Jun 18, 2019 City Council on 2019-06-18 12:00 PM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, June 18, 2019. It is noon. We do have a quorum and I'll open the meeting. Our first agenda item is citizen comments on consent agenda items. Do we have any blue cards? I don't see any blue cards. Second agenda item is requests for clarification of agenda items listed on this agenda. Councilmember Briggs. So I would like to pull item A for a presentation in the public meeting and then I have a question about G, which is really much how is this different than the item we voted on last week which is also regarding traffic signals. Good afternoon Treta M. Deshpande, deputy city engineer. This is on the operations side so this is more of a maintenance contract replacing our equipment. On the signal side it is replacing entire signals so they're designed, replacing poles, replacing sidewalks, we're replacing ADA ramps. So that is for reconstruction of 10 to 14 signals within the city. This is more of operations, meaning old equipment on existing intersections. We have to replace a cabinet. We have to replace a camera. This is that's what this is for and it's a three-year contract with multiple firms for different units. Okay, thank you. Thanks. Councilmember Meltzer. I'd like to pull item K for separate consideration just so we can have discussion on it. Okay, anybody else? Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. Yes, sir. I have a question on D if the staff could help me with that. Good morning, Jason Brown, city dean. The oil, is it recycled? No sir, it is not. Okay, so how do we dispose? What's the disposal process? Disposal on the engine oil and the auxiliary oils would go through a vendor. So we would go out to separate vendors and depending on the market on oil, you either pay for it to get removed and disposed of or that they get for free. Previously we've used one vendor so far, Safety Clean. It's been a free matter at this point. Got it. Okay, thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. And then I have a question about N and while they're coming up, that's a permitting fees. I'll have a comment about J and I just appreciate them coming back and the work they do loophole and just kind of being persistent and going back through the process. I'm grateful for that and then yeah, the permit fee I have a question about. Which one is that? So that's N. Yes, David Gaines, finance director. What is, what's your look into how long we will evaluate to make sure the pricing, now because it is a different increment, how long will you give it to then reevaluate? Have you given any thought to that? Sure, so in the work session presentation here in a little bit, we'll talk through how we came up with that fee, but also the cost of service study that we're gonna go through. So this will be part of that cost of service study. So when we get to that point to truly understand what the billing inspection should be based on based on cost of service, we'll come back to council to see how should we set the fee based on that. So this is really a preliminary fee until we get that cost of service done. And what is the timing? I guess we're gonna get into it in a work session, but if you could tell me. Yeah, right now we're planning for the cost of service study to be done at the end of August, beginning of September. We're entering into a contract with a consultant to come in and wrap up our cost of service study. We've done an internal analysis to kind of know high level where we are, but bringing the consultant in will help us get to the fine point and bring that conversation back to council. Okay, thank you. Thanks. So Mayor Pro Tem on Jay, you said you had some comments. Were you saying the comments were gonna be here? Yes. Okay, I wanted to make sure. Okay, all right. Okay, thank you. Yes, thank you. All right, so the only ones I've seen, I observed that we're pulling our agenda items A and K, all right, for staff presentation. All right. Moving on to our work session reports, agenda item 3A is receive a report and hold a discussion and give staff direction regarding construction, budgeting considerations, and construction procurement methods. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Mario Canizares. As you all know, staff has been, has had conversations with council on the high cost of construction when it comes to our CIP. The same is true with vertical construction, meaning facilities that are being constructed and built here at the City of Denton. City Manager and I have been discussing these issues with colleagues in other cities and cities are Richardson and Lewisville recommended peak performance value of Chris Squadra, excuse me, that he's been assisting them with costing projects also with the procurement of a number of facilities at these at these organizations and he's been working with other cities from around the DFW Metroplex. Mr. Squadra is here to make two brief presentations. The first one is what are some of the cost drivers when it comes to vertical construction in the marketplace and he'll elaborate a little bit more about that along with what are the ways that cities like ourselves and others can help mitigate some of those some of those cost increases. The second part of the presentation is to discuss a procurement method that we currently do not use here at the City of Denton but are used by other Metroplex cities and around the state and around the country and get your feedback on whether or not you would like for us to proceed with that construction methodologies. Call construction manager at risk and at the conclusion of his comments I'll come up wrap up the last couple of slides and get your direction on that on that on that option. So with that if you have any questions of me if not I'll turn it over to Mr. Squadra and let him make his presentation. Thank you and thank you for your time Mayor and Council. My name is Chris Squadra I work for peak program value. We are a project controls firm specializing in cost and schedule management and procurement and risk management for construction projects. We're currently managing about 380 million dollars worth of projects in the North Dallas area. We've been working in this area for about 10 years. My background is as a construction cost estimator for a general contracting community and then about 30 years ago went into the consulting side. The first thing I wanted to discuss today is the there we go got it. So I want to talk a little bit about escalation. We are currently in one of the hottest construction markets in the United States. Our escalation is running at about 8/10 of a percent per month on vertical construction. Some say that that's going to be more like 12% a year next year. This is because the demand for construction is outstripping the supply of subcontractors that can do the work. It's not so much a material and a labor in this index kind of thing it has to do with subcontractors raising their profit margins and material suppliers raising their profit margins because they need the demand to go away and so in in our in our world that's how you say tell people that that you have a shortage of your supply of materials or labor is you raise your profit margins to go away profit margin in 2009 for some subcontractors that I know was around 10% and their profit margins were running at five today their go away go away pricing is around 45% profit margins and they're currently taking work at 35 to 40 percent margins so this is a acuity brands this letter is dated May 8th it basically says that they're raising their prices by 15% on May 15th which is a week after the letter was issued acuity is one of the largest suppliers of lighting fixtures in the world they have 13,000 employees and probably a 35 or 40 percent market share there were more slides with examples like this but thankfully your staff made me take them out so that you didn't have to sit through all the examples and the way that we can mitigate these impacts is we predict the escalation I'll use the police department headquarters and substation project that will complete design in January I'm in June of 2020 and start construction probably in September 1st of next year yet we're going to come to you in a month with a budget that predicts what we need to spend then and you have to pass an ordinance and go pass a bond on November 5th if the voters so decide and if you decide that predicts what that's going to be so we're going to carry all that escalation in there and then we are going to suggest that we carry what we call some phase two alternates that are nice-to-haves not the must-haves that we've promised the stakeholders and if I'm right and the escalation continues throughout this period then it will bid at or below the budget we've predicted and we will have taken some phase two alternates to construction documents they'll keep well if as happened in 2009 the market takes a very steep downturn then using the same budget will be able to buy those alternates on bid day and we will over deliver to the stakeholder group that is one of our proactive planning processes others are that sequencing and project bundling putting some projects together and trying to attract better participation from the marketplace is also a good a good option and we believe that there's some tools out there for procurement that we could be using that would help us get better value but that's the subject of the second half so yes sir we do have a question from Councilmember armature yeah so first of all thank you that's eye-opening that explanation of the the cause of the inflation of construction costs just wondering as far as the predictability of this goes or to the extent that it is predictable are there you know known concerted efforts coordinated efforts by sub subcontractors to you know raise prices together or does it happen on an individual basis and no I don't think there's any collusion going on in this marketplace is considered to be what we call in the industry a clean marketplace there are areas of the country primarily in the northeast where that's not the case but to give you an example from one of those subcontractors that I know that is a drywall subcontractor they bid 15 to 20 projects a week and they they kept track of how many they turned down from existing general contractor clients in one month they turned down 300 opportunities to bid turned down people that they worked with didn't even count the people that they didn't know who asked them to bid work so in that environment you you have a limited amount of resources and you keep raising your what they call their go away number which is the number that they want to be nice to one of their clients but they don't want to work when they start picking up work at the go away number then they raise the go away number and that becomes their new profit margin does that help oh yeah that's yeah that's fascinating terrifying isn't it yes well I appreciate you explaining that so they would rather do that than hire more individuals and get more product is that what you're saying well let's let's examine that so one project I'm working on now has some very very complicated masonry that to install it takes a lot of training when we first started putting that masonry on there we built a mock-up and the masonry crew was all taught how to do it here it is seven months later only ten percent of the people who were there at the original training for putting that in are still on the staff because they've been poached by other people you all know the Dallas Cowboys training facility right that project had two drywall subcontractors to split the risk because it was so big and there were fistfights in the parking lot when one drywall contractor started putting flyers on the windshields of the other saying come work for us for two dollars an hour or more so they can't find skilled labor the Masons are an extremely short supply they're actually training people from temporary labor on how to lay block so that becomes a quality issue as well so it's that's the the constraint is on the supply side especially on labor and on the material side u.s. gypsum who makes drywall or people who make steel they have 300 million dollar fabrication plants to increase their capacity they have to build another plant they're not going to invest the 300 million or in the acuities case there they can only get so many lighting fixtures so they just raised the price okay all right thanks and then let me just close out of this guy so this one is about procurement options there's really just there's 15 or 20 different procurement options but in general speak there's only three that we really use in the municipal world if you take design build off the table which is also very common but the design bid build is used to be the most common method competitive sealed proposals is a second and the third that we'll talk about as Mario pointed out was construction manager at risk design bid build is the most traditional method in government contracting it's it's used most commonly by the federal government and has been used traditionally by this city it's not really the focus of this discussion it starts with design team selection and then an opinion of cost from that design team drawings and specs are completed you get sealed bids that are then opened all at the same time and the selection is usually a hundred percent based on cost if some past fail criteria are met can you bond the job did you turn your bid on in on time etc the two other tools that I'd prefer to talk about because awarding a hundred percent based on cost has some drawbacks and in actuality is a false sense of value the competitive sealed proposal process allows more flexibility in the award criteria so you are allowed to use the qualifications of the contractor or perhaps one of their logistics planning and traffic control plans or who their project manager is and cost is weighted as part of that it does pretty much the same thing design documents are finished you receive sealed proposals as the name might indicate and then it's scored by the by the evaluation committee inside the city it's open to invitation by all and there's a very short amount of time to evaluate the bid so a very important component of this presentation is having been in the general contractors office when the bids from the subs flow in if you have 30 or 40 trades that you're bidding out and you get you know somewhere between 5 and 10 bids in every trade then you have for 200 to 400 proposals to evaluate and the low numbers start coming in at 9 in the morning and the bids are due at 2 you really only have three or four hours to go through three or four hundred proposals and it's not the world's greatest process for picking the people who have the best number and this also this process the CSP process relies on the design team to do the construction cost estimates designers are not the world's greatest estimators I'm a certified professional estimator and there are no certified professional estimators in any architectural or engineering firm that I've ever run across in all my years doing this so the quality of the candidates and the pricing that's received by the city are really the pitfalls of both this and the design build process I mean the design bid build process the city has used CSP before and they typically have weighted the cost as 35 to 65 percent of the selection criteria so the the third process that a state law allows municipalities to use a one-step or two-step process the two-step process that we recommend you have a request for qualifications that goes out you take the most qualified candidates and you get proposals from them for their fee and their insurance and their on-site overhead cost the job trailer and the project manager and all that stuff and then they come on board before the design is finished and then when the design is finished they put all the documents out to bid and that that process there we go that process allows us to get 90% of the work is done by subcontractors and we get all those bids the same bids you would get in the other two processes from the same subs will come into that general contractors office the difference is because they're brought on earlier you have you have more input during design the second bullet here the most traditional method obviously is DBB is design bid build CSP is competitive sealed proposal but the input during the design processes is really great to have a contractor at the table who knows of materials and methods that may not be known to the design team there are called value engineering suggestions you've probably heard that term sharing of cost responsibility means that instead of just the design team who is not very well qualified to do cost estimating the design team does an estimate and the contractor does an estimate and then those are reconciled to to a much more solid number you share the responsibility of cost between the contractors estimating department at pre-construction as you go through the process so in this example on November 5th if we are fortunate enough to have you approve putting a ballot measure in front of the voters and we're fortunate enough to have the voters approve the project the construction manager at risk would come on board in late January early February and from February until June they would constantly help us control the cost give us ideas value engineering unlike the other two where there is no input from the contracting community during design we had a question from sure yes go ahead yeah just a quick question about the last slide is it factors into what you're talking about now and moving forward as just wondering if the retention rate of subcontractors and workers for contractors does that factor into you know the way someone in this field would would quantify the risk involved in the added time and cost yes there that's a great question interestingly enough because you force everyone in the earlier two processes to cobble together a number very very quickly and in many cases without the chance to even meet the subcontractors and talk to them about their scope they have a higher fee in what they call design bid build or competitive sealed proposal they charge a higher fee in this particular process you get the bids from the subcontractors come in and the city staff including let's say in this case that I'm using Larry Chan and maybe a firm that knows cost goes to the contractors office when the subcontract bids come in gets the actual bids go to the city of every subcontract bid and then there's a three-week period where the subs are brought in one at a time and they're vetted with the city in the process and we sometimes only get one masonry bid or one HVAC bid in this process we can ask to rebid that scope get new bids and the city gets to see the new bids in the first two processes that same process will happen because I've done it and what happens is you sign me up for a lump sum on design bid build I only got one masonry bid but so did all of my competitors so I use that number and then you sign me up then I rebid masonry I put the savings what's called the buyout in my pocket in this process the savings are transparent and go back to the city so probably more of an answer than you wanted that is excellent I'm thinking of some work I had done on my house I wish I'd done it thank you well sure and so this the other thing that's nice is if the contractor comes on board in February and starts telling the subcontractors that they're gonna be bidding something in June then they can get into the estimator's schedule think about the gentleman who's running a drywall firm doing 15 to 20 bids a week and think about how easy it is to how hard it is to get into that queue and if you start telling him 90 days in advance you get better participation and the transparency of sub bids I just talked about and the most collaborative method because the contractor and the other two methods the street if you will has about three to four weeks to figure out what your design intent is and bid it properly and you've had a year or 18 months to design it they have four weeks to figure it out in this process because the contractors brought on so early they have from February to June to figure out what the scope is and they don't leave things out so it's becomes less adversarial I have a quick question yeah you had mentioned on the design build this is this is the far right is construction manager at risk your answer to councilmember Amater was that in a design build that if you have one bid and then you send it out for rebid and you get a lower bid right that that Delta is realized to the benefit of the contractor and I so let me clarify that you're thinking of design bid build which is the left hand column or the center column I'm the general contractor you're the city and let's say that councilperson Emmett arm a tour arm a tour is is a masonry bidder right you take my bid in the first two scenarios and I and all the bids are open I'm low or and I win the contract sign the contract as soon as I have it I then go to two other masons and I send them the drawings and I get pricing in and then I go back to councilperson amateur arm a tour and I say I have some other numbers your way high I work those three or four masons against each other to push the number down and then that number right is this right yes this is we can't do that anymore well we can't do those design bills anymore we can't we can't have them doing that I guess what you're talking about I'm the contractor so I'm doing this in my office no no I understand what I understand what I'm what I'm hearing is you're saying that we we pay to have these things built and we get a bid from a contractor then that contractor can go out and solicit lower bids and that Delta will will go to the bottom line of his profitability on that project instead of necessarily being forwarded or disclosed to the city to lower the cost of the project am I am I'm hearing that correct he you can he confused the issue a little bit he was okay he was comparing design build with CM at risk the difference is we're not we're not recommending design build at all we're recommending CM at risk I understand that but we have done we have done design build a thought in the past we've certainly we certainly use this CSP yes you've used design bid build is just another term for it is hard bid so and and so a hard bid process design build is a completely fourth separate type so Chris just just a second okay yeah when the council was wrestling with the Baylor Park issue in the bathrooms and the plumbing costs and that sort of thing you're very frustrated because we had a had accepted a bid and there was no negotiating on it because it was a traditional design bid bill so we have reached out I've had some experience using CM at risk and we reached out to some of our fellow cities to see if there's anyone really using that because under that scenario where we just knew that there wasn't enough subcontractors to get the pricing down we were locked in and prohibited from doing that under the traditional bid CM at risk not only not only do you have the the upfront contract or the design estimation contractor estimation we have our own estimator so it's really more of a three-party collaborative method and if any of us feels like that trade is high we didn't get the bid or get the best timing for a bid or whatever we can actually take that and go out and re-bid it that's what you were wanting to do at Baylor we just didn't have the right contracting mechanism to allow you to do it oh no so that's the reason we're bringing this no I appreciate that and I appreciate the distinction I'm just saying based upon his response to a question that's understanding that if that is how that can work I'm not saying that's how it's worked for us in the past yeah but that's not acceptable form of securing a contract because then any benefits obtained from lower pricing because of connections or anything like that it nears to the benefit of the contractor and not to the city so they just go out and shop them that's right and whatever savings they get that's everybody goes out and eats a steak dinner or something that's right versus what we're recommending to you we would actually keep the savings as the city yes okay just want to make sure I understood that because that wasn't my understanding in the past so it's good to have some clarity um we have a we have a couple more questions councilmember Melser and then councilmember Briggs I'm having a little bit of difficulty connecting the first part of the presentation with this part if we're in an environment of rising subcontractor costs yes you know is this even a real scenario where suddenly subcontractors are coming in at lower prices isn't isn't isn't it the opposite in which case is there an advantage to having the contractor locked into a hard bid if we're if they're in a rising subcontractor well this environment remember when you receive a hard bid that you're you're unaware of how many bids were received that day from Masons let's say so that's the example we've been using or an example that's coming up here a little further from a nearby city I think a neighbor of yours they we only received one HVAC slash HVAC bid and if that had been a hard bid where you'd locked in the contractor with that only number on the street was one number right then in that case you would have signed a contract for that number and the reason that the only one number came in as it turned out is that there was a large number of other HVAC opportunities that day unbeknownst to even the contractor when the city saw when our firm saw and the city was in the room that there was only one we all agreed that it was to Todd's point we had three estimators that all said the HVAC isn't worth that much the guy who was bidding it probably was tipped off by one of his suppliers that no one else was asking for quotes on the specified material so he jacked his number way up so in that particular scenario the city is locked into a lump sum with the contractor and in this particular example we asked the contractor to put that back out to bid we got four HVAC numbers and we saved six hundred and seventy six thousand dollars I understand the dynamic of if there's an opportunity to go lower it's better not to be locked in but I don't understand is what's the prevailing environment that that we have more opportunities like that or that we have more opportunity more situations where prices are going up well the prices are going up regardless right so the theory is no matter which procurement method you use 90% of what you buy is going to be provided by subcontractors from their estimating department and for them it's hard bid every day right so they're going to be turning out the same proposals regardless of which column we're in right and the only difference is does the city get to participate in that room and do you force the estimating team to turn in their opinion to you with less than a day to review everything and then when they have the contract in their hot little hand then they turn around and work to get the best value for their lump-sum contract with you and as you said in yours to the contractor let me let me comment on that because I hear what you're saying theoretically you know the prices are rising you're not going to get a lower bid but in theory yes in practicality you have contractors that that no subs that they might have a job that's canceled I mean there's all kinds of extenuating circumstances where people in that data flow understand that they may like working with this contractor better than the other one and they couldn't bid on this job because they had another job but then things so it's not out of the realm of possibility even in this rising environment cost environment to find the particular fact circumstances that will allow you to get a lower bid because in this case it was just mentioned there might have been some facts behind the scenes that caused that bid to be extraordinary higher than the than the others and just the facts nobody just had the time to do it so I agree with you but I think there's I would be very surprised if there's not an opportunity to at least put it back out to see if you can get a lower number and that's really the key is if you do get a lower number who does that who gets that benefit yeah I guess the part that you know I still be resting but a little is sure are you giving in general are you giving up some leverage that locking them in might give you you know like I totally get the like having more time to do a good job is a good thing I you know I understand the presentation but but if you're telling me that the general environment is the rising cost or is the other some downsides you know there is there other you know I guess are there opera are there moments where you'd say given the environment you want to lock them into a you know a hard bit well I think that one of the most important things to remember is that one size doesn't fit all one size fits you so every project working with the facilities group there are risks and benefits to each of these methods and we will choose the one that works the best depending on which project type it is the reason we keep talking about the police department headquarters and substation is there's a lot of time between now and the time it bids and there's a lot of help we could get but you know there are certainly projects that lend themselves very very well to locking down the contractor from 100% CDs on bid day and though and those have their own set of circumstances it's not this is not to be seen as a presentation that we should be using Seymour on every single project but not by any means it's just another tool in the toolkit that's helpful thank you Councilmember breaks and this may be for the city manager but is this CM AR process new and I noticed on the previous slide it said that the city we've never used this before and just curious why it's not new it's it's been around for a long time I think it's just been changing the way that we do projects here you know keeping it we've got things much more tightly scheduled out now we're bringing in third-party estimators to assist our staff which we hadn't been doing you know and and so it's just it's just one of those things where if if our this goes back to a little bit to Councilmember Meltzer's question but you know if our folks that are going through the budgets and representing us feel like there's areas that we could be you know that we're really overpaying you on a project we're really stuck with a issue of either knowing it and continuing on or scrapping the entire process and starting over reason we like this is if you've got a trade there that you feel like you can really save some dollars maybe we just timed it wrong maybe there's something extraordinary that happened you get they've got time to plan and you can go back out and rebid it and refine it in my experience as well we've delivered a government center in Arizona using this and the other thing it really did was helped us manage the contingency a lot tighter when you've got the you've got the contractor working with the architect from day one not only not only do you have the estimating going on at the same time all three parties but they also can identify areas in the plans that are maybe wrong or can't be built that way and help you manage that contingency which you know puts that money right back into your pocket again so big projects it's it's definitely a tool worth using I'm not sure on a small project it's gonna make that much difference quite frankly but when we're talking about potentially bundling up to forty or forty five million dollars together on those two projects and you've got the same trades going back and forth our mate where the where the money is a project like that it's really how long they have to mobilize on site so anything we can do to make make their experience more efficient will save our residents that money and that's why we're bringing it out the size of the project absolutely yes okay um this slide just is to note that there's been a study that was ten years long started in 1998 and then was just updated again in 19 I mean 2018 in January they released the new report it covers 500 projects large and small private and public and it was done by the University of Florida and the University of Colorado and in that 20 year period they basically proved empirically that there's less cost growth from the original budget more projects finish on schedule and it's a faster project delivery method the C more process so this is not just our opinion it's and to your point I think about you you said is this a new project method it was authorized by municipalities in the state of Texas I think about ten years ago and the most recent update to the law governing its use was in 2013 I think in 2010 maybe ten percent of the municipalities use it for their projects over 10 million and just in you know I would say very subjectively without any facts to back it up nationwide I would say that the contracting community is doing I would say 75 to 80 percent of the projects the contracting community has on their books is the Seymour method if it's over 10 million or 10 to 15 million all the contractors are telling me that owners are using that method most of the cities in North Dallas use it for their vertical construction on large projects now so it's not it's much more common than it used to be and in 2007 I wasn't used at all at least by municipalities so we've talked about the fact that 100% of the work is priced competitively in both options the fee and on-site overhead for the contractor is competitively bid much earlier and then the subcontractors in the Seymour processes bid later and we've talked about all of these points already and so I'll you know if there's this is just reiterating what we actually got to a little earlier these are just some examples from real life this is a list of savings for value engineering this is a value engineering list there's this is produced by the general contractor of ideas it's just a list that we got a lot of savings from the general contractors input this is one of your neighbors that you'll need to you'll need to stay behind the mic because we're televising this so yeah yes thank you very much no you forgot about that so this is just a compared to the green boxes there basically just show where you know this is the Delta above or below this is that six hundred and seventy six thousand dollar savings and this is a blow-up of that so the real this is that's real money that's the HVAC plus some other things that were rebid on two fire stations that were built together by the city of Louisville and for those of you who know Todd white who's the director of procurement over there you can give him a call he was in the room he saw these numbers he saw these savings this is not a theory that's six hundred and seventy six thousand dollars went back to the city of Louisville and I am here to promise you that if they'd hard bid this not only would they have paid six hundred and seventy six thousand dollars more for the fire station but that contractor would have made six hundred and seventy six thousand dollars more they would have taken that money and put it into their profit line and the only reason I know that is that's the way it the world works out there and this is where I'm supposed to turn it over to Mario and I was told I had 20 minutes unless I was interrupted with questions and I tend to be long-winded so thank you for asking all those questions because that's why the only reason Rachel didn't throw something sharp and heavy at me so members of council again not to reiterate the things that Chris has mentioned we do believe it does have its merits to be used by the city it is another tool in our toolkit as far as from a construction methodology or bidding methodology that we have not used in the past however it is not it's not a process that we would use for every project as mentioned for some of the smaller projects probably doesn't make a lot of sense sounds like we probably won't be using design to build anytime soon but but construct excuse me the competitive still proposal still does have some merits and utilizing that and and and again the other thing that I wanted to mention too is when it comes to design bid build and even CSP we do use those for those horizontal projects like roads because again that while there are some contractors it's not it's not as complex as a vertical construction it's pretty typical a few trades that are being used question is this process something that our procurement department can do or do we have to hire somebody to do that they actually they actually would help facilitate the request for qualifications but what we recommend is that we would we would have a consultant on board to help us facilitate the process and so that consultant cost would more than likely make up for I mean we would make up for it in savings yes by doing this way yes ma'am so outside of that again done on a case-by-case basis not for every project as mentioned before and then really as mentioned as mentioned just a bit ago we do think it's a viable procurement method if you all agree in that in that with with that with that option we would recommend get hope to get your direction on how to proceed forward with that we do believe because of the complexities and the size and the scope of the police station renovation along with with the substation that we're looking at constructing if the bonds pass that it's a very good candidate for Seymour so with that I'll open it up for questions and see if myself or mr. squadra or Cassie or Laura you'll from purchasing can answer those questions for you so I appreciate my colleagues questions during the presentation I appreciate the information as far as direction I think this is better than a viable procurement option I think for most of these big projects these big capital improvement projects we're talking about I think it's maybe the only responsible option vertical construction is so complex I mean infinite variables everything from the rising steel tariffs to you know what the market is in some far-off country for a material all the way down to what the subcontractor had for breakfast if it took him too long to get his bid in that day I think the only way you ever get anywhere close to real numbers on a bid is to have the GC's involved very early on in the process and if this is our best option to do that my direction is full steam ahead with implementing Seymour for I would almost say all of our big certainly evaluate case by case but all of our big vertical construction projects and even some of our smaller ones we heard an example before of a smaller vertical construction project that might have had the benefit of some transparency on the front end and some better costing on the front end with somebody actually from the industry so that's my direction yes I am also an agreement I just saw on the list earlier the sub bids and that's an issue for me and I go back to the conversation we had about the restrooms and I think it was either the plumbing or the concrete mayor that you knew of a bore I guess real price and then we were be chopped we were charged more and so if this takes care of that then I'm for it I'm strongly in favor also and I think the taxpayers will be will be really happy to know not only the savings but the increased transparency you know basically you know I'm confident in our sort of our management's track record for being good financial stewards so you know like a little bit you're asking me to abandon common sense if you start by saying well projects 10 million dollars today and it's gonna be 11 million a year from now so that would lead me to think I want today's price but I get the examples with complex projects that there's more you know that there are some pockets of upside in you know allowing the flexibility so you know like I said basically demonstrated your ability to be good financial stewards if you think you can get a benefit out of it I wouldn't want to take a tool away from you any other comments yes mayor Pro Tem question I guess Mario yes to that end walk me through that so my understanding it's rare if ever we've had a case where a contract was bid at a rate and came in at that rate without any changes right I mean there's change requests in every project or adjustments are you speaking of change orders along the way yes right there are a lot of times there are change orders things that are unforeseen right that just weren't known to the design process that those those do happen right so for example if someone bid a project and let's say they lo and behold they figure I underbid it right there in theory stuck to that number in theory but in theory and one practice there's change orders opportunities to find relief it's usually not a good experience if you start that way yeah got it so yeah so that's that's my that's that's my understanding I mean here's the thing no one's gonna do a project at a loss you know that there's opportunities to fix that along the way and so regardless of what the first number is if the number changes there's ways to hide that change in the mix you already started we're not gonna you know it's tough to get to a point where your tech start you fire a contractor that that's few that doesn't happen often so I like the process only if only for the fact that we can rebid segments of it that to me it jumps out at me because I think far too often in this in our current process there's times where it's like you can't go back or you got to start it all over so to have those opportunities incrementally reevaluate is and I think also I think there's something to be said for having a almost getting a look at what the the area is doing and come back and say oh well there's a lot of bits that day they didn't get it now they're they're hungry and we can we can seize upon that sometimes it's just about timing right right so that's that's good thank you yes so I'm familiar with at least one project where in schematic design design called for all load bearing masonry the entire structure the outer outer wall the structure being load bearing masonry and then the I guess what further on the process you would end up with the change order but a GC was brought in early on and immediately said no I know the materials market right now I know the masonry labor labor market right now and I can tell you even without going out to my subs that you're gonna want to make some big design changes before you get further in process that's right so is it fair to say that on complex projects vertical construction this method could actually prevent a number of change orders or big changing horses in midstream in big projects absolutely because if you've got the as mr. squadron engine if you've got the contractor on board early and they they notice something that's unusual or just again problematic working with the design team they can make those adjustments in their design documents now you may lose a little time because it's gonna require some time to make those redesign changes but if you can save it on the back end when it comes to pricing or materials or construct ability it becomes really just a trade-off so yes we can avoid some of those things as opposed to going all the way down to the end of to the to the construction documents you're basically a ninety five hundred percent designed you go to bid it and then contract this as well you know if you would have made some changes along the way would have been different but it's too late by then I'm definitely in favor of this process one thing I don't think was an aspect that wasn't covered as much as what I see this is is the time savings because we've had a number of times we've had a project bid it came back above what we thought it should and we would go back and redesign it and then send it the whole thing back out to bid and that time savings when you're looking at one percent point eight percent a month then that adds up really quick as well so yeah so from this down I mean I think the direction is this is certainly a tool that we want yes that we can use but let's take fire station three for example I forgot what that bid came in at what six point six point four million so when you're talking about that