton and forward to him a true copy thereof framed be it therefore resolve that the city of denton does hereby officially and sincerely extend its appreciation to tim fisher for his successful career with the city of denton's water utilities department passed and approved on this day the fourth day of june 2019 give him a hand thank you okay next up is the national pollinator week is there any who is here for national pollinator how are you great to see you again hey look at that that's good how are you hello okay i'll let y'all introduce yourselves great hi i'm sarah luxden i'm the sustainability coordinator for the city of denton we've been working really hard over the past year to support all of the pollinators here in denton we've been working with different local organizations such as texas master naturalists we have the texas master gardeners we also have native plant society and we've also been working with organizations like the denton county beekeepers association unt's bee campus usa and then their save the bees we also received our monarch joint venture grant this year for 200 milkweed plants which we've been restoring the prairie at clear creek natural heritage center hoping the weather will hold out tomorrow and we'll finish planting those 200 plants but we've we've been really working hard and we've got such a great community that supports what we do during pollinator week which is june 16th through the 22nd we've got a ton of events and they're all listed on sustainable denton.com if you want to learn more Clay Thurmond and i'm with texas master naturalist elm fork chapter and a year ago i think it was i challenged the city to become a monarch city and with the help of sustainability we've stepped up to it and we've got a lot more to do but we're going to get there and encourage everybody to plant pollinator milkweed etc in your gardens and i was part of the crew that we planted 130 milkweed so we've got about 70 left to put in the prairie at clear creek and it was a pretty good day we had something like 13 16 volunteers with representatives from keep denton beautiful sustainability trinity forks native plant society and master naturalist all these organizations coming out to come out and help restore the prairie and pollinators hi i'm pat edwards and i'm a member of the denton county master gardeners and the trinity forks native plant society chapter and just want to encourage everyone that even one single potted plant would help hi i'm don edwards and i'm also a master gardener and i'm president of the trinity forks chapter of the native plant society and we are just thrilled with all the things that are being done here and we love clear creek and we do lots of things out there so thanks for all that's been going on thank you well you have a high success rate of getting things done man you're outstanding okay so i have a i have a proclamation here so it says it reads um greetings uh whereas pollinator species such as thousands of species of bees are essential partners in the production of much of our food supply and whereas pollinator species provides significant environmental benefits that are necessary for maintaining healthy diverse urban and suburban ecosystems and whereas pollinate pollinization plays a vital role for the trees and plants of our community enhancing our quality of life and creating recreational and economic development opportunities and whereas the decades for decades the city of denton has managed urban landscapes and public lands that include many municipal parks and greenways as well as wildlife habitats and whereas the city of denton provides recommendations to developers and residents regarding landscape landscaping to promote wise conservation stewardship includes the protection of pollinators and maintenance of their habitats in urban and suburban uh environments now therefore i gerard hutz with mayor pro tem of the city of denton texas do hereby proclaim the week of june 16 20 june 16 through the 22nd 2019 as national pollinator week all right thank you thank you mayor pro tem hesbeth i asked him if i could read this proclamation because it uh it means a lot to me and it is i'm going to invite everyone down here for the anniversary for pride denton everyone that's here come down please and so generally these proclamations are um are really happy except for now recently we've had some tragedy in dallas so i i just want to take a brief moment of silence for the um the two transgender women who were found slain if you guys wouldn't mind doing that for me please so it's a very tragic event thank you very much so um you want to go ahead and introduce yourself my name is leslie and i'm with the stoma on democrats of denton county uh and while i have all the members of council here we just want to remind people that there's some important figures to keep in mind six the number of black trans women who have been murdered this year 40 percent the number of homeless youth who identify as lgbtqia plus zero the current number of non-discrimination policies the city has zero the number of inclusive statements we've put out outside of proclamations every year pride month the equal rights language that we get from the federal government isn't enough to make sure that our community feels included like our voices feel heard and like that we feel safe my name is camion connor and i've been a resident of denton since 2001 and um i am on the steering committee for pride denton which puts on denton's pride celebration for the last two years and this year as well um we really try to center the voices of queer and trans people of color um as you heard there were two um black trans women that were murdered in dallas and so that's why we really like to uplift those voices because they're often silenced um would also love to invite everyone to every event that we have this year to celebrate pride from june 24th through the 31st my name is enedelia sauceda my pronouns are she her hers i'm also on the executive board for pride denton i'm happy to be here i am a resident and i also work for the university of north texas i've been here since 2010 and i was a student back in i don't want to say that i've been here a while hi my name is kathleen hobson i use she her and hers and they them theirs pronouns i am a member of the pride denton steering committee and i'm also the director of the pride alliance at the university of north texas which is our gender and sexuality resource office uh very happy to be here for the second year in a row for the proclamation and i've been a resident of denton since 2014 hello my name is angelica fraga my pronouns are she her hers um i am also i'm a coordinator with pride denton and a steering committee member for outreach denton um and i'd also like to take a moment to um think about the trans woman who died while in ice custody on the first day of pride month so just want to acknowledge johanna medina thank you that's pretty somber what's going on right now um in our communities but i do want to take this moment to read this proclamation um the city of denton um to all whom these presents shall come greetings whereas we recognize the june anniversary of the stonewall uprising in new york as the beginning of the modern lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer equality movement and whereas we recognize the tireless efforts of lgbtq and allied groups who have pursued equality for all citizens in texas and abroad and i want to pause here for just a minute just to remind everyone that these aren't just initials they're your co-workers they're your family members and and they're your your friends and your loved ones so um and whereas we recognize that on june 27th 2015 the supreme court of united states in the case of ogre fell versus hodges director ohio department of health ruled that the constitution grants same-sex couples and the same right to marry that a heterosexual couple has whereas we recognize former president barack obama's declaration on june 24th 2016 of the 7.7 acres surrounding the stonewall inn as a national monument this is the first national park service unit dedicated to the gay rights movement and includes the tavern christopher park and several other streets where protests were held in 1969 i therefore keely briggs on behalf of mayor chris watts the city of denton texas do hereby declare and proclaim the month of june 2019 as denton lb lgbtq pride month in the city of denton and ask for all citizens to celebrate the work of the lgbtq community and promoting diversity and tolerance and tolerance please in our community and throughout our country so okay do we have anyone so that brings us to a presentation from the members of public do we have any cards any cards okay okay so that'll take us to the consent agenda and uh i'll take a motion on the consent agenda we didn't have any items pulled today at the work session council member ryan move approval of the consent agenda council member armatory i second okay we have a motion and a second we'll vote on the on the screens and that motion passes five to zero next item up will be items for individual consideration and uh on for this the first two item a which is id 19-1137 and b which is 19-138 have been pulled and those will be back on a on a future agenda so if you were here for those those items have been removed that will lead us to item c which is 19-1191 consider nominations and appointments for the city's board commissions and committees and so do we have uh okay any no no new additions okay so i will um council member briggs i move to approve the nominations as presented okay and council member davis second the motion okay we have a motion and a second we'll vote on the board and that item passes five zero that completes items for individual consideration that will take us to our public hearings and i will call the first item and then we'll play the no okay so i'll call the first item which is a so it's a dca 19-004 hold a public hearing and consider adoption of the ordinance of the city of denton texas amending sub chapters 5 8 14 and 23 of the denton development code okay and at the same time i will open the public hearing so that i don't forget to do that good evening i'm julie wyatt senior planner with the city of denton and i'm presenting to you dca 19-4 treatment centers so the request before you is to consider a city initiated revision to the denton development code specifically to amend sub chapters 5 8 14 and 23 as they relate to supportive residential uses and treatment facilities the next few sides will just be about some background information so in 2013 the substance abuse and mental health services administration conducted a survey regarding drug use and health within the united states the results of that study determined that there were 22.7 million americans who needed treatment for drug or alcohol problems but only 2.5 million received treatment and that resulted in a treatment gap of 20.2 million people additionally the white house has declared opioid abuse is this public health crisis a little closer to home you open up the denton record chronicle and you see how drug and alcohol issues affect our citizens so solutions of north texas is an organization within the city of denton that provides treatment for adults and families impacted by drug and alcohol dependency they currently have a facility located on north rydell it includes a residential treatment for adult males as well as outpatient treatment case management and education and a duplex for single mothers they would like to expand that use on their site to include additional residential housing detox program and and other services the current zoning regulations however do not address these types of uses and how they could responsibly develop within the city of denton and the slide in front of you shows what that menu of uses we have within the denton development code that could potentially relate to this to this type of facility we have community homes for the disabled group homes and hospital services and while these uses may pull in elements of treatment facilities or supportive residential type uses they really don't capture that full those full uses and so and and so it's really difficult to apply these to that to that type of facility in 2016 hud and the department of justice released a joint statement it related to substance abuse and and the treatment of substance abuse as an important societal need but also stated that it is a complex land use issue the statement was intended to provide cities with legal clarity to maintain a community safety and character but also protecting the rights and needs of people with disabilities including those recovering from drug addiction and this statement resulted from issues associated with a high with a high concentration of sober homes in a community of about 60 000 residents the three key points in that statement were first that a city can deny an accommodation request if granting such requests would impose an undue financial and administrative burden or would fundamentally alter the city's zoning scheme licensing and other requirements for health and safety may be permitted provided that they're not based upon stereotypes and that the fair housing act does not prevent action in response to criminal activity