Jul 23, 2019 City Council on 2019-07-23 11:00 AM

July 23, 2019 City Council
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             Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Tuesday, July the 23rd, 2019.
 It is 1102 p.m. We do have a quorum. I'll call the meeting to order.
 Our first item on the agenda is citizens' comments on consent agenda items.
 I do not see any blue cards. We'll move on to requests for
 clarification of agenda items listed on this agenda.
 Anybody have clarification of agenda items? Councilmember Armitage?
 I was wondering if there's somebody here to talk about item B just briefly because I thought it
 was really important and someone could just speak about it. If not, then that's fine. I don't want
 someone to go out of their way to come in the evening. Is this consent agenda item B? Yes.
 Okay. All right. And then item G, I wanted to pull that for some questions right now and then
 possibly pull it for individual consideration. Okay. So we have questions. Is there someone here
 to answer the questions on the victim assistance coordinator grant for consent agenda item B? And
 then we'll follow that up with someone to provide answers or comments on consent agenda item G.
 Chief Dixon's not here right now because you can find him. Okay. All right. So then anybody here
 on for G, which is professional services agreement with Rick Robinson? Is this the retreat?
 That is the, he's the consultant we've used in the past, but this is specifically a contract to do
 executive coaching and some other personnel training. Okay. So this isn't in the retreat.
 Oh, it's not. No. Okay. Okay. We've hired him to work with some departments on professional
 development, executive training, that sort of thing. And so there's a specific scope of service.
 I did not want this to get up near my signing authority. So I asked it to be brought forward.
 Okay. In that case, I don't want to pull it. I don't have any questions about that one.
 For item B, I don't want anyone to go out of their trouble, to go to too much trouble to come out
 tonight. I'm just really proud of this, this victim assistant grant. So I thought it'd be
 a good opportunity to highlight it if somebody was here. Okay. All right. Any other clarifications
 on agenda items? All right. Seeing none. We'll move on to our work session reports. Our first
 work session is 3A. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the 86th
 session of the Texas state legislature and impacts on new legislation to the city of Denver.
 Good morning, mayor, city council, Sarah Hickler, director of public affairs. I'm here today to do
 a brief presentation on a summary of the state legislative session. We are going to try to keep
 it brief in your backup. We did have more information from the Texas municipal league,
 as well as an informal staff report that was sent out a couple of weeks ago. So at this time,
 I'd like to introduce Brandon Ungamelian. He's with focused advocacy, which is our state
 legislative consultant. He'll be taking you through the presentation today. Thank you, Sarah. Mayor,
 members of council. My name is Brandon Ungamelian with focused advocacy. Is the
 slide before you indicates in 2019, we saw a steep increase in legislative activity,
 both in terms of the number of bills filed, the number of bills passed, but most importantly,
 the number of bills passed in that final column that affect municipalities. It's worth mentioning
 that municipalities are impacted and affected by legislation more than any other entity in Texas,
 far more than any other private sector entity and public sector entity as well. This sort of
 hyperactivity about municipal issues that's reflected in these numbers bore out as one of
 the overarching themes of session that the legislature took a keen interest in how
 municipalities are operating in a wide variety of manners. In November of 18 leading into session,
 the city adopted its legislative agenda and first amongst that was preserving local authority and
 that again, to the theme of the legislature being keenly interested in how cities operate, we saw
 a number of bills this session that were designed to preempt municipal authority and so that
 ongoing conversation of preemption versus local control was one of the defining elements of this
 session and then you see the other positions that the city adopted going into session.
 In terms of bills that passed that relate to the city's agenda and that relate to city priorities,
 we have a list here. I'm sure that you receive updates on these throughout the session.
 The city now qualifies for the Tourism Public Improvement District along with several of the
 cities. That was a comprehensive bill. The DCTA board reform bill, of course, passed.
 The coal hunter ranch MMD bill passed. Senate Bill 21, which raised the legal age to purchase
 cigarettes to 21 passed. House Bill 1545, which was a no, I just is that smoking age
 ratio 21 that includes e-cigarettes. Yes. Okay, just figured it did. I just wanted to clarify that.