levels of projects and council's not gonna give you direction on what level but when as you've talked to consultants as you looked at the projects coming up I mean what what do you think is I mean is a six million dollar project not enough to do something like that or would you try to bundle that's with something else is that really what you're trying to accomplish with this particular process is how can we bundle these upwards in the past you really probably couldn't do that without I mean probably wouldn't give you that much leverage to for savings whereas this does is that is that what I'm hearing yeah right now I mean in this in this economy in this part of the country this this makes a lot of sense right now in vertical construction we are having that discussion right now as we're talking about possibly combining the the tennis center updates with the American Legion we're not sure and we're having that discussion is there enough benefit to use this method versus the traditional method but with that when you when you start getting into a 40 million dollar contract with all the subs and in quite frankly just trying to plan out their time there's no question there I'm not sure when we're talking about a five to ten million dollar budget if it makes sense but we're having those debates right now great so it sounds like you know this is an option yes sir and use it the best way you can to gain the most efficiency okay yes thank you and so again just what will happen in the next number of weeks probably in August we bring into you all for your consideration at one of your council meetings just a resolution authorizing the staff to proceed with using CMAR construction manager at risk for the police headquarters in such station just as a policy as I do have a question on that why are you requiring a resolution I mean if this is I mean this is no different then long okay yeah you got to come to the microphone I'll repeat it stay long okay yeah so it's a state law so it's a state law that if you use this method you have to have a resolution of support by the City Council okay fair enough all right yes councilmember Riggs so does that mean that every project we decide to use this for will have to do a resolution if we decide to use CMAR my understanding is that for every project we would have to bring something forward to to get your get the council approval thank you okay other than because it's state law is the answer do we have any idea of the rationale behind that rule I mean is it something because there's more risk and the council needs to be aware of that risk or that just seems sort of unusual to me but if not you just send it to me and send it to us an email or something we can do so I just want to have an understanding of that okay any other questions on this item thank you very much appreciate it thank you great presentation appreciate the information we'll move on to the next agenda item then we'll take a quick break agenda item 3b is receive a report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding a pilot program for valet solid waste and recycling services for the downtown area well good afternoon manager members of council my name is Brian burner I'm a director of solid waste for the city of Denton I appreciate the opportunity to talk a little bit about a exciting program we've got conceptualized for our downtown area Thursday marks my tenth month anniversary here with city of Denton I appreciate the opportunity to work for you it's an exciting place to work but since possibly the first day I came here I keep hearing about the downtown area house how we're servicing yet how there's litter how some of these things smell how we've got parking this and that back and forth and it's always been on our agenda to try to look at a way to address how we service garbage and recycling in the downtown area one of the things that we want to talk about today is a concept and actually show a proof of concept or do a proof of concept on the valley service model in the downtown area recently we were contacted by a group of business owners and managers along the industrial street area gave us an opportunity to try to put something in place to affect some of these areas what we want to do is review the challenges take an alternate look at some alternative considerations define really what this valley service model is how it works overview what the pilot program is and then talk a little bit about some next steps again as we talk about the conditions that currently exist in some of our downtown areas right now with related to solid waste we have dumpsters up and down the street taking up valuable parking spots we service our dumpsters anywhere from three to six times a week and as a result some of these may sit during the hot parts of summer they they smell they just don't look good us trying to service dumpsters when there's cars parked in front of it we just can't do that so it's inefficient they create traffic and safety issues when there's special events downtown sometimes we can't even get in to service them so going on and on there's got to be a better way for us to manage this issue and as a result we think we may have come up with a problem or an opportunity there are several opportunities out there that we've been looking at on paper current we have our current service model that you know from from addressing some of these service and program areas you know it's easy to use and allows for additional capacity we just drop additional dumpsters but again a lot of the other issues that we've identified it has that in area we're looking at in-ground dumpsters and while it does improve aesthetics and relatively you know it reduces our potential for illegal dumping and contamination still there are issues associated with that same thing if we create revampments around dumpster enclosures along the area it takes up parking spots it's again it's it's difficult to to service in those areas getting rid of the issues that we've identified by centralizing compactors while that creates areas it's it's it's away from the downtown area it gets the dumpsters off the street it kind of it concentrates a lot of the garbage recycling into one area it's not really easy to use for our business owners because again they would have to drag these bags two and three and four blocks to get them to the compactors by putting in a valet service where basically you've got back door recycling and garbage where city staffers or contractor picks this material up takes it to the contractor it solves some of those issues and that's the proof of concept we want to try to identify as we go through this this model so again what is a valet service basically what we're doing is is doorstep collection by a solid waste employees both refuse and recycling carts and these carts are transported to a centralized compactor the compactor reduces the volume basically so instead of having to dump this material six and seven or three between three and six times a week basically it's one or two times a week that we're having to pick up the compactor and taking it to the garbage to the landfill or to the Murph another benefit is basically as our employees are managing this material we can actually do a lot better job of source separating so our recycling gloves come out a whole lot cleaner we have a lot less rejected at the Murph because again it's going into the right area it's putting in the right card to begin with there's there's not mixing on the street by less than than diligent employees that we currently provide so we want to try to do for a proof of concept is beginning next Monday the 24th we want to take the next 30 to 120 days and provide this proof of concept collect collecting three or four times a day at the back door of each of the five businesses along Industrial Street what we would do is we would be taking information on the amount of effort the amount of garbage the amount of times trying to optimize when those garbage cans have to be emptied and again along that time trying to figure out what additional time the employees have available to them so that could potentially be used to collect downtown garbage cans like that the big-belly dumpsters doing that doing some litter abatement extending our power washing contracts so that as we potentially try to apply this you know across downtown we know what the level of effort what the cost are going to be instead of a six day a week operation as it is right now we would be seven days a week operating from about one in the afternoon 12 at night because again later in the evening is where a lot of the garbage and recycling generation occurs in this area in this in this proof of concept we would use we would utilize existing staff and equipment but as we go forward we would be hiring additional staff acquiring some specialized equipment to do this we try to apply as much electric equipment as we could to minimize emissions in the downtown area beginning with the Industrial Street and then as we move forward trying to identify how we provide this service potentially through all of downtown right now we've identified two areas that we currently have dumpsters that the city owns that we could electrify and put compactors in place and from that going radiating out so what we would do over the next 30 years next 30 years next 30 days is actually create gather this data come back to council provide the information and with the direction to go forward we would formalize the service and establish budgets and rate structures we would come back purchase the equipment install the infrastructure if this proves to be unsuccessful then we'd basically drop back five prevent those findings to the council and seek direction on alternative service models to apply in the area so with that answer any questions you might have and so I assume they get two bins even if now they're not recycling so they would get a recycling cart and a trash cart all the businesses they would get two types of bins and depending on how much garbage we would go back in and we would actually do a waste audit to determine how much waste they generate and when they generate it some of these may actually get like three garbage can't garbage carts and one recycle some areas may get three recycle carts and one garbage depending on what they're doing but they would get adequate capacity for that interim between the times that we collect it so I hold as much garbage for every two or three hours and so where our business is supposed to store say four bins well we have been working with these areas we've identified or with these business owners we've identified areas around their businesses that they can be stored and again if there is a storage issue then again we compress the amount of times that we service but again so that they have at least two bins in those areas so far all the managers and the business owners have have worked well with us we've identified areas and it seems to be working that's part of this proof of concept to ensure that the garbage can and the recycling can come from those businesses into those areas and we're able to pull it off and swap the carts as they need to be is the compactor does it make a lot of noise it does not make a lot of noise it does make some noise but it's not in it's not overbearing it's a it's a it's an electric motor so you hear a whining kind of like an air conditioning unit running but that's only while it's compacting and so this pilot is going to tell us basically if the storage works the bins are large enough if the three to four times a day it is enough and correct and that it can be done efficiently what what that potential cost is and what most importantly what the potential free time is of the employees so that as we start expanding it they can do those other services that we were talking about servicing the big bellies doing glitter abatement in the surrounding areas taking additional time to do power washing to get the leachate off the off the ground what we anticipate though is that as we start using a cart service and it's service on a on a several hour basis as opposed to sitting there for two or three days a lot of these issues go away again you know you're not having to drag a bag halfway down the block before you throw it in and there's not stuff leaking out the bottom all that will go away because again it's right at your back door and then we take it off site and we manage it you know responsibly at that point so we anticipate a lot of that effort will potentially go away and that's one of things we want to prove up with this okay I'm in favor of the pilot of trying it and see how it works I have a lot of questions and but I'm in favor to at least try it and I see potential for a lot of the other contracts that we have downtown to go away if this works which would free up some funds to then invest in our solid waste department correct thank you yeah so I love I love this idea and so I support you know moving ahead and and looking into the numbers you know for me the key will be you know tests will be apart from the practical the practicalities of it on the ground budget wise you know what the numbers are and and what that means for our other collection you know what the impact would be in our other collection and recycling programs and and on rates of course since and I think this looks like a great place to do that test pilot because of the dumpster issues one of the benefits not listed also improved ADA at pedestrian access because if there aren't the dumpsters then we don't have these problems with with a non walkability and then you know code enforcement doesn't have to worry about trying to crack down so much on dumpsters that don't exist I I would propose and I know and I'm saying this because you know I've counted that we've had you know four members of council who have at least four that I've counted you know spoken out favorably for some sort of zero waste you know food waste program for me this would seem like a good opportunity to also test some sort of food waste you know collection program although I realize and then the question is what do you do with the food waste and we don't have something yet in place for that but you know so maybe that might not be possible from the point where this pilot hits the ground but if it works then moving forward that would be neat I was going to ask but had my question answered about you know what about recycling and so am I correct in understanding that it would be that one truck would pick up both the recycling and the solid waste or would these be two separate actually what we would be doing is servicing the the area with a common vehicle so instead of pouring the trash into a truck we'd be loading the carts onto a trailer swapping out and then taking the carts to a centralized area where again they're bifurcated recycling goes recycle route garbage goes the garbage route and again if we find contamination recycle route we can divert it immediately as opposed to mixing it in contaminates the whole load ends up going to the landfill we get a much cleaner recycling a much higher return on investment and that that thrills me you know for all the obvious reasons and cutting down on trips and and costs I really like that and I'd be curious you know I know that a model like this can't be carbon copied and applied to residential pickup but because we've been talking about you know possible you know changes in scheduling and and and cutting down on certain residential pickup services I'd be curious and you don't have to answer this now but I'll just throw that out there moving forward for staff to look into you know how lessons learned from a model like this might apply to the the applicability of regular hazardous waste collection pickup and electronics recycling pickup but especially hazardous waste for for businesses and for residences as well councilmember Meltzer yeah thank you man you know in addition to the benefits already enumerated I'm excited about this being potentially a big step forward in just commercial recycling which is still the big mother lode and biggest opportunity for us to have an impact on life of the landfill so very supportive I'm curious to know if you've already not that I need to see it but if you've already done that kind of pencil version of what this looks like if it were scaled up on some kind of hypothesis right we don't know exactly what it's gonna look like but do we have a sort of expected case so that you'll know if it works it is scalable and you know potentially presentable we have really like a blank slate right yeah I mean and and we have not applied it to this model as we've been talking about new streets we have put some back-of-the-napkin type calculations and again you know what we feel right now dumpster service is extremely expensive and extremely inefficient when we start right sizing what your fees and charges are because we've got some people in shared service right now that are paying may weigh more than what they need to and some that are paying way less than what what they should be paying right now so yeah from an equity standpoint it's it will basically level the field but at the end of the day at least in in some areas you could be paying an equivalent amount for really this higher level of service because of that some people will be paying more some people may be paying less and that's part of what we want to do with this proof of concept is to identify exactly what that manpower is going to be and then how we apply it across this entire area well I think I think you know probably for your own sanity and ease and ease of evaluation after you know it probably would be good to have a you know a pencil scaled up case but at least super super supportive of getting this on its legs and trying it out thank you Councilmember Davis so as I understand it right now the business centers are paying for shared access to these kind of maybe four row block five to block dumpsters what are their rates gonna look like during the pilot project is it are they gonna continue paying as if they had the shared service dumpsters they just get the added benefit of the valet service or are we doing something different with their rates during the pilot program it seems like letting it run a little longer makes the most sense for data collection but I don't want to do that if we're putting them at some disadvantage on their rates no we're not changing rates at any point during this this pilot we will absorb whatever cost internally as part of the research and then as we move forward over the next hundred and twenty days and we start moving people out of a dumpster program and into a formal carted service that's when the rates would change we understand it you know one size does not fit all we're looking at a tiered service what a real estate agent or lawyers who has one bag of trash a day versus what you know one of our heavy you know restaurants or visitor center would you know there's going to be a sliding scale between the two and we have to figure out what those those tiers would be what's the what's the likely model for the for those rates then how many carts we switch out for you a day how many trips we have to make by your business how do we if this pilot project is successful and we want to go forward with doing it long-term or an expanded area what do we tell our business owners about what their rates might look like and how they're going to be calculated one of the common terms you hear in the industry is page you throw the people that use the the the program more intensively will end up paying more so again you know part of this is you pay for what you use but it also creates a driver that if I want to recycle more and get a little bit more benefit or figure out some way to alter my operations that I produce less garbage I'm allowed to do that and I have control over my my garbage bill at that point so by doing things internally I can actually reduce my own cost so again it allows us so it would be a some sort of volume based type system really around what you what you generate yes mayor Pro Tem thank you what is the approach to cleaning the carts is it are they regularly sprayed by the service how does that work well you know we anticipate that you know because you're doing a back door service and that you're putting a plastic bag in there everything is contained so again you know the the amount of leachate and liquids that you see in the current system is not going to exist because again it's contained we do anticipate though that you know there will be cart clean cart clean that needs to be occurred and that's part of this pilot determining how often it has to be cleaned we're currently looking at at that process we've we've got some you know sanitizer and fragrance on order to upkeep the cart we're looking at probably on weekly or bi-weekly basis the carts will be at least rinsed if not you know steam cleaned and then managed at that point okay and then if I may sure and then I did a quick look and the only one that's open past 12 is dance and that's Thursday Friday Saturday so your last pick up at 12 how do you address that because so you're closing there's an abundance of trash last carts run what is our approach to managing that 2 o'clock search if you will well again you know looking and talking with the business owners the the the time period that we've set forward here they feel that there is it there should be enough remaining capacity in their carts until our first collection that next day so even though the carts may be full or partially full they do have enough capacity to maintain that that morning rush with that morning operation until they get going again okay yeah that'll be interesting to see yeah because if you all of them close at 12 and if the last runs at 12 right either you they're gonna though they will have made some run at some point but that's just trash is normally the last thing to go we'll just watch but I think the timing is interesting and I and I'd like to see us and one of the learning things we want to do in this pilot is is you know based on the information that they've given us you know this is what we're seeing as far as trash generation and the timing and everything else and based on our discussions with the building owners and managers themselves you know we've come up with this schedule but if our folks in the field say hey this isn't working we need to do it it allows us to adjust you know on the fly and then we come back to with the the the permanent program so to speak we can we have that information that says well even though you think it should be this we know it should be this sure yeah that's right that's just I yield to them as well but but that I don't know that when I was in the business that was the first thing we did when we're closing is run out the trash to catch the I mean because they closed at 12 right you know so that's but if that's what we'll see okay we're gonna very quickly okay we are no I appreciate that question may approach him that's because there are you know there's a lot of usage between 12 and 2 and some of those locations and especially if we expand it to the whole downtown so that's gonna be a critical point in and data for us I think for the for the bars and the bottles because that's that's a lot of recycling it is yeah so and then I just also want to mention that you said plastic bags in the bins and I wanted to remind you that they're not allowed in the recycling bin correct yeah in recycling again we do not allow any film whatsoever so again it's just the garbage in the banks or in the bins that's my monitor so I just wanted to mention that if there's consensus for this moving forward you know just want to make sure that other business owners who are thinking hey you know why not us our area could use this that this is a test pilot and that you know it's successful could be applied to other areas and I wanted to mention you know an obvious place to to look if this is successful and once a troubleshooting is done would be the the fry Street area which has you know serious dumpster issue late night you know it's similar issues so I see this is test pilot is a plus for for everyone assuming the numbers are good also well first of all kudos thank you for this kind of creative out of the box thinking I look forward to the data we can all speculate as to what the data would be but that's the purpose of a pilot program is to gather data and I think that moving forward depending on the data I think there are many many other potential applications that will be available that even with a slight increase potentially we may see that the the benefits because that's really that's really what our fees are for I mean our fees are based upon what are we getting from it what are we paying for it whereas if you're taking dumpsters off the street if you're getting litter off the street if you're you know sometimes it's worth paying a little bit more to have a little bit more presentable city so I really appreciate the creative thinking and the willingness to try something new and to address a problem we've been trying to address this issue for a long time and whether this works or not we don't know data's got to come out but this is the first kind of viable alternative outside of shared dumpsters that we've that we've really tried to do which is a very different approach so thank you for that and I look forward to the to the data and sort of the analysis of you know what worked what didn't you know we're gonna find ways to maybe improve it or make it more efficient I'll be curious is to see if it if it doesn't actually save us on labor costs when you're talking about if you only had to use a truck 20 to 30 percent less one of these big trucks and you get that much more life out of those things are expensive they are I mean very expensive so appreciate appreciate that thank you so much to staff and solid waste staff to do that yes real quick well your comment made me think of something so there are currently dumpsters there to get the full potential of the pilot will they be removed so that there's not any extra dumping going on after those dumpsters that are currently in place will be removed and the only opportunity to dispose of garbage and recycling will be the carts on site so we'll be able to visually see the difference - okay thank you so much thank you mayor yeah thank you as far as the carts storing them I'll tell you I went from a dumpster on one of my units to carts you can find a place to store them and it cuts down on so much extra illegal dumping it cuts down on so much litter and waste around plus it gives you got green carts and you got recycle carts that you can put out so very excited to hear how this turns out thank you very much for that thank you all right let's take about a five or ten minute break and we'll come back and continue our agenda welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council it is 1 32 p.m. on Tuesday June the 18th 2019 we're on our agenda item 3c which is received a report hold a discussion and get give staff direction regarding the 2019 boards and Commission's nominee screening and appointment process good afternoon my name is Rosario's and I am your city secretary I'm here to present the 2019 boards and Commission's nominee screening and appointment process the presentation will cover eligibility qualifications and terms as well as terms and limits the term assignments removal application for all nominees required the vetting process how nominations are submitted I'll cover briefly what is in the notebooks that were distributed to you earlier and of course the timeline for nominations and appointments so for eligibility qualifications and terms it is important that or it is qualified it is a requirement that individuals be a resident thereby being a resident a registered voter of the city they cannot have any financial obligations of the city either at the time of employment of appointment or during the term of appointment and of course there are special qualifications as you can see here you have five boards that do have special qualifications that must be met term terms and limits are typically for two years the exception is the public utilities board as they do have four-year terms the term limits expire August 30th 30th of 2019 and begin September 1st of 2019 the exception is the HS the Habsco whose term expired June 30th 2019 and begin July 1st of 2019 the term limits are for three consecutive terms individuals are required to remain off of that particular board at least for one year however they do become eligible for appointment to a different board for removal removal can be only for cause and that could be possibly not meeting the requirement of being a registered voter in the city which usually happens when they leave the city missing three regularly scheduled meetings in any one year or lack of attendance at 50% of the regular meetings held in a year and as you know we'll be discussing that those specific requirements here in the future and of course if they're convicted of a felony and in some cases for removal a public hearing is required for example with the public utilities board should any vacancies occurred individuals are appointed for the unexpired term of the previous member if applicable the application process for all nominees is that they submit a new application we do need to ensure that we have current member information as well we are now asking that they provide the voter registration or the date of birth so we can verify voter registration status we were in the past basically taking it for granted that if they indicated that they were a registered voter that they were we are requiring that they at least sign the the application particularly and that they are providing their date of birth in some instances and of course that they meet the necessary vetting requirements which I'll cover here in a little bit the other thing is to make sure of course that we're able to verify some of the other appointment data so if an individual doesn't have their voter registration card like sometimes I lose mine or I'll keep up with it just providing the date of birth is sufficient yes it is okay we're able to verify through the county there may be times when the information we can't readily verify them online because maybe you know they use a nickname but we can always check specifically with the county to make sure that we verify for the vetting again we need to verify that you know they are registered voter the no financial obligations so the city covers library liens parking taxes tickets and possibly utilities and that they meet the special qualifications for those five boards that are noted earlier which are noted here again and those boards it's really very important because the qualifications are very specific so we want to make sure that we you know we check off those qualifications that have already been filled and then we advise the remaining council members maybe if you still have a appointee or nominee in in in the works and whether or not they're eligible to be appointed to that board the nominations sending us an email is sufficient we do ask that you at least list the board commission or committee that you're appointing the individual to and the special qualification if any of course if that you're doing a reappointment it's a little bit easier you know to determine that we are asking for a process change that before we schedule any nominee for either appointment or reappointment that they fill out an application and you let us vet them first to make sure that they meet all the necessary qualifications so we're hoping that you'll support that process change we were provided notebooks and the contents of course you have those existing members and the existing seats who are either either expire in 2019 be it June 30 or August and then the that the attendance report just show you what the attendance was for the full year versus quarterly and we will make sure to provide you the information on a quarterly basis it'll basically be a crawl each quarter so that at the end of the year whenever your reappointment process comes through you'll have you'll be able to view your nominees or your appointees attendance for the full year and of course the on members list we are providing on the website beginning tomorrow information on each board who nominated what their terms served and when their terms expire and then we also included the board rosters as they provide the contact information for existing nominees the timeline again you're getting your presentation today we're going to be loading information on the website tomorrow nominations we're hoping that you submitted within July by July 19th as we get nominations in as we get an application in we'll go ahead and make sure and try to get the bidding done ahead of time to help facilitate your nominee and scheduling them for appointment and then basically the first meeting that we're going to begin appointments is August 6th and it'll continue on for other meetings until hopefully all seats are filled and that's your presentation any questions so if we are going to renominate someone that is already on the board can you clarify do they need to send in another application or is the one that is currently on file okay for us to go ahead and renominate them we are asking that they submit a new application only because again you know we are asking for the voter registration information a lot of the applications that we have are at least two years old we haven't found any issues with individuals being able to fill out the new application as well in the code of ordinances it does note that you know the City Council will consider appointments based on the information within the application so we thought it was really very important that we provide you the most current information when considering your nominees so do we need to notify them to do that or have they already been notified we already notified them in your list in your notebook you'll see a list of preference by by members and then the last tab has the applications for those 660 members that have responded so far as we get them in we'll provide them to you okay thank you so much on the three two-year terms how does that what do we do with a partial term when somebody let's say somebody that was appointed in June of this year made this year in till August that's not going to count as a full two years right if they're appointed for what we call an unexpired term basically to fill you know a seat that got vacated for whatever reason it's considered unexpired and even under the code it says that does not count as a term so we did take that into consideration when providing you that the data my questions have to do with kind of specific committees the requirements in them and the makeup would this be appropriate venue for that or should I just follow up with an email questions for like certain different qualifications for different boards or commissions like animal shelter something like that yeah yeah so I'm looking at kind of where I have vacancies coming up and I'm wondering so I'll give you the I'll give you the example if that's relevant or not so for instance a historic Landmark Commission I've got an appointment coming up says a historic Landmark Commission shall include at least one representative from the following and then has a number of group County Historic Commission and owner of real property etc so that mean one one representative from each of the following each of the following okay yes ma'am and and then for so I take it so that's relevant yes yes that's that's appropriate because during the presentation Rosa did put an exception of special requirements for certain boards including the ones that you're asking about so it's totally okay great thanks so and then the other one kind of two related questions and the first one I assume the answer is yes but I always want to be sure just so I don't end up nominating someone and you know then it turns out oh they don't qualify because I misunderstood for a health and building standards commission let's see the city the commission shall consist of one of the following general contractor represented etc and that also means one of each one of each one of each okay so I guess I could go back and check this yes it would probably be good idea to have just to make sure that that each is in there inserted in our documents to you you'll also see that in in the under the the board not the board listing the board not or nominations by listing by board member we did include if that there was a special requirement noted and what that special requirement could be now keep in mind that if a council member if you may base possibly have a nominee that meets a contract or qualification but they don't get the application in or later until after another council member has submitted somebody for that qualification we would then let you know that unfortunately that positions already been filled or it's pending being filled okay and that's a good point that's helpful so and these and I love these notebooks by the way this is really helpful to have this and since we just got this today I haven't I the information I'm about to ask for might already be in here and I haven't had the time to look for yet but so is that do we have somewhere in here a list of on each of these committees that have specific requirements like that kind of who meets which requirements who's already on that committee or conversely or you know what requirements must in an additional appointee have given the current makeup of who's already on that committee yes on the nominations by board or the listing of members by board it does show at the bottom there's that kind of a text box at the very bottom what those qualifications are and if there's a member listed under there what qualification they currently meet or would meet would need to continue meeting for reappointment okay and that is let's see in which tab is that on the nominations by board right by board nominations by board listing by board it's okay thank you thank you you're welcome and we're available to meet with you one-on-one if you have questions about any of the nominees and those special qualifications board we know it can be a little bit difficult when you know you have the special qualifications that have to be met okay any other any further questions saying none thank you very much appreciate that next item is agenda item 3d receive a report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the general fund preliminary fiscal year 2019 through 20 proposed budget capital improvement program and five-year financial for good afternoon mayor and City Council my name is David Yanes finance director the budget process is now in full swing so we're gonna take this opportunity to take a high-level view of our preliminary budget for the general fund a lot of these numbers are going to change as we go through the next month to the proposed budget but this gives us that first snapshot of where we are what we see as possible supplemental items and considerations in our in our budget as we move forward so those that is a large part of the object objectives of today's presentation and again focus on the general fund over the past few council meeting we've had the utility funds come forward water wastewater and solid waste while the preliminary electric fund come at the beginning of July talk let's talk through on the general fund side those revenue and expenditures expenditure assumptions that we're assuming right now in our forecast talk through some of the supplemental packages we can incorporate now in our in our forecast and what those options would be to the tax rate to implement those supplemental pack additional supplemental packages have a discussion on the homestead exemption and then receive any feedback from City Council as we continue in the budget process so just to set the stage for what our ultimate goal is as we go through the budget process over the next couple months is to adopt the budget and the tax rate before September 30th here are some of those requirements that we that we always shoot for absent specific dates later on in our calendar of when we when we anticipate public hearings and having the formal budget available for City Council so our budget process is really year-round we start budget planning this year we even started before January and December and in January as we started doing our looking at our baseline budgets for each of our departments even started the supplemental process earlier than usual this year to try to get that a picture of where we are some of that was driven by the discussion we had previously with our estimates for FY 18-19 and some of the measures we took to negate that sales tax impact which we'll talk a little bit further about as we go through the process since then since January and February when we begun we've been meeting with departments continuously to start off with those baseline budgets take out any of their one-time cost from last year really scrub those budgets to try to make sure that we have line items that meet what we've actually spent over the past three to four years and then start looking at what supplemental items we could increase to each of the department's budgets till we get to this point where we're gearing up for the proposed budget to City Council at the beginning of August into July and we've started to receive our assessed valuations from our preliminary assessed valuations from the CAD where and which we'll touch on as we go through I'll get out I'll keep kind of hitting on this point these are preliminary and especially with those CAD assessed value numbers they can change consistently over the next six to seven weeks until we get to that proposed budget here's a snapshot of our just our major funds all of our city funds and our major ones up here at the top again we're going to focus on the general fund today we'll also touch on the debt service fund as it relates to our total tax rate and our debt service tax rate and how that incorporates for our total property tax rate those utility funds electric water wastewater and solid waste have all either come to council or will be coming to council council shortly on the internal service fund just want to point out we have a new internal service fund this year the facilities fund previously we had facilities in the general fund up until this fiscal year we're proposing in the next fiscal year budget to treat facilities like an internal service fund as you can see some of these other examples where it's its own fund and it's funded through transfers from all of the major operating funds including the general fund and the utilities so what he's really fits that mold of one of those departments that is a service department throughout the city so it makes a lot of sense through allocations and other measures for them to pay for their services through the through those allocations you can see our capital funds listed there and then our special revenue funds which we have quite a few of and these are really funds that have that specific revenue source that are tied to specific uses that we can use those those dollars for one of the one of the initiatives will we'll be doing we're doing currently and what we're doing over the next month is trying to find one-time capital costs one-time supplemental items that we can fund from these special revenue funds that are appropriate and that we don't have to find from the general fund traffic safety fund being an example we know that that we're gonna have that balance there what are appropriate expenses we can spend out of that fund what are those one-time studies or or other appropriate expenditures we can make from that fund and draw down that fund balance here's the budget overview basically how we got to where we are so far first two items are measures that we take every year where we get to the baseline budget take out those one-time costs try to scrub all the line items to to get any excess budget that's not spent each year out of the butt out of our forecast next year so that we're budget of budgeting appropriately these following four or five items are really initiatives that we've taken this fiscal year gearing up for this discussion of our final forecast and how we can fund supplemental items one one being to return unnecessary