or some other type of fraud or illegal conduct so based upon the solutions of north texas facility within the city of denton the community needs that joint statement guidelines and the current regulations staff recommends the following amendments to the denton development code sub chapters five eight 14 and 23 so first we're going to talk about sub chapters five and 23 sub chapter five is our land use tables and we're proposing to add supportive residential as a use to those land use tables that supportive residential is intended to provide residential living for unrelated individuals with disabilities in a single dwelling unit it's supposed to be a supportive family-like environment a self-governing or supervised it seeks to emulate a biological family to normalize the residents and integrate them in the surrounding community a treatment would be incidental as as as any other home and it does not include individuals who are not disabled who are prison pre-parolees or sex offenders we are proposing to add this supportive residential land use to the residential land use category it would be permitted if approved in residential districts with the limitation that the uses would be limited to fewer than six unrelated individuals and could not be located within a 600 foot radius or on the same block as another supportive residential treatment facility or group home use we're also proposing that the supportive residential use be permitted in districts where multi-family would be permitted or permitted with an with an sup with a limitation that if if there are fewer than six residents the use would be permitted by right however six or more residents would require a specific use permit once again adding that 600 foot buffer we're also proposing to add a treatment facility use to the land use tables the intent of that is to provide a facility we planned structured and organized programs solely designed to initiate and promote a person's chemical free status it would be licensed under the in accordance with the texas health and safety code chapter 464 and supportive residential uses could be a component of the treatment facility use we are proposing to add this land use to the institutional land use category and proposing that it be permitted in some downtown university core districts community mixed use centers regional mixed use centers and employment centers with an sup and a limitation that there that there had to be a separation a 1200 foot separation between any individual use and another supportive residential treatment facility or group home use we're proposing changes to sub chapter eight that is our group home sub chapter this is in the 2002 denton development code this sub chapter is actually being removed in the 2019 code and that all of those require all of the requirements within that chapter are actually being put in other parts of the code particularly in sub chapter five as as use specific standards but this current sub chapter eight has has references to assisted living facilities and group homes for handicap persons or institutions these these uses aren't included in our use tables so it really does provide or create a confusing application and so we're we're proposing to remove those unnecessary references and once again this is actually being folded into the new denton development code sub chapter 14 is our parking sub chapter we want to make sure any uses have adequate parking the supportive residential use we're proposing that one space be required for each bedroom with a minimum of four spaces and then the treatment facility we're proposing one space per 200 square feet of gross floor area this really is consistent with with the parking for our medical uses in in the city of denton sub chapter 23 is our definitions sub chapter it defines our uses and we're proposing to add a new definition for disability and that it would refer to disability as defined by the americans with disabilities act of 1990 that just as a shorthand that that act defines disability with respect to an individual as a as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual a record of such impairment or being regarded as having such an impairment we're proposing to revise the definition that we currently have for disabled persons this definition is very specific to a specific land use and that is community homes for the disabled community for community homes for the disabled are actually regulated by chapter 123 of the texas human resources code and this definition really just does relate to that use we wanted to make sure that was really clear so that as the code is applied in the future that this is um that planners will know how how to apply it so we're proposing to add the language in the underline the underlying language we're also proposing to remove the definition for handicap we feel like it's redundant and it kind of creates confusion as you're applying all these regulations so we're circling back around to to the menu of land uses that we have in the dent development code so um we previously talked about community home for disabled group home and hospital services as uses we have in the dent development code we are proposing to add supportive residential and treatment facility um as part of that menu supportive residential being being um that it would be fewer than six residents in in residential districts over six residents um would be permitted in those multi-family districts with an sup 600 foot radius separation and a parking fridge bedroom that treatment facility would be designed to initiate and promote promote a person's chemical free status an sup would always be required for the use and it would be in more of our commercial districts or mixed use districts um considerations we looked at when we were analyzing this proposal is we wanted to balance the needs of the community services with issues of compatibility so when we look at supportive residential we felt like this use was generally appropriate for neighborhood settings with those limitations because those reduce the intensity and make sure that they are compatible with the surrounding neighborhoods but we wanted to ensure the adequate spacing so you didn't get a grouping of these uses in particular neighborhoods we do we are proposing to add that sup for over six individuals to provide that additional scrutiny for for a more intense um use uh we're we're proposing parking that would provide adequate parking on site the use would require a disability and that gives staff clear direction on how to apply the use and then the residential development regulations would would ensure compatibility with the surrounding and built environment so any structures built for this use would would would blend in with the neighborhoods they would be located um treatment facilities the considerations we looked at for those or due to the potential impacts associated with the proposed use we are proposing that it would only be permitted with approval of an sup and with a limitation that would ensure that the the use wouldn't be grouped in a particular area that there would be that 1200 foot separation to reduce confusion with other medical uses we added that word solely to the definition to limit that application you know some hospitals do have mental health or detox facilities within that hospital and this would be used solely for for the treatment of alcohol or drug dependency and it's a pretty broad term it can go all the way from a hospital um down to a community mental health center or or a recovery center so it runs the gamut and that's really why we wanted that sup component in there because we really want to make sure that we we understand what any applicant is is approaching the city with we did um put a notice in the paper to comply with notification requirements and the planning and zoning commission recommended approval of the text amendments as well as staff has recommended approval and i will stand for any questions thank you julie i have a couple of questions okay council member davis first to begin with i i think you did an excellent job of striking a balance and what you correctly identified is a very complex land use issue not not all of our potential treatment facilities other things will be as well situated as solutions is now and i want to first of all congratulate your hard work and the work of all the folks who are here in support of solutions it's a phenomenal program i'm very familiar with what solutions does and the the benefit that they provide our community and the reduction in recidivism treatment is an enormous component of reduction in criminal recidivism we can't do that we can't reduce crime without adequate treatment facilities i'm i'm ready to move adoption but i don't want to deprive my colleagues of their opportunity to ask questions my question is we're very familiar with solutions and what they do are there other facilities in the pipeline or other facilities that would qualify for this land use that we know of in the city right now i am not aware of any thank you and another question council member armature so i too am grateful for these changes to the code and that now there's a space for facilities like solutions in their housing and i really appreciate the separation of the housing and the treatment facility because that's really important and i'm going to vote yes to this i just had a couple questions about you know how the supplies outside of this particular case solution so number one wondering if you could speak to this magic number of six you know in this six or more six or less what what what is it about that number that that causes concern you know what is it above that number that causes concern and less than that number that's okay yeah if you could just speak to that well so when we're looking at the supportive residential use it really is for for the fewer than six residents is really intended to go in the in neighborhoods so that those residents can stay integrated and and plugged into our community and we wanted to make sure that it was um that it was more consistent with with what you typically see in a neighborhood um it's also you know we try to look at it other parts of the code so um for instance uh community homes for the disabled that has that has a provision that no more than six residents could be permitted so it really is kind of tied to uses we already have but well as to make sure that it's consistent with with um the type of of development you see within a neighborhood and things and i do understand you know uh i've seen that i i see that number six across the board so i understand it's consistent i was just wondering why six across the board you know i'll i'll admit that to me um it feels arbitrary but i understand that it's that here in this case it's for consistency and so i'm okay with it for um for these purposes maybe take that up at a later point um my second question kind of has to do with you know concern moving forward um you know i'm always i'm concerned you know and i understand that an sup is not an automatic no and it's not an automatic yes and it's funny some that a lot of people i'm sure you're more familiar with this than i am depending on what their position is on an item they say oh an sup that's just an automatic yes they'll say that if they're against it and then and then if they're for it oh it's an automatic no um but you know because i i'm so supportive of um i'm supportive of supportive residential in our community um you know not only because of the connection to treatment and treatment facilities but also because it it provides another form of affordable housing which we so desperately need um and so i was wondering if you could speak a little to um what uh what concerns um and you know maybe maybe what what kind of training or consideration uh you know planning and committee like planning and zoning or council uh should keep in mind moving forward to make sure that in deciding on an sup for a future hypothetical uh supportive residential facility to make sure that um prejudices aren't being applied you know assumptions about about crime or uh that don't necessarily have any basis in reality what uh you know what what kinds of measures uh would you recommend be be considered to avoid prejudicial judgments and in in an sup under under these new designations moving forward i'm gonna i'm gonna ask julia you can speak to the training part but i just don't want to get into a look into the future without all the facts i mean so you can speak to what planning and zoning does training wise um and and succinctly that would be that's sufficient and then the the you know the hypotheticals we can we can take up another time with any sup we have our criteria for approval and that really is the basis for our analysis um with any with any use so we really just look at that criteria for approval within the development code and then analyze those projects based upon that okay well and thank you and um you know because i'm because i'm interested for future reference in in these hypotheticals i would like to request this is a staff report moving forward that this issue um can go before um the committee on disabilities you know some consideration if they're interested in um uh in ada training for uh you know planning and zoning and councils