fund balance in our internal service funds mentioned our internal service funds just a moment ago a lot of those funds had fund balances that weren't that weren't necessary over year over year those fund balances would just sit there and since they're really funded through allocations it makes a lot of sense to essentially sweep those dollars back to the operating funds to the utilities and the general fund each year instead of carrying a balance that just sits in an internal service fund two examples of that with our tech services budget internal service fund and our fleet internal service fund we were able to in our forecast for next year we've taken those fund balances basically to zero and reduce the applications necessary next year so we don't have to just have that money sitting there and that's been an initiative we've taken the past few years with all of our funds really focused on internal service funds this year with that we also looked at our allocation for our general fund administrative costs from all the internal service funds and operating funds these are administrative costs that the general fund bears that obviously benefit the entire city all the all the operating funds and we've always done this this charge back with the with the transfers to the general fund but it's been a few years since we've really taken a deep dive at what that allocation was so that's something we've really focused on the past three or four months of taking a deep dive looking all of our assumptions that go along with those allocations and coming up with a new allocation model for how we're how we're funding the administrative cost in our general fund and that's how you know that's legal HR finance all of those city managers office all those functions that really benefit the entire city obviously as I mentioned and implemented the new internal service fund with facilities one one item that we've talked talked with council about over the past few months and then as we have the fleet discussion with their internal service fund we'll mention again is the reassign doing an analysis for underutilized vehicles really step back and look and looked at all of our vehicles and our fleet in the entire city to see how can we either create pools throughout the city or look at some of those vehicles that aren't utilized to their full capacity and share them amongst other departments or delay some replacements and that has really proven benefits to us as we look at our forecast not having to spend cash funds and also limiting our our kind of short our five year debt that we typically take out for our vehicle replacements and again looking to utilize those special revenue funds for one-time expenses so those are all those pieces that that led us to where we are today when we look at our forecast so to touch on our revenue assumptions in the preliminary budget and again these can change as we go forward but right now we're projecting an increase of about nine percent in assessed value and that's based on the the June 7th preliminary assessed value that we got from the CAD we get that's that's the tenth of our preliminary values of about 16 that we usually get as we get our final certified values at the end of July so normally those every year they decrease more and more as we go through the process because of protest and an added wrinkle to that is the CAD as we've seen in the past few years has told us that they've they've had more protests this year than they ever had before so it does add some uncertainty to what our assessed value is going to be that nine percent is after we've already reduced that what's on our preliminary value by about ten percent to cut to negate that uncertainty to some degree but again it is assumptions on where we are so you've got you've got six more reports assessed reports from what I understand from your slide right so is the is the nine percent based upon okay here's your tenth report based upon where we were last year this is so the next report and the next subsequent reports you're saying that number could change depending on right yeah so you're not projecting that nine percent what you think the sixteenth report will be it's just based upon what you received in your tenth well actually the nine percent that is our projection of what the last report would be okay what you think it will be overall yeah I looked at where we were through the tenth report last year and where we ended up and took that same factor and applied it to the most recent we we did just get a new report on Friday obviously with the next week and it was it didn't drop as much as we thought so that number is more like nine point three percent now than the eight point nine seven but it has hovered around that nine to ten percent range most of the time great yes councilmember is that nine percent appraisals or is that new growth or that's combination of both that's combination of both that's total our new growth is has it has increased quite a bit this year more than it had last year from about 330 million to about 430 million right now roughly in our in our new value so when we look at those numbers we're talking total but as we look at the effective tax rate and those kind of consideration that's when you pull out that new value look at it thank you so obviously our our second biggest source of revenue in the general fund is sales tax this is a discussion we've had throughout the year obviously with our draw our drop in sales tax this year which was really really the result of one significant taxpayer so we've revised our estimate this year brought it about three and a half million lower than our budget based on knowing that we were losing the revenue from that one that one taxpayer and we've done a re-estimate of where we think we're gonna end the year with sales tax and that numbers really held held firm over the past few months came up with a revised estimate a few months ago as we've received the past two months of sales tax it's really hit where we where we were expecting that revised estimate to be for 1920 we're currently estimating a four percent increase on that revised estimate which is consistent with what we're seeing if you if you remove that one taxpayer we're still seeing that four to five percent increase on all other taxpayers so that's why we feel comfortable with that four percent again that'll be another one of those numbers that we continue to look at throughout the process up to the proposed budget sure do you believe that the that in that taxpayer that seemed to have been the major cause of the decrease do you feel that that's a permanent we're pretty much permanent loss of those sales tax dollars or at least a majority of them we're working under that assumption so the next next big big factor of franchise fees obviously is a discussion we've had ever since the with the legislature looking at Senate bill 1152 changing the franchise fees revenue revenue we can expect next year and just for as a high level of review of that legislation telecommunication providers who have both internet video and phone if they have both of those their pieces of infrastructure in our right-of-way they now only have to pay for one of those one of those lines instead of for both of them that 650,000 is is obviously a guess from us and that's that's really based on the the telecommunication providers that are paying us right now you know one factor in there that could change thing is do they change the way their business models and and does it have a bigger impact so we'll continue to take a look at that and see if shifts happen though that's the number we're working on right now so that that he that's almost three-quarters of a penny on a tax right I mean yeah it was about a penny for yeah it's a 1.1 million for the compensation and benefits here's here are the assumptions we're working on right now for 1920 and for those future fiscal years consistent with the past few years we currently have a 3% average merit increase in the budget next year this is really a 3% kind of bucket that we have out there and then our actual increases or go through our annual process with each employee but we have that 3% plugged in for next year as we've had the past few years we do have no change to our city contributions and health insurance you know obviously this is something that is definitely a positive as you look and everyone knows health insurance health costs are going up and a lot of cities and private companies are dealing with significant increases in their health insurance costs from an employer perspective based on our health insurance fund balance right now really have a strong internal health health insurance fund and we haven't had those those big hits this year where we really feel comfortable at this point going in the next year with no increase in a city contribution again that could change over the next few months but we pull pretty confident in that right now I think councilmember Briggs had a question the councilmember and is that three percent increase you said some could be higher is that all staff all the way down from every to every employee full-time all full-time staff yes yeah councilmember I would love to see your future future staff report kind of more of a breakdown obviously not to the person but you know maybe maybe by by department for instance that's just one example just you know just to give a kind of a better sense of that yeah distribution retirement are we all like to point out our TMRS rate our retirement system for most of the employees through in the city has in our contribution rate based on that actual study they do each year has increased slightly to 17.46 percent this has doesn't have a large impact on our on our forecast heading into next year but you just wanted to note that increase and what about kind of the number of people that were actually retiring I don't know that number we can try to make an estimate maybe over the past six months or past year on our number of retirees we can get that number okay thank you so I just want to point something out here that I think is we talked about it only once a year we sort of go over it very quickly which is okay but it's a good thing so I want you to look at that tms tmrs rate and let's make sure we all understand what that is and that's for every full-time employee if I'm a correct if I'm correct is that right outside of fire who had the fire outside of the fire pension right right outside of fire pension right that the city of Denton pays whatever that percentage is of their is it their salary or their pay their salary into a retirement tmrs for their retirement if they reach certain investing requirements in addition I believe the city of didn't employees also receive the social security the employer didn't pays the employers portion of social security is that correct so when let's just be very clear about something the city of Denton employees have a wonderful retirement opportunity and system tell me one private company that pays close to 23 percent of retirement benefits to their employees so I really just want to point that out not to the detriment of anybody or saying it's it's a complaint but I want to say that the city of Denton does take care of and pays from a retirement benefit perspective and we've looked at other employee benchmarks I know in the past and that's that's pretty good I mean that's that's pretty good so I appreciate you bringing that up I just didn't want that to sort of go on past because I think that's a great benefit that we provide to the people who work in the city of them yes just on that so the rate increase is due to the merit increase or is it to hold up get the fund hole and right yeah so the team arrest does an actuarial study on each of their entities each year and they produce the number that is required to fund the liability they have so that's that's just the number that is a result of their actuarial study which is based on the number of retirees that are currently retired from the city that are receiving the benefits wanted to point out that any other increases in positions are considered in the supplemental package but we have included three additional firefighters to correspond with fire station 8 this is a strategy this is the second year of a three-year strategy for fire station 8 and FYA 18 19 we added our first three positions for fire station 8 adding three more in 1920 and then in 2021 when we're projecting fire station 8 to be up and running we'll add the captain positions and then have a fully staffed fire station when we're ready to ready to roll with the with fire station 8 did add add these numbers here at the request of council just to show what our employee the DFW which is the most local we could get on the employee cost index what that is for all employers over the past couple years at that two point eight percent increase in two points councilmember Meltzer yeah I just you know explain why why I asked for that just because people's appraisals go up doesn't mean they're they're capable of paying higher taxes right that's not money in your bank account so I wanted some indication of whether people's wages were rising so at some point in slides to come we'll see what the actual tax bill is that we've been issuing to people so you know as a way to gauge whether tax increases are within what people's ability to pay you know whether that's risen or not that's what that's why I asked thank you so I've got a question of clarification on that yeah this says employment cost index is this simply wages or are these other costs in employment I believe the employee costing this includes health and to health it's kind of all-in cost for employees that metric okay so this so this isn't just wages which I think you were is what you were shooting for so this is this is a combination of a lot of things right from the employers cost councilmember Armitage it's a similar question I'm trying to understand you know what those figures mean so this is this percentage it's the increase in in all of those things for in the Dallas Fort Worth right yeah from the last year right so 20 it's based on March so that's the March 2019 number was 2.8 percent over the March 2018 number and then the March 2018 is over 17 so as yet a year-over-year increase is how that ECI is calculated okay and you know maybe this is a silly question but so does that mean the general Dallas area or Dallas and Fort Worth or what they when they look they look at DFW as a metro area that's okay so including including Denton correct so want to talk a little bit about where we're seeing the our effective tax rate a rollback rate in this discussion these numbers will definitely change as we go through the process you're gonna see different numbers but I think it's a good perspective for us to see where we are right now you know as we mentioned our forecast that we'll be looking at in a few slides is based on the effective tax rate which the effective tax rate is essentially that total tax rate that would get the same amount of revenue from our existing homes from existing values as as last year so we're projecting our effective tax rate to be about two and a half cents less than our current tax rate of about 62 cents so we are expecting a decrease again with that effective tax rate we'll show a slide in a moment where you can see how that's been dropping year-over-year with our increased assessed values so there's our effective tax rate want to show our rollback tax rate and this is with last year Tony spent a lot of time explaining to us that the officially calculated effective tax rate sort of didn't do what we sort of think the effective tax rate does so is this our calculation or that that was that was really a one-year kind of a thing because of the freeze I have if you want to get in the detail I have a slide kind of a high and if you really want to get into that I know we don't we don't so this year we won't be on two tracks this year when we talk about a calculated verse it'll just be the one effective tax rate great and real quick does this up to this point anyway because I know the effective tax rate does not include new growth so is that correct here based upon your assumptions that this is what you're thinking factoring out the new growth that you're anticipating the whole calculation based on that so this year the rollback rate is still at 8% the new legislation will go into effect next year so that rollback rate that 63 and again this is gonna change but we're projecting right now at sixty three point seven cents would be the rate that if we were good if we went over that rate we would have there we have a petition for an election beginning next year is when that now drops to three and a half percent and some of that the nomenclature changes as well the effective tax rate becomes the no new taxes tax rate and the rollback rate becomes a voter approved tax rate so you'll see some different naming structures but just kind of for reference to show where we would be sitting next year where that would actually drop to about 61 cents so you know it could limit some of those supplemental packages as we get to that discussion if we were in that scenario already next year and there's our estimated taxable value right now with that nine percent increase over last year here's our tax rate history you know I want to focus on our on this on the the focus that we've had the past four or so years on the effective tax rate and our increased assessed values have have allowed us to see this you know continuing decrease year over year the past few years to our total tax rate and so you can see you know we've had this column here from the presentation that was posted with the average tax bill based on our average taxable values so you can see how how that's affected those those values the tax bill paid you know one point I'll make on the debt service rate is we have based on our debt service expectations for next year we're able to decrease our debt service rate by about a half cent by point five cents to move and move that over to the property tax side as we look at the effective rate so here's our financial forecast and there's a lot of numbers here so I'll try to try to focus on some of the most most pertinent ones you can see our property tax rate here in 1920 this column here you can see our property tax rate which these are the numbers at the effective tax rate that revenue about forty seven point four million that we're expecting from property taxes and then ourselves tax number which is increased over our estimate but still behind what we had budgeted for this fiscal year I would jump back to the estimate quickly you can see heading into our budget last year we anticipated a 1.4 million dollar draw down in fund balance whenever we draw fund balance down that's always for one time expenditures based on you as we step back and dealt with the sales tax issue we implemented a lot of processes did looked at our hiring and did a lot of many other initiatives that has actually gotten us to a point where we're now anticipating to actually be over to actually be over in our in our change in fund balance to a positive as opposed to that drawdown that we had this fiscal year and then heading into next year you can see some of the other pieces that we've discussed here with our franchise fees our transfers you can see that that transfer number is really made up of that admin transfer from the other utilities as we reassessed that allocation on the expense side some of the drop that you see in a few of these categories is related to facilities moving out especially in operations and maintenance and repair a lot of those expenses last year were in from facilities as a department within general fund now that we've moved that out it's less than those amounts kind of the big picture is right now we're heading into 1920 with an estimate estimated 1.2 million 1.3 million dollar surplus that we could look to supplemental items for but do want to point out we have traditionally when we've shown this we've kind of plugged a number in here for supplemental items and knowing that we'll add some amount we've just taken that out this year and we'll show as we were kind of thinking through supplementals in a different way and so we'll show why that makes sense for on the fund balance the percentage is that percentage in an ordinance somewhere or is it just an agreement because it says 23 and then 25 but for somewhere in my mind I think 24 I don't know we have it so in our in our I assume it is an ordinance but in our policies it's a 20% fund balance minimum with a 5% resiliency fund balance so really 20 to 25 percent is our target so you can see we do stay above above that 25% most of these years but I will note as we add supplementals and they have that recurring cost that would affect those out years on what that fund balance would be but we are in that target range that we're shooting for thank you so a couple of kind of related questions number one so whenever I see lists like this with miscellaneous with a big figure you know next to it I'm always curious to know not necessarily everything but you know what are some examples of things that would be within that miscellaneous category so I can get you a we can follow up with a breakdown of that so I don't kind of oh that was too many things that could be kind of contractual services just all kind of the random at line items that we have with that with our budgets we can definitely get you the detail on that yeah yeah that would be great and then and actually a similar thing would be great too for kind of my next question about the licenses and permits fines and fines and fees categories I would love to see just lists of the different categories of fines and fees and licenses and in permits and a breakdown of even if it's not too much trouble kind of year by year that'd be great and that's we can definitely get that for you and I'll just use that as an opportunity to mention our permits you know one of the things that we'll be discussing in the future slides and it will be an emphasis over the next month and who kind of mentioned it earlier in regard to the the permit fees is really taking a look at our permit permit fees our custom service on that and trying to do a deep analysis to see what are our correct charges so we actually have a work session item here in a couple in a couple items to talk about that in more detail great one one piece on the on the transfers site on the transfers expense here we have seen an increase in our tech services transfer based on a lot of a lot of new applications that we have really particularly with police and also an increase in our rec fund transfer of about eight hundred thousand dollars and that does tie into our another initiative of really doing a rec fund study to get that cost of service of whatever our recreation programs cost so quick question on the so on the proposed property tax that's the effective tax rate based upon your son but that includes the taxes from new growth correct and so then what I'm seeing is based upon all of this and I see personnel's up three million dollars yeah so that's that would be just essentially the three percent plus the new firefighters so then with this change in fund balance so there's no discussion here supplementals so it would be when we start discussing supplementals as we get further down the road that's when you start talking about whether there's going to be a tax increase or not from the effective tax rate is that right correct and so we really in a couple slides we really set up supplementals for that exact discussion this year where we've okay first tier would draw down that 1.2 million then additional tiers would be another cent increase to the tax rate and I really appreciate the sort of removing the sort of out years of the supplementals because that always just seemed to confuse me whereas okay here we go we got this and then we'll be able to plug it in as we go through the conversations with the with the five year forecast okay thank you so well we will start that discussion on the supplementals and we're just referring to general fund supplementals right now and all the utilities you've seen them bring supplementals forward and also our internal service funds I brought supplementals forward that's been somewhat of a change from previous years or those some of those have been built into the budgets this year we're really pulling those out so that council can see all those separately in total about five point six million in in supplemental requests four point six million of that roughly of recurring requests and about nine hundred thirty thousand in one time is that based upon the the department's request for supplementals and then council requests for supplementals yes this is a total yes pretty much is what y'all can come up with at this point okay yeah and we'll go through and show you how those are we're tearing those off here in a minute thank you yes councilmember on those some of the individual budgets we've seen had the supplementals built in is that counted here or not we've taken all the supplementals out of the department budgets and basically are they're all right here and you'll see how we prioritize them as we move through the presentation but I do recall during some of those we asked if that was covered within that budget and so during the during the utility budgets that's right because each of those utility budgets is a standalone and general fund because there's a property tax component to it we've treated those in isolation I think a couple other comments that I know David will get to but this is a snapshot in time we've got two studies ongoing right now the rec fund and what that cost of service is we're going through all the programs making sure it's worthwhile but that funds about a million dollars upside down so that subsidy would be is built into the general fund right now the development services department as well those those costs that we're taking on to make sure that we're interfacing with the development community that funds about three and a half million dollars upside down so we're doing a cost of service analysis I'm not sure when the last time we did that was in Denton but we're doing it right now to make sure that we can have a policy discussion with you moving down the road in terms of how much of those costs we should be recouping based on what council does with both of those studies it will have a direct impact on paring back the potential tax increase so all that's related today this is a snapshot in time but those two cost of service studies are gonna be very important from a tax policy perspective to follow up on that the rec fun that you're talking about is upside down does that have something to do with an auditorium that we talked about or is that just part part of it is actually is an editorial budget that terms in the journal fund those programs that where we collect these to sustain the programs that's upside down about a million so we're basically tearing that apart as well as our cost of delivering planning zoning and building services to the development community so those those policy discussions will be brought back to you soon but whatever decisions we make there we will start tearing back any potential tax recommendation property tax recommendations I just want to make sure everybody understands that's how this will work so question for for Todd so can you explain exactly what you mean by by upside down a million dollars upside down it means if it means if we're having to hire staff and take on two million dollars of costs to provide all the recreational programs and services but we're only collecting a million okay so we're right got it we have we have underestimated correct million correct and on the development services side same thing we've we've been able to move everything this year into one fund to show what it costs us to deliver services development community just like we do with the impact fee discussion and we're able to show that if we're if it's if we've got ten million dollars of costs that we're incurring to provide those services we're only collecting six and a half million through fees so we need to kind of work our way through this summer and talk to you about that and connect can I ask just in terms of thinking forward to that when when impacts are when when when fees are considered to address an imbalance like this our impacts looked at use is it kind of a use-by-use or is it spread out evenly or some holistic some combination of factors on the rec center it would be program by program so we'll be able to literally say what this program costs X receive why are back in fees on the development services side those are fixed costs in terms of staffing contracts that sort of thing so that's that's a little bit easier to identify and manage for you but in the past historically there's been a kind of blending and a sequestering of the of the rec fund and our park staff over the last year has worked with us to pull that apart so we know exactly what it cost to deliver those services and we're able to have a intelligent policy discussion with you now thank you so much so just wanted to go into a little more detail of what our strategy is with presenting the supplemental packages to you this year an attachment that we have with with this item is our first kind of breakdown of where we from from city manager perspective have ranked our supplementals again this is going to change as we go through the process leading up to the proposed budget but we've we've inserted inserted those supplementals into these tiers so the first tier essentially can be paid for with our surplus right now in 1920 and then we've essentially come up to about one point one one to one point one million dollars for each tier so that it equates pretty evenly to a one cent tax increase so to kind of make to make it as simple as possible we can find the first tier and then each additional tier would be a cent tax rate increase almost simple enough could you just translate the one cent to dollars on the average bill because nobody's gonna have a one cent increase right no right if that's a rate but what would that do to the average person's tax bill we can get the exact amount I'm out for you on that I could make a guess but I'd rather just but this this is a the comments that I just made just so the council can interpret this we try we've spent quite a bit of time trying to put these tiers together so we can explain to you if we've got if we're currently we've got about four and a half million dollars of subsidy built into the general fund so for the rec fund and development services we work our way through this summer if we decide that we're going to cut that four and a half million down we're not gonna recoup everything let's say we're gonna recoup half what will happen is you automatic it will automatically take that tier four and five away so you wouldn't be looking anything more than a one or two set over the effective rate so because we're eliminate the more you eliminate those subsidies the less those two tiers start going away every one point one million so I don't want people to rush out there saying they're recommending a four cent tax increase we're not we're just showing you in order to fund the all the supplementals that they're recommended this is what it would cost right now but we still have you know four and a half million dollars in play and you and need your direction on how much of that four and a half we should start recouping so that's how this interplays with this slide so here's one to show you have the detail of all of our tears but to show the way that we have the tears broken out right now is we have the first tier really with our with the council initiatives that we've heard as priorities from council over the past few months through this fiscal year you see that kind of that 1.3 million that would kind of eat up that surplus those are when you look at the detail on that you see that's largely related to the pest mitigation that's been a conversation over the past few meetings and the homeless initiatives which eat up a good portion of that 1.3 million and then a few a few other council initiatives that we have detailed in that attachment I can pull that up if you'd like or we can just go over at a high level and again as all those supplementals as the departments come forward with their budgets they're going to go into detail on each of those supplementals during their during their process and can definitely answer any questions related to them the next tier that tier two which you know if we find a tier one in this manner would be that once an increase is really focused on public safety with police positions meet confer agreements with police and fire and then a few other a few a few other pieces from the from animal services and public affairs tier three is largely through some dispatch positions and then our parks parks that five hundred eight thousand again that we'll go into more detail on that with the department presents but that's really related to operations and maintenance costs for parks that we've taken on recently that have some the costs that just need to go along with with those parks that that way that we're that we're maintaining now and parks that we're about to take on to maintain so those are costs associated with those that's why we have those ranked here in tier three and then tier four as we go along with some other initiatives so you'll see more detail on this with each of the departments but wanted to just frame the discussion in this way to give you some context as you as you hear each of the departments go through the process so just so that I can associate this slide with the previous slide the tier one is the is the zero tax increase and then the tier two is the one cent one cent one cent one cent you know one cent for each one of the tiers that goes up is that correct yeah I have an estimate for the one cent about $25 yeah it's actually on the next slide right if you just do the subtraction one line to the next so here's where you see that average tax bill just again kind of reinforcing our strategy with the effective tax rate and the tiers going forward and you can see that that change on the tax bill is that average tax bill residential commercial is that every thing combined that's average residential and that 245 is that will not be the number we end up with that was just kind of based on our AV right now but you can see how it's increased each year so unless there's any more questions on the supplementals at that level jump into a home set exemption discussion this is this home set exemption came up as the discussion item during last budget process and then in December we we did a work session on the home set exemption to lay out in detail where we are right now with the home set exemption what our options could be moving forward and then just want to highlight that our any day on a decision for next year for the home set exemption we would have to file that by July 1st so if we were gonna make a change for this upcoming fiscal year we would do that you know obviously sooner rather than later if not if you wanted to make if you'd still wanted to make changes down the road it would take effect in the following fiscal year here's just as a reminder right now we have a point five percent home set exemption and there's a floor of five thousand dollars so essentially because our home set exemptions so low anyone with a homestead exemption on their on their house gets about a five the five thousand dollar home setting homestead exemption per property the maximum for that you can you can allocate for homestead exemption is 20% you know one note that we that we talked through in December was there's been an opinion from the Attorney General the state attorney general and we haven't seen anything to contradict this at this point that you cannot set strict dollar amounts for your home set exemptions now you have to do a percentage so we can't do those increments out from five thousand to ten thousand you have to you have to stick with a percentage we'll continue to monitor that but that's at least the assumptions that we're working on at this time so about the home set exemption I mean this is coming up so soon at July 1st is so we will we be having a special work session on just discussing this well this will be coming before us I assume sure well we have the discussion in December and the thought was we just bring it we bring it up as part of the budget process and definitely if it was the direction from council we can bring it the next the next council meeting and go into more detail if that's if that's what you would like I I definitely support support that oh yeah I'd like to talk about it more okay here's a here's a breakdown of where we're projecting homestead and a lot of this is similar what we presented previously just updated with some our preliminary values we anticipate we look at our current home set exemption has about a five hundred and seventy thousand revenue loss just based on the exempted values which kind of gives some context for any decisions that we would make to increase that you know it would have an impact obviously on our forecast for next year just like to also break that just to show all of our properties all of our non exempt properties 44% have the homestead exemption 29 percent are commercial and then 27 percent are going to be those residential that don't have homestead exemption so rental properties and things like that does that exemption amount include the 50% exemption that when you turn 65 that you get before your taxes freeze sure I will it does not but I have on this slide just kind of a history on obviously we have other exemptions in addition to this but these are kind of the big the most significant either exemptions and also the freeze here so you can see there's about that five hundred and seventy thousand dollar difference from the homestead exemption then our over 65 fifty thousand dollar exemption is listed here so it's separate and there's the impact that we've seen again both of those increasing each year over the past five years and we've also this will be entering our second year of the property tax freeze so here's our estimated right now kind of revenue decrease from the property tax freeze of about one point one million dollars that was about 700 thousand dollars last year and so when we did not have the tax freeze that's when the exemption was enlisted and so now we have both will there be a discussion when we talk about homesteads and exemptions to talk about this again or because I know the tax freeze you can't overdo right it's final it is what it is but the exemption was set by council correct correct that would be at the discretion of social question it sounds like your question your comment is hey before we had the freeze we had the over 65 exemption to help with with taxes but now that we have the freeze do we still need the over 65 exemption to fifty thousand dollars and the question out of that is if you have an exemption are you I mean I know you can add to it but can you take away from it and don't make any bones and I'm trying to say we're gonna I'm just trying to understand what the question was yes well and as we talk about increasing homestead exemption for everyone not that they would lose it just that it would be in a different exemption you know in some way so I just wanted to know what we were playing with when we brought that conversation back I believe it would be just at council discretion but I'll wait and try to get an official word on what the process would be to decrease them Mayor Pro Tem may I add to that request when you come back I'd like to see a mechanism to convert this exemption to those that rent because if you if you think about it at 65 if you don't own a home you don't get the homestead and if your property owners taxes go up they then pass that along so there's no real relief for if you 65 and up and you rent and so I don't know if there's a way to target that I doubt it but I'd like to at least understand that better just for my own and others may understand it perfectly well I just don't understand I want to try to get relief to those 65 and older that rent because values go up those costs get passed along and I don't know if there's a way to incentivize property owners I just would like to understand if there is a mechanism to pass that relief on I'd like to understand sure we can definitely bring that back and kind of and show all the all the state laws that are associated with that I will say you know the homestead exemption is something that is a state state law state regulation so I don't know that there is another vehicle outside of the homestead exemption but we can know and I'm specifically talking about because I share councilmember Brig concerned about the over 65 exemption and the freeze in conjunction target one audience right that my understanding because that's homeowners right yes yes yes so and freezes homeowners right yeah so the 65 and over renters you know I'd like to understand how that that one that we control could possibly I don't know if there isn't there isn't an avenue but as I like to see and we can talk through scenarios on what that impact would be thank you sure well never mind I just had a thought but I'm gonna reserve I'll wait say it later go ahead anybody have any questions so far just to just to be clear on the homestead exemption bring back at the next council meeting options for the homestead exemption talk through all these pieces and obviously would that be in the last meeting and have be ready to act quickly if there is a decision to either move forward this year or next year yes that's my monitor and I'll throw on you probably do this anyway but you know when that comes to us to have a chart of kind of the effect of the homestead exemption at various levels on the various tiers yeah I have that here but we can in later slides but we don't have to go through that right now I can bring that next time great so here's just more detail on and some of our key budget dates as we move forward obviously we'll have department presentations our kind of first set of some internal service funds and some general fund department presentations following this presentation and then over the next three to four meetings each meeting you'll have departments coming in front of you you know each of those departments I'm sure could talk for three or four hours about all the stuff all the things they're doing in their apartments but they're really gonna try to just hit the highlights of their accomplishments over the past year and talk about their next year on some of their goals that they're looking forward to and the financial impacts of those july 26 is when we anticipate to receive those certified values and then internally we'll be working once we get those values to push out that proposed budget as quickly as possible in advance of our August 1st budget workshop where we submit the full proposed budget to City Council and then essentially each meeting after that will be following up with with responding to questions and different different pieces of the budget so next steps we'll continue to revise those estimates and prepare the budget and have that focus on the recreation and development services cost studies well I think we already received some some feedback on the homestead exemption but if there's any other feedback regarding the budget theme or priorities would be welcome to take those now or just hear those as you listen to the departments moving forward one question back on the over 65 $50,000 exemption that's the total amount that's not I mean that's since it was since it was implemented that's the yearly amount that you into the annual amount right I think what would be interesting is if you were able to and if not that's okay to have a maybe a historical context of maybe the last two or three years of how many new over 65 exemptions came online in other words people who turned 65 and took advantage of the exemption just to get an idea of what that increment is because that number will keep growing because is that am I correct in that that correct and you can you can see some of that growth here right yeah actually that's enough you don't need to do the other sorry okay any questions all right thank you very much