uh when considering sup's like this and uh and other kinds of issues where we're in a position to make a make a decision on on um uh like this that that that could involve potential uh prejudice um may i speak yes i think just for clarification on the staff report and the um and then refer to a particular board you mentioned the committee for persons with disabilities there's something like this is outside the charges the list of charges that's in that's included in the enabling resolution so that's not something they would normally consider as part of their charge however there are council subcommittees that would definitely fall with it you could probably have this um directed to one of the council subcommittees and you know the city manager can probably assist in which one might be the more the preferable subcommittee or a council work session if you want that i guess i i don't quite understand how it falls outside the charge but that's we can consider that at another point okay thanks okay uh council member ron yes what we're amending here is our current uh ddc the what went into effect in 2002 we recently passed a ddc that's going into place in on october 1st so just want to make sure that these changes will all come back to us so that we do get them incorporated into the the new ddc as well you are correct thank you okay and uh council member davis i move approval of the staff recommended amendments to the development code thanks uh so councilman berth yes so i motioned to second and um i just want to say that the the six works for me because in our neighborhood we have several homes that are integrated and they live in you know three-bedroom houses and so you don't want to really have any more than six individuals in a three-bedroom home in a neighborhood so that that part makes sense to me so um i'm gonna be happy to to second thank you and then this is a um public hearing so i don't have any cards of anyone wishing to speak on this item but if you there's someone that does want to speak please come down give us your name and address and you can do so no movement okay thank you so we will close uh item a's public hearing and we have a motion and a second and let's vote on the screen and that item passes five zero next is the agenda is item b which is s-nineteen zero zero zero nine a hold a public hearing and give consideration adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas approving a specific use permit for a treatment facility on approximately 4.4 acre site and uh so i'll also open the public hearing uh for this item all right i'm presenting uh s-nineteen nine redel campus the request before you is to hold a public hearing and consider a request by solutions of north texas for a specific use permit for a treatment facility the subject property is about 4.4 acres it's located on the east side of north redel here outlined in yellow approximately 495 feet north of mingo road the subject property is located in a dr2 district this sup is is running concurrently with a proposed ddc text amendment that dca 19 for um so uh the proposed um treatment facility is consistent with the definition that was embedded within dca 19 for it's permitted in dr2 with uh with approval of an sup and with that distance separation of 1200 feet from any other supportive residential treatment facility or group home so there is um solutions of north texas um has a facility on the site and they have some existing development so we're going to go over what's existing today and then what they're proposing they would like to expand that use um so currently they have an administrative building here outlined in orange um this is for case management and treatment they hold regular office hours and some evening sessions five nights a week they also have program residential housing outlined here in purple this is two duplexes for 32 male residents the residents must be cleared from detox and remain drug and alcohol free they must also obtain full-time employment or be enrolled in school for at least 35 hours per week solutions of north texas staff is on site during night and weekend hours for resident support drug and alcohol testing and also safety there's also an additional duplex for two single mothers called return to monitor house it provides a stable residence as they complete their requirements to obtain permanent custody custody of their children for for reunification they are proposing to expand their treatment facility use to include an ambulatory detox program here in this location this would have provide housing and medical care for six adults um and full-time monitoring by staff they're proposing additional program residential housing one one duplex here for men uh and that would um and then and then three additional duplexes for women up to 64 residents would be added to the site if approved and then they're also proposing an additional administrative building to accommodate future growth also other development could include outdoor pavilions storage and then two access points to north redel here and here with a looped internal drive as well as buffers the the um the full sup criteria for approval is in your backup but we'll just kind of go over those as we talk about the project so our findings first thing we always look at is the future land use and and the dent plan 2030 the future land use of the subject property is neighborhood university compatibility area the proposed use is fitting as this is a mixed use context and there are there's a lot of different uses in this area and this is an appropriate use it's also consistent with the community health safety and services goals within dent and plan 2030 the plan identifies a need for substance abuse treatment and it also establishes action to identify key partners to aid in the implementation of these programs and solutions of north texas would meet the intent of this the proposed use conforms to the definition and limitations for treatment facility uses staff does recommend that the facility administrator provide evidence of license licensing through the texas health and safety code chapter 464 on a yearly basis and then also a if approved a full site plan would be required to ensure compliance with all setback lot coverage site design landscaping parking and access requirements since they haven't fully designed their site yet we really looked at what activities they're proposing for this site and we wanted to analyze their proposal based upon those activities so the first thing we looked at the ambulatory detox housing program it is limited to six residents and due to that limited number of residents and that watchful environment staff does not anticipate that the use would create negative impacts for the surrounding current or future development we also looked at their at their program residential housing this is really intended to function in a way similar to any other residential use the occupants must attend work or school they have to pay rent they have to maintain the property it wouldn't result in incompatible densities the number of total residents if the sup is approved would would be maximum 96 and that would be 22 persons per acre the maximum density permitted in dr2 district is 30 dwelling units per acre so it's actually less than the maximum density and staff is not it's not anticipated to create adverse impacts for on-street parking due to the the the parking requirements for for the supportive residential and the um and the treatment facility use there will be adequate parking provided on staff the administrative buildings both the existing and the proposed are compatible with with these types of mixed use higher density areas and in fact they're permitted by right we also looked at the infrastructure of the area it is an infill site there's water and sewer available along north redell there's also a dcta bus shelter located within 200 feet of the proposed facility it's here outlined in red the sidewalk network on redel is incomplete however this and other development as it occurs additional sidewalks will be required so they will be required to put in sidewalks when they when they fully develop the site and so so that that sidewalk will will be complete in the sometime in the future staff does would like to provide for additional modes of transportation for both residents and staff so we recommend adding bicycle racks installed at a rate of one per 10 required parking spaces that way that that residents can choose different modes of transit if they'd like notification was sent out we haven't received any responses so within the ordinance we have outlined the activities that if approved would be permitted on site and these would be permitted regardless of what building they're in so we're proposing to permit the administrative building and that would include the administrative and clinical staff training education treatment and case management services the rest the existing program residential housing those those two duplexes for the 32 residents along with the the requirements that they hold that there are that they remain drug and alcohol free and that they have employment or go to school that return to monitor house that we talked about for the single mothers the ambulatory detox program for six adults with with that outpatient outpatient detox and substance abuse and then and then the additional program residential housing the four additional duplexes to allow additional men as well as women on site the planning and zoning commission recommended approval of the request on may 15th and staff recommends approval of the sup with the following conditions that sobering centers defined as a place for individuals to stay in lieu of arrest until sober enough to safely leave would not be permitted on site that the facility administrator would provide evidence of licensing in accordance with the texas health and safety code chapter 464 as part of the yearly inspection any existing driveways not shown on the concept plan would be removed when the site is developed and that curb and gutter would be repaired with the public improvements with the sidewalk installed that bike racks would be installed at a rate of one per 10 required parking spaces that there would be buffers installed beginning at the front yard setback on both the north east and south property lines and they would include a medium or small canopy tree planted every 30 linear feet then any future buildings be designed with a residential character and that includes primary entrances facing the right of way or a plaza area buildings would incorporate things like dormers gables recesses covered front porches the kinds of architecture you see in neighborhoods the front facade must provide windows and doors for at least 15 percent of the wall area exterior finishes would be wood masonry or cementitious siding and that masonry would comprise 25 percent of the exterior finishes we're also proposing that are recommending that all existing and proposed solid waste receptacles be located along the rear property line and screen from public view and that all other requirements in the ddc adopted this year would apply including tree preservation landscaping fencing and screening we did provide these recommendations to the applicant and and he agreed with them and i'll the applicant is here to answer questions and i will stand for any questions okay we have we have one council member arbiter oh is council member davis wasn't yours before mine well no okay somehow some switch places so i had a question about the sidewalks okay um who is responsible uh for the sidewalk the applicant would be responsible to install the sidewalk when they develop the site with their next phase okay and and is that and that's per just city policy kind of across the board um okay yeah i would i would um i'm wondering if uh if if there's a way that the city can in this particular case maybe another case is moving forward kind of along the lines of our um our uh waiver program for or our grant uh program for affordable housing permits where affordable housing meaning certain definitions doesn't have to play pay waivers is there a way that we could you know at least in this case you know reduce that cost uh you know for the app for the applicant never mind moving forward across the board and maybe that's just something for my colleagues to consider in this case but um you know because this is a form of in addition to providing treatment it's also a form of transitional affordable housing and you know i hate to think of of adding that that cost considering what a public service it provides okay and council member davis so uh for the benefit of those playing along at home i want to mention that we have in our materials in front of the council tonight 27 litters of support uh in a packet that ranges from former mayors to former assistant district attorneys current defense attorneys mental health professionals it's a huge spectrum of the community in support of this particular sup i want to express my own support for it i i do want to ask um the recommendations you outlined for us those are fully incorporated into the draft ordinance we have in front of us correct okay and the applicant is on board with all of those yes okay well i'm ready to to make the motion as soon as the public hearing is okay and council member breaks so what we're talking about sidewalks is there a sidewalk from the um from the building to the dcta stop there is not those are those are existing development and and right now there's not a sidewalk there okay well i would um i would like to see if we could get that small section of sidewalk on our list of priority sidewalks because driving down redel it's a smaller street and people go down really fast and if somebody's parked there there's really not a safe way um to walk and that's um just a cost on that yeah if there's not going to be development then that would more than likely be our responsibility to to get to you we'll talk to mr olefant he's working with the with pre tem on the sidewalk master plan right now thank you okay and so no other questions so this is a uh yeah public hearing and i have a few cards but anyone that has not filled out a card that wants to speak on this item you will have an opportunity you will just need to give us your name and address but i'll start with the first card i have wishing to speak uh scott weisenbaker and you see that okay so and as the applicant how much time does 10 minutes i'll be quick i do have a quick presentation um but i do want to thank everybody it's been a very long and tedious process getting here i wish we had been doing this part about a year and a half ago but i'm sorry we we are um it's is you know the city has worked with me and we have been able to put together a great plan so i just wanted to cover a few things before we move on um because one of the questions i'm always asked is about crime now in 13 years that we've been here we've never once had the police called on us we we've asked for some uh help a few times when we had somebody break into our property or we had somebody in crisis but this is a crime map for an entire year it's as far back as i could go if you look right up there there's a little void of all crime let me bring it in a little closer that little captain america shield thing in the middle that's me that i didn't i don't know why it looks like captain america but you can see there's no crime we're we're not there's no crime associated with my facility nor has there ever been okay something else about my facility is that if you're not familiar with the joint commission this is the gold standard accrediting agency for hospitals there is only one other facility like mine in the state of texas that has been awarded this accreditation but these are the different uh services that we've been providing for all these years we obviously do interventions we're very involved with our court system we provide services to all six of our adult specialty courts and i personally help develop and sit on three all three of our drug courts our family drug court which is our return to monitor house as part of that our felony drug court for people who have had lots of trouble and then our first defender court so this is this is what we've been doing with this population in this city without any trouble for all these years we've put over 3 000 people to work and the reason that we haven't had any problem in our community and we haven't had any crime is because how we handle our business and this jaco accreditation is just part of what shows that here's from their webpage but i wanted to show you the real reason we do this this is why we do it if you take a look at that picture this is why we do it this is a good friend of mine she's actually here right now and she's been with us for many years this is a dent resident whose life was saved because we're able to do what we're doing it's important to also understand that 50 percent of the women that i work with in our our family drug court are sent to other cities because we do not have the capacity to help them right now which is why it is so important that we get this move forward and that we can why i've been so you know our city manager has been wonderful working with me i think our first meeting shocked everybody um but but we've been able to work through these things and get us to where we need to be i just wish we had been here sooner but we're here today and that's what's important so i'd like to thank all of you and this is all i had to say did anybody have any questions for me while i'm here i just have one before you speak can you give me your name and address my name is gerard hudspeth scott weisenbaker is 4700 gunnison thank you right here thank you okay and then yes we do have some questions so so dav uh councilman armator so first i want to say about the crime you know uh you uh solutions is in my neighborhood ish um within walking distance and uh my neighbor my direct neighborhood my block has experienced some crime and i'm wondering if you know we had more solutions closer to me maybe we wouldn't have that crime problem so there you get your great uh crime deterrent and um great reason to say you know yes in my backyard for something like uh solutions um i was wondering if you if you could speak to um and if you don't feel comfortable doing that but you know by all means don't but you know you know you did mention the long and tedious uh process you know and i know that uh that there have been um a number of holdups along the way and i was wondering if you could speak to the cost uh you know financially for for solutions of of that and also in just also in this sense of lost time well understand we're a public charity i actually started this organization all those years ago with 4500 and it was either going to work i was going to go broke again um i've been cleaning this over for 24 years so this is the passion this is what i'm doing um but as we were putting together our first building there was a number of setbacks now a lot of that was there was a massive turnover in city leadership so i believe that we were in this weird vortex of of changing positions and code changes however it worked out my initial plans were kicked back seven times uh which cost me an additional 25 000 in architectural fees and then there was just there was a lot of setbacks along the way i think that a lot of this was i don't think the city knew what to think about me i think that i frightened people because of who i work with but we've just while we've demonstrated that we've never been a liability in the city and i've always encouraged everybody don't take my word for it call call the police department or sheriff's department speak to anybody who's been in law enforcement in this town for a decade or longer and ask them what they think about us um but there's you know costs are more um there's on my women's program i wish we'd been here a year and a half earlier because there's a lot of lost revenue which doesn't go into my pocket as a public charity it's getting that building built so that we can increase our capacity and help more people in the city of denton so that's is that what you were looking for yes and thank you okay and councilman brief hello hello so as we heard earlier there isn't anything else like what you have what we what you do in our city um you are it and so it's greatly needed and greatly appreciated i just wanted to go ahead and say that um can you talk to how you approach visitors or guests on your property are they are they allowed do they um are they allowed to stay um visitors and guests are to sign in with my office obviously is i'm housing people i'm returning them back to the workforce as i said we've put over 3 000 people to work so um when we when they first come to us we've got like a kind of a cooling off period a little no contact period because we need our complete and total attention to get them into the work that we're going to ask them to do and then they're very quickly going to return to the workforce so they will carry on we do all of our program activities in the evening so uh as as they're having support group meetings people are welcome to come to those so there are uh visitors allowed but no overnight guests we don't have men in a women's program or women in a men's program it's um it's it's we try to keep pretty good eye on it and i think we do a pretty good job of that and just one more question so the the dcta bus stop that's near your location um do a lot of your residents use that as they absolutely it used to be in my front yard but you know somebody with a lot of money moved in down the street and build that apartment complex so they got my bus stop but it used to be my bus stop but but you know they walk they walk down the grass and and it's it's just the difference of it takes them a minute to walk there now so um but yes a lot about half of the men and women i work with have one complication or another which is preventing them from driving maybe they don't have insurance or their license suspended or maybe they've just you know had everything taken away and they're starting to put everything back together so they're bus riders and the dca has responded in a wonderful way the the bus line that comes through our facility goes from razor ranch all the way down to the unicorn lake through all the main uh employment areas and it does a loop down our street so i'm just thrilled to death that they've got that route straightened out for us in a wonderful way well let's hope they keep it there yes thank you so much thank you and then councilmember davis i want to first briefly thank you also on behalf of the the council and the city for what you do and what you provide for this community sorely needed and we need three four five more of you doing exactly what you do and i want to mention that i've been honored to work with your staff and with you and some of those specialty courts that you mentioned specifically creation of mental health treatment court there's such an intersection of mental health and substance abuse issues and your staff was instrumental to getting that program off the ground my specific question is you mentioned a couple different times now you're a public charity what can the public this is a big endeavor for a group like yours uh expansion like this what can members of the public do to help you in your efforts and help further your mission well as a five one c3 obviously funding is the number one thing for this but we believe that this needs to happen so at the end of the day it's it's my name at the bank if everything blows up and goes sideways they're coming after me for the money so i'd like some money but but it's uh it's it's it needs to be done as you said we need it it's and it's so valuable and there's so many people in this room right now there's a lot of people here that this is affected one way or another um and in the letters that i asked the specific key people within our community right because this is it's a it's is needed and we're dentin and this is where we're going to be and this campus allows us to do so much for our community i mean the savings that the city and the county that will will realize over the next decade of us doing this is is you almost can't calculate that um but it's a tremendous amount of money not just in save lives but in recidivism i mean you see it as a prosecutor we've been in that courtroom for so many years and and we're making a big change in there so it's it's this is evident with everything that's happening thanks and then one more question councilman orion thank you scott i've known you over a decade yes um i remember back in the beginning when i first met you you were already starting to think forward on this this project and i'm so glad to see it come forward uh a little choked up uh and i know i'm going to shock the city manager with this but since they are a 501 c3 i would like for it to be placed on the next uh agenda to put my contingency contingency funds all towards solutions of north texas okay and then uh i'll just tell you thank you for the tour out there it's really um amazing for those that have not been to to go just kind of see uh that and the focus on work is dynamic i mean that is that is i mean we walk through the dorm and there's not a person there it's it's tip top i mean that is that's that's needed i have a couple of dope never mind never but no so so thank you very much just echoing what already has been said so anybody who hasn't had a chance to walk in i know we've met once before and talked we are all welcome to come out you just just call me um if i'm available at all i'll tell you thursday's right because i'm in court all day but just almost any other time you let me know we'll i'd love to show you what we're doing we're super excited about it excellent thank you and then uh counselor breaks you have a question again or no i just came okay thank you very much and now i'm going to call uh brent snider if you'll come and give me your name and well y'all have your name give me your address and please i'm brent snider and i live at uh 1210 east hickory hill nargile thank you i've been uh on scott's board for about nine years i've been chairman of the board for approximately about six years and i just wanted to come uh first support of scott and also tell you guys thank you and how much we really appreciate the support that you guys given us y'all been great partners y'all really have y'all are meeting a uh i guess a need in our community just head on y'all are for thinking