let's go ahead and take about a five or ten minute break we'll come back and pick up the rest of the work session welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Tuesday June the 18th 2019 it is 2 47 48 we're moving on to our work session agenda item 3e which is receive report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding departmental presentations in preparation for FY 2019-20 proposed budget capital improvement program good afternoon mayor city council members my name is Nick Vincent the city's budget manager I'll be introducing the departments to be presented to you today there are four of them materials management airport public affairs and community development good afternoon mayor council I'm Cassie Ogden director of procurement and compliance here to talk to you about its label as materials management but we also go by procurement and compliance so not to confuse anyone so first off for our accomplishments for this year we are very very excited to announce that we have actually implemented our electronic bidding software ion wave is now live on the city's website so you can go online and check it out you can see all of our upcoming or our open solicitations it's it's currently the application that we use for our vendor registration so our vendors are familiar with that with the software already some of the key things that we've accomplished this year so far we've processed 63 of our requisitions which means in turn our purchase orders in less than three days for a total of a hundred and forty million dollars that's through April so and I just want to give you some context compared to last year this same time we had only processed 39 percent of our purchase orders in three days or less so big shout out to our purchasing group they've been really working hard to streamline some of their processes and make sure they're they're using their time efficiently so I really appreciate all their hard work on this additionally we've already executed 112 contracts through through your approval of City Council up till April so just to give you some context for those we're processing more currently than we have in the past so to date so far this is as of April we've processed 255 total contracts so through council city managers approval and then purchasing's approval levels formal solicitations you can see the numbers from 18 19 year to date versus 17 18 so the RFQ is the request for qualifications RFP is request for proposals PSA is professional service agreements and then IFB is invitation for bid and we've done last year we did a total of 103 or I'm sorry last year we did a total of 165 currently through April this year we've already processed 103 you know we talked about the different tools for procurement on contracts construction which one of those categories with those are those under RFPs is that where those typically the RFP would be the the competitive seal proposal that you talked about this morning and what what mr. squadra was referring to as the hard bid would be the IFB IFB yes okay for bid so it's where lowest price okay thank you so some of our goals for this upcoming fiscal year is really to implement our vendor management software we want to streamline that process because right now we're handling all of our vendor requests through email and we want one stop shop for our vendors to go on update their registration information their insurance and their w9 just how they do business with the city we would like to implement a better process for them and then enhance the transparency of our external website again just making it more user-friendly so we want to add a quick link for open solicitations to the main page of our website as well as add our p-card transactions we get a lot of open record requests for those so effort to be more transparent and proactive why don't we just put it on the website let people look at them and then as well as making the contracts available the contracts are currently available but there's no report as to what they are you just have to know the number to be able to search for them so we're working on that as well and then just adding more vendor information so education on how to do business with the city on our website councilmember Armitage has a question so first I want to say awesome about putting the p-card up on the website that's an excellent idea I love that and can you just say a little bit about auction services exactly what that is and then what what the rationale is for for outsourcing it sure so currently our distribution center our warehouse handles our auction services just for our general item so it's this excludes fleet so not vehicles but when we're getting ready to get rid of you know desks and things that we've we've we've purchased as the city our warehouse staff handles that there's an advertising requirement in the newspaper as well as we do all of the we stream all the phone calls we answer all the phone calls from the public about what's included in the auction we we process the auction through an a Bates currently we completed an operational assessment we had a consultant come in and kind of look at our warehouse operations to see where we could find some efficiencies and that was one of the recommendations that they made is to outsource that because it's spending a lot of staff time and we're getting very minimal revenue back so well and so that sounds like a really good idea and so the the physical items himself would still be housed in the city warehouses just is that right but or with the warehousing also be looking at different options more than likely they would still be on site at the city here we we have three big containers that we we auction them all in one bunch essentially we auction by container and when they're advertised are what kind of venues are they generally advertised in we advertise through the paper okay just through this so that's in the in the right and then through Renee Bates their their website they advertise the upcoming auctions as well okay I will keep my eye out for them so our budget emphasis over this past year and then especially through the upcoming year is really trying to be more responsive to our internal customers as well as our vendors using best practices and then also becoming a strategic partner with our operational departments to make sure that we are procuring their items in a timely manner as well as using technology so we're really looking at we've been looking at automating our systems and processes to reduce those manual processes and to increase our productivity reducing the risk and you can see that through a lot of the contracts we've been giving you we've you've seen an uptick of contracts we've been trying to make sure that we're we're really monitoring our expenditure levels we're not overspending our contracts and then this idea of developing staff so really focusing on training not only our purchasing and warehouse staff but also our end users and our our our departments some cost containment strategies that we've implemented so we've really like I talked about ensuring that our contracts are not overspent I know it seems very very basic but that was not happening in the past unfortunately and so we've tried to we've tried very hard to implement processes and procedures to ensure that we are not overspending our contracts and that before that happens we come to you and increase our expenditure authority and then as well as just ongoing monitoring of our expenditures and ensuring that it is coming to you for approval some of the process improvements that we've implemented the big one that we're very proud of is this 63% of our purchase orders that have been processed in three days or less our goal is really 90% so we're still working we have a ways to go to make that happen but that's been that's been very it's been a year a long time coming and I'm very proud of our staff that's been working on that as well as just standardizing our documentation that's required when staff enter a purchase order and for future process improvements we're currently working on updating our purchasing manual that's been scheduled to come back to council in August that's been a major major project that we've staffed and working on so we're excited to bring that to council and then as well I already mentioned the training materials just making sure that people understand the procurement process what they need to do and to make sure that we can respond to their requests in a timely manner as far as our budget highlights so these are really the revenues for the entire fund the materials management funds this includes warehouse and purchasing and you can see the warehouse sales is the largest number as the sales if we don't see the sales our biggest customers DME if cuz if DME doesn't spend as much or doesn't buy as much from the warehouse then we don't buy as much in inventory so that number really can be reduced depending on DME's workload miscellaneous income that's really our p-card rebate that we receive scrap metal sales vending machine rebates and then our cooperative rebate so I have a question about the auction because it came back up here how is that once a year or I mean how frequently it's currently as needed so as we fill up our three containers that we have we decide we need an auction and we advertise and go out it's it's usually we try to do at least once a quarter and so generally is that office furniture and stuff so when new furniture is bought the old stuff is brought to you into your correct so there's a process that this every department has to follow as far as they have to have they have to look make it available to another department for a certain amount of time and if no one else claims it then they have to fill out a form and justify the need for disposal and then as David mentioned earlier really drawing down the fund balance so you can see the use of reserves we're trying not to keep a fund balance and materials management anymore so we've been slowly using our our fund balance over the last couple of years for the expense side again you can see the inventory this directly links to the warehouse sales that you saw on the previous slide so if we don't if we don't sell it and then we don't buy it essentially other points I wanted to bring up is the operations that's really where we're paying for a lot of our software and licenses and things like that and consultants as well as our cost of service that's really our cost for our other internal service funds like tech services if you don't have any other questions I'll keep moving position summary I know there there was a question we've had a lot of movement in our fund over the last several years so I'm gonna try to do my best to explain this as clearly as possible so in FY 18 purchasing added as another buyer in FY 19 we transferred two FTEs from city manager's office so myself and our compliance officer were transferred over to purchasing and then we added administrative assistant position in purchasing in FY 20 well actually currently this year we've also added an additional paralegal which is why it's showing up in your in the FY 20 baseline budget and then we are requesting to add a part-time procurement assistant and then with warehouse we have transferred so we had staff that were currently funded through DME that worked at the pull yard so they did the same things as our warehouse staff logistics wise they were inventory management but we brought them under our fund and they're still our houses at DME but and paid for by DME but they're now reporting to warehouse so that's some of the movement and I'll stand for any questions that you may have questions so when you look at the personnel services it looks like quite a bit when you look at other departments so I think it was at 20 I'm looking actually at the employees at the number take away the warehouse but okay yeah so it's 15 in the department and I think you've said something about hiring a paralegal correct and so do you normally use our our city attorney's office for anything as well that you would like to have somebody on your staff to so we currently have a paralegal that it's a it's already filled position but it really helps us with with our contracts and then the discussion back and forth with legal they have a they don't like it when I use the term legalese but we sometimes don't always talk the same language and so that kind of helps us and as well as they help us with our contracts so we implemented our new contract management software this year and our paralegal has been helping us straighten up our contracts and make sure that we're able to report and understand what we have and that's really the impetus for using a paralegal yes that's my mom I just wanted to add I know that the the volume of contracts that they have that the this department was in need of someone who knew how to put contracts together to be parent before they went to review for the various departments including our own it's a very there's a huge volume of contracts and so they needed that assistance so we suggested a paralegal might be able to give them that that assistance that they're needing and which they did hire that person didn't the contracts still go through your department after when they're put together then they are sent over through docusign for Mac Ryan one to review and ultimately approve and so that has cut down on the the number of corrections necessary by using the paralegal on their end yes I just wanted to applaud the food purchase justification form which I think is great to reduce overall expenditures and ensure competitive selection process just reading here from this slide I just wanted to mention that this also ties in to you know discussions we've been having count as a council about zero waste and cutting down on food waste as well and I would love to see moving forward I guess let's see when when was this implemented the new form I think so we have a food vendor application that's live on our website right now so anyone that would like to apply to supply food to the city can go on and fill out an application we also sent the application with a letter to over 400 vendors that were registered with the health department last month I believe I'm looking to Lori correct me if I'm wrong so I believe it went live last month okay so so obviously too early to have to track the savings but if I would love to see in a year you know to look back and to see well I don't know if I'll be here on council next year but still is regardless member of the public I would love to see what the what the savings are and also kind of as far as amount of food ordered what what that difference is that would be would be really good to see and that's one of the reasons that we're putting the p-card transactions on the website too is because we want to add some categories so you can really see what in a broad sense what the city is spending in those categories and one of those being food so we're gonna have that report on the website as well thank you thank you yeah that was something when I got on council first I was I was shocked by you know the the amount of food we had left over after you know having these you know box lunches and things and I feel like I've noticed a reduction in the in the amount of that so I can at least see visibly a difference I heard from the I have some talks with the auditor about it and so now I'm just really pleased to see this is happening moving forward and I don't think anyone's going to go hungry is a you know it is a result of this attempt to just kind of rain in the waste and and make have some savings as a result any other questions thank you very much thank you afternoon mayor members of the council I'm Scott Gray the airport manager I've have the privilege today to provide you an update on the proposed budget for next fiscal year and I won't go through each of these line items here for the accomplishments or the goals but I just want to point out just a couple that I think are very important as you know we're in the process of constructing our parallel runway should be completed in the September time frame one of the accomplishments we did complete this year was coordination with text dot to go ahead and get the lighting grant moving forward so we can try to tie that into the end of the construction unfortunately I think it's going to be a little bit later in the in the calendar year but it is something that's extremely important to make that a fully functional runway the other item that council is familiar with is the part 139 evaluation that we work to get FAA out out here to do that is an item that has been kind of in the books for a while we took ownership of that and it was moving it forward I do want to let the council know that this budget does not include any 139 expenses that will be something we'll be bringing back separately as we continue to analyze what those costs will be particularly construction costs some items that would be necessary for 139 would probably be items that we would do anyway so we'll break that down into specifically what would be a 139 expense and maybe an annual occurring expenses if we were to perform 139 operations councilmember breaks to that point to the opposite if that does occur do we find discounts in insurance or any other kind of thing that we pay for if we do get that certification I do not believe that would be the case but I would certainly work with risk to see if there's an opportunity there I know the American Association of Airport executives does have contractual relationships with some insurance companies that do provide discounts for airports that are under their umbrella so that might be something that we could certainly explore so if I could sum up the accomplishments is continue to be one of the busiest and best general aviation airports in the state so how can I sum up the goals there without going through all those to be the best general aviation in the state that's really our goal and it should continue to be our goal we we have a fantastic airport here at Denton and with this runway coming on and the ability to continue our growth on the west side will be significant for us moving forward budget emphasis I think really these three items are set the foundation for us to really solidify this airport moving forward a number of the things that I've done since I've got here it is really to look at what's been done in the past move those things forward if possible and really kind of look at our management practices to make sure that we can ultimately reach self-sufficiency cost containment strategy one that I always throw up there and and I think it was talked about earlier with scrub the budget I guess I'm old school I use zero based budget same concept we look at our budget every year every single line item is there any one-time cost that we program that can come out and do we need to take a look at moving some of our items to specific line items so we can track them better that's really what we do on a regular basis we do review our our budget on a monthly basis as well so process improvements and I think the two through four there are ones that I just talked about moving forward but one that is continuous and is very important is is the city continues to grow is our connection with development services they have a very important job to to get development through the system whether it be on airport or adjacent to our airport and we have a responsibility to ensure that those developments don't impact our airspace so we are invited to every meeting the development services does for any proposed development actually in the entire city but we focus our efforts around the airport to protect that investment and make sure that there isn't anything that will move forward that could jeopardize the future of our airport and we were very pleased that we have been able to continue that effort the other items there are really those those foundation items our revenue primary revenue sources our leases so as we have stood in here in front of you in the past there was some lease issues that we have addressed but we need some we need some good software to make sure that that stays at the attention of everybody and then safety being one of our number one priorities and as we move forward with the potential of 139 inspection work order software will help us be able to meet those demands of 139 requirements as well just a highlight of some of the revenue and expenditure items for the airport as you recall we we brought forward an appraisal of our vacant properties set in fair market values for those properties we have since brought two leases forward to the council at fair market value that fair market value again helps us to to reach the self-sufficiency mark we are seeing a slight increase in fuel flowage again our second largest revenue source which basically is not just necessarily tied to operations but we are seeing a little bit of that tied to operational levels of our corporate operators they pump more fuel into the larger aircraft we do have a contractual increase that will be coming forward which is our FBO commissions which is a percentage of gross on hangars our leases have a specific date where that triggers and increases additional percentage so that is in our proposed budget as well so on to the five-year forecast we do not have any supplemental so you won't see a separate supplemental five-year forecast for the airport this year did you want to point out just a couple of things and primarily if you look at the at the net revenue and expense line you'll see that there's a negative there so we are operating at a loss currently and in a lot of that loss that you see in these next few years is really associated with us catching up on on maintaining our our facilities some of our pavements have not been touched in a number of years so we've actually self-funded by drawing down some of our fund balance in doing a four-year program to fix all of our pavements we were lucky enough to have a text on aviation come out and do that analysis for us we just got that report several weeks ago which identified some of our pavements has been in some some areas as being in poor conditions so we want to use that funding to go ahead and get those addressed as quickly as possible would you I mean to create a whole extra task but I mean do you have a sense if you were to separate out kind of one-time refurbishment not necessarily the repeat maintenance you know what your profitability would look like then so if you if you look at that line item our our withdrawal right now for the next four years is $250,000 a year so if we were not taking that out of this these line items we would be at least as an operational self-sufficiency level at this point the 250 years what you're putting into into kind of catching up on refurbishment yeah that also kind of helps answer my question because looking at the gas royalties I see they're constantly decreasing every year and so with that negative already at the bottom it's gonna just keep getting larger but you said the 250 is coming out and that will eventually go back in which will help make up some of that difference but do we have a plan going forward to try to help make up some of that revenue loss yes and that plan is to get to the west side to our hundred and fifty acres of developable property on the other side again some of these things that we're doing now in the last year or so and moving forward is really kind of setting that foundation to give us that solid ground to move to that other side access being one of the issues that we have talked to council that we're still working on a solution with be that the northbound access road or some other means to get over there that will be the success of our airport moving forward is that hundred and fifty acres of development so Scott on this if I recall the debt service is in the general fund there's a debt service associated with the airport that used to be in the airport fund which would show up on this on these presentations but that was moved I guess is a year or two ago to the to the general fund what is that that service amount annually that I mean just so we can sort of have a context here looks like finance is willing to step up and answer that for you sure I do the number I have in front of me it was moved in 1515 16 and that amount was about 440,000 at that time a year service a year is that what it is now I would so the highlight just a little bit on the revenue side again our major revenue sources is our land leases so although we have some historical leases that are in place that may or may not be at fair market value ours moving forward are and that's significant as we get to that other side of the airport you will see on that line item that that we missed our budget this year primarily because there was a couple of major leaseholds that didn't go through as we had hoped the developer wasn't quite ready to move forward those are the two leases that have now gone forward we should recapture that and we do have a couple of other interested tenants that are looking at the remaining parcels that we have so we hope to exceed that in the in the upcoming years most of the other items you see here are rather small increases I did want to point out the one that I mentioned earlier the FBO concessions you see a 110 budget item there for this year we are going to have a little bit more anticipated revenue primarily because they're full so we get a little more revenue from that but then a fairly significant jump that's that contractual one percent did increase there that's my breaks so go ahead Jesse did you yeah okay I just go ahead yes well just on the use of reserve line the 15 16 the nine hundred and sixteen thousand which is close to a million do you recall what that was pulled for I actually don't I can get that for you because that was actually before my time but I can certainly find out what and then we have the the two years that does not pull in any use of reserve and then we continue again do you know what what that is for and why that's being let me let me have an IOU on that we'll get you the specifics on that line okay thank you two-part question on the west side development and also the part 139 and how those may tie together what's the target market for future development on the west side and then also do we have a target market for potential scheduled service carriers if we get the part 139 ironed out let me let me start with the the latter first which is the 139 question the intent of 139 was not proposed in the master plan or previous documents to attract scheduled service it doesn't mean that it couldn't happen usually that type of activity is generated based on the airline's interest in serving a market not the airport's desire to have that service so sometimes it will happen sometimes it won't we're not moving forward with the intent to have scheduled service at this time our 139 examination so far has been to support large aircraft greater than 30 seats which is basically a 737 which we have a base one now to serve the university market for their sports charters as well as help possibly get some additional activity from race days at the at the race the lap that the second the first question you had was target market for the for the west side the airport master plan was completed in 2015 it did identify some in just planning terms what may go out there it showed small t-hangers all the way up to another FBO maybe terminal building on that side what I would suggest the target market on that side and we're work going to work with economic development and had had some conversations with development services as well the planning of the 288 corridor and I think I've seen some items that maybe warehousing is some item that's obviously around the airport now but that corridor being more of a business related corridor would draw more of the corporate user to our airport which on that side of the airport would be in conjunction with that type of development so I would tend to say it may still be kind of a combination we it really depends on the users desire there is a significant demand in the metroplex for t-hangers for small general aviation airports every airport has a waiting list nobody has enough of those facilities there's really a reason why because they don't really pay for themselves or make enough money unfortunately that's why that nobody else is building them either but there is a possibility with a large track of land that we may be able to find a developer that would be interested in introducing more t-hangers to our facility but I would say another opportunity might be flight school operations another FBO and corporate environment on that side one question I had and I heard I guess it's a couple years ago that and I didn't realize this that you know it like a DFW there's a tremendous amount of business that comes in from don't know how say but flowers that people ship flowers from all over the world and they fly into DFW and of course they have to have refrigeration facilities and stuff like that do we have either through our economic development partner out at the airport a process whereby we can try to identify different businesses like that and what would be required at the airport to try to bring that type of business into the airport do we have that or if not do you think that would be a good idea would that just sort of be a do other general aviation airports such as ourselves go after that kind of business or is it just simply what we're doing here as well certainly mayor most general aviation airports don't look at cargo okay our airport though is is let me just say it's a better general aviation airport we have a larger runway we have the capability of maybe some limited cargo not UPS or some facility like that that will scare the neighbors of having late-night flights we do have a little bit of cargo that comes in now but no we don't have any specific metrics that looks at that certainly we deal quite a bit with our in internal economic development department so we'll ask that question if there's a way to look at that just curious we certainly have the capabilities to accommodate a larger aircraft if we had to and I don't know what they would use to actually ship those but we certainly look okay yes that's member armature that's a follow-up question I had not thought of that but um if you could tell me and what is the largest size cargo capacity plane that our runways can fit and whatever the answer is I'm not gonna know what it means but I'm gonna write it down and look it up certainly our runway has a 100,000 pound weight capacity at the moment so most of the cargo airplanes that you might be familiar with a 737 DC 9 an MD 80 again you all know what those are and I apologize I don't have pictures for you to show you what those are those are typically actually heavier than that but because we don't get very many of them we can provide one-time approvals for them to come in to operate but generally they're somewhere around 140,000 pounds is where we like to target our limit as we look at future capital projects of our existing runway we will be looking at repairs to the runway and as part of that maybe an actual overlay that will bump us a little bit to 150,000 range so we can just accommodate those airplanes on a regular basis if we need to okay thank you just carry thank you the only operator that we have on a regular basis that it utilizes aircraft to that side is Peterbilt they do fly in very periodically a number of items that they may need on the line Councilmember Briggs in the you just said existing runway and you kept saying existing runway so is our new the new runway is it the same weight capability no ma'am it the new runway was designed to accommodate the majority of our existing fleet it is a 5,000 foot runway our existing is seven and two feet our existing is 100,000 pounds the new runway is 30,000 pounds so most of our corporate smaller corporate airplanes will be able to use that that that runway now as we go through time another master plan maybe there's an idea to look at that runway maybe it needs to be pavement strength increased to accommodate some larger airplanes in addition to our existing that is not currently in the plans at the time okay moving on from revenue to expenses there are a couple of line items here that you'll see with some big jumps a lot of that was just reallocating them to the correct categories for tracking purposes you can see the two hundred and fifty thousand dollar line item there at the bottom was what I talked about for the pavement maintenance program that we are moving forward the personnel cost I had mentioned earlier is we have a cost savings due to some change in personnel and then the typical three percent I think is what was was used there the rest of the line items are relatively straightforward if it was explained before forgive me so what was the thought process behind moving the debt service off the you know because it was fairly obvious the fun couldn't sustain itself so it was generally seen as an amenity of the of the city and something that by removing the debt service and having that put into the O&M I'm starting to be a debt service rate it allowed the airport opportunity to sort of break break even from that point on it's it's one way or another I mean you could have left it I think I think the other thing was just kind of concerned that if it was left on the books there they'd be showing half a million dollar deficits each year with a significant transfer in from the general fund so it was six one half a dozen the other optics yes thank you from a personnel standpoint no changes of our six personnel that we have we have three in the field and three in the office I mean we will continue to do that again as we get into the 139 examination as of right now we believe that we can handle the requirements of 139 with our existing staff but if we see something or hear something from another airport that's doing it that we need to look at including training and so forth then we'll bring that forward separately the five-year capital program again there's the 250 and I won't belabor that we do get a $100,000 grant each year from text dot we match it it's a 50/50 grant we take advantage of that believe it or not there are some airports that do not but it is something that we use for projects that are not FAA grant fundable it's really a maintenance grant and lastly is the text dot grant matches as I mentioned the primary runway has a project that's coming up because of the significant savings we had in the in the parallel runway construction project there was already funds set aside for that that will actually fund this without actually getting any additional debt we have requested from text on to have a meeting which now is scheduled for the 28th to discuss our our airport capital improvement program that they have currently on the books it has some projects that I think have just been brought along over the years that I don't believe is is is got the priority that we need to focus on our primary runway to make sure that it's capable to handle all of the traffic that's interested in coming to the airport so we're having that meeting here and at the end of June and I think we'll just see a reallocation of our projects it won't really have a major impact on what we propose to move forward with as far as funding goes though I'd be happy to answer any additional questions good afternoon mayor city council I'm Sarah Kuechler I'm the director of public affairs I'll be doing the presentation today for public affairs department our department consists of communications DTV and community development division the community development division will do a presentation following mine so this presentation will just focus on communications and DTV and I'm going to try to move through this quickly so stop me with any questions as far as accomplishments from this past year a few key ones are listed on the screen I just want to highlight that first one we have enhanced and expanded our improving Denton campaign and communications so these are ongoing efforts to inform the public and our residents about upcoming and ongoing construction projects this year we created the 2019 construction guide we're working on a mid-year update right now which will go out to all residents at the end of July we also launched the ways traffic app we created a new interactive map on our website redesigned our website pages as well where there's much more information on active projects as well as increased our social media and next-door project notifications as far as our goals for next year it will continue to be a focus of ours for the improving Denton campaign especially given if there is a 2019 bond program for educational materials for the public we're also going to continue to focus on our digital engagement platforms and we're currently evaluating our metrics and how to best use these and I'll show you a couple of the metrics in a few slides from now so as far as budget emphasis and these are kind of five key points listed on the screen where our team has identified where we want our focus to be in terms of improving resident and business satisfaction telling our story improving the unity of communications throughout the city providing outstanding customer service and then collecting and using that data to make more efficient work and this is an overview slide of all the services that our department provides I'm not going to go through all of these but I do want to just highlight these are ways in which we are trying to tell the city's stories and form a resonance of programs events services news upcoming policy things that may may require some citizen input so kind of the major six areas here we handle our media and public relations marketing creative services video and broadcast services digital strategy and online communications all of our community and neighborhood relations and then intergovernmental affairs which is our federal and state so under public relations there's the crisis and emergency communications I know that you know if there's a gas line cut or something that it's sent out there was a question on social media and I sent it to the the city manager to you if somebody's water if they're a utility customer and their water has been disrupted or is off if there is a way to communicate that to the the area say via you know text or through an existing system that we have we can explore that with our utilities and customer service to see if there's any additional opportunities for those notifications usually because they are so limited until a block or so it's not really efficient to use our social media channels which have a lot of followers on them but maybe we can look and see if there's any additional ways in which we can notify when there is a water outage and just looking at the screen I just want to say kudos to you guys you'll see that there's not very many staff and you guys do a whole lot in the city so I just want to thank you for that I'm so as far as cost containment strategies and this year we did hold some positions vacant for a while to get some temporary cost savings as well as to understand how they should be structured appropriately to meet our goals and then DTV continues to use student volunteers and interns to assist with the production and also provide that real world real-world experience to the students and interns that they need to continue to move on in their careers so process improvements again if you are listed on the screen I do want to touch on that first one in regards to the engaged Denton application we're continuing to use that software and we've set up service request types that go automatic routing so if it's a certain request it will go to that assigned department we also have the ability to reassign in the background so the end user never knows that it's being reassigned and having that smooth transition and handoff as far we're also using some different features through that app there's an escalation service level so if a resident isn't responded to or the status hasn't changed in a certain amount of days it will then be escalated and we can follow up with that that department that is handling that request to make sure it's finished or at least communicated with the resident yes so and these are these are things that we've discussed on the community engagement committee which I a council subcommittee which I love being on I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to text a phone text alerts and kind of what the plans are at least kind of what what you're looking into about you know how to increase capacity for residents to get text alerts and updates and I say alert but just updates on their phone on emergencies construction issues that they're following anything else that they would want to follow I recently heard since our last meeting you know somebody in Sanger said that in Sanger we get updates on our phones on all kinds of things so I know that there there's some kind of barriers with the technology you know that that we're using now so I was wondering if you could just kind of speak to that what it's like with the limitations are now and then moving forward with the plan what the plan is yeah that's something we could explore further to see what would be appropriate what do our residents really want to receive through text to make sure that we're not overwhelming them either so we've gone to look for that that public input as well and we don't really have the software right now to do those text notifications it may be possible through our code red system but again that has traditionally been an emergency only system so we'd really need to look at all the implications but we can explore the continue to explore those possibilities I'm going through the next year okay thanks yes is there any tracking of sort of the regular phone way for citizens to make inquiries and is there if we seen a dent in that based on people shifting to using engaged in that's a good question I'm not able to answer that I know some departments keep track of incoming calls but I don't know that we have a city wide count on customer service calls we may have some indication from customer service utilities but they're probably more related to utility bills so here is a slide showing some of our key metrics and dashboard and so in terms of the engaged dent in application since October 1st we've handled over 3,000 service requests and that's citywide and we have about 85 staff users using that system so very collaborative nature to process those requests as far as our social media total engagements are those clicks like shares comments and impressions are basically that a resident has seen it you can see in both these graphs right around January of this year we've had a significant uptick in both those areas and that has come with the addition of hiring a social media coordinator who's helping us to do some of that further engagement and notification so we can we're able to tell that difference and we're able to actually pull monthly reports and understand which posts get the most interaction so we can better inform how we're doing those posts and then the other thing to highlight we have our web page views total social media followers we continue to see this increase year-over-year really trying to push those as a main source of information for our residents as well as our website and then we've gone over this before in terms of the public meetings recorded from DTV so challenge challenges I'm just continuing to expand service delivery without increasing expenditures for staff continuing to look at our digital platforms and different tools that we have available to us now and that's the opportunity there so far as budget highlights do you want to point out a couple areas where you'll see some fluctuations so it from 17 to 18 to 18 19 in terms of the personnel services this is actually the result of a reorganization and that's when we created the centralized communications office so it was a transfer from other departments it wasn't an increase in personnel from this year to this year but in going from 18 19 to 19 20 we did have the addition of two new positions one which was focused mostly on that social media and digital engagement and then the other which is handling all of the construction project notifications for the city as well as additional duties the other thing I want to highlight is in materials and service supplies line item we did add in from 17 to 18 18 and 19 the resident update newsletter it's about 150,000 for our additions each year and then in the operations line item again this was a transfer from finance miscellaneous to our department for our legislative contracts as well as our engaged Denton software citizen survey some of those items so that they could be consolidated and live with our department I'm happy to answer any questions on this screen I just want to share that you know over the last year so I've received numerous comments positive comments about the newsletter so I really appreciate that you guys have done some really good out-of-the-box thinking on several initiatives so I just really appreciate your staff continuing to find ways that we can better engage you know our citizenry thank you and so this is the position summary so again as I had kind of just highlighted this was that this year to this year was the transfer of positions and the reorganization structuring and then the addition of the two new positions from the 18 19 budget to next year's budget is reflected here and then our supplemental package summary and so we are requesting two supplementals as well as we have one which was a City Council initiative so the first I do want to highlight is the construction guide they're not ranked here appropriately the construction guide is actually in the tier two supplementals and that's to have two construction guides per year that are mailed out to all residents so just including that funding for next year's fiscal budget and then the second item we have is a public participation platform so this would barely allow us to buy the software to have a digital home for all of our public engagement right now we seek feedback through citizens in a number of different ways which is great but sometimes the information comes in in different formats and it's really hard for the all of the departments to analyze what feedback are they receiving and have the tools necessary to compile that report and provide it to the policy decision makers so that you have all of that same public input available so some of the tools we've looked at that other cities use is a software and it allows you to have to tell some background on the topic attach all the relevant documents that might be there pictures maps so forth they'd have all the project contact information you could have a dialogue with whoever that project manager is there's a number of different engagement tools which you can have a basic survey you could have a map available and ask residents to pinpoint on a map where they think certain investments or improvements should be made and all this could then be systematically compiled and delivered in one report to management or to council or to our committee needs that information we just saw it as an opportunity we know we're increasing that as a goal for the city and some of our departments are doing it in different ways if we could have one home one tool it might facilitate some of that input and then the analysis of the input that we receive and then the last one is the closed camp closed captioning this would be for council meetings only and it would be post-production and I think it would take a few days in order for that closed captioning to appear on the council meeting and is that the that's the closed captioning that would also come with a transcript service that's correct and remind me is that 21,000 per year yes that would be 21,000 per year there's also an equipment charge but that could be handled through the PEG fund because this is an ongoing expense it cannot be covered underneath the peg fund I want to make a request that when in in November when the when there's going to be training for committee chairs on on minutes that there be some consideration of including once or if this gets voted on you know to by council for the next year's budget that these transcripts be included in the minutes as a matter of course it's that but is that I think you said the 21,000 was for council meetings only so that's correct that would be that would be something that would be additional that we need yes this covers up to 50 meetings per year so based on the number of council meetings we would oh so that does not okay so that that does not apply to would not apply to committee correct committee meeting just 50 public meetings per year so we assume it would be City Council but it but theoretically could could be any spread out I'm not making a case either way but it's if we vote to approve this we're not committing to only being up to 50 meetings per year so any 50 meetings that you would choose yeah thanks you have questions any other questions all right thank you very much appreciate that I do have just a couple of slides on our cable TV just a couple slides on our cable TV peg fun this is our special revenue fund the public education and government peg fee per state statute all cable providers collect this fee from cable subscribers each month in the city of Denton our peg fee is set at 1% of the gross revenue of the video services provided this fund is for capital expenditures only so do you want to take a minute to go over some of our planned expenses for the next budget year we do have about 300,000 for production and maintenance so you'll see in that first line item about 150,000 for upgrades to the control room this is the replacement of equipment every four to five years that equipment is cycled out and replaced to have the latest technology make sure it stays operational we also have included expenses for remote meeting production suite and basically this is all this equipment would come in a cart and we'd be able to produce meetings off-site so for City Council luncheons or other committee meetings that take place at another city facility we would still be able to record them and have them actually be live right now we do not have that capability we're limited to where the equipment is and then there's a few other upgrades audio upgrades for one production camera a digital edge at its station and then just allowing for maintenance to be included in these equipment person purchases so if something goes wrong with the equipment we do have those maintenance in the agreements in addition and we budget for this each year is the Denton peg channel grants for a total of forty thousand we provide a grant of ten thousand to each peg channel so that's UNT the public access Denton ISD and TWU and then each year we have a contingency line item of a hundred thousand this may not be used but it does allow us if something breaks or fails during the year to go in and be able to purchase it from the peg fund without doing a budget amendment first so here the budget highlights so as I described the 340 and planned expenditures is shown here and then the contingency of a hundred thousand and that will leave us with a fund balance next year of still one point one million dollars in the peg fund happy to answer any questions you might have I just was sort of asking myself why is there such a large fund balance I think it's just accumulated through the years and I also think if we were to move to a new facility eventually where we wanted to outfit that room that could be used as well that's an eligible expenditure underneath underneath the peg fund I just want to put out we've got Peg Hinklewolf over here from the Denton Record Chronicle you've got your very own fund I want to make sure she was noting that any other questions now I'm done afternoon mayor council Danny Shaw community development I'm here to present the budget presentation for our department our divisions use me if community development is based on our consolidated plan goals of making sure that we are providing decent housing in the community a suitable living environment and provide economic opportunity for for folks who are experiencing or of lower moderate income some of the accomplishments we wanted to highlight is of course we're making our progress towards our five-year consolidated plan we're about to enter into our final year of that plan and then we have assisted with housing tax credit application this year that we did provide a resolution of support for did not get funded but we were able to process that application and then we're continuing to strengthen our housing crisis response system with the goal of making sure we have the right data and information to help you all make decisions on how we provide services to people are experiencing homelessness for our 1920 goals we will enter into the beginning of the process for our planning for our next five-year consolidated plan for 2020 through 2024 that is a lengthy planning process for us it says it's just like our and didn't plan 2030 or the city strategic plan it takes a little bit of time for staff to get into that process and develop that plan and then we're also finalizing the setup for the administration of the new affordable housing fee grant program that council has initiated of course we fall under a kfa for providing safe livable family friendly communities and we do that through the creation and preservation of affordable housing and we do that with housing assistance programs by collaborating with our nonprofit community housing developers and utilizing data to make sure we have a good understanding of what the affordable housing need is in Denton we also do public facility projects with the federal funding that able that enables us to provide improvements to neighborhood infrastructure and some of the assets that the city owns like parks and public facilities when they benefit low and moderate income families and finally through social services we provide grants to our nonprofit partners who are helping people who are the most vulnerable such as those people experiencing homelessness victims of domestic violence the elderly and others some of the ways in which we've been working on our budget management and organizational efficiencies as in previous presentations we did hold a position vacant position I previously held to give us some temporary cost savings and also to give us an opportunity to look at what were the best usage of our staff resources and then another way in which we assist in in the in the city is we collaborate with other departments to provide some of those grant administration function so that those departments don't have to do that and resulting in no duplication of services councilmember great says a question can you describe the fair share program with the police department yes so it's based on population percentages of people are receiving services and so the police department provides funding to Children's Advocacy Center for for the provision of services to victims children childhood victims of abuse and neglect and we coordinate with them on that yes yeah they do the background work of doing the budget for that and then providing the contracting after that we take it over and do the ongoing annual monitoring so we're doing monthly reporting reviews and doing the payment processing for that again it just reduces their need to have someone on staff to do that work if I recall are we I think I'll ask you the formal question are there any other cities that do the fair share program as far as because I think we pay the fair share is calculated by advocacy center and the police department in collaboration with one other is there anybody else I have to look I don't know that for sure I think Louisville is the only other city contributes but I would want to make sure that most other cities do not and then of course we embrace our focus on our core values of being transparent and one of the ways in which we did that this year was to make sure that the public has access to our committee agendas which were not previously posted through legislature and we also did our video of our final recommendation sessions that our committees did for that again to help the public see what kinds of decisions those committees were making recommendations to you all for how to utilize the funding we're looking at making sure that council has an opportunity to review all of our program guidelines one example of that was our home improvement program and then just in the new program and then just kind of been working through with the staff to refocus our how we do our team meetings to make sure we're working on the real real focus on what we're celebrating our successes and identifying what our outcomes are each week so that we're better better positioned to make sure we're achieving our goals for the department there's really no major changes for us in the general fund budget we do have just what it happens annually an annual increase to what's the human services grant based on a population calculation and then council has the initiative for the affordable housing fee grant program so that did increase our budget by that seventy five thousand dollars then you'll see what our funds are that were expected received from CDBG and home and there's no general fund revenue generated by the department though only a portion of our funding comes from the general fund a couple of budget highlights and we are seeing some personnel savings to the benefit of the department and then just to highlight in our miscellaneous funds this is just historically been where our grant funds have been placed so what you're looking at here's only two funds our human services grant and now the affordable housing fee grant program for seventy five thousand so that's what's in the miscellaneous category and then operations wise because of our cost savings and we we are purchasing some software for the department to manage our grant funds and tracking in our application process we're pretty excited about it so built into 1819 there's a one-time expense for us to set that up and then there's an annual licensing fee that is now built into our budget so those are the biggest highlights for what has changed I did about the personal services on the next page it's their sixth total but three really within the general department and since we're adding the housing fee the grant program is that you feel like that it's going to be able to absorb by current staff or yeah one of the things by by withholding filling the previous position the human services coordinator position gave me an opportunity to sort of look at how we wanted to redraft those job responsibilities so taking into consideration what you know our grant funded folks can't work on general fund projects and vice versa expanded that job description to cover a little bit more of these programs so I think under our current capacity we can manage this new initiative would be a different conversation should we be adding additional initiatives in the future okay thank you so that brings us then to what our staff looks like again our general fund three of our positions are general fund community development manager the community development assistant and then the human services will now be a grant program position and then three are funded by the community development so our community development administrator our housing programs manager and the residential construction specialists so questions comments questions comments yes I just wanted to comment that the video that you guys made recently about the program that you have I really enjoyed it I know that it got shared a lot and it provided information that people just really didn't know so hopefully we'll see more of those about the different things that you do in your department thank you appreciate that it's been a real benefit for us to be joined with public affairs in this way to help improve our marketing and you know telling people what we've been able to accomplish and what value the community has in having this program so thank you for that anyone else thank you very much appreciate it is there one more oh yeah oh oh but I mean there's not any more budget as far as for that agenda item okay yeah so we're gonna go on to agenda item 3f which is receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the development service fees good afternoon again a brief presentation to first touch on the changes we need to make to our fees based on legislation and House Bill 852 that was passed and signed by the governor and then kind of give our first look as we talked about earlier in the budget presentation at our development services cost of service study so House Bill 852 changes the way that we can charge fees to residential dwellings permit fees right now we charge those fees based on value of the dwelling based on the new bill we have to change those - we cannot charge based on value anymore so we're proposing to charge based on on square footage as as we talk about the cost of service study and as we mentioned earlier this is somewhat of a placeholder until we get to that point where we have a deeper discussion of what the fee should be but we have a chart here on the next slide that kind of equates what our proposed rate would be versus what the the fees that are paid right now for these residential dwellings so we're proposing to implement a 74 cent per square foot fee and this is based on our median median square foot for a residential dwelling of about 27 2700 square feet what fee would be calculated for that residential dwelling to pay the same amount of fee as they pay currently so you can you can kind of see that on this chart as you look at the fee though they would pay in the new new ordinance and the difference to what they're paying today anyone under that 2700 will be paying less in the new with the new fee and anyone above that 2700 we'd be paying more based on the new fee our current fee structure the tiered structure based on value this would be just having one amount that applies to everyone based on that square footage and with the supply to all forms of residential including multifamily yeah no not multi-family okay so just single-family residential okay so that's all we have on that we obviously have the ordinance in the in the consent agenda that goes along with that definitely answer any questions but do want to touch briefly on our preliminary cost of service analysis internally we've done a cost of service at a high level to see how much is building inspection at a high level paying for itself with fees and how much is planning at a high level paying for itself with fees here are some of the considerations we put into that analysis looking at our employee costs as maintenance costs as fixed costs that we have every year including our transfers from the general fund that are that are included in the budget for development services to include all those costs at a high level and see how it breaks out what we have not included in the print preliminary analysis I'll show on the next slide are those costs from other departments from fire from looking at our engineering with our development review fees that we're now outsourcing through those are pieces that would be included in a in a potential in our cost of service analysis how we'll get more detailed with a consultant here is a high-level overview of that of that breakdown as you know a number we mentioned earlier during the budget process if you look at development services in total focusing on the fees that we just looked at internally those kind of fixed costs that we know about we're under collecting or having about 3.8 million less in expenditures verse our revenues and if you if you break that down just to building inspections verse planning specifically at a high level planning recovers about 10% of its cost and building inspection recovers about 74% of its cost so our steps our next steps with this is to engage with a consultant to come in and just start by saying what are the true costs to provide these services at a high level but also detailed for each permit for each building inspection what are the costs and then have that policy discussion of what should this the subsidy be what should the cost recovery be to make up those costs that's something we just haven't we haven't done to that level of detail because this is always a tricky is the right word but it's a it's a confusing concept and that is the transfers because the transfers when you look at this are almost half of the expenditures for each one of those for planning and for building inspections you got internal transfers of 3.5 million with a total expenditures if I'm reading this slide correctly is 6.6 so it'd be interesting to know exactly what all that that in not not now but as we get more in depth into discussing this cost recovery and so forth just how that all really works together because it can be had a confusing concept I mean I think everybody understands it but when you see half of a sort of department or sections budget being internal transfers that's fairly substantial sure we can get obviously through the formal cost of service they love all that broken out yeah even this right here is kind of showing some Costco between those okay thank you yes mayor pro tem yeah and mr. city manager when this comes back in the consultants I would like to have someone put on a black hat from a customer service perspective because I that that's the blind corner right it's gonna it's it's hey your fees are going up and it's in a perfect world scenario but I think we need to also be aware of deficiencies as far as hey this permits taking too long and why I know we've done some great things and made a lot of great strides but I would like to have that narrative to go along with it just to in preparation for what I anticipate you know coming and so just one just an evaluation of our you know yes I mean it's undeniable where you know far above who were but just where are we on delivering communication you know that sort of thing with that department absolutely and we actually just had a meeting this morning on that very topic and I've been starting to reach out to petitioners after they've gone through the process making sure that I understand you know their experience what went well what didn't go well and bringing that feedback back to Scott and Todd justice and we're gonna be actually formalizing these meetings with the chamber of the Builders Association sort of thing to make sure that we're responding as well as possible and if there's if there are breakdowns in our service level or for missing schedules that's something that we're spending much more time tracking as well that we know that and that we're trying to respond as quickly as possible I don't anticipate a lot of pushback on the fees if we're able to save them money through the process and that that is the discussion with the Home Builders Association especially so we'll try we're going to continue working that and actually formalize our own meeting process with them to keep getting that feedback we're gonna go start with Councilmember Armitage we'll just go around oh yeah just kind of a request for for data I would love to see I'm trying to kind of do the calculations and figure figured out on my own but I really can't with without seeing it written out if this would amount to now to now billing by square footage instead of value if it would in fact amount to an increase for everyone or if some would would remain the same because value and you know it is not I mean generally speaking value and square you know the bigger the house the bigger the value but you know to what extent is location is location factored into you know the neighborhood factored into that value I'm not sure so regardless of what the result is I would just kind of love love to see that that spelled out and then you know just to learn more in the future and in relation to what what you were just kind of speaking to you on how both cost and time can be saved in in consolidating certain kinds of inspections both for the you know which would amount to cost savings for the city and also for the customer the builder yeah and again just to reiterate this this is a this is a very quick placeholder that we had to put you know put in place in order to come into compliance with state law when we come back we will have a much better holistic thought-out strategy and but we needed to keep we needed to make the change to get into compliance and make sure that we weren't going backwards in the interim and I didn't I wanted to be sure that we weren't having a real negative impact on the home builders when as they're coming in so that didn't that took over the issue before we could actually get to a holistic look at the cost of the department so we'll get that we will also get together some other survey data from other cities which is it's helpful but it's just sort of interesting because we many of our surrounding cities you're going to see them continuing to to charge higher and higher fees now with the big tax capped or that few percent so it's inevitable that's what's going to happen we'll put as much rationale as possible to it more and just recouping our own costs to have to provide that service to those residents and not worry so much about where the market is unless it really puts us out of out of compliance or you're out I really put this out there so we'll have that analysis done from you in all different levels thanks and you know in that case and since you re-emphasized you know the extent to which this is a placeholder put together at the last minute I'll kind of withdraw my or put a pin in my request for that additional data until there's more of course I'm curious but it would be it would be a waste a waste of time I think to to to come up with that but at some point when this comes back to us that's that is one of the questions I'm going to be asking mm-hmm my question is on this bill is this strictly for new construction or what are we doing on remodels where remodels base yes Scott you sat down too quick over there since since remodel the cost is not nearly as much you're not dealing with foundation generally not with a roof the law addresses all one and two family dwellings so so those dwellings whether it's new construction alterations and any work that permit cannot be on a value so it's a square footage so if you are doing a remodel of part of the home but not the entire is it just the area of the home that you're remodeling that is going to be subject to the fee the total area of the remodel is what we'll address and then we have those minimum fees so most of our remodels will just fall into the minimum fee category and we won't deal with the square footage okay thank you and as with most legislation has passed we have to try to decipher exactly what the legislature was intending but Scott is absolutely correct that the fees are are charged in connection with the construction or improvement of a residential dwelling and that's where we have to kind of interpret what do they mean by an improvement it's not construction but it probably most likely encompasses remodeling yeah I just thought to save a little you know time I'll just point out that you know slide four I think very much addresses Councilmember Armitage's questions you have very clearly showing that the that the new structure reduces costs on smaller dwellings on a per square foot basis increases costs on larger dwellings on a per square foot basis moving forward so just kind of rehashing our next steps and obviously the ordinance that's on today's agenda and coming back really targeting with it'll be we'll be going going hard with the process very quickly to try to get back to council at the end of August early September so we can try to fit it into any kind of budget discussions we can have with that full cost of service study and get feedback from council great any other additional questions fantastic thank you appreciate it thank you very much thank you all for those good presentations okay at this time I will now convene the closed session at 410 in the closed session we will consider the following items consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code section five five one point zero seven one and deliberations regarding real property under Texas Government Code section five five one point oh seven two Council on June the 18th 2019 we do have a quorum I will now open the meeting our first item on the agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance to the US and Texas flag please stand with me if you're able we did not have any proclamations or presentations this evening so we'll move down to agenda item number three which is presentation from members of the public and we will now review the procedures for addressing the City Council the Denton City Council has adopted rules of procedure including a code of conduct that applies to citizens as well as council members these rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizen reports citizens will have four minutes to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes to give an open mic report there will be an electronic bell when time has expired if the remarks are not concluded by that time the citizen will be asked to stop speaking if the citizen does not cease and a second request is made the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chamber citizens are asked not to approach the dais if a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council please let the city secretary know in advance for scheduled citizen reports the council may initiate discussion or questions following each citizen report for non scheduled open mic citizen reports the council may listen to citizens speak however because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance the Texas open meetings act limits any deliberation or decision by the council to a proposal to place the item on a future agenda a statement of factual policy or a recitation of existing policy citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member please refrain from making abusive personal impertinent profane or slanderous remarks anyone who violates this council rule of procedure may be immediately removed from the council chamber thank you in advance copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary we'll now move to our agenda item 3b which has received scheduled citizen reports our first speaker is Layla commings regarding citizen support for the Denton basic service center project if you'll just state your name and address your time will begin my name is Layla commings 1740 Caris Lane and I could I'll direct your attention to a video that I brought my name is Lauren Fouch and I'm the CEO of Mayhill hospital in Denton Texas many of our patients experience homelessness when coming to our care and are forced to return to homelessness at discharge due to lack of resources and housing in our community Mayhill is interested in developing a partnership with Denton basic services center to provide a much needed service for a long-term wraparound services and housing to our homeless citizens please join me in supporting Denton basic services center my name is Hal samples some documentary filmmaker who's currently working with us in Europe and formerly worked with ABC television and charities like central Dallas ministries and Metro Dallas homeless Alliance I'm here to support Denton basic services and their efforts to provide a tiny village community and would like to provide a film in kind attract the process as well as success hi my name is Amanda Hunter and I'm the founder of Christ Church Camp a new beginning we support Denton basic services and we hope that you will too hi my name is Sage Lewis I'm the executive director of the homeless charity I'm so excited that your city is thinking about trying a tiny house village I believe that's the next step up and you will find the more you learn about homelessness and investigate it that there is a certain kind of person that a tiny house is a good fit for the time being homelessness is not a one-size-fits-all thing so thank you so much for giving this some thought and I wish you the best of luck hello my name is Pam Gutierrez and I'm the executive director of Denton County MHMR Center I am pleased to provide support for the Denton basic service center as you know at Denton County MHMR we provide services to homeless individuals every day and this is a situation that's not going to go away anytime soon the Denton basic service center would help us with this need to provide services for the homeless individuals in Denton County and we would love to partner with you on this tremendous project so we would love for you to consider this project and we want you to know that we are in support of this project I'm Leon Carlo Canlis professional musician and educator and I support the Denton basic services center I'm Ben Heasley of the bearded monk and I am very excited to do a fundraiser for the Denton basic services center hello my name is Wayne L Shire with Bridging Hope Ministries and we support the Denton basic service center together we can make a difference I'm Laura Douglas librarian with the Denton Public Library and I support the Denton basic services center I'm Willie Anna Cole academic advisor at TWU and I support the Denton basic services center hi this is Carl with brave combo just letting you know that I look forward to performing at a fundraiser for Denton basic services center peace you sorry I said do I could just go sit down okay let me see okay don't see any questions you have times about but thank you thank you so much for sharing that the next speaker is Joel hunt regarding homelessness if you'll come down and state your name and address your time will begin hello my name is Joel hunt 1821 Senna Street and I do I work at JPS and do street medicine I've been doing that for about over ten years started a program in Salt Lake City and then at JPS in in Fort Worth in 2014 and that's the delivery of health care directly to people experiencing homelessness and unsheltered or sheltered living situations and I've traveled the country in the world looking at homelessness and in moving to Denton I moved about a year ago and because I was living in Fort Worth previously and it's one thing that struck me about Denton is the is the homeless population and that it's relatively small and that it's relatively non intrusive and it's and it's a manageable population and so what I am here before you saying is that I think Denton is situated nicely they'd be proactive and get ahead of this and not be like other communities where we're kind of trying to play catch-up and and be reactive to the situation Fort Worth County we've seen increases in homelessness Dallas County the value the cost of the number of the minimum wage or the wage needed to afford a fair market rent apartment no more than 30% of somebody's income is kind of astounding in in in areas where it's a mathematical economic situation and I I think that's coming this way in terms of more increased homelessness in Denton County and so I think it's it's important that you guys are having this conversation and I support any efforts to address and I think that the need is present and urgent to really lean into figuring out proactive situations or proactive methods and let that be this Council's legacy is being a community that leaned into this problem and really addressed it in innovative and collaborative ways it's really all I have so if there's any questions I don't see any thank you very much thank you so much for coming down sharing next speaker is Jane Piper Lunt regarding homelessness I'm Jane Piper Lunt 1205 North Austin I first want to congratulate you on expanding Monsignor King good move most of us have had to advocate for a family member whether it's a parent in a nursing home or a patient in a hospital or even a just a child in daycare dealing with any large system we often have to advocate for and protect them from aspects of organizations that are supposed to be helping them Alan Graham founder of Community First Village in Austin said we believe the number one cause of homelessness is the profound catastrophic loss of family houses will not solve the homelessness problem but community will we agree with that as do all the people in our video they all know these villages provide the missing family and home to lift our houseless friends beyond their problems to a better life since coming to you last August we have in good faith made efforts to address your concerns when we were told no tents we changed from one in a sanctioned tent village to a tiny house village when we were told we needed electricity we're pursuing ways to use solar panels we were on the United Way sheltered planning group a work group we have built alliances with Mayhill MHMR UNT and nationally known advocates including the magical how samples internationally known photographer and filmmaker the man who taught Dallas mayor Mike Rollins how to care about homeless people we've joined with these people to provide case workers wraparound services and support we hope you now will decide it's your turn to direct staff to work with us I have brought you the same proposal that you probably saw at work session as last year and we need every bit of it but we are willing to negotiate the number one thing we need to have to not cause people to suffer another year is land it provides a solidarity of vision and the catalyst for fundraising and resources the second thing we have to have is the SUP to overcome the barriers of codes from there we can work out the rest with you and staff council we have to do everything we can now while it's still manageable I know what the current numbers are saying from the pit count but we are seeing new people become homeless every week our daily bread says they are seeing new people every day what the other nonprofits are doing is great but the numbers are growing and we are not getting ahead of the problem while making those long-term plans when one of you gets a call that someone is about to become homeless we want to provide you an immediate place to send them we want to be the feeder program to prepare people to be the success stories for your housing first program but most of all we want to alleviate the pain of living on the street I'm asking you to put us on your agenda and take this take a vote the number one question that I post to you is is it okay to leave people on the street to suffer while you're making long-term plans when you have the power resources and people willing to do the job to provide transitional housing now councilmember Archer can you speak to how basic services center would fit within the continuum of care including how MHMR and and may Hill would be able to access people who are living there and provide them services once we get the initial group just of residents that will start building the houses and we will build more houses and they would like to rent houses from us so they'll be providing an income plus they'll be providing case workers and one of the big problems may Hill has and MHMR is they do not have group homes anymore and and well may hell has three but they're awful and they know they're awful image are has one but yes it is wonderful and I think they've got what five beds or something like that but you know they just have no place to put this and when people are trying to recover they've gotten stabilized they need a stable place to go to not back to the street and if we're no other reason and Joel probably knows this to be able to take their medication some won't take it on their own but they'll they can get a shot you know so anyways councilman Briggs thank you for coming back and speaking to council I appreciate you saying in your in your notes there you talked about community first village and when I look at this proposal and I see this it reminds me of what they're doing there and that has been a success it's proven successful and I the last in April 30th 2019 on our data dashboard the last number of chronically homeless individuals was 119 actively homeless was 514 but what I see this project doing is getting that number that 119 number of chronically homeless unhoused individuals off the street and so I appreciate you coming and presenting to us again thank you any other questions comments councilmember Davis hi Jean hi I wanted to also thank you for coming and speaking with us and the other folks who spoke I want to thank you for bringing kind of a larger group than we expected with just three agenda agenda items and bring the video for us to see and I want to thank you because I think that what you're talking about can be part of a wrap-around solution a both end and I appreciate you mentioning Monsignor King and the partnership the city is developing with Monsignor King at the beginning of your remarks that doesn't mean that has to be an exclusive relationship and that there's no other options available and I think one of the things that you and I spoke about when we met was I would like to see us explore a relationship with the city and some city city-owned property I don't know I don't know at this time that I'm ready to commit to a budget allocation but I think a relationship can be developed and I think it a relationship can grow into it can take different forms they can grow into something useful for everybody and something that helps address the problem thank you all right any other questions thank you very much appreciate it all right the next speaker will be Edward Prout regarding liquor establishment to be located immediately next to slash across the street from Melrose Apartments will state your name and address your time will begin my name is Edward Prout 2898 Telluride Place Loveland Colorado I and my wife Satorne Prout are the owners of Melrose Apartments at 211 and 215 East Oak Street just south and across the street here from City Hall Mr. Mayor distinguished council members I wish to thank you for taking the time to hear my concerns and the concerns of my 34 tenants regarding two proposed liquor establishments immediately abutting our apartments at 211 and also 215 East Oak Street if you would please there's a packet before you it's a black colored rim there turn to page two if you would please page two through five show aerial photos of a proposed open-air liquor establishment immediately adjacent to my apartments at 211 East Oak Street you can see from the red highlights the immediate proximity of this proposed outdoor liquor establishment my tenants have numerous bedrooms just 10 feet from this establishments building and property and yard I feel the noise generated both day and night from outdoor patrons consuming liquor immediately adjacent to my tenants windows would be highly audible within my tenants residence and unbearable for them if you turn to the next page you'll see actually a floor plan of John Williams at Eastside this is his proposal and you can see there there's quite a large deck in the front yard of the proposed establishment that would be uncovered it would be open to the air and it can seat 50 to 100 people so that would also largely impinge through noise I feel and my tenants do as well to their their enjoyment of life in their residence if you'd now turn to page six page six through seven show aerial photos of a second proposed open-air outdoor liquor venue at two on one East Hickory Street this venue would be immediately across the street from my apartments at 215 East Oak this liquor and restaurant venue would also feature outdoor serving of liquor in addition the establishment would feature a music stage for live bands I and my tenants concerns are that music and noise generated from this location will be very audible within their residence and prove highly uncomfortable for them both liquor establishments will also bring added traffic safety and likely heightened crime issues within the neighborhood please continue to turn those pages if you would please there's 20 protest petitions filled out by my tenants asking that the liquor licenses for both of these establishments be denied at this time and just pass those petitions the final two pages marked in highlight yellow is both the city of Denton's noise ordinance in respect to residents and homes as well as the state of Texas's ordinance regarding noise disturbances to homes in conclusion I would ask this body through the mayor's office to issue a letter to the Texas alcoholic beverage Commission expressing reservations to the project closest to