in this thing that we're taking we're taking people she left on me we're taking people and uh and uh we're standing them back up we're dusting them off we're putting back in society we're taking that burden off i mean incarceration hasn't worked and so we we need more facility than what we have and um so we're thankful for you guys and helping helping us address this this problem uh i think the first time around we ran into some challenges i think with uh with our building um and so i think hopefully with uh what we're doing here today will eliminate some of those challenges that we've had uh that came really close to derailing us i think with the design redesigns on those kind of things which uh were really quite costly but uh i think this this right here just this meeting here will help that a lot so i just want to tell you i'll thank you all again appreciate you thank you very much uh is it robert williams if you give us your name and address you'll have how many minutes i only need about 30 seconds robert williams 9477 fort worth drive uh denton texas i uh am the ceo of ranch hands rescue and uh have been a partner and a friend of scott's for about five or six years now and i just want to tell you that i think that what he's doing is not only incredible for denton county but for the entire metroplex i've been cleaning sober for 32 years so i have a a real passion towards what he's doing and i think just like with the drug court and the other things that have happened here in denton you're going to see that this is a very proactive approach to something that's going to put denton on the map you know what i mean in in the middle of the country for being proactive i believe with all my heart that we have to help each other and that we have to take care of each other and so it's a big honor for me to be here tonight in support of scott and solutions uh and his staff because i think they're first class and i know that they're saving a lot of lives and it's important for all of us excellent thank you thanks for having me yes sir and then the last card i have again you're you're more than welcome to speak even if you didn't fill out a card but lee allison no oh 70 got it okay so yes sorry i read that wrong i hadn't stacked up so is there anyone else who would like to speak on this item it's a public by all means come up you have to give me your name address and fill out a blue card afterwards please okay uh my name is alicia monday and my address is seven chasewood uh circle in lake dallas texas 75065 i don't know if he needs up code so i just want to give you a little uh insight from an addict you know who went to his program and um so i've been sober three years in one month or 1125 days so thank you so i spent um started using drugs when i was 13 and i'll tell you i spent a good portion of my life about 16 years um in and out of just different drug houses uh in and out of jail multiple times i probably got a record a mile long you know um but i really felt hopeless and broken and like i had nothing left in my life um i was just ready to end it and i met a lady at the city of denton and she gave me scott's information and i had an old friend that i used to hang out with she was already in scott's program and they both kept urging me to go to scott's and i remember talking to them and um they finally gave me an opportunity to come up there and uh because i was really dodgy so it took them took them a couple of times to be like okay yeah she's probably really serious now so um when i had my interview um and they gave me an opportunity they asked if i was ready and i even asked for one more day because i wasn't quite ready but um they said it was now or never so i was like okay i'm gonna jump on the bandwagon and i didn't think it would work for me i didn't think it would work at all but once i got into their program and i began to see what he had in there the community have the fellowship of the women that i got to spend time with the program i began to uh to actually experience for myself my life just took a turn and i i embraced it i loved it i began to get sober and clean and um it it really completely changed my life um i was supposed to be in prison uh in two different states and um thanks to the help of of solutions and the recovery that i had started uh scott helped me get into one of the drug court programs and i got to become the first graduate of that drug court program um other things that happened in my life i've never had a stable relationship when i came into their program i was in a really abusive relationship and they helped me to overcome that and to get out of that and help me to find out how to love myself again and um now i'm married and a happy home uh with my husband and i can honestly say like his program has brought me my recovery his program has helped me to find out who i am and what i want out of life and gave me another chance because i could have been another statistic that went back to prison and got out and did the same thing again i mean i i could see that for my life i was ready for it and they told me there was hope and all i had to do is believe and once i started to believe they really started to change my life and i recommend this program for anybody that's struggling um i help other women i sponsor them i get to go and be a part of anything that they have going on and it's just an honor to be able to be there and to have a new life outstanding thank you thank you and we have just so we have a couple of a couple of folks who want to visit so council member arbiter so first i want to congratulate you um on all that you've accomplished um i have been uh attending the uh family drug court for the past two years and gotten to know um scott and been so such an admirer of his program um and i wanted to to uplift you and the work that you've done and everybody who's been through this program because i know they make you work not only in the sense of getting a job there's that work but the work of the day to day um and you know uh this is my second year on council people say to me a lot how how can you do that oh that's really brave that's nothing compared to what what you have done what you have accomplished and i have that feeling hearing you speak um and going to family drug court graduations and the women who have been through that program they really you really work are extremely brave and so i i just wanted to say that that i admire you you're you're a hero to me and thank you thank you and thanks to scott and solutions and in the peer support and the program which you mentioned is so essential it really is and and i don't know how many people realize that how many people who work actually have jobs with solutions have been through this program themselves well you get to a point where you feel like you're unlovable that everything you've done can't be undone that there's no hope anymore and they really gave me that opportunity to realize that it didn't have to be the end for me that i have a life and i don't have to live like this no more and all i got to do is take some certain steps and that they would guide me through it and that guidance is what i needed my whole life i had no one to show me it you know my father was an addict my mother was a single mother working to support three children so she wasn't able to really be the guiding factor so it was a lot to have somebody just to say no don't go that way we're going to go this way let's do this and it changed my life and then also council member briggs thank you i wanted to also say um thank you for coming and standing up here and sharing your story and i want to congratulate you on your recovery and your new life guiding and helping others and you are loved and appreciated thank you thank you thank you thank you very much i appreciate it again this is a public hearing is there anyone else would like to speak on this topic no movement okay well thank you again thank you scott for your everyone what you're doing testimonies you're bringing i appreciate it and so with that i will recognize council member armater oh i'm sorry so i'll close a public hearing and then recognize council member armater so um i move approval uh with the um uh additional stipulation that the city take care of the the sidewalks in front of the property and on ruudel and that we waive the uh these fees for this for uh for what they've been through today to get to this point at the very least the sup fees i would like to see that in the spirit of the affordable housing uh waiver uh program that we already have i realize this doesn't qualify for that um but it is transitional housing so that is my request mr manager yeah i guess my concern with this is it's we don't have a policy for it i'm not sure how we get around the gifting of public funds so i just need to ask the city attorney his opinion on that mr attorney do you need time to research that no no i guess one of the things is that um and as as the concern i have for the city and i recognize the project you know and you know the window where the council is at and i think that's it's a great project that's going on at the same time council always has to be cognizant of favoring one applicant even if it's with the best of intentions over other applicants that come forth they may also request an scp and so as you as you start going down this this line this is the second request where a a particular scp applicant has come in and this council has been has faced the question about waiving all their fees because of the nature of the of the applicant either non-profit or maybe some of the the past history involving a certain property in the restaurant use and so with that you're starting to go down the line that you're starting to waive fees for certain types of development projects when there's a whole bunch of other development projects that aren't getting that same treatment so with that i do caution the council about going down that path because sooner or later there's going to be requests from other applicants for development wanting the same kind of of benefits or d or waivers that you all are that you have proposed this evening so with that i mean if if the council wishes to proceed in that direction that is that is your your call i as your legal advisor just have to point that out to you with respect to this application and the past and any future applications where you may want to waive fees okay so we have uh we have a motion and uh is there a second one more time okay council member bricks so i i want this project to pass um and i don't want it to be held up with um the idea that there may be something we could do it may be something that we can't i would like to see if we could go ahead and get this project moving and approved so that the they can start their work and we can work um other things out individually um if there's possibility for that you know sidewalks i mean i don't know that that's we're going to be able to do that here and um i just i just don't want to see this project fail tonight because of people being unsure about what the city can do and what we can't do sure in my in my best uh mayor watts impersonation so let me make sure i'm hearing you you want to offer a friendly amendment that would amend uh that would remove the sidewalk component and actually roll in which was missed the staff's recommendations is that kind of what i'm hearing well i would like to do that um as well but also with the acknowledgement that the conversation that was brought up from council member armature will continue in some form or fashion and that the other you know the the sidewalk to the dcta also will get on on a list um as well so i just i am afraid to walk away from here um and and see that that original amendment would not pass so yes certainly and i see those as two components the segment that the city will look to prioritize and the segment that we probably want to wait until there's a plan before we pour sidewalk that gets torn up uh with work so i i think it only makes sense to wait till there's a plan and then uh not have sidewalk that they're driving large equipment over to put in a road so that's if i'm if i'm hearing you right right so i will make that friendly amendment but uh with the the stipulations and also with whatever money i have left over in my in my funds i would like to also donate excellent thank you uh council member armature you're the movement what uh so i have before i do um i want to ask a question of is this more of a city manager than a city attorney question but either of you welcome to weigh in um i want to make sure if i accept you know this the friendly amendment because i too i want to see this pass tonight no matter what um uh that um we can come back to this discussion and that it won't to this discussion of the sidewalks and some a possible fee waiver and that we're not foreclosing that discussion by approving this because you know it's it's my understanding that the sidewalks are somehow built into this um built into all this i just want to make sure that i'm not foreclosing the possible almost the kind of reverse of what you suggested you know that um i want to make sure that i'm not foreclosing on this this on having this discussion at a future date and that if it does happen that it wouldn't hold them