Melrose apartments at your next meeting and also perhaps most importantly in working with John Williams which we are working together is to ask the city to possibly issue some variances on permits to allow him one to cover his outdoor deck and to to have a wall built between my property and his thank you any questions councilmember brief and so you're saying that there's currently it's not except not it's not okay for them to do a buffer a wall that's no all I'm saying is that really in essence I was made aware of this entire liquor application just a week and a half ago and so I flew back down from Colorado and so I'm really asking for some time to allow John and I to work this out both with the city and between us to mitigate noise so that we are in essence good neighbors I've spoken already with planning and they would like me to submit plans for a wall a stonewall a sculpture a nice sculpture stonewall in between the properties and that will help mitigate some noise but my buildings are three stories high and so my main concern is the open deck in front of John's establishment at 125 East Oak Street that's open air because that would hold 50 to 100 people drinking alcohol till 2 in the morning and we have bedrooms almost immediately adjacent to the to that deck okay okay seeing no other questions thank you so much appreciate it thank you we'll move on to our agenda item 3c which is the commonly known as the open mic agenda item we do have one blue card mr. Woolley Husbeth if you'll come down and state your name and address your time will begin council my name is really has with 116 23 Newton I have two items I want to talk about I want to talk about the homeless and my plight that are my concern for myself and my family okay can you show this on the screen please what I'm okay I'm gonna write on that to show you something your policymakers you make policy you listen to situation and concerns and you make policy I know what you're here about but in a win when there's a person like me a someone in the audience or an individual who's just frustrated and we want to talk to somebody we're talking to you I'm talking to you I don't know that you can do anything about this but I'm frustrated my last grandbaby that we have that was we were blessed with we had to pay my children my son and his wife had to pay almost $15,000 I believe to get that young person here I'm so happy I would have paid more than that for a little Lydia Grace to be here but it's put a real hardship on them and and they we in an effort to try to help them we let them rent our house the one that you all bought to help them just to as a low-income rental amount and we didn't know that we were going to be able to get money to or they didn't know they were going to be able to get money rental assistance because they had to move because you bought the house so that you could widen Barney Bray so that we were happy to get that but what they did is the pinnacle that's who did this they said here's the rule if the house rents for an amount and I was did read for nineteen nineteen hundred dollars if they if the tenants can pay that amount then it's a wash and they don't subsidize my son and his wife can only afford at this time four hundred dollars that's what we charge them if that's the case pinnacle in the rules government rules is supposed to pay the rest for 42 months to help them as a rental subsidy now here's the problem pinnacle is saying they are ignoring this that happened at all they don't keep they are not adding this to anything they're saying you have a $1,900 home you you should afford you can afford a $1,900 home and here's the two problems I have with pinnacle and the next time I meet with them I will have my phone on record because no one should be talked to like they talk to me my son and his wife let me tell you something that grandchild daughter of mine is very important to me and I want to take care of them you are have no right to talk to me the way you talk to me and here's what they say it very nicely we've already given you more than what we give most people you should be happy with that now let me tell you something about me that's something you shouldn't do because I will be back and back and back doesn't mean much to you I don't care but that's what's gonna happen I'm imploring you to look at that $1,500 and the rules I think the government allows for this difference if they are only paying this then they should be subsidized with the $1,500 that's the part I don't think you even know I don't think you it's not something that you do I'm just telling you that so that's what's bugging me right now they're giving me giving them nothing and now they have to leave the house it's time up already okay well I'll just sit around and wait for another opportunity to talk about the homeless thank you thank you mr. Hesbeth all right move on to our consent agenda portion of our agenda and I believe we had a couple of items that were pulled councilmember Ryan with approval with the exceptions of items A and K councilmember Davis second approval removal of those items all right so we have a motion and a second for approval of the consent agenda except for agenda 4a and 4k which will be considered under items for individual consideration let's vote on the board please motion carries 7-0 for the consent agenda except for items a and K for a and 4k we will take up for a as the first item for individual consideration bless you consider it for a is considered option of a resolution establishing naming policy guidelines for city buildings facilities land or any portion thereof repealing resolution r2012 - 0 0 7 and declaring an effective date mayor city council guy Gary back and director parks and recreation Heather Gray business manager parks and recreation good evening so I have a presentation for you on the naming policy amendments and just as a background on the development of these amendments this policy is an existing city policy back on April 3rd 2012 as council approved resolution r2012 0 0 7 which repealed an earlier version from 2007 now within the last year we've had council requests for naming opportunities to be available to help subsidize the cost of city assets so parks and recreation took the lead on developing some amendments to help with this request staff members from several departments have reviewed the amendments on February 4th of this year the Park Board recommended approval of these proposed amendments with a 5-0 vote and most recently on May 6th presentation was given to City Council during work session and direction was given to move forward with the amendments as proposed and to place them on resolution and a future available future meeting just some background on the existing naming policy this does not have anything to do with the amendments were proposing but the existing policy as it is now it provides consistent citywide guidelines for naming after an individual or an organization and states that naming opportunities exists for city assets it does not include the naming of streets fire stations or police stations and it outlines the procedure to get naming approved so the amendments that we're asking for we have defined naming rights is it was not previously defined and just as a note the procedures for purchasing naming rights was already in the policy it's just the naming rights were not defined so we added a definition and we also added some clarifications which were that naming rights can be purchased for a city asset but it's for a defined period of time and that defined period of time would be determined by City Council and we've also specified that once the naming rights term has ended the facility may be renamed and we've proposed an updated user-friendly application form which is in a PDF fillable form so if this were to be passed this evening then we would place the updated application form and policy on the website in hopes that more people would take advantage of proposing naming a facility or a city asset Councilmember Armitage has a question okay um so as it stands now without without this this ordinance can the city decide to name a building by a council vote to name a building or facility after an individual it's my it's my understanding yes that that this is something count that yes ultimately it's it's Council's decision so but this ordinance would open up a process open it up to people to apply it was already open before so mm-hmm so the difference okay if you could kind of explain the difference you know how would you in a nutshell explain the the quantifiable difference between what what this new ordinance will do versus what we have now basically the new ordinance we're just kind of clarifying the naming rights portion we didn't change anything regarding individual or organization like naming after somebody in a her you know in an honor type situation we didn't change any of those this is more dealing with naming rights and clarifying what those are okay and so say I'm thinking in you know people's what people's fears would be you know including my own you know we have the the the Toyota for the Bud Lights of Denton Civic Center you know is it this under the new ordinance would that be possible not possible just to clarify for the for the public and people who are skeptical about about something like this that would be an option or consideration it could be Petco dog park and it would ultimately there were an application have to be submitted or a contract negotiated but it would have to go through a process with the city manager's office then to City Council and then an ad hoc committee is pre is developed by City Council and appointed by City Council and they go through the the details of it and provide a recommendation to City Council City Council can decide at that point time whether they want to follow that or not and then with a three-fourths vote City Council can skip any one of those steps thank you councilmember Meltzer I think you may have just answered this but I'll underscore it so just for my own sake God for clarity and probably others when you say this has to do voting rights this wouldn't apply then for instance to like the naming of the vela soccer complex it technically that I wasn't I wasn't sure how vela came about if that was approved prior to but let's say for instance Patrick Park we're calling it Patrick Park just as a naming a working name at this point in time but the developers intended on filing an application once this passed recommending it be called Patrick Park after a family member it would go through that process and then council can decide whether they want to officially name that or not but I understand with respect to the Patrick Park project but in your understanding the vela complex should have and maybe they'd go through a process like this that's correct okay and why is there the requirement stated that the individual must be deceased at least five years which fortunately is not the case for mr. Bella yeah so that that was in the policy we didn't change that if council decided they wanted to adapt that work staff is more than willing to make an adjustment the assumption is that when a name is considered that you want to give it some time to see how things kind of fall out in regards to making sure that everything that that person did was worthwhile in and worth that naming as an opportunity that could be three years it could be five years it could be one year that was already in the policy when we when we took it on to review it yeah I understand that you're not introducing that but I was looking for an explanation to why and there's also a clause in there about a person having made significant strides in humanitarian causes on a world or national level yes there's a reason that local is excluded as far as you know so what that is specifically referring to non-residents so anybody that's a dent resident if they were a war hero they would automatically qualify for a consideration because you have to be a resident for naming if you're a non-resident and you did something that was you know heroic then like a president or something like that then you could be considered under those circumstances I see that helps thank you councilmember Davis so kind of as you have alluded to a few times we're amending a policy that's been in place for some time now and we have lots of things that we name that have nothing to do with purchasing the naming rights we just choose to name after an individual or a group or an event do we have any facilities currently in the city or do we have anything kind of on the docket coming up where someone has purchased the naming rights or where we know of it obviously there's not a Petco dog park but is there anything else currently in the city or that we're looking at where we think someone is interested in purchasing naming rights just yet you don't have to say who it is yeah not that I'm aware of the dog park would be a good opportunity for something like that instruction costs so currently this is not the purchasing and staff fundraising for this kind of thing all that that has not come to come to be even with this policy on the books for some time now I think it's more or less creating a clarifying an opportunity that that we could do that if needed in the future thank you so an example of this is the Linda McNatt adoption center animal care and adoption center so that that is an example of something that went through the process of a naming right and I was on council when this was developed and what I can somewhat remember is the deceased requirement which I mean it's up to this council if they want to modify that I know I've received a couple emails regarding that part of that was to safeguard against if you named something after someone who was still living that if somehow something happened to that individual in the sense of they took a different path that might not have been consistent with the naming at that time I think that was really the only justification for that so that I can recall so what I what I'm understanding is this is a very limited amendment to as far as the changes now if there's a desire to talk about the current policy and what are some of the things in the current policy well that that's okay too but as far as the basis of the amendment let me pull it back up because my computer just it seems like the major one is the definition of naming rights naming rights was not defined before and it's just simply a financial transaction whereby a corporation organization individual or other entity purchases the right to name a facility amenity or feature for a defined period of time which the defined period of not time is not prescribed in the ordinance that's something that is at councils discretion is that correct that's correct okay and then once that time expired then the facility or whatever the subject of the naming right was would then be open to that type of process again that's correct okay so mr. city attorney quick question we're here talking about this ordinance if there was a desire to look at some of the terms of the underlying ordinance before the changes it's posted in such a way that if this council chose to do that they could do that yes okay okay all right councilmember Briggs I need to speak or not go ahead and make my most emotion whatever pleasure well I would like to motion to postpone actually because I feel like this council needs to go over some of the existing guidelines I did receive a couple of emails and there's been some confusion and I feel like if there's already something in place it can remain in place while we really take a deeper look and open it up to more citizen comment and public input that would be my motion okay so you're making a motion to postpone yeah is that to a date certain till till we can have a a few more or I guess like a public meeting on it or another work session where council can go through a little of these that are actually concerned some of the guidelines current the current ones mr. chairman that be a postponement to date certain events certain what would be your event certain events are yes sir and what would that event be the event would be until such time that a work session or a public meeting is held to further discuss the naming policy guidelines allow public input would you is your motion basically adopt in his event certain language yes sir okay councilmember Armitage and I I second that motion as the vote as it stands now I would have to vote no I I support naming buildings after local individuals but I I don't support it you know naming a public building after a for-profit entity of any kind okay alright we have a motion to postpone that is a motion and a second any more discussion to an event certain which is a public hearing or work session to further vet this policy all right let's go ahead and vote on the board please motion carries six to one we will move on to our agenda item I think it's 4k which was part of the consent agenda item which was pulled so now it's an item for individual consideration consider adoption of a resolution of the city of Denton establishing an acceptance of sponsorship and donations policy and declaring an effective date all right good evening mayor council members it's me again Heather gray business manager for parks and Recreation so I have a presentation here for you on the acceptance of sponsorships and donations policy this is a newly proposed policy just to clarify it is regarding the city accepting donations and sponsorships not the city giving out a co-sponsorship so just some background on the development of this policy over the last couple years staff has been asked to take a look at our processes and try to formalize our processes as well as develop and implement new policies when necessary over the last couple years we have received some requests from council members to have sponsorships and donation opportunities available to help subsidize city programs and assets staff from several departments have collaborated to work on developing this policy Parks and Recreation took the lead on the development since we figured to be the primary user of the policy in April of this year the park board recommended approval of this policy with a 7-0 vote and then most recently on June 3rd a presentation was given to City Council during work session and direction was given to move forward with this policy and place a resolution on the next available agenda so just a summary of the policy it does establish structure and consistent citywide guidelines for the solicitation administration and acceptance of sponsorships and donations that the city receives it defines the types of donations and sponsorships that can be accepted such as in kind or cash and it gives examples of benefits which the staff may leverage in return for a sponsor or donor for example a common one would be to place a logo on the back of a race shirt some of the benefits of adopting this policy would be to allow the city to offer affordable programs and it would create collaboration and buy-in from our residents and our local businesses so this is taken from the policy this is the proposed workflow approval levels based on the dollar thresholds so as you can see at the top level $50,000 and up and this follows our procurement process which is it will go to RFP that keeps everything transparent and gives everyone the opportunity to place a bid in for a sponsor or donor opportunity once the RFP process is finalized and that would be taken to council for approval and that is for solicited donations and sponsorships because if it's unsolicited those would just come to us and then they would be taken to council for approval and as I mentioned before we've worked with several departments in collaboration over the last couple years to identify departments that would be able to utilize this policy some of some of those departments are listed here and as well as examples of some of the programs they would use it for. Councilmember Meltzer. I really just have a comment I get it that it's it's money and we're looking we're always looking for funding sources and alternatives are of course taxes but to me there's something unseemly about entities that could have business before the city you know currying favor and by you know sponsoring city activities and if it were possible to carve that out then I'd be for that but I don't see any possibly could and that things come up you know someone is our XYZ company is our sponsor today and something comes up tomorrow so I'm disinclined to do it. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah so could you could you could you talk about what what would not be eligible for a sponsorship like that you know so you mentioned here you know parks and recs programs you know library programs you know what are some some kinds of programs that might that would be exempt from this? I can't think of anything off the top of my head that would be exempt from it. Because I'm actually you know even though well there's an obvious connection between this and that you know the naming rights issue you know while I'm dead set against kind of corporate naming of public buildings I see how underfunded you know especially a number of our parks programs are and I know the good that it can do so I'm I'm actually inclined to vote in favor of this because of the good that I know it can do for some of our really needy programs especially ones that benefit kids I mean when I was a kid I ran around I don't even remember what they corporate you know my little soccer team had local sponsored I didn't care but it helped it helped pay for it so I'm kind of looking for maybe I'll hear from some of my colleagues more about you know reasons why I should be voting no you know potential negative uses that I haven't thought of but right now I can't I can't see a reason not to. Mayor just two quick examples of donations that one that we received just last year and we came to you was the donation for the cemetery enhancements at I00F there that's an example of just someone making a clear donation not really expecting any type of advertising or you know sponsoring an event but then another example could be like our spring Easter egg hunt we could have a company that would sponsor that that would you know help offset costs for the purchasing of Easter eggs or candy or whatever it would be for that program yeah so you know could we have you know an amendment that you know kids programs can't be funded by tobacco or a liquor you know or something like that or do we already have awesome yeah it talks about alcohol tobacco and sexually oriented business I believe. Councilman Briggs. So do you foresee because when you talked about the benches and some parks and the animal services I immediately went to the parks foundation in the the animal board or the the animal foundation do you foresee us like taking or getting any donations that they normally would get with this policy? So one of the things that from a park standpoint I can't speak up behalf of everybody and maybe Heather can add to that but you know one of the benefits of the parks and recreation parks foundation is going after some of those large ticketed items as opposed little small things here and there if someone's if we're looking for a sponsor for $500 for a run that may be not kind of in their wheelhouse to get some of those types of sponsors if they could come up with that that would be fantastic but this would give staff the ability to do that as well so it gives us a little bit more I guess feet on the on the road trying to help with that. So you don't see it as competing more or less working together to get more things accomplished? Absolutely. Okay thank you. Councilmember Ryan. And there's nothing that precludes one of those organizations or other nonprofits from being a sponsor to get their name out there and advertise more when they're actually trying to collect for the parks department already or for the animal shelter or you know reading type organizations I mean that that would be fine if one of them wanted to have their name on a t-shirt correct? That's correct. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah I would just clarify for me as far as representing my own views I feel I feel differently about nonprofits for instance that you know that want to do contribute to the city such as the Foundation and others I think that they the thing to worry about is that our programming becomes shaped by people with financial interests rather than by what we view as the civic interest. That would be my reluctance. Councilmember Davis I think you had a request to speak. I did. So to me this is the kind of thing that a city does with especially at the lower staff approval level so when you had your chart up a while ago of 5,000 and below this is how we're able to maintain certain programs this is how we're able to get community buy-in to certain programs kind of like Councilmember Armitter said you know being on the the peewee soccer team and you have a local business on the back of your shirt well the city does the same thing with some of these programs and I see nothing from this except for expanded opportunity for especially our kids and lower income families that send their kids to these programs and I think Councilmember Meltzer's point is well taken that we have to be vigilant for things you know entities that we contract with we probably don't want a $50,000 sponsorship for a big headlining event but I think we also as a community have the wherewithal to police those kind of things and we have a very transparent city manager's office your department is very transparent and I think we can keep our between the council and our very involved public and our ethics policies I think we can keep that kind of thing in check mayor just a follow-up on that to add in regards to the RFP that was added so we had more transparency we had everybody kind of given an opportunity to step forward and make a donation for the dog park as an example so it was out there for everybody to see and say okay I'm interested in doing that as opposed to I didn't know about that I would have done that so we're trying to make make efforts to really promote it market it and give everyone an opportunity to play a part. Okay all right. Councilmember Meltzer? Yeah so you know to Councilmember Davis's point what mechanism would there be that would enable us to avoid something that would be an unseemly relationship with say a bidder for a big contract you know looking to do a sponsorship? So we talked about this in regards to the ethics policy and if if somebody is reviewing a board or working with an RFP with the finance department or purchasing I should say they wouldn't be involved in that process but also the person that's going out on the street that's going to go out for a $5,000 sponsorship for a run would have to have a pre-approved list that they would submit to their supervisor that we would kind of try to identify any potential conflicts ahead of time and then a follow-up on that saying here's the places that we went to so we could track that. Is that process pardon me I didn't see it but is that process described in the policy? It is it's specifically on this on this screen here for example the up to 5,000 authorized staff submit solicitation plan and list the potential sponsors and donors for approval by next-level supervisor and then they would go out and do that and then have a follow-up. Thank you okay so I just want to make sure I understood a couple of things that you said earlier that this was on a June the 3rd work session which was we talked about the one a couple weeks ago okay and the direction was to move forward bring it forward yes sir okay good thank you anybody else wishing to speak all right council mayor pro tem hudspeth thank you and and thank you for making that point and also I'll just say Gary for me personally just know that if Noah for no other reason I take peace and and I hold people accountable for their individual efforts and what they do personally or what this staff does and I think it's noteworthy that you come from Arlington which is as the Mecca of stadiums has you know growth out out the ears and if anyone is attuned to those concerns those those experiences lessons learned scar tissue to quote the mayor you have that experience at a level that at a 250 million dollar level or whatever that is that that a lot of us don't have you know and so I appreciate your look at this and your experiences that undoubtedly have poured into this and then I just look at your track record from being here from day one when I first met you at the Easter egg hunt that you talked about and you're taking family pictures for us and so again I just I I hope that you'll continue to be evaluated on what you've done since you've been here and the hard work you've put in and I appreciate this document appreciate your staff's work and the city manager's work and so with that I move approval councilmember Davis I second so we have a motion approval for agenda item 4k I believe is what it is let's vote on the board please motion carries 7-0 let's take about a five minute break we've got a agenda item coming up that may take some time so let's go ahead and take a quick break we'll get right welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Dent City Council on June the 18th 2019 it is 7 35 p.m. we're going to move on now to our items for individual consideration portion of our agenda our first item under that agenda is agenda item 5a which is considered an appeal of the Historic Landmark Commission denial of an amendment to an existing certificate of appropriateness for the expansion of a mural to the front facade of a local designated landmark building located at 122 North Locust the Historic Landmark Commission recommended denial 7-0 good evening mayor council the item in front of you tonight is a an appeal of the denial from the Historic Landmarks Commission for a expansion of a mural that was related to a certificate of appropriateness originally approved in 2017 just to give a little bit of background if you recall we initially heard this item in November of 2018 and then it came back in December at that time there was a postponement of this item to an event certain that event certain being the adoption of the Denton square design design guidelines that's and those regulations actually went into effect today I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on on the applicability of these design standards I at least wanted to to mention them since that was the that was the I didn't know they were effective today so 14 days past and so really looking at that there's there's three three of the six criteria that we would really look at the one in particular criteria item number four with respect to the 25% we have included sort of some supplemental background material and as part of the AIS this mural would not meet that that 25% so that's just looking at it again on a very broad brush view relative to these these standards but again we're here really in conjunction with the certificate of appropriateness okay so I want to make because I know I've got a couple council members that I've requested to speak so I'm gonna let their questions come but we might need to get a comment from the city attorney as far as those design standards that we that went into effect today are they applicable to this or exactly what we're here for but councilmember Armitage yeah so so number one so that question about you know if you could speak to how how is a law that just became effective today applicable retroactively to an existing you know mural on a structure and then the question well actually you know what I'll leave I'll leave it at that one for now if you get answer that speak to that and maybe that's a city attorney question I'm not sure I think you know with respect to this I know that it took effect today the question would be is that whether or not this provision here works in conjunction with the HLC process of a COA and did this in effect basically nullify the COA because we now have a new ordinance it takes it takes that it actually addresses murals under a separate body of law called the downtown design standards I would I would have to ask that question as to as how this interrelates with the HLC and their COA and appeals to the Richard Kanon is how that had interplay was to be done yeah we we we really looked we really looked at it as as as to two separate two separate items again we we understand we were wanting to see how these regulations would ultimately be approved but really at the same token it's under under two different two different reviews so I mean one thing that I can add to that is is if this is in effect today and I'm gonna look for verification as to what I'm from Richard he understands how these rules work better than I do but if the applicant were to pull the application completely and then reapply under the new rules is that a possibility for them to do absolutely okay okay Councilmember Briggs I saw that you had requested to speak I'll wait okay and so just to give a little bit more overview of the certificate appropriateness process I won't read read everything verbatim but it is part of our debt and development code and again it requires a certificate of appropriateness for any alter change to any really exterior architectural feature and architectural features defined below further within within 37 six eight there's they separate the certificate of appropriateness the review of that really into three categories the first being minor alterations minor exterior alterations and those really are related to any change of outward appearance if it's going to change the outward appearance of a of a building or structure then it would not qualify under that minor minor exterior alteration ordinary maintenance no go ahead I'm sorry ordinary maintenance would be the changing a an awning or gutters and anything outside of that is is looked at as a standard review which ultimately goes to HLC for for consideration so I have a question and this may be a question for Roman but so this is the current certificate of appropriateness code is that correct correct so I'm reading thirty five seven dot six dot eight dot a shall alter change etc etc any exterior architectural feature so is just a flat surface wall considered an architectural feature in other words if you're if you're painting something I know we talked about this but I didn't really recall this but so to me it's what is an architectural feature so if they're saying the wall itself is an architectural feature okay but I just I don't understand given the definition below that how they define that term okay pretty broad includes shall include but not be limited to architectural style John arrangement of such portion of the exterior of a structure as is designed to be open to view from the public way I apologize I didn't get down that far I got stuck analyzing the first one I apologize for that as a waste of time appreciate it I'll admit it when I'm wrong councilmember armature yeah I'll just say you know to comment on that that because I too hadn't noticed that the include but not limited to I I know that revising this is not on the agenda before us today but I would hope to see I would be in favor of seeing that change in the future because that is as long as you say once you say including but not limited it to not limited to that opens it up to a lot of to potential what I would consider arbitrary decisions that that would make me nervous okay thank you proceed and so the criteria for denial this is a little strange typically we're used to seeing criteria for approval this is really the reverse of that for whatever reason when this was originally drafted it included criteria for denial and so the COA must be denied if there's a final decision that the proposed work will have an adverse reflect adverse effect on the external architectural features of the historic landmark the external architectural features of the properties in the block or in the historic district as a whole or the future preservation maintenance and use of the historic landmark and historic district and so those are essentially the three criteria that HLC considered when they when they reviewed this item and so just to give a little again background on what was approved in 2017 there was some storefront improvements as well as some restoration and the mural that currently exists on the on the side and rear of the building that was approved 5-0 back in 2017 about a year later the applicant had submitted a an expansion of that mural or an amendment really to that that 2017 certificate of appropriateness and HLC did approve for three this section of the facade which you see here at the top of the at the top of the building the item in question which they denied 7-0 and that's subject to the appeal is the front-facing facade which which you see sort of the the older the older image and what exists what exists today and so really there's not a staff recommendation with respect to this because this is a an appeal of a decision of a body that unanimously denied it and so we're here just to present that present that information present that material and again just wanted to highlight those those three criteria for denial customer breeze has a question can you go back to the slide previous slide when it shows the old the tan so when was the last certificate of appropriateness given to this building what did the whomever before this owner had it have to go before and get the green awnings and the tan paint and was this all given a certificate of appropriateness before I'm not sure the only one the only record that we have is is at least that I've seen was the 2008 designation of it as the landmark and then the 2017 certificate of occupancy I'm sorry not certificate of appropriateness for the for the change in façade so this was since it had been designated on record the first time somebody had correct correct come to try to change it see how can you go back to the slide that showed the before after with the plain white wall and then with the mural okay so this is a question it's one that I had asked in it in the email so so you're saying that or so according to staffs recommended recommendation currently you're saying that 57% of the front façade is mural correct if we were to look at it under the under the code under the under the code that would that went into effect that went into effect today yeah if looking at under the code went into effect today 50 57 percent and and that means of the year obviously you're not talking about of the painted surface but the entire front of the building because that's how it's defined in the code right correct I think it's it's and again these these were sort of rough numbers that we had I think it was 800 square feet the total front of the of the square footage and and so it was that and so that area of the of the facade that's painted on the front yeah and so you know I am I'll say you know I'm for I'm going to vote in favor of the of the applicants appeal for a number of reasons but I wanted to to know in case there's a decision that this needs to be in compliance in compliance with the code if that's what council decides what what would have to be done would the whole front facade have to be whited out or as as my as I had had seen it looking at this I see you've got a blue base color and then you've got this you know the moon and the bird and the cloud and this stuff on the bottom so as I saw it and I'm not saying that I recommend this because I prefer for it to stay but but my question had been well what if you just decide to either paint over the rust colored and the cream on the bottom paint that over blue then you've got 25% at the top or if you decide to do the same thing to the top to block out the moon and and then you've just got the bottom but what I heard in response was no that this that would still be a hundred percent correct let me let me sort of interject this right now I mean we haven't even voted on this we haven't heard from the public on this I really don't want to get into what the options are depending on the vote because we've already said that this isn't pursuant to the new code so I want to get I want to do one thing at a time so if we could just move forward on that track that would be great okay councilmember Meltzer yeah I'm not sure let me know you know this isn't what you want to hear what I have to say I plead for a little intellectual honesty just among ourselves I mean we voted whether or not technically should apply or not we voted for these standards two weeks ago and we thought that that was the right thing for the square now we might be wrong we might have misread the will of the community okay then own up to that and and if I'd say if you want to say this is okay and maybe we do then you ought to be able to say well how should the those standards be changed so that it would create a precedent that we wouldn't mind following we can I think we can address that at some other at some other point yeah I mean if we can get through this and then we can ask for a work session to come back and revisit that if that's if that's our idea or if we think that this is okay based upon the code that it was at the time and we want to keep the codes that exist now so I'd like to take those in two separate questions if that'd be if that'd be possible instead of conflating the two of these because I think it could get pretty confusing okay was that your presentation that was that was all I had okay so I just want to make sure I understand the facts or the the the factual timeline on this if you could go that this is fine this picture so go back to the one where it shows that the south facade was approved the south I'm sorry yeah yeah the south facade was approved in 2008 I thought it was like 7-0 18 18 but it I'm sorry this was this was that's that that's the north side okay north side was in in 2017 correct 7-0 which is okay same building just a different side the other one was 2018 which was the south side four to three that's correct that correct and there's nothing back in the Historic Landmark Commission factors at least that I saw that addressed anything about front-facing facade of the square that's sort of imported into the new standards that we just went into effect today is that correct that wasn't a specific factor that was taken into consideration you had those three that you gave us either for denial or acceptance I think it's part of if you follow those the minutes even watch the meeting it was there was a lot of back-and-forth but what they ultimately did was they decided to take separate votes on on both the south and and the west because this was in the same day correct this was in the same day correct because this came as this came as one application it wasn't parceled parcel okay so let me make then I need to make sure I understand this so the south facade in the front of the building were those completed at the same time yes my understanding that was okay that was that that was part of the amended request that was heard in 2018 okay so they were completed at the same time which my understanding so somebody correct me if I'm wrong is that they were completed before coming and officially filing for a certificate of appropriateness is that correct they had filed it was my understanding and the advocate can probably sure but my understanding was it they had started painting it the that week or the weekend before HLC was to hear they had filed it though they had filed it they did file is in the process for here so they were painting the full south facade and the west front facade and my understanding is he had some of the equipment available so decided to go ahead and paint it and if it was denied then he would he would paint it back but this is my point and so this is this is helpful because I don't know if I connected all the two because we heard this back in November I think is what it was so the south side and the front were all painted at the same time I mean in the sense of the same project they weren't and they came before the HLC for approval or denial at the same time that is correct so the facts of whether it was done beforehand you know you did it before you waited to hear what we had to say that applied to both of those correct the south side and the front side but the south side got approved