up at all i think we can get them certainly going and that's been the intent all along is to get them moving um with the proper legal cover which you've accomplished tonight in terms of the in terms of the sidewalk issue this development is treated like every other development which is the city attorney's point and the off-site improvements being the the sidewalks would be required of any developer so that that is the issue with using public funds for a private purpose there's two there's two avenues that you know we can potentially consider and i'll commit to doing that the first one is to bring back the the plan which the council only gave us authority to apply for residential properties which this would not meet that definition the second one is i'm sitting here thinking racking my brain is just whether it would potentially be eligible for an application to the cwg area so i think i think those are two areas we can look at i could certainly bring back the the policy discussion down the road you know and and you can consider that in budget i can certainly do that sometime in july or august but the gifting issue is a big one this is extremely different from the issue with with sedna that you faced a couple months ago where we actually had a petitioner pulling out a letter which was given to me several months ahead of time from a former staffer saying they could take direction one way basically ignoring the zoning code so there was no question in my mind that the city had some obligation to help fix that there's not the case here and it's a very different situation so you do have i think those two policy avenues if you want to consider and i'm more than happy to investigate the cdbg option one way and bring back the the grant program on the other well and thank you very much i appreciate that i think those are two good options i'll reiterate and i would um that uh you know the the uh affordable housing fee waiver program it's something that i had brought to the table and i had hoped that it would be for non-profits providing shelter and transitional housing and all kinds of in group homes all kinds of affordable housing by non-profits and not just single-family residential so i hope we can have that discussion i like the idea of cdbg and i will say that now i have i have spent all of my contingency funds on mhmr and friends of the family which are related in the um uh to uh uh the kind of uh people served by solutions so anyway but i will commit right here when my contingency funds fill up again whatever date that is i'm just going to give the whole thing to uh two solutions because i feel um you know we we really uh owe you guys for all you do for dentin um i don't consider it a gift it's just uh you know the least i can do um so i will adopt that friendly amendment all right and council member ryan oh okay uh councilman davis um i think i want to echo the spirit of what council member our mentor is is offering there and it is frustrating to have uh non-profits in the situation that solution finds themselves um whether it takes the form of a work session or bringing back a formal proposal i'd like to you know wasn't a member of the council the last time that came in front of us i'd like to at least have a discussion about um either as a grant policy or a waiver policy that would include uh non-profits um i i don't i think one of the best things the city can do is remove hurdles for non-profits who have the means to do big projects like this and if we have a fiscally responsible way of doing that i'd like to find it and i'd like to find it soon so if that takes the form of a work session maybe that's the best um and and i don't have a strong preference for whether it's waivers if waivers are problematic a city administered grant program that has strong policy guidelines that we ahead of time set exactly what the criteria are so we don't get into confusion about you know maybe a a for-profit venture wanders in on it um but i'd like to have that discussion also okay thank you so we have a a motion and a second and to frame the motion and then the movement can correct me if i'm wrong uh it's staff's recommendations uh in addition to a component that we will either one or both have a work session and a look into cdbg funds for a funding of a sidewalk once the requirement that the development plan be produced be entertained or looked at to see if there's funding for that which is great idea it's what we did here at quaker town park that's how those sidewalks were put in uh and then it was seconded by council member bricks under those same kind of that same understanding did i miss anything okay so let's uh let's vote on the board okay we took the scenic route to a 50 vote it passes unanimously okay that takes us thank you all very much and that takes us to item 7c z 19-3 zeros to be hold public uh hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas approving a change in the zoning classification for downtown commercial uh neighborhood oh and i will open the public hearing uh i'm going to be giving two presentations um one for item c and one for item d in one so you may want to open the got it okay let me do that yes so also i'll call and open oh first i'll call item 7d s 19 uh triple zero seven b hold public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas approving a specific use permit to allow a drive-through facility in association with the bank on a on a properly general generally located in a downtown commercial general zoning district great and i'll open that public uh hearing as well thank you cindy jackson senior planner with the um planning department uh as i mentioned this is actually two requests with one presentation because they both involve the same site uh agenda item 7c and 7d z 19 0002 is a request to rezone a site from downtown commercial neighborhood dcn district to downtown commercial general dcg district site is located at the northwest corner of carroll and mulberry s 19-0007 a request for a specific use permit to permit a drive-through facility in association with the bank that is planned if the zoning request is approved now i want to specify that in order for the sup to be considered the zoning case has to be approved first but i'm giving the presentation for both the current zoning as i mentioned is uh dcn and you can see the current zoning map right here the proposed zoning is dcg and you can see that shown right here the dentin development code has zoning criteria for approval of a of a uh zone change request the proposed zoning rezoning conforms to the future land use element of the dent plan 2030 and the proposed rezoning facilitates the adequate provision of transportation water sewer schools parks and other public improvements and public convenience criteria one for the rezoning is the dent plan 2030 that must comply with the site is located on the edge of two different uh future land use areas as you can see uh the eastern part portion of it is in downtown denton and the western portion is neighborhood university compatibility area the downtown denton intent is for moderate and high density residential commercial office and entertainment and other uses encouraged to encourage a greater level of activity in downtown neighborhood university compatibility area the intent is to create a compatible form and land uses for areas that serve both the established neighborhoods and universities the proposed dcg district is consistent with the intent of both land use designations as it prevents both office and residential use types that is encouraged by the designated designations criteria two is with regard to adequate public of facilities the site is already developed with a funeral home water and sewer is already available to the site with regards to transportation west carroll boulevard is a primary arterial and mulberry street is a collector street the those two streets will be able to handle the traffic that is generated by a bank use with a drive-through facility we did send out public notification as required we receive one notice in a response which is in your backup the respondent was a tenant is a tenant of a building within 200 feet but not a property owner so we could not include her on the the calculations for the 200 foot buffer however you do have her concerns in your backup staff recommends approval of the rezoning request because it is consistent with the goals and objectives of the denton plan 2030 and it complies with the zoning criteria for approval on may 1st 2019 the planning and zoning commission also recommended approval of this request with a vote of seven to zero we're going to move on now to the specific use permit request which is a request for our two-lane drive-through in association with a planned bank the sup criteria for approval is a compatibility analysis between the surrounding property and the requested use included including the following the specific use will not impede the normal and orderly development of surrounding vacant property parking generation and traffic and access nuisance prevention landscaping and screening and architectural compatibility the site plan this is a request for a drive-through facility in association with the bank the applicant is requesting to provide a two-lane drive-through on the western side of the site as you can see from the site design the building will be located actually towards the front the site will have access from both carol boulevard and mulberry street and um the um it has 228 feet of frontage along west mulberry and 181 feet of frontage along south carol the proposed drive-through is consistent with the mixture of commercial uses that you can see up and down north carol excuse me south carol and as previously indicated it is compatible with the future land use designations of the downtown denton and neighborhood university compatibility area as such the site does comply with the criteria for approval of an sup again we did send out public notifications as required and we received no responses to the sup request planning and staff recommends approval of the zoning request as it meets the criteria as i previously mentioned as in as is in your backup on may 1st 2019 the planning and zoning commission recommended approval seven to zero of the sup request with the following conditions which staff may modify up to plus or minus five percent except as provided the existing 13 000 square foot funeral home shall be demolished the approved use of the site shall be a 12 000 square foot two-story bank with a drive-through facility consisting of a maximum of two drive-through lanes the building square footage may be reduced beyond five percent but it cannot be increased more than five percent the total of a total of 33 parking spaces shall be provided in accordance with the denton development code a maximum lot coverage of 80 percent with 20 landscape area is required the lot coverage may be reduced beyond five percent and the landscape area may be increased by any amount landscaping in the attached site plan reflects an intent to comply with the ddc requirements for parking street trees minimum landscape and canopy areas and compatibility buffers with administrative approval of alternate buffer elements permitted in accordance with the ddc notwithstanding the limited administrative approvals authorized in conditions two and four the city reserves the right to require approval by ordinance of any amendments to the sup the attached site plan and the elements described in the site plan including those referenced in conditions two and four the planning and zoning commission also desired for large trees to be planted along the western property line as well as having a perimeter fence placed along the perimeter of the site adjacent to the single family use the applicant is in agreement with these conditions and that concludes my presentation thank you and uh i see no questions for staff there's one council member jesse davis so just so that i'm clear nothing in the zoning request or the sup allows a drive-through uh for any other purpose except for a bank correct the draft ordinance as i've read it is drive through in association with the bank that's correct thank you and i have one question do we have is there anything future plans for that the drainage just to the north of the property is that well is there plan construction i i can't answer that i i know drainage is what will be is uh considered when this site uh will be developed perhaps the applicant can address that what okay i got that is so thank you uh no other questions so will both of these items are public hearings and uh if you've not filled out a card i have one but if you've not filled out and you want to speak to it by all means but i'll call down lee allison if you can give me your name and address and you have two items is it he's the applicant i need a little help here to get to the president tonight 10 minutes each or okay i'll take less than 10 okay well you have 20 which one is yours save it for another day thank you good evening i'm lee allison with allison engineering group 2415 north elm denton texas how do you go from pulling at heartstrings to pulling at purse strings here but banks are important to the community and hopefully make it easier for people to donate to responsible and needed