correct and then the west side was denied and part of the deliberations or the record seemed to indicate that some of it was because of the front-facing part correct very helpful thank you very much I appreciate that okay any other questions for staff before we take public comment all right thank you Richard I appreciate that all right the first speaker we're just gonna go ahead and go I'm gonna shuffle the cards but I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and call Eric Colito first because I think that you know he has obviously direct interest in this I want to hear from him first if you could state your name and address your time will begin yeah can we bring that slide back up which one which one are you looking for that main one that yeah yeah okay hello Eric Colito 1209 piping rock in Texas I want to thank you guys for these multiple meetings I know it's gone a little far we've met a little bit more than maybe anybody has has wanted to but my hope is that we find resolution today I do want to reiterate that I have sought counsel through this process and prior to either of the COA's and HLC meetings we were optimistic after the first meeting of course because it was unanimously approved and as you saw on some of those notes of the process of how each one goes where you can be staff approved that we felt like because of a considerable part of the mural was approved that that would happen that was the optimism I had and Roman as well after meeting with staff further we found or I found that there were new staff members there are new commissioners and we were going ahead you know the rest of the story I respect the process I appreciate the the conversations that it has sparked now I hope that my transparency and presence through this process reflects that and and the the reason and intention behind the cadence that has has transpired I know you I sent you an email it went over what we had already covered in the last meeting as well as some extra notes so I don't want to bore you with all the details but I appreciate this slide being up because it kind of touches upon some things that I would like to you know this is a 360 degree mural as you know and it's in line with the design standards that were in place at the time of the denial and the appeal and it was encouraged by the city's property appearance guidelines as well which aren't included here but I put those in your notes you know even looking at this now and saying that the denial was based on an adverse effect to the external architectural features of the historic landmark I could bring Roman up here I could bring the Texas Historical Commission and they will tell you that paint doesn't do that the external architectural features of the properties in the block or in the historic district we could go over all the diversity and the different style and look of the buildings but we could also just go to our own city's design a cultural design district application which this mural was a feature of including Dan Black the artist that did it in use of approving that for us and then the last the future preservation maintenance and use of the historical landmark and the district this building was dilapidated it was not in good status there was cracks it was a stucco building before even though some people think there was a brick on the front we paint over it was stucco it was cracked it was faded Dan went back he didn't just paint he also went back and repaired some of those cracks in the building that will help maintain it so the criteria for denial is actually a great criteria for approval in every way and I just want to read an excerpt from the city's post about this and I'll just expand a little bit and I'll be done but the original Denton district celebrates what makes us uniquely Denton by establishing a cultural district the city is committed to promoting and supporting the diversity of cultural amenities that celebrate our history define our present and curate our future then it goes on with a link where you can see the actual video for application I couldn't say it better myself I believe that this full mural exemplifies these aspects and it calls for the city's promotion and supported and support as stated this balance has been duly reflected in the opinion of our historic preservation officer Roman McAllen as well as the Texas Historic Commission and their sentiments towards this full mural being in line with standards your vote today will send a message and I ask that it be one of support for this pillar of artistry that we can all be proud of and point to as further support of our rooted artistic identity to remove this element of the mural compromises the integrity of the artwork and neglects and serving a greater good for our community the downtown district and the arts as a whole however you vote I sincerely appreciate your service to Denton and our great question from Councilmember Griggs hey so one of the things that we've heard is that if you if you allow this to continue you're gonna set the precedent for people who have historic structures who are just gonna do whatever they want and then ask for forgiveness later what do you say to that so obviously like I said there even though the cadence wasn't perfect there was process there was communication and there was transparency through it precedent does cut both ways and I feel like the precedent that was set here is one that also makes a statement on the good side as well and you have to take both into consideration we did work on a building that was not in a good shape we spent a lot of money we featured a local artist to be showcased here that sends a message to the city to our universities to our youth people take pictures in front of it it promotes community it says take care of your building as far as the process and how that went that is something I served on HLC for six plus years so I do respect that process and it has been one that can be difficult sometimes for these very reason reasons that exist so I hope that because of those that I've stated before and now that you can see there is a deeper intention there and it was not with one of disrespect in any way Councilmember Armitage yeah so were you aware so as somebody who is served on HLC are you aware of any any penalties that they have in place for you know jumping the gun on a project before approval sure we had had some situations that would qualify as that from the HLC's purview we didn't have the ability to extend punitive you know reaction but that being something that the council would have in their purview is something that could be you know enacted and I don't even know the details in the extent to that but I think from my experience on HLC that wouldn't be something that would come from the HLC's purview but yours or the Council yeah and that was my understanding too and that was you know responding to Councilmember Briggs said you know I wish that that there were something in in place and I do hope to see that in the future what you know what I don't like to see is I don't like to see art destroyed to penalize a an act like this so I think that you know there are lessons that we can learn from this both as far as what works and doesn't work in the in the code and what works and doesn't in this brand new code and what works and doesn't work as far as HLC but but I don't I myself agree that that this the front of the mural and of course the side of the mural which is not in question today does not damage the building and in fact preserves it thank you thank you very much appreciate it see no more questions thank you a next speaker is Susan Carol Davis if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin Susan Carol Davis 807 Live Oak Denton Texas thank you members of the City Council for the opportunity to speak this evening it is my hope as a Denton resident that the mural on the corner of Oak and Locust streets remain as it is today with the inclusion of the mural facing the downtown square I was not able to determine whether that particular building with some Adobe construct is designated in the National Registry of Historic Places if it is in that registry I understand how that might complicate the matter on the other hand I was pleased to learn that the mural artist Dan Black made necessary repairs to the building frontage prior to constructing the mural it would appear to me that the preservation of a historic building structure was a very important concern for mr. Black not just that his artwork be seen growing up in Denton and now making documentary films about Denton residents in history I poured over many black and white photos of the square taken in the 1800s and the 1900s from year to year from decade to decade I discovered significant variation in the building scape over the decades now in 2019 I see a vibrancy of colorful and attractive storefronts I see a vibrancy of ages from infant to senior citizen as president of the artist enclave of Denton County with members who are local artists and art supporters I hear from them how meaningful public art installations and expressions of art are to them the muralist and owner of the building are not members of artists enclave I'm appearing and appealing as a Denton resident who hopes to see this particular mural art in question be included in the history of our square that is being made now history past history in the making thank you very much for your consideration and again I speak on behalf of myself not the artist enclave of Denton County thank you very much thank you appreciate that councilmember Armitter thank you thank you for your comments you mentioned the range that you see looking back in historical photos from the area do you happen to know the range that that this that or rather can you speak to in terms of years you know you said from from the late website from the from the late 1800s into the mid-century yes I began looking at photos of photographs of the square when I was doing a documentary about Weldon Burgoon whose family lived in Denton County for several generations so in looking at those photographs of the square I was just struck by how I think people adapted that square to the needs of the community and the wants of the community when they needed to have three general stores they had three when they needed to have two drug stores and and one restaurant they had that so I felt that the square was alive and vibrant all through that time even as Denton is thank you and as far as color palette obviously the older photos are black and white you know but we can read about references to you know is it your understanding that there was generally a kind of neutral hope in brown and gray I don't know that specifically but I would say in looking at and reading about the life of Denton at that time there was many a fair there was many a celebration on that square so it would surprise me if there was not a bit of color in the buildings at that time as there are in other smaller towns such as Hillsborough Texas where my parents were born and grew up thank you thank you appreciate that thank you the next speaker will be mr. Willie Husspeth come down state your name and address your time will begin I was very confused when I came in and wondering what this was all about I got the idea I thought it's about take changing the mirror for didn't quite get the reason for that so I appreciate the discussion that has taken place here lately and I'm still confused so let me just state what I think I know the mural is different I like different it's very the colors bring out a happy feeling and sensation to me to see that it's it's uplifting to me so I would not like for to to be removed now what I think I get it from what you said is there are two issues two issues one is how does the rule apply to what you do right now as opposed to what was approved when it was in existence I in existence when the mirror was put up there I as far as I can tell you can't go back and are you shouldn't go back and do something that was done before just because you came up with something that you want to do now that's my thought you shouldn't do that if that's not the case then I think the postponement would be a good thing to do so that you can get squared away as to what you want to do here and clear it up for all of us so that would be my suggestion but again I like it and I hope that it stays thank you sir Phyllis Minton if you'll come down states your name and address your time will begin good evening Phyllis Minton two zero zero five burning tree lane Denton thank you council members for the thoughtful consideration of this matter and all the matters that come before you I have a great deal of respect for your stewardship of our city I actually like the mural that we're talking about but at the same time I have great disdain for individuals who know the regulations and arrogantly defy them the owner apparently someone who was very familiar with the HLC I'm sorry you're taking a beating on social media over this you're doing a great job keep it up thank you mr. Ken Gold state your name and address your time will begin my name is Ken Gold I live at 2512 Natchez trace here in town on the appeal to the council of the historic Landmark Commission decision denying an amendment to the existing certificate of appropriateness was the denial of rational exercise of municipal power I don't think the facts here are in question much are they the owner knew he needed approval of the HLC having been on the HLC the owner knew he didn't have that approval he intentionally proceeded anyway in broad daylight on the county square and it also doesn't meet not only does it not meet the old standard since it wasn't approved it doesn't even meet the new standard so what we have here is going to be a precedent no matter which way you rule whether you like it or not which gets to live the art or the rules your rules as Picasso was best Picasso once suggested learn the rules like a pro so that you can break them like an artist isn't art all about breaking the rules let's face it the world has seems to have many stupid and untalented people that's why we need rules but with enough talent and brains the true artists might be above the rules artists they should be bold enough to live life on their own terms and free to break the rules of bureaucracy and mediocrity I respect their audacity their power and their confidence to subvert our system and to all you potential Denton mural artists out there wondering why you followed the rules but still haven't achieved the wealth and fame you need and deserve take note someone here is breaking the rules brazenly and seeing all the success and notoriety that comes from doing so if you approve so I want to just take a second to repeat the facts the owner knew he needed permission and chose to proceed anyway he knew he needed that approval he did not have that approval approval he did it in broad daylight thank you thank you councilmember Armeter did you have a question for the speaker yes ma'am hi Ken so so first of all so as I understand it you're you're separating these the two issues of we've got in the one hand the issue of this person knew the rules because he was on the committee had been on the committee before you knew exactly what they were and gave the mural the go-ahead anyway from money it time and money yeah in that yep because of because of the second yeah by by his own admission so I agree with you a hundred percent on that and I agree I well I should say I have a problem with that and which is why I would like to see a change in the HLC rules and asked to have that come back to council and that's would you say that that's an objective measure for compliance versus not compliance as in you either you've painted it after the approval before the process right there's one or the other there's no gray area there right right and so would you agree that as far as the rules about the criteria for denial for HLC that we saw there that the timing of of the painting of the mural right doesn't factor into that criteria that that's a separate issue if you understand it sure yeah it's it's separate but it's like you know it's knowingly and brazenly that's my problem thanks customer and breaks you didn't have a question okay all right I think those are all the cards we have except Linda Edie filled out a card in support of the mural and how that's could be phrased either in approval or denial I'm still trying to figure all that out so you're wishing not to speak so I just wanted to make sure of that I wanted to give you an opportunity if you wanted to speak you could yeah okay now if you haven't filled out a blue card this is not a public hearing so if you don't have a blue card you're not going to be able to speak so I just yeah technically the blue cards are supposed to be put turned in prior to the the calling of the item so miss Edie if you could go ahead and come forward and my address is 29 Wellington Oak Circle Denton Texas and I thank the council for giving me an opportunity to just say a few words today because I do support the appeal for the decision that HLC made Denton I'm president of the board of the Greater Denton Arts Council and also do the film programming for the Denton Black Film Festival so art is a really important part of my life and what I do and Denton has that identity for art I mean that's something that we pride ourselves in we're going to try to do this historical this a cultural district art district and it's something that's very important for Denton and this mural just adds a lot to the square I mean there's a lot of things that need to be done perhaps on the square and buildings that don't look quite up to stuff in my opinion but the mural does really add something and as an art and what we're saying I think we need to be careful with the statement that we're making to the artist in the community and I think with the gray areas of this art nuts just you know being in effect today and then what happened before he had put in the application maybe it hadn't received full approval but I think there's enough gray area and a lot of things about this that are just a little bit confusing that I think the council could I hope you find it in your heart to go ahead and go with the mural and let it stay so that's my two cents almost sorry yes councilmember Melzer has a question for you Miss Edie councilmember Metzl has a question and miss McAdams if you could go ahead and turn your card in right quick that'd be great thank you very much um you might not be able to do this off the top of your head but do you have an opinion about what a general rule would be that would guide us going forward for other buildings around the square this were the sort of example that we set what would the sort of rule be I don't know that I can give you an you know I'm not an architectural expert or to give you an exact rule it does look like that's something you need to go back and perhaps review because sometimes things can be very subjective too in terms of what is art so you have to be careful in doing those making those rules so I would really just suggest going back and looking at it and the impact that you think it will have on the city and on artists maybe even talk to some artists and get them involved in their opinions too and maybe more input from the community would be helpful thank you state your name and address your time will begin thank you Lenny McAdams 1426 Kindolf Drive Denton I feel sorry for the artist in that he's been castigated it seems to me that given what the building was and I've been here a really long time I remember when that building was all just kind of a beige color up and down but to allow the entire Muriel to cover the north side and to allow some on the south side it was not unreasonable to believe that that small paint on the front would be appropriate that's just course sort of common sense so and I don't think it was a willful disregard they were in process they had filed the answer and I don't think the paint itself makes a difference to the historical value of that building that bit of paint on the front if the sides don't ruin it that bit on the front certainly does not spoil it as a historical building thank you thank you all right those are all the cards we have belief staff has completed their presentation the only thing that I ask is as we talk about this is councilmember Simon if we could really keep it restricted to the issue at hand and that is the appeal of the historic landmark Commission decision we're going to have plenty of time to address any kind of alterations or modifications or not address at all the procedures and policies that went into place effective today so if we could councilmember Davis thank you mayor so I analyze this as you said under the law that existed at the time the mural went up I think that's the only fair way to do it at the time that the HLC made their decision I also want to be very careful tonight to separate out the two issues and some of our speakers identified the two issues we have in front of us an appeal that has set criteria and then we also have in front of us process that we're dissatisfied with whether the mistake was with the the applicant or elsewhere we're dissatisfied with how that process brought us here today so I want to separate those two things out I also want to say that if we look at the certificate of appropriateness and the process for applying for that the question in front of us is does the proposed work have an adverse effect on the external architectural features of the landmark I think there's a case to be made that paint is not an architectural feature for one that a COA was never necessary I think there's also a case to be made that in fact my my personal opinion is that the mural itself does not adversely affect the external architectural features if we assume that paint is an architectural feature and for me that's kind of a big assumption frankly and then we then we look at it on the merits we have a historical commission that's job is to make that judgment call and it is a subjective judgment call first about whether this is an adverse effect and our prerogative as a council is to disagree with that subjective value judgment and I personally disagree I think it is a positive effect on the building I don't think the paint color from a preservation standpoint makes any difference I think the project as a whole did more to conserve the building than anything that have been done in its lifetime before so I don't think the mural has an adverse effect so if we look at it simply as an appeal of the decision I respectfully disagree with our landmark Commission and I think there's no adverse effect by the mural being in place but we also have to consider the way that we got here and the process that brought us here and we have to acknowledge what councilmember Briggs mentioned earlier that we can't have folks disregarding the process when it's in place for that reason I would be in favor of the applicant being fined the $500 applicable under the code for violating if our decision is going to be that paint is an architectural feature and that they should have had a COA before they did it let's find them the $500 and leave the mural as it stands councilmember Armitage so so first of all I'd like to at some point here just confirmation from staff if that is true about the $500 fine if we have if that is on the books for the violation and if that's the case then I would be I would support that I agree with pretty much everything that councilmember Davis just said including and especially about the paint not being an architectural feature but since this was something that was considered by the historic landmark Commission if there are already teeth there then as well apply them if there aren't I think we should put some teeth and I'm wondering if the slide of the front-facing mural could be put up again so we could see that I want to just to speak to you and again this this is is opposed to the question of was this painted before or after a decision was made I don't think there's any denial I don't think anyone here would deny about the the timing of that that's just objective fact but as far as the the decision that was in the hands of HLC that is now in our hands this is about aesthetic subjective judgment so I'm going to share mine because that's before us so looking at this just the front the the the staff opinion here that we have in the backer for today which is pretty similar to the HLC opinion says that when looking at the front of the building unless an individual sees the facade on the north side the mural appears to be disjoined and just detracts from the district so I'm gonna argue against that but respectfully respectfully to staff I understand it's a subjective opinion but I'm gonna share my subjective opinion if you could if you could make it concise and brief because we got some other yes thank you very much so looking at this so honest so looking at this from the front okay not knowing what's on the side this appears to me to be a landscape a landscape of a sky a colorful sky with a moon and a bird this is not you know to me disjointed would mean if there was a hand or some body part reaching out of nowhere where you're not sure exactly what that is right I know what this is in terms of representational art and it can even be taken as abstract art you know because of the style in in which it is painted and then I want to speak for the colors okay because you stated in the very beginning that you were going to support this and we have three other people four other people wishing to speak so I would appreciate if you make it very concise and wrap it up please I completely understand I'm almost done then this is my last point about the colors about the colors okay we've got blue cream and we've got some black and then we've got this kind of rust brown color let's start with the rust brown because it's on the bottom that echoes the color of the wood the historic wood and the way it's painted it echoes the brick on the square on the sidewalk there right with the planters so it's not coming out of nowhere we've got cream all over in bits and pieces all over the square and we've got black all over the square as for the blue which is the predominant color and I think that that's maybe I assume what people find what people who don't like it find the most disjointed as far as color goes you've got the sky and I want to emphasize that that people when people think about exterior paint colors and what goes and what doesn't go with an area people tended to often discount the natural landscape and even though this is an urban environment it does have a natural landscape so the sky is blue it goes with the sky you can see right there and that's the end of my argument as far as this being totally a a concise landscape in its own right that color wise it goes beautifully with the square councilmember Meltzer yeah I've got first a question for the start preservation officer and I'll stand on your way down you know there there's a few areas that I just feel like we're not being consistent within ourselves I would just like to iron out why was this brought to HLC in the first place the first C of a was to paint the north side of the building the large two-story mural as well as to repair the stucco and to repair the wooden facade and doors and paneling so that nobody clarified just in the interest of time why was the issue of they were looking at tonight yes brought to the HLC well that originally so they came back to amend that certificate of properties to paint those two other sides and a discussion staff level was that the HLC had seen that first C of a and dealt with that so to amend that C of a without going back to them didn't seem appropriate but what was it ever about anything other than paint the issue is paint there wasn't anything other than paint that was being discussed that's correct so a second C of a or the amendment to the C of A so do they have jurisdiction over paint or don't they under the the the code is exist until October 1 for an individual C of a did they have did they have jurisdiction over paint or didn't they they do have jurisdiction over paint in historic districts so we have three of those but for an individual landmark normally they do not it can be approved administratively but you you brought it to them because you felt they did have jurisdiction they certainly did for the first certificate of appropriation so amending that same you know discussing this with Richard and just discussing in general we determined that it would be nice to go back to if we're gonna amend a C of a that they originally approved even if it is was only for paint was to go ahead and take it back to them respectfully so okay this idea that you know I mean just within ourselves we ought to get straight on whether we think that or regulate paint or not because it sounds like our rule is that they do regulate paint but then some of us don't think that paint and I think I wouldn't be wrong in characterizing your own views that paint ought not to be but I don't know if we can so make that decide that issue tonight okay under this issue so thank you if I if I can just press I had a little sure you know mr. mayor what why did we postpone this item till the events certain of the rules the downtown design rules going into effect if we're not to consider the downtown design rules well if I recall correctly when we heard this the first time we thought those rules were going to be coming back to us in two weeks not in six months so I think that's the reason and even if they to come back to us in two weeks I don't think we'd be having any different conversation because rules typically don't apply retroactively and this was a decision made by the HLC and denying the certificate of appropriateness and so I think that's what we would have been hearing at that time okay cuz I understood at the time that you felt that you know that that was sort of substantively relevant and I might have and if I was I was mistaken okay yeah you know and it's like kind of all I'm after is sure just start getting ourselves sorted out of course and then I already spoke to the issue of you know if we don't think something like this if we if you do think something like this is appropriate for the square then we ought to relook it absolutely absolutely councilmember has our mayor pro-tem husband thank you Richard's gonna help me pull up something graphic while he's doing that I'm gonna I have a list here I've been quiet so bear with me I'll point out what one of the speakers said and so I don't know if the camera can catch it but anyway this is a this is a packet that was handed to us during the economic development partnership board I'll direct you to the website for the city for the Denton cultural district and then I flagged this page which staff put together and here is take my word for to look it up online here's the front of Andy's bar in that in our advertisement in our video because not because it's hard on the eyes because it's easy on the eyes I think I'll start as he's pulling up that's good and so what's absolutely perfect for me because I try to be consistent across the board and it's interesting tonight that we voted against so there was a there was an issue that came before us that had a proof from a board proof from council just two months ago and six of us had no problem voting against that just torpedoed it with no problem here's an advertisement it's an advertised board in the middle of our square facing the center of the square disjointed as all can be and if we're going to find the person that $500 that's two doors down then we need I won't support that until we find this fence that is in terrible shape I looked at it close there's a piece thing stuck to it there's an artist name type painted on it it's out of control and so yeah then I'll go to the and that's been there since February a long time anyway this council's free thinking which the process works they go to Commission they have a right to appeal that decision to us we have a right to make a decision if in and I think that is hard-earned by every individual that goes through an election process and works hard to sit in these seats and that's a duty we share I do not share the thought that we're inconsistent I think it's interesting that Roman just stood here and again hang on the details Roman just stood here and said it the original application was stucco it was paint it was other things on the first side then they came back to amend that but he did the right thing and saying hey we don't just in an abundance of caution bring it back one of my peers would then reduce that to say we're only talking about paint well no if you take him at his first words it was it was more than paint it was repairing the building it was a lot of other things but the paint part only the front he did not want to do without having some sort of record trail that sort of thing so it's interesting that just that quick words get turned around and I think that's what's important to hang on and so I think we've been a punt I've been absolutely clear absolutely consistent and I resist any accusation of anything other than that you could look at this meeting you can look at the meeting that preceded this I think it's it's it's a flaw to be subservient to a system to say you can't change your mind I think it's absolutely great to move things forward we have a new policy in place for for downtown square I think that's great I think there's there's nothing wrong with what we worked on and I think one of the speakers said it's it's based on cost the decision the painter the owner of the building made a decision based on cost absolutely we we vote on stuff on cost every day we we every day so yes absolutely every home builder that comes before us is based on cost so I think that's the that's the real pragmatic part of it decisions at my house are absolutely made on cost and so yes I guilty and I think that the owner of the building would say the same and I think we do it every day here so I can't I can't begrudge someone from making a decision based on cost I do it every Tuesday and so that that's a challenge for me and then let's take another step forward let's look Jupiter house just reopened I absolutely think that place is fantastic but if we're gonna start regulating paint the the the very top portion of his building is all black and then it's painted Jupiter house and white so does he have to take that back to the original brick because the entire top of it is painted and then what's missed is the you can't see it in this picture but I looked at it close the Denton mini mall doesn't say many anymore it says men and the NI has been eaten away and it's okay and no complaints and and so it's just very inconsistent I mean if you leave your building dilapidated you're okay but if you would make improvements on it we have thoughts about that but if you're the fence we don't mind and if you're Jupiter house and you paint it all black that's okay it's just and so for me I just I don't understand the the each council member needs to make a decision right and and I think you know you stand on that and and and I think that's how I I've made my decision my decision is a pragmatic consistency that I would happily sell to anyone based on cost and I can't support a fine if we're not going to find everyone on the same side of the street okay council member Ryan thank you bear I think this is probably gonna be a question for Roman because it deals with the 2017 application and as I look at the backup from from them from from the HLC on that day under the section that's property appearance guidelines for downtown core there is a section of that guideline that covers color that covers I'm sorry what color okay so whether you know whether we're talking about paint or brick or whatever it is color is is you know the look of it and so it's not my question is when they approve this because you said they also did the front facade for the the new doors is that correct right so they approved that facade but they approved it as a solid color on the top that's that's correct you at the first the original certificate of appropriateness it also included painting the front of the building the cream color and then doing all that okay so he had already gone through and gotten approval for a particular way to paint that front that's right so and then he came back to amend it and that was the reason as councilman for hudspeth said that we just felt that it would be appropriate to take that back to landmark commission because they had seen it with as you said painting it cream color there right so I guess that's that's kind of the direction I'm coming from is if it was approved one way and you want to make a change you should have gotten the change approved first I mean I'm very torn on this issue because you know I love the way it looks I'd like to keep it I think that with our new rules and regulations we're not necessarily that going to affect today we're not going to set a precedent because the rules and regulations have changed and it wouldn't be able to happen again but again I guess the direction I'm thinking of on this item is had he not painted before he went back to the HLC what when he came to us for an appeal HLC turned it down what would we have decided then if it wasn't there if we were approving for it to go on today would we say yes or will we say no is it because we've seen what it looks like and that's the reason why we're gonna vote for it or because we've we've had an outcry of public opinion more so on the on the keep it side but a little bit on both sides yeah and so it's it's a tough tough vote and we'll just see where we go from there yeah I just like to get an answer to the question about councilmember Davis's assertion that there is in fact a power to fine that's a good question we've got the city attorney queued up to answer that all right then in short the answer is no but how I get there is you have to look at the DDC specifically thirty five point one point ten point four any person who violates a provision of this chapter which is chapter 35 the entire DDC within the city of Denton it shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined the maximum fine in the amount of two thousand dollars if it's a violation and for public health safety and welfare which this is not that would be more like somebody allowing mosquitoes to breed in a pool during the summer when West Nile is prevalent here or and shall be fined the maximum fine in the amount of five hundred dollars for any other violation now using the terms misdemeanor guilty conviction that is a criminal process that is there and so the way that our code has been designed in all our ordinances in our city code violations of those of those ordinances I take it a citation is issued that is then taken to under our criminal process under state law in our court is prosecuted in municipal court and so can the city council just put up every site to this and issue a fine of five hundred dollars no it can't if the council but you know if the council is concerned about people doing a forbidden act before and then come and request forgiveness later at a later time one thing that you may want to consider if you're amending your ordinances is to actually build in a penalty provision as part of the application process if somebody has already done it you may get there one of the one of the I would not recommend making a separate civil administrative penalty like our red light camera system to try to go after somebody to collect on that kind of penalty because you may end up not being able to collect I just want to make sure I understand I heard the advice about you could build it in for future I heard you're saying we can't just do that as a council no sir what are you saying that a citation could be issued that would then go through a yes judicial process and it's and I think I know where you're going and if if the council were to reverse the HLC's decision and they're fine in and which would be approving what the applicant is requested then it has become legal there's not a violation that exists anymore because you have legalized it and so no fine no citation that's my monitor just gonna be really brief so in that case thank you for saying that mr. city attorneys I in that case because my comment about the $500 fine my being okay with that was contingent on us already having a policy on the books so even if you said it that it was possible for us to do that which which you didn't I still wouldn't be okay with that unless it was something we had on the books so I support putting something in there for the future to ensure that I know that you know nobody jumps the gun again so I just for the record I just withdraw my my comment about the $500 okay I get the last word I'm not gonna recognize anybody else so I'm just telling you that this is very simple to me once I got the facts straight because that's really this is just a fact-based case with some nuance for me I agree with mayor pro tem we have a process the process is if you don't like the HLC's decision no matter what it is you can come appeal to the City Council and the City Council has the opportunity to review that under the standards that they review decisions I remember there was a case like this with solar panels on Oak Street where the HLC denied solar panels on a house appealed to the City Council and I believe the City Council said they were okay so this this turns for me on a very interesting fact that confirmed here first of all I want to thank everybody for coming out and expressing the opinions the wide range opinions that we had expressed tonight I mean that's to me that is the process no matter where you come down on those opinions and on those on those opinions about the facts that's the process I appreciate the historic those people serving on the Historic Landmark Commission and the time that they put in and the energy that they put in the thorough thought and deliberation and intentionality that they consider every decision that comes before them so no matter how this decision goes it's in no way a reflection on anybody sitting in here tonight and it's in no way reflection to me at least for me on the those who serve on the Historic Landmark Commission but so this is how I see it is it clear that the the mural was painted prior to the meeting of the HLC to approve that or not I think that's clear and that's that's a that's a stipulated fact was there that certificate given for the north side of the mural that probably was asked for prior to the painting and that was given so here's where it turns for me and I didn't know this until I was refreshed my memory had a recollection the south side of the building which was painted at the same time as the front of the building was approved on the same night that the front part of the building was denied now of all the facts that I've heard that's the thing to me that somehow I don't I can't really make a whole lot of sense out of because if the denial was punitive for not getting the certificate prior to the painting then it would seem to me that the south side would be denied as well so I don't understand that rationale except reading through the minutes that part of it was because it was the front-facing side of the square I did not see that in any of the requirements either for approval or denier with that level of specificity yes it's very general but one thing I think it's imperative that we do is we try to provide consistency so that people understand how we are going to deliberate and the consistency of that so if there was a concern that it was painted outside of the normal process then and if that was the reason to deny the front inherently implicitly then the south side should have been denied as well because it was done at the same time so I'm gonna have a hard time bifurcating those two in my mind I understand about well somebody did it they flagrantly broke the rules and they should be punished okay let's just take that as a as an approach if that's the case then why was it bifurcated at the HLC deliberation so when it comes to counsel for me I have to look at their decision and try to understand their decision so suffice it to say that's what's turning it for me is that the mural which I'm not even so sure I would call that a mural based upon some of our criteria