organizations like the one we just had with me this evening are marty rivers with the bank martin martin with bates martin architects everett weinman with lynx construction and i believe a few employees family and friends with this project one thing that's changing in the banking industry is the need for drive-through facilities that's why we're only asking for two you've seen more internet banking smartphone banking interactive atms i mean there's just less reasons for it so they're only looking at tooth this evening as i'll try and go through some of these quickly as cindy mentioned the zoning currently is dcn it allows does not it allows a bank but not a drive-through facility we're proposing dcg because it allows a bank but also allows a drive-through facility with a specific use permit under the new code the new zoning will be mn mixed use neighborhood that also allows a bank but it still requires an sup for a drive-through so we got to go to the sup and if we get the zoning i feel like that's just belts and suspenders we did have a neighborhood meeting it was a come and go from six to eight p.m and no one showed up except again for bank employees family and friends this is the site plan that we've developed one thing i'd like to point out about this these two kiosks here are where the atms itms will be housed if we were to take these two pieces of improvements off of the site plan it would meet the zoning requirements and this could be approved by right without those two pieces of equipment on this site so we have work to try and come up with the site plan moves the building to the front and does a number of other things this is an aerial view of the existing site you can see a larger footprint the wires is two-story this building's away from the street we're up into the corner you can see three drives one here one off of carol and another one off of mulberry this one's across the street and offset from an existing drive this is looking from carol boulevard you can see the existing facility has much of the front parking and little or no landscaping there there it is from the side on direct on street parking and that's an interesting intersection at this location and the drive here this is a rendering of what the bank will look like from the architects to give you an idea as far as scale and appearance back to the site plan again we've gotten rid of this on street parking we've gotten rid of this drive we've moved this drive over to line up the one across the street from it we've pointed this in such a direction that anyone coming late at night would not have headlights pointed in a residential area but really to the to the commercial on the back and a much smaller footprint this site actually has more green space than the existing site does there are about what did i count one two three four banks already on carol boulevard with drive-throughs they're all on the east side we're on the west side you have point bank you can see a much larger drive-through and no cars well there may be one and right back here is a house on the same block so you got it nestled in with residential like many others independent bank they've got five drive-throughs in the back and i think we found a motorcycle in that one again indicating the limited need for drive-throughs anymore uh first state bank doesn't even have drive-throughs and they're a forced three-story building on the street then uh access bank their drive-throughs are in the back you can see one you can't really see they have one of their service vehicles park here and another one here again the drive-throughs are not getting the use like we've seen in the past their atm is here there's a house back behind it in this area and more houses along the street there so these facilities have worked close if you go up and down hickory i'm sorry carol on the west side there are other large buildings in the nearby area that are two and well i think all two story talls but we're not going to be the first one in the area next to this neighborhood this is the fort worth branch i think gives you an idea this is what they really do in the way of architecture and not just something they're dreaming up here's another facility in denton that has drive-throughs a little bit loud colors but they're there why are we looking for a sup it's going to be two lanes it'll be behind the building it'll be separate from the building buildings generally in the southeast corner instead of having the pavement and so forth in front of the building to the major streets and the site's going to meet either of the development codes at this time we haven't committed to which one but we'll probably work under the current one and the applicant does agree with the staff recommendations i would be glad to respond to any questions you might have okay we have one so far councilmember breaks mr allison um so i did read through the p and z minutes and there were some current concerns about the lighting and i think that was addressed um mr rivers addressed it with the lighting just going to be going down so there won't be any lights going up or in into the residential area is that that is correct and this site will meet all of the code requirements including those for being close to other uses such as residential or lower density commercial so we're meeting the candle power with the candle lights yeah and plus it is going to be downward down pointed light not outward and um did i read something where they you agreed to have a fence um but i was just curious what type of material that was going to be that is in the staff recommendation and it will be sorry whoa right there it'll be along the west side there is a residence here i believe it's being used for rental the fence will be six foot tall wooden with steel posts along this side the good side out and it'll taper down per the code in the front yard so that we're meeting those and providing a nice appearance back and forth and then the buffer as well against the fence so yes we've got the buffer okay standard buffer there looks good and can you just help me understand that the two because in my mind the pictures you showed are the drive-throughs that i'm used to right where they're really large and you drive up and you have the rove teller so how did these two little rectangles here address like drive-throughs are they both atms or is there are they talking with individuals that are in the larger building or um they are and i may ask marty to help a little bit here but basically they are automated transaction machines but they're interactive and they can visit with people inside this building or anywhere else in the world via the internet so they can work with tellers out of any bank that they have in in the world oh and those machines right there so yeah that's why they're more often being referred to now as interactive teller machines instead of atm it's just like carrying your cell phone and doing banking or you can do it all right there well actually better because you can talk to somebody if you need to so do they generally look like the hopefully not the the red and yellow ones but do they look like the size are they the same size that's they look just like atm's and we'll have a match the brick building and one of the things that i want to point out is that uh the direction they face is towards the bank that's why we have to drive through that specific way it's actually better for traffic if you have the other way but any noise or light will be facing away from the residents towards carol street so you'll drive up and down the left everything's going that direction any noise or lighting will there be enough room because like you said that it would be better for them to be reversed so people will come in into care or they could come either right from either from carol mulberry you come in from here and go straight there you can come from here and go around and then around there's a pass through lane frankly we probably only need one but in case one of them doesn't work you don't need to have a backup plan i mean try to drive through traffic you'll first aid bank took theirs out a lot of banks are taking their tube systems out i know with two other banks doing that right now and replacing them with these kind of machines so it'll look similar to wales fargo but not as loud okay similar to that okay thank you can you give me your name and address please marty rivers 120 industrial street thank you a little additional comment miss briggs is that carol boulevard is divided by median so this is going to be a right in right out only drive where mulberry is two-way so this makes the easiest and simplest access to the atm so we're not complicating the traffic patterns and and creating contradictions there also i think mr hudspeth or somebody asked about the drainage yes sir i believe this is a part of the city's peck four drainage program at least on the tail end of it and we are doing the drainage analysis with this to establish the base flood elevations and proper finished floors etc so there and to that end i just i just wanted to make sure you're aware if there's going to be construction maybe we can sync that up or i could even envision some sort of pedestrian bridge i don't know if that's if your applicant i mean if that's advantageous but if it is i might have that conversation because we're going to be doing a lot of work there anyway i just want to make sure it's synced up so it's not i don't want it to be a surprise when you're up and running when is this coming i'd like us to have that conversation sooner than later we're already having them thank you though appreciate that yes anything else yes councilmember arbiter yes um so the two drive-throughs are they both for either individual or and or commercial yes mind things they're available anybody that banks there they're just like most itms or atms that you see now they're very small commercial base so if you have a lot of coin or change you need to go inside the bank so it's not people that will be sitting there for long times it's mostly you can you can have a check and deposit that you can deposit cash or get cash but it's not meant for heavy commercial use those are uh transactions that need to be handled inside the bank facility yeah great and that's what i assume the answer was that makes sense i just just wanted to be sure um and you know and say there is a um a large vehicle uh that what kind of if if a large vehicle a trucker uh wants to come in through carol go through the the drive through and then kind of pull around and come out on carol to uh avoid mulberry is it is there room enough to turn around in there on the um uh part of the bank property that's parallel with mulberry yeah that's why there's a bypass lane there if they weren't going through the drive through lane they can go around those yeah there's plenty of room there i mean my number one concern is people get around there we try to think of pickup trucks we're actually making the parking spaces six inches or a foot wider so that people can fit in there and we know that we have people sometimes that have trailers have been in banking for as long as i have i've seen everybody try to go through the drive through with everything you can imagine duallys you know we have to secure posts all around those so yeah thanks and that's what i figured that was the answer uh it's just hard to you know looking at it hard to tell the scale i just want to be sure all the lanes are fire lanes so they accommodate fire trucks and these are 12 feet wide so they can easily get around from any direction excellent thanks thank you appreciably this is a public both of these are public items so if there's anyone else that would like to speak just come down give your name address don't move it okay so i will close the public hearing for item c and item d and i will call on council member briggs i would like to make a motion to approve uh with p and z and staff recommendations item c both of them if i can but it's individual yeah yes so item c okay yeah is there a second for item c with the with cities with with staffs recommendations oh john council member ryan i'll second thank you so let's vote on the board for item c and then we'll take up item d item c passes unanimous five zero and i'll council member briggs i'll make a motion to approve with the the same if there are i don't know the presentation went in there but whatever staff recommends okay for item d yes okay thank you and council member ryan i'll second thank you and let's vote on the board and item d passes five zero as well thank you yes sir appreciate y'all okay so that'll take us to item e and as i after i call it there's a there's there's a note here so uh calling item e seven e dca 18 dash triple zero seven oh double seven uh triple seven hold a public hearing and consider adoption of ordinance of the city of denton texas amending in 2002 denton development code and currently currently amended to add sub chapter 35.25 the denton square district and section 35.25.2.1.2.a and uh so one note we're we're missing two of our council members and and then a third mayor pro tim i'll be recusing myself yes okay and and then we're a third is recusing so my thought is we open the the public discussion have staff present um and then leave it open so that others can comment and vote when we have a full council but i i want to hear thoughts so he's not here councilman bricks yeah so i i know that this item has been pushed and pushed we keep showing up on agendas and then gets taken off and um it's really important the design standards um and if we could vote on it tonight i mean we have a majority here i would like to continue to do that so that these can start being applicable applicable um if if not then i guess we'll just kind of see what the next meeting would be but if the city and city attorney i mean if it's for affirmative then that would mean that it would be good and that is correct the charter requires that any ordinance that you repeal or approve have at least four council members voting in favor of that and so all four of you would have to vote in to approve this item thank you thank you councilman briggs council member davis um i i agree with council member briggs that a lot's gone into this so far there's been a lot of opportunity for public comment there's been a lot of work done at pnz i'd like to if possible i haven't had a chance to count the noses but i'd like to try for four tonight if possible uh if we know specific concerns that our colleagues would have raised had they been here then i'm open to to discussing postpone for that but without specific concerns if we think we can get to four tonight i'd like to give it a shot okay very good well all right yes well let me open so did i open i don't know i'll i'll double open the uh public hearing for dca 18 0007 thank you sir thank you mayor pro tem and members of council my name is sean jacobsen assistant planner with the development services department and i am delighted to be here at long last to present the denton square district as you all know this started out with a tragic fire in the square which highlighted the great need we had for standards to protect the fantastic historic resources we have at that time this body directed us to come forward as quickly as possible with standards to protect the square as it's worked out it's taken a little bit longer about 18 months but that's given us a chance to have an incredibly transparent process and we believe that we've come forward with really a great ordinance to protect the square and we began by researching seven cities that we believe really did a good job with design standards in one way or another and from that we crafted standards that were really tailored to the unique needs of the denton square from there we knew that stakeholder feedback was really important and so we went to business owners and property owners both in the in the uh within the district as well as residents from within the district and from across the city got feedback from them and what we heard was overwhelming support for what we were proposing we also went before hlc before planning and zoning commission and more than once before you all and received great direction feedback and taking all of that feedback together we revised those standards came back again throughout it's been the same core standards but they've been improved based on what we've heard from you all from the community at the last time we came before you there are about three items that you gave us direction to work on one of those was the review process we wanted to went from having a board to instead having city council as that body of review we knew that we needed to have standards to address murals on front-facing facades on the square and we were also directed to have more robust standards for screening temporary construction areas and we have synthesized all of those into the ordinance that we're bringing for you tonight that took us to public hearings and we did go to planning and zoning commission last week and they approved unanimously one thing i want to specifically highlight for you all is that process change that we discussed as you can see here when an exterior project in the square comes in it's one of those minor projects general repair minor alteration that would go to staff for review and either approval or denial if it was denied they would have the option to appeal directly to city council but any major project and any mural that would come directly before this body for review and either approval of a certificate of design consistency or denial we did know that it was important to extensively notify for this item and so we sent out letters to all property owners within the post district within 200 feet as well and we sent out postcards to 500 feet at this time we've received three letters of support and four letters of opposition we did get a chance staff did to speak with two of those in opposition and they are no longer an opposition understanding is that they have no concerns with what we're proposing now so with that as i noted planning and zoning commission recommended approval unanimously six to zero and i will stand for any questions you have thank you council member brief and so on the floor um he said two of those are no longer in opposition after you spoke with them what were were their concerns did they just not understand completely what what this was about or so one of the gentlemen he simply asked what the effect would be it asked that we would explain that further and so we actually went over and talked with him and once we explained what it would and wouldn't affect with what he could do in the future he was comfortable the other owner found out that based on how his property fronted the district actually didn't take his property in and so he didn't have concerns okay thank you and council member davis so you guys did a really good job documenting some of the interaction at the public meetings and the one thing i didn't know if it was addressed or if i missed it there's a little bit of concern over paint over existing exposed brick is that a part of the design standards or is that just kind of left to discretion as they come through the cdp process that is within the design standards we have put in a standard prohibiting the painting of existing unpainted brick okay i just missed it thank you sir thank you any other questions okay and some other questions thank you very much this is a public hearing is there anyone that would if there's anyone who want to speak on it please you can come on up give us your name and address you have to fill out a blue card afterwards yeah i was just thinking that i'm sorry can give me your name and address please sir thank you uh jean price 3316 sunny jay lane genton texas yeah and a lot of the two fires that we've had downtown i would think that maybe part of this ordinance ordinance and commission area should be either brought through the fire department they have some say on it or we have some sort of fire standards to keep buildings from burning maybe added water or added something or another to you know prevent fires in the future that's all okay very good thank you other than that really good thank you i appreciate it is there anyone else that would like to public hearing anyone else want to come up and share their thoughts or have questions no movement okay oh i'm sorry i didn't see that was that for the past speaker question it was but but it's okay i can i'm happy to say it now yes please sorry i didn't see it yeah no i was just going to suggest that um somebody if it's not too much trouble maybe somebody from staff could get in touch with the gentleman who just spoke and let him know about what our uh you know fire safety regulations are in the area i think he would be pretty satisfied that we've got some pretty stringent rules okay yes thank you and again i apologize i didn't see that okay and any other questions okay with that i will close the public uh comment for dca 18007 7e and uh councilmember armature i move approval thank you councillor briggs i would second thank you any other discussion i missed that all night but i'll do it tonight no discussion let's vote on the board and that item passes four zero with one recusal and if someone could let council member ryan know we're back that brings us to concluding items council member briggs i have one main one today during the budget items for water and and wastewater there were two very large items in the budget for power purchase one of them was for 1.4 million and the other was 1.2 million and i know that these are um large energy users but i would like to see if there's any way to install a renewable some sort of renewable panels for power at the at the facilities it could help our rates go down if we don't have to spend so much money on on the power that's needed so and just a little just how many megawatts each of those facilities use and so what that would be and what that would look like if we did um put some solar panels out on on the property if that was possible and um lastly a few weeks ago i asked for a list of of employees that um lived in the city and um or those that didn't and i would like to continue that conversation um in a work session so that we can problem solve and get ideas and work together and see if there's some sort of incentive policy or employment policy that that we can um talk about to um or or agree on a on a survey something that we can work together um to see what we can do to address that okay thank you and council member davis i have uh two items uh also at our work session earlier today we talked quite a bit about the drainage budget and one of the things that kind of came to light is um we will probably uh beyond just the peck four project that we're talking about now need to have a broader conversation about our drainage channels that are not uh drainage channels per se but are actually improved creek beds there are some that are in in such disrepair that at some point in the near future it may be this council maybe several councils from now we will address what to do with those improved creek beds so i'd like to request um honestly i'd like to make the request as broad as i can without overburdening staff what i'd like to know is what kind of financial impact uh it would be to remove uh the currently improved concrete uh it's the best way to phrase this but to remove the concrete from the uh what were previously natural creek beds specifically pecan creek as it goes through town in the places where it may be feasible to do so you know parkland uh broad flood plains uh that kind of thing because i think at some point in the near future we're going to be talking about need to make big improvements to those regardless uh related to that um one of my previous requests had to do with uh something council has looked at a little bit before with trails on uh places where we have drainage easements but we may or may not have surface rights and improvements through downtown i'd really like to expand that information request a little bit i'd like to talk specifically about um trails along some of those creeks that i'm talking about some of that is public land some of its disd land some of its city land i'd like to talk about in advance of parks presenting their master plan i'd like to kind of get the sense of this council for uh introducing some trails specifically along those natural creeks and some resources we already have available and rights to is that too broad or too clear either one council member ryan thank you mayor pro tem um in line with the work session item we we kind of got a little off when we were talking about it but uh getting back to it as a request uh the laboratory uh the ability to have a laboratory is not feasible for the city to do but is a county-wide effort uh i think it's some talks that we might want to start getting into with the other cities in the county uh because according to texas criminal or texas code of criminal procedures uh article 49.25 uh the commissioner's court of a county having a population of more than one million uh and then there's some outs there shall establish and maintain an officer of a medical examiner which means that within the next probably not on the 2020 but by the 2030 census the county will be required to do that and since denton is centralized for one thing it will allow us to process lab results and we can kind of split the bills with the other uh government entities throughout uh the county much like we do with uh the children's advocacy center or the tax base or 9-1-1 okay any other items anyone have have one uh there's the on the eighth so saturday 10 to 3 golden triangle mall there's the hometown show uh that will feature various uh trades and uh kind of just coming together and meeting different homeless so homeowners will have needs repairs etc the then they'll have the different trades there to kind of meet them get to know them and just kind of promotes shopping local and understanding the trades and that's kind of top of mind as it's been in the news you're talking about plumbers certifications etc so this will be a great opportunity to kind of meet some some people in town that do trade type work and realtors etc so and and i'm always trying to support golden triangle mall in conjunction every chance we get just to keep it in the family they are in the number one district in denton so that's important so with that i will adjourn this evening's meeting it is 8 51 and thank you very - Thank you very much.