was half approved and not half approved that's pretty crazy making sometimes you know how does that happen so I'm gonna vote to I don't what are we is this a what are we calling this and a it's not a denial is it a deny it's not a denial of the appeal it's an approval of the appeal is that credit it's it's how would we couch this if there's going to be a motion or if there's I mean what are we ever actually asking about and I think the easiest way for the public to understand as well as the council is that if the council is inclined to approve mr. Polito's request it would be a motion to reverse HLC's determination and grant and then fill in the blanks and I saw certainly appreciate the council members discussions about the current rules I don't particularly believe that this set precedent under our current rules simply because our current rules were not in place and we can revisit those at any time based upon anything that we want to either modify or amend or we can just leave it alone and wait until these situations come I will encourage people to maybe avoid this process in the future let's try to follow the process of getting filing the way we're supposed to file and getting that however I understand that there's punishment I understand there's there's consequences to our decisions but also believe that it's a paramount for policymakers and decision makers to be as consistent and predictable in their actions as possible and so my vote here tonight to reverse the decision of the Historic Landmark Commission is to say that because it was bifurcated decision I don't know how to even deal with that except to say if they approved one but didn't approve the other I did not understand the rationale under the guidelines in which that was done and that means no disrespect for them it's just a disagreement of the process it's not trying to substitute my judgment for theirs it's trying to understand the process that occurred at that time all right councilmember mayor pro tem husband I'm going to make the motion to reverse the HLC decision and grant the appeal for item a okay councilmember Davis second we have a motion to second let's vote on the board please motion carries six to one let's take about a five or ten minute break and we'll come back with our regular agenda welcome back to this meeting of the Dent City Council on June the 18th 2019 it is 903 we are now moving for our agenda item 5b which is consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton amending the code of ordinances related to chapter 25 titled streets sidewalks and public places oh and special events that's the most important part of this whole title for parks and recreation and today we're going to briefly recap the ordinance that's in front of you for consideration the purpose of the ordinance is to provide safety and compliance with public safety streets consumer health and solid waste also to give us a process that provides consistency across the board setting standards and equal application to all event organizers through a streamlined process it also gives us some logistical procedures and planning and budgeting for special events and last but not least it gives us customer service or enhances our customer service by providing a guide with step-by-step processes on going through these special event procedures and also offers a one-stop shop for event organizers a little bit of background on this ordinance we started this review process just over a year ago back in May of 2018 council was presented with some information on the current process also procedures and issues that were identified with the current process we discussed related ordinances that pertain to parade permits food permits fire code amplified sound the request for alcohol sales and also street closures First Amendment activities and block parties were discussed and how this ordinance would apply to them there was also a request that we have a formal approval process and if there is a denial of the permit that an appeal process be implemented and finally there was some discussion on councils review and approval of special events so on May 7th we came back with a revised ordinance based on those comments we had a review of insurance requirements at that time First Amendment activities were again discussed and the applicability of those of this ordinance to those events and a notification process as well as a submission timeline for block party applications that includes a reduced timeline for them the use of peace officers for security and master application and online guide so through those discussions we develop solutions number one is the ordinance itself it specifically defines what a special event is and it provides us with that consistency of application we now have a guide with activities that are involved in special events and all the related requirements associated with those activities it's also used as a step-by-step planning tool for event organizers we have a master application that standardizes the review for all departments it's online and fillable parks has been designated as the coordinator and facility for special events providing a continuity of service and then we also have that final permit application process that provides us with the final approval if there is a denial there is an appeal process outlined in the ordinance and overall it gives us compliance with applicable requirements not only upfront but through the actual event itself so what does this look like in motion the administrative process begins with the application submittal where we check for completeness of the application and also gives us an opportunity to get clarification if there's any questions that application is then submitted to all of the impacted departments for their review they would provide us comments on the requirements that are needed based on the activities that are applied for or are proposed for the special event for the special event and it also provides us with an opportunity to meet with the event organizer if that's necessary to clarify again what they're wanting to do and those requirements if they have any questions we have a built-in timeline that allows for an update of that application and a second review process also to put together any documentation that's needed in terms of contract or council items for approval and then finally we have that permit approval and a denial or appeal process simultaneously we have some operational procedures that are happening including the scheduling of staff and site preparation at the event itself we continue with site operations staffing and ensuring that there is safety and compliance and then wrapping up at the end of the event there is cleanup equipment removal and the documentation of the event and also the assessment of fees if necessary a couple of key provisions that we discussed at our last meeting was there now is a requirement that any special event that requires an ordinance which would be if an event organizer is requesting an exemption to the noise ordinance or requesting that they be allowed to sell alcohol at their event that those applications have to be submitted 90 days prior to the proposed event date that request needs to also accompany the application so we have the application review process the documentations that need to be drafted for legal review and then placement of the item on the agenda for the next appropriate council meeting for those special events that do not require any ordinances or approval by council we're requiring a 60-day notice prior to the event so 60 days prior to the event that will be required to again submit that application goes through the similar application review process adjustments for subsequent reviews and then the administrative and operational planning for block parties we've set up a 14-day notice so this is something that council provided some feedback to us at our last meeting they didn't want it to fall within that 90 or 60 day time frame and we agree with that so we've got that down to 14 days during that 14-day period that allows us to review the street closure application and not only is that reviewed by the police department but it's also reviewed by our street department that also provides the event organizer an opportunity to make arrangements for barricade rentals and there is a provision to provide for a shorter time frame if we feel that we're able to get through that review process and the appropriate barricade rentals can be done in a shorter time period and then finally we do have a 7-day timeline for First Amendment activities that is a defined event which I'll review with you here in just a minute and that provides us an opportunity to review the event for any public safety needs and operational planning that may be required other key provisions that we discussed are the requirements for insurance that was changed slightly from a five hundred thousand dollar minimum in some cases to a flat one million dollar I'm sorry yes five hundred thousand dollar minimum in some in some occasions but now setting a minimum liability of a million dollars and we talked a little bit about the number of events that that would impact and out of all I believe 30 events that impacted three two events were actually at five hundred thousand one event was at two million and that was just their normal liability insurance that they carried it wasn't a request for a higher insurance requirement block party I'm sorry First Amendment and block parties are exempt from special from the special event fee and also exempt from the insurance requirement the ordinance also provides guidelines for parking it requires plan and notification of affected businesses and residents and it also requires that they provide that they provide some sort of documentation that they've received permission to use a private lot if that private lot is included in their parking plan for security and traffic licensed peace officers are required I believe Councilmember Ryan you'd ask for information to clarify in the ordinance that that we allow a law enforcement officer other than the city of Denton could work those securities and we did provide some language in there to clarify that any licensed peace officer that is commissioned by a Denton County agency would be allowed to provide security to to a special event within the city of Denton and then finally there are some exceptions to motorcades and funerals special event venues and also government approved events so touching briefly on that key provision for First Amendment First Amendment was defined in the original ordinance and some additional language has been added in there to clarify that that seven-day timeframe applies to First Amendment activities that are pre-planned scheduled and promoted for a future date and again those are required to come to us with some notification within seven days of the event so that we can appropriately plan for any special public safety needs or any organizational planning needs we also briefly touched on another key provision which was the in-kind services as I mentioned earlier any request for in-kind services will now be required at the time of the special event application those in-kind services include waivers or reductions of set fees labor labor and staffing cost public safety cost and in some cases we have had requests that we pay for specific services that are provided to their events such as the rental of table and chairs the departments that are impacted include our own department parks police fire and EMS solid waste and streets and the vegetarian impact includes loss of revenue staffing cost equipment and supplies and then again the direct payment on some of the services are requesting we shared with you an overview of what the special event costs were for last fiscal year 1718 a combination of those out-of-pocket expenses those were that for those in kind requests that were formally waived also hot funds were included an additional I believe it's about ten thousand dollars that was provided as cash donations to those events totaling just under five hundred thousand dollars in the last fiscal year in support of special events in the current fiscal year we've had 11 events that have been co-sponsored by the city of Denton those comp those co-sponsorships are now at a total of two hundred and sixty three thousand dollars which is slightly above last year's cost at two hundred and thirty eight thousand when you add in the hot funds at two hundred and forty eight thousand in the cash sponsorships of ten thousand we've now supported special events at a cost of five hundred and twenty two thousand dollars moving forward we did talk to you about bringing a co-sponsorship policy back to you with the eligibility requirements of who is eligible to receive in-kind services and also what type of services would be eligible to be waived or reduced we've also are proposing a level of support and this would also give us a good opportunity to review the process for approval instead of bringing those to you one at a time as they're currently done we'd have the opportunity to maybe fold that into existing process such as the hot fund review and then also setting a budget allocation a special event budget or in a street closure budget to help provide some support for block parties when they're closing down the streets for barricade rentals both of those we've actually submitted a supplemental packages in the current fiscal year for the next budget cycle well we're also planning on bringing back some information on a software software tool that this will take us this process completely online we already have the online application but this would provide us with the opportunity to do an internal workflow where all of the information would go to the affected departments for the application review they can provide their comments online and also show their approvals or denials online this would also provide real-time status updates to the organizer the applicant that where they can view their application online and see the status of it see what has been approved what comments are left remaining that need to be addressed and how far out they are from their timeline so our options for this evening are to approve the draft ordinance with the additional changes as recommended by Council approve the draft ordinance with additional revisions that we may receive tonight or not to approve the ordinance Councilmember Briggs could you go to the slide where it's key provisions submission timeline and it just gives the different types that we're adding here could you or do you know like a cost estimation maybe for the the person that's doing the application for each one of these just in general for the okay so like with the public safety you know if the event holder has to do that how much would that with that normally be it is really going to be dependent on the activities that they are proposing to have so there are permit fees that those are set and for the most part they're nominal like the application for this process is thirty five dollars moving forward that would include a permit as well for parades so that they wouldn't have a separate permit for a parade or a separate fee for a parade so in some cases they're folded in actually reducing the cost but again in terms of public safety and security cost that's gonna depend on their estimated attendance the type of activities they want to have other app with other permits that may be applicable they also come with the cost or health food permits those are often though you know transferred over to the individual vendor the special event organizer doesn't pay for those but then there's also rental fees if they just want to use the park there is one fee but if they add on let's say the Civic Center use of the Civic Center in the patio that's going to be an additional fee so it just depends on on the activities that they are planning right and all of that as I recall is in the online application and everything is up front and you get that cost right then and there so you know what which is good and transparent I'm just curious because I see here like you know the First Amendment activity public safety and then operational planning is there a is there a price for operational planning no so in the case of First Amendment activities and also block parties are except from the application fee and the insurance requirement there there isn't there isn't a provision in this current ordinance that they pay for public safety and know the operational planning is something that we would do because it would it benefits both sides of the equation in this case so when we're talking about the two the black the block party and the First Amendment activity those costs would be minimal if if anything correct correct and on the block party they still are responsible for the parric the barricade cost however we are proposing a grant program that would assist them up to two hundred dollars for or you know to be used towards those barricade costs I think that's in our supplemental yes yes okay and my last question is what would be reasons for denial of one of these because we do have the process we actually went through one earlier you know appeal of a denial so what what kind of circumstance or situation do you think would be reasons for denial and are they outlined anywhere or is it subjective no no it's clearly outlined and that's again one of the certainly one of the positives of the draft ordinance and just as you pointed out it's everything is clearly stated up front and even included in our guide which gives them that step-by-step process so everybody knows up front what the requirements are and what those expectations are so in terms of what what you know event could be denied for maybe they don't provide us with the insurance certificate of insurance maybe they haven't gone through the processes or provided the appropriate documentation that they might need for their health permit or a tent permit and all of that would be funneled through us however again eventually we do want to move towards a total online system that would allow that event organizers to see exactly what the status of is of their event but in the meantime we would have that communication one-on-one with them through the Parks Department and we do have a dedicated staff person just for special events so that staff member would work with them again individually to make sure that they know and understand where they're on the process as this timeline continues to move towards their event date okay so it would be just a lack of having all the documentation correct more so thank correct thank you so first of all thank you for you know streamlining this this process and doing all of this so I the first time this came before us when it came for us in the work session I was nervous about that first amendment category as you probably recall and my what I was nervous about was you know obviously you know the first amendment granted to us by the Constitution and so you can you can have a first amendment activity without seeking permission of this of the City Council but that said I understand you know the need to want to kind of have if it's going to be a really big event you know to make sure there's like police there if there needs to be a street closure and just so the city's aware etc etc so so anyway so I had can I had looked into that and had reached out to and emailed with Larry Colister in the legal department and I consulted my own attorney and just asked him hey you know can you suggest a fix for this and it emailed that to City Attorney's Office and and then I went and checked for it in the new ordinance and it looks it looks like the that language is not in there but I wanted to kind of reiterate and you know and to share with my colleagues for the first time what yeah what that that suggestion was and again this is just my private attorney suggestion and I couldn't find I was just going to try to find the response from legal I couldn't I couldn't find it I don't know if it was in it one of the you know confidential legal legal reports I don't remember but I couldn't find that but he suggested at just adding some language saying if circumstances of public interest are rise at a time when compliance with this ordinance and it's seven-day notification requirement is impossible or unfeasible the First Amendment right to peaceable assembly overrides any justification to deny the assembly or find its organizers or participants and what that would do just those few words he was arguing again I'm not a lawyer but he you know but he bit and I'd be curious for the City Attorney's opinion the idea was that that that would eliminate any concern about the appearance of a prior restraint which is which is illegal I'm not saying this is illegal but I'm saying that that it could kind of open up liability or concern where somebody could say hey you know what you just did you're not allowed to have done that because you didn't fill out a form and therefore opening us up to liability so I was wondering if either you you know could speak to why that language wasn't included in there or maybe the City Attorney would want to speak to that but I'm just curious because that meant that made me nervous and then I was excited to find what seemed to me a simple fix I think we did if Laura if you could go back to you had the definition of First Amendment activity it had that was pre-planned okay we made a distinction when it came to First Amendment activities and those that would have to be have to come in at these seven days in advance and that's the key word pre-planned we recognize that there's going to be situations out there like what happens a spontaneous protest in reaction to a court ruling and a shooting incident whatever might be that might occur that's not what Laura and Parks Department and you all are trying to address that's going to happen no matter what ordinance we have I had when such an occasion happens when that happens the city's reaction and concern is going to be public safety's whereas we're trying to ensure that this this spontaneous event protest is peaceful that it doesn't lead into property damage or a counter demonstration and create violence our concern is much different than following an ordinance so but that definition the way it's written simply answers that question that don't recall the name of the attorney who wrote that but that's in essence we have recognized that by limiting this to those that are pre-planned so Earth Day we know that happens every year you know that would fall under something like this because it's a First Amendment activity that's what we're this ordinance is geared to address under the First Amendment activity and thank you and I can I completely understand that and agree with that absolutely it was this is this is about not so much the difference between pre-planned and and and spontaneous but and whether or not that's that this that's what this is limited to I understand that but it's just about putting in some language there just to protect against any possible claim of prior restraint which doesn't so much have to do with the pre-planned versus unplanned question but just about just saying we know that you have the right to the we know that that the first amendment trumps this however you know here is this here are these guidelines so and anyway that was that was you know my attorney Richard Gladden suggestion I didn't know what there was I couldn't find the response I'm not sure if I got one from legal but I was concerned enough about it and the liability there as much as I love everything about this including including this business about the plan versus the in the spontaneous and I love it I'm gonna have to vote no because of my my concern about that any of the questions councilmember mayor pro tem hospice move approval councilmember Ryan no second let's vote on board please motion carries six one moving on agenda item 5c consider appointments to city council committees I didn't think we were sorry there's actually not a presentation I'll just pull this up really quickly for you all to review so this is a quick reminder I made a presentation last Tuesday on the city council committee appointment process as well as the role of city council committees and tonight you're simply voting on the appointments that were included in your agenda package okay so I know I spoke with councilmember Meltzer about he was wanting to I was wanting to get on mobility committee and he was wanting to get on the economic development partnership board committee is that correct which is then also the TERS committee so do we who's on the economic development partnership board committee I thought Gerard wasn't serving on any more committees besides the 2019 preference choice column to the far right indicates oh Davis okay Davis is on there okay well I think we got so I guess Paul unless one of them wanted to sort of substitute you in and anybody go ahead councilmember Briggs did you have a question or comment well well I didn't know I when we asked about this earlier I thought I was told that this was a separate process and all these nominations for the economic development partnership board would go through a different process and so what we want right now and what we say is gonna be different when I agree on that board they need to be yeah chosen and nominated and then voted on yeah so like I Meltzer could you know put his whoever's on the nominating committee could sure know continue to nominate however many people they wanted unless I'm mistaken so if we vote on these tonight as presented if somehow there's a change that's available for you can be on the economic development partnership board then I could be on mobility we can do that if not we'll just vote like this because I'm not gonna disrupt that whole process I mean you're already on there and I'm not gonna say hey I want to be on it and you not have a an opportunity to be on there so we'll just take care of that afterwards so we're fine correct and just quick point of clarification any of the committees that have read lettering next to them where it says separate appointment process we we were asked to include those in this matrix but those are not a part of what you typically appoint during this process yeah yeah okay yes I'm sorry I forgot to push yes go ahead oh I'm go ahead on councilmember has a mayor pro tem husband yeah mr. city manager can I I don't know the process so staffs been great about getting me information I just would like to I don't know how to have to bring this conversation forward but for example I just want to have a discussion about the and I've said this before the citizens boards and council members being present there and I want to try to circulate a conversation or I get I understand it's an ordinance issue some of them I just want to have a holistic discussion about I can just use an example we're economic development partnership board just last week and they're talking around us like hey we got to take this to council and we're sitting right there but you're not in council capacity so you're you're citizen your council capacity but you have no opportunity to speak to it because you're not a consensus and so it's just I just think it's it's antiquated to some degree and then you could also expand who could be there so but for the requirements you you could have three people there right if councils are if you're not a part of the board then three people could sit in there and have no problems so I just want to I don't know what that process is I don't know if I have to go find consensus to have bring that up then then I'll try to find that but if not if it's something that can be done just by request I'd like to have that conversation to see if there's there's consensus for it all right good councilman Briggs I now I forgot what I was gonna say oh okay so if we vote on this and you said normally the ones in red are from a different voting process but is it part of the ordinance say so if it's Davis and Briggs so does that have any binding if we vote on this ordinance say for the nomination committee to to choose those two people so for tonight there's actually no ordinance this will just be reflected in the minutes and so it would not impact any of the other ordinances associated and that's a good point that's a good point so I guess customer Melser would you mind if on the preference choice of your name being included under the economic development partnership board so at least the nominating committee would know who the preferences are okay sure yeah okay that's a good point thank you so there's no action oh no we do have to take action but to to to appoint these committees yes do all right okay any other questions seeing none councilmember Briggs I'm of approval councilmember Armitage second let's vote on the board please and that's 7-0 approval 7-0 with the next item is consider approval of a resolution of the City Council of the City of Denton appointing an alternate representative to the Denton County Transportation Authority good evening mayor members of the council Mario Kanisaris deputy city manager just wanted to make some brief comments back on May 21st the City Council appointed Mayor Watts and former council member Sarah Begarry to the DCTA board mayor Watts is a primary member Ms. Begarry as the alternate soon thereafter after that appointment Ms. Begarry resigned from that appointment so that leaves an alternate appointment open and so just wanted to come as soon as we could to see if we can if council would make an appointment for the alternate appointment the key with having the alternate as they obviously attend the the board meetings at DCTA when there are closed session items the alternate appointments are allowed to stay in the room during the deliberations with the board and the city are assuming the staff attorney and the absence of the primary member obviously the city didn't would have representation there to be able to deliberate on behalf of the city so with that really just seeking a nomination for an alternate member and then that way we can go ahead and get that information over to DCTA so they can go ahead and begin doing their orientation with with that individual council member Briggs you made a yes I'm just gonna nominate councilmember Ryan I know that the last one of the last meetings he volunteered and said he would like to be the alternate okay Councilmember Melcer I'll second so we're going to we're nominating council member Ryan is the alternate for the DCTA board is we have a motion and a second for that nomination let's vote on the board please motion carries 7-0 thank you thank you moving on to agenda item 5 being consider a motion to reconsider the June 11 2019 approval of an ordinance of the city didn't regarding a change in the zoning district and use classification from downtown commercial to highway corridor good evening mayor and council Richard can only development services have just two brief slides related to this item on June 11th there was a ordinance that was approved zci 1900 to 4a this is part of the city initiated rezonings for area 24 that you see here if you recall there were two properties that were removed and it's sort of right before the public hearing that reduced that acreage down to 3.57 acres when the ordinance went forward we had the old caption and so what was read into the record and voted on was for that 8.32 acres rather than the 3.57 and so the item in front of you it would be requested to be reconsidered and if so if that is approved this evening this would be then re-advertised and incorporated into the group two amendments that are scheduled to be in front of council on July 23rd this is just sort of a staff and well did somebody from council probably had to ask for that correct okay all right council member Ryan okay all right yeah no that's fine council member Ryan council member Briggs second you have motion to second let's vote on the board please motion carries 7-0 we're now to our public hearing portion of the agenda it looks like agenda item 6a has been postponed and will be noticed for a later date agenda item 6b has been postponed and will be noticed for a later date and then agenda item 6c which is hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance amending specific use permit ordinance 2017 - 222 to allow for a change in the previously approved building facades within a multifamily development on approximately 0.9 acres all right good evening Haley Zagorski with development services so this is case s198 which is an amendment to the existing SUP for the Rainey Road apartments the request before you is to consider adoption of an ordinance to amend SUP ordinance 2017 - 222 to allow for a change in the previously approved building facades the property that you can see outlined in yellow is just under one acre in size located at the intersection of Rainey Road Rainey Court and Elm Street so a look at the original approval as I mentioned this was approved in 2017 the SUP was for a multifamily use on a property zone NRMU 12 this is a look at the approved landscape plan that kind of shows the full picture so you can see two buildings they are designed to be townhome style apartments a total of 10 units each one would be a two-story unit with a rear fence that you can see in the the black hatched area here so give the appearance of townhomes this plan also include us included a storage building here buffer to a single-family use just north of here and a total of 23 parking spaces in the interior of the property also included with the site plan and landscape plan were very specific building elevations that specified a square footage amount of brick and stucco on each wall of the buildings the condition of approval for the SUP was that the development substantially comply with that approved site plan landscape plan and building elevations it's also worth noting that this site since 2017 has moved forward with permitting they actually have a permit issued and could complete the buildings today as they were approved but the new owner is looking to enhance the facades so just a refresher on the criteria for approval of an SUP it was found to meet all of these back in 2017 the two most important criteria for today are just the consistency in scale bulk and coverage with surrounding areas and architectural compatibility so just to look at the two buildings these this is the rear elevation so building one is on the south side this is the side that would be visible along any court so what was approved in 2017 was a combination of stucco and brick mostly brick but there was a about a third of the each facade was stucco at that time what's proposed today is to reduce the stucco substantially on all sides of the building and instead add stone elements that would range from anywhere from 30 to 45 percent of the facades similarly on building 2 this is a look at that rear facade that would be visible along North Elm Street same thing no stone was included in 2017 now they're looking to add 30 to 50 percent stone on any side of the building so staffs findings the use has not changed the site does have a permit issue that is in compliance with that approved site plan and landscape plan they're not proposing any changes to the buffers the existing trees are still to remain along Rainey Road and the overall design of the buildings is still the same this proposed change of materials was found to be consistent with residential style and unlikely to result in any nuisances notification was sent regarding the request in between P&Z and council I did receive two responses one indicated opposition one indicated favor but their comments indicated that there may have been some confusion there and what their response was both were just same concerns as in 2017 about multi-family going in the area there was not a neighborhood meeting held regarding the request the planning and zoning Commission recommended approval five to zero with the staff recommended condition which is that the proposed building elevations supersede and replace those approved with and attached to ordinance 2017 222 all other provisions of the original ordinance would remain as adopted and I'm happy to stand for any questions has the building permit been issued it is they've they would apply for a revision if this gets okay that's gonna be my next question correct so there's a there's a process for that where they can because their permit is pursuant to their original SUP correct so they would have to okay fantastic Councilmember Nelson stone good I move approval of the SCP with the recommended condition Councilmember Briggs I'll second we have oh this is a public hearing thank you very much I will now open the public hearing thank you I'd like to request that you make a single line yeah anybody wishing to speak on this item please come down state your name and address in your time will begin anybody wishing to speak I always call it three times I'm gonna call three times anybody wishing to speak all right we will now close the public hearing thank you thank you Aaron for that okay we have a motion in a second any discussion let's vote on the board please oh so we're gonna have to make somebody's gonna have to move again okay who seconded it all right so we have a motion in the second motion carries 7-0 concluding items councilmembers Councilmember Meltzer okay first I'd like to request an ISR on candidate properties for a basic services center and I'd be entirely open to having that contextualized with a recommendation for against whatever conditions but you know what what my candidate properties be and please include in your consideration the Riddell property mentioned that right now there's a road planned for second just a topic for one of the construction updates I'd like to tee up just based on following public comment picking up a perception that we do construction we start construction projects and then they just said they had a very nice exchange with the city engineer explaining that sometimes it's concrete curing for months sometimes it's rain clearing and you know it gets the impression that like we just are starting starting starting and not finishing things so you know why is the condition why is the construction project just sitting would be the topic for in a construction update and third and last community clearly embrace the mural and despite my vote I'm happy it will remain too I like it too but I'd like to request a work session that can you know go into our survey process to revisit the downtown design standards with respect to murals paint and color on the square so that if we think that there that it ought to be a precedent that we define to what extent it shouldn't shouldn't and to to clarify whether HLC should be issuing or denying coa's over paint or not and third with respect to consequences for violations of process all right that's my monitor you just you just stole my what I might two ideas the latter two so I will withdraw my request so I have I have a list here so with the DRC there was an article about the Providence Place apartments and and the alarms not going off and that there's there's other ongoing issues and so I'm curious who is responsible to make sure that the units are safe and in compliance with the code so that issues can be avoided like this as far as you know smoke alarms and things like that I also recently have noticed several locations where the developers went out of the way to preserve trees and they are dead because the route zones were not protected the throughout the development so I would like to when we do bring our tree code back to us for discussion and final approval I'd like to discuss that to make sure that we are doing everything that we need to do to protect those critical root zones and today during the the budget discussions we learned of several house bills was the 852 and 1152 which are gonna affect us and the loss of revenue along with the the red light camera if we could just in our next budget discussion have a page of a list of all the future loss of revenue with the the new legislation just kind of on one slide where we get an idea of how that's gonna affect us and mr. Hesbitt talked earlier about Pinnacle which is a company and so if we could just have in a Friday report the rules for relocation and financial assistance that's offered I remember some of it but it's been so long since we've gone through that process that I I'm not familiar with it so much anymore mayor pro tem hud speth kind of touched on this earlier when he talked about an issue brought up during an economic development meeting it was brought up that we had an economic development fund and there is about a million dollars in that fund right now and so a lot of people aren't familiar with that and so if we could just have a conversation report about you know what what that's for and what it can be used for if we're saving it for something and I do know that the the board does want to have a conversation about that in the future too and then also discussion about land for the tiny house village that's it thank you thank you sir kind of along one of those lines I'd like to if staff and it could be a Friday report thing I just want to understand what we anticipate property wise to be remaining after Bonnie Bray's widening so we're buying those entire properties what will be left afterwards just to kind of get an idea of what can go there and then to if we could look at I don't know if it's technology solution but when we have a graphic up to also have the timer so the speakers can see how much time they have left simultaneously that would be good or at least understanding what our options are in that regard and back to Bonnie Bray the houses we own can we get the the mowers out there those on the corner and pretty rough shape and then I'd like it I'd like to ask either Mr. City Attorney I'd like to see what our options are periodically individuals on counsel mention and I'm guilty of it as well emails but then you don't there's no so the you're referencing I let's say I reference an email but then I don't provide that email in the backup you know I are in the record I just I want to have a conversation or a work session on a policy that would address that so if a councilperson mentions I know all the emails are open record but I think if you're gonna if I'm gonna cite one in my conversation I mean need to then produce that for the record I just think that that needs to be a policy discussion for this this council and if they if the majority ops not to do that at least that's done so wide open thank you yeah I've got a couple when we have the work session about the basic services center I want to also have a information from staff about the shelter work group that was discussed because that organization or representatives of that organization were on that shelter work group I'd like to understand more about the organization its history its makeup its 501 3c status any of these projects that they've done in the past I mean if we're gonna have a comprehensive conversation about it let's have a comprehensive conversation about it also I'd like staff to we saw that there were two institutions there that were talking about support and that was the May Hill Hospital and didn't MHMR I want to make sure that those are plugged into our current operating shelters to ensure that they're providing those services there as well because we have a very established nonprofit who has an emergency shelter and also the Salvation Army so I want to make sure that if they're offering services somewhere else that they're providing those services to already established places so I want to ensure that we have adequate and accurate information when we consider any decision in that regard councilmember breaks did you have another one or okay all right yeah and I think along with council or mayor Pro Tems I would like this and maybe maybe some of the council members will if the legal department is getting letters from attorneys representing private attorneys representing council members on specific language going into ordinances I would like to know that ahead of time I would like to be able to be copied in on that even if it doesn't make it into the ordinance I want to be able to be aware of of what's going on in that regard so that's all I have seeing no more we'll stand adjourned at 950