 House Bill 1545 was a 500 page sunset bill TABC sunset bill and within that an amendment that
 allows for under certain circumstances and in limited quantities, craft breweries to much like
 distilleries sell a certain amount of their product to go, if you will. House Bill 3143 was
 a very important economic development bill. That's Chapter 312 of the tax code, which is the property
 tax abatement act. That entire law was set to expire at a 10-year sunset on it and if the
 legislature didn't proactively reauthorize it by passing a bill, it was going to go away.
 And we were able to get that bill through the process. And then at a very local level,
 House Bill 1, which is the state budget, contained a fantastic provision that provided $8 million
 specifically for the construction of a new driver's license station here in Denton. Dr. Stuckey
 worked tirelessly on this and Representative Stuckey and was in fact appointed for the first
 time a member of the Appropriations Committee where he made this really a top priority for
 his constituents. Councilmember Briggs has a question. Was there a time limit in that
 to use the funding? It's $8 million appropriated in 2020. Okay. And then in 2021, I'm looking,
 I'm picturing the bill pattern in my head. I think in 2021, there's an unexpended balance
 provision. So it's, I think we've got two years to do it. Two. Okay. Thanks.
 Senate Bill 2 was, you know, one of two top-of-mind pieces of legislation for
 cities across the state this session, the other being Senate Bill 29. But Senate Bill 2 was the
 so-called revenue cap bill, the property tax bill. I'm sure you've been briefed on this. My
 understanding is that you have a budget workshop coming up next week and you'll dive further into
 this. But suffice it to say the old term of rollback rate has now been changed in statute
 to a more conversational voter approval rate. And the current level of 8% has been now reduced 3.5%.
 That's if you, if you go above 3.5%, then that triggers an automatic election as opposed to
 a petition process, which could lead to an election. So those are the two key changes in
 the bill that we go from 8 to 3.5 and we go from a petition for a potential election to an automatic
 election. It's worth noting that the conversation and the debate started at 2.5% in the legislature
 and it remained there more or less throughout the process until conference committee at the very end.
 If there is any kind of a couple of bright spots for our lobbying efforts, when I say our, I mean
 cities across the state, didn't include it. It was getting that number raised from 2.5 to 3.5.
 And then the next two provisions, at one point, there was a very, very complicated and harmful
 and problematic provision where this bill would have affected the debt rate as well. We were able
 to get that removed in conference committee. And then last but not least, able to get a
 banking provision wherein any amount that you, that a council adopts below 3.5 can be carried
 forward up to three years. And so in the fourth year, you could hypothetically, if you had adopted
 a zero, zero, zero three years in a row, in year four, you could have a 14% increase without there
 being an election. And that's an extreme example. And then of course, everything kind of scales back
 from there. Question on that. Are there provisions in the bill that provide for either the reporting
 or the accounting of that? I mean, you know, there's great links on public notices on what
 we need to say, what we need to do. But on this particular provision, I mean... On the banking?
 Yeah, on the banking portion. So there's very specific criteria. This is how you report it.
 This is or no... There's a very specific calculation. Right. But there is, to my knowledge,
 there's no reporting requirement per se. There's just a calculation that your budget officers will
 have to do every year. And then to my knowledge, and I could be wrong about this, but I don't
 believe there's any notice or anything like that that has to be given about the banking.
 So it would just be... It sounds like it's left up to the individual municipalities on how they
 work that into their budget proposals or budget presentations on if you've banked it, this is what
 we have to avoid, you know, the automatic three-point... Automatic election above 3.5.
 So it's going to have to be in the budget presentation. Oh, do we... I think we have
 somebody... Yeah. So we... David Gaines, Director of Finance, we get the effective tax rate and
 voter approved tax rate calculations from the county, from the state, and ultimately those
 haven't been developed yet. I imagine that will include some calculation of if you have a rollback,
 how that would be included in your calculation. So that's probably where it would reside.
 Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because I was thinking about more of the banking. In other words, if we only
 raise it by 2%, then we can technically bank, quote unquote, one and a half percent. Was that
 one and a half percent based upon the assessed values in the years that that one and a half percent
 is incurred? And then that amount carries forward, or if the percentage is what carries forward,
 then it's applied to a higher assessed value. So to be truthful, if they gave us this provision
 without any more than what you're really describing, that's going to make it very interesting to figure
 out how exactly that all comes down. I think those are just the pieces that we'll find out as they
 start. Okay. All right. Fantastic. Thank you. The last thing I'd say about that is that as you think
 about that banking, you have to always think of it as on top of the current 3.5 that you get in any
 given year. So you've always got a 3.5 and then whatever you've got in the bank. It's also worth
 noting on that banking. That is a rolling bank. Right. So year one, year two, year three, year four,
 you're going to lose year one if you don't use it. Yeah. So you have to keep track of
 when it was incurred. Yeah. So it's going to be a mental exercise and a mathematical exercise like
 the rate adoption process always is. Thank you. Last but not least, and again, you'll get into this
 with staff, this bill does not take effect until January 2020. So in the current budget process
 that you're going into right now, you're still under current law, 8%, no automatic election.
 So this bill doesn't affect the budget that you're about to consider and adopt over the course of the
 summer. Another significant piece of legislation that impacts city finances, Senate Bill 1152,
 which was the right of way bill that the cable industry slash telecom industry pushed this session.
 Right now we have telephone access line fees and cable franchise fees. As cable companies have
 become phone companies and phone companies have become cable companies in terms of industry merger,
 they went to the legislature and said, we really don't want to pay both fees. We'd like to just
 pay the higher of the two and be able to drop one of those. The impact of course to cities is a loss
 of revenue and is noted here. It's an anticipated $650,000 reduction for the city. As we have said
 both throughout session and now in presentations to cities throughout the state after session,
 what is troubling from our perspective and from a lot of other people's perspective is that
 the industry never came and visited with cities about this. The telephone and cable companies
 didn't knock on the door here at City Hall and say I need to talk to you about a $650,000 reduction
 to your revenue that we're going to be pursuing in the legislature and we're going to as cities
 have to think about strategically how to handle that type of relationship in the future and perhaps
 mitigate it. Last but not least, this entire bill will be challenged in court is unconstitutional.
 It will be added and amended into the existing lawsuit for last session's telecom bill which was
 the so-called small cell legislation that is currently being considered in our judicial system
 so both these bills will have their day in court. Councilmember Meltzer. I don't know if you can do
 it briefly but can you can you briefly say what the constitutional claim would be? Sure. Cities
 have a constitutional requirement to get fair compensation, fair market compensation for use
 of the right-of-way. You are prohibited as a city from just giving away the right-of-way.
 It's a long-standing constitutional provision and the history of it is so that back in the day we
 didn't just give away land to the railroads and so you can't brother-in-law your way through the
 right-of-way and say oh I'm just going to give this company a freebie and charge this company
 something else. So what the industry did is come in and ask the legislature to set a flat statewide
 amount for use of that right-of-way. We contend that that amount is dramatically under value
 and thus in violation of the constitution. Thank you. So so one thing I want to just point out on
 on that bill is I didn't really quite get through the whole conversation that a lot of it's as a
 result of mergers because now you've got and also cable lines and phone lines now being run through
 fiber optic which is one one facility. So we talk about how that this is a loss of revenue for the
 city's administration for the city budget but in the end it's a loss of revenue and a greater
 greater cost to the taxpayers to make up that lost revenue with no guarantee that those savings
 to those industries will be passed through to the customer. So let's let's not I mean we sort of it's
 sort of been couched as a industry versus city municipality right-of-way and all that and but
 the whole purpose of the right-of-way issue and the constitutional requirement is to make sure that
 citizens aren't unnecessarily subsidizing private corporations through the giveaway of public assets.
 So that's my biggest concern is we talk about it in a budgetary requirement for us as we deal with
 how do we fund the services of the city but that's about what is that about a quarter to
 between a quarter and a half cent on our tax rate or even more maybe three quarters of a cent
 on our tax rate that is just basically literally disappeared in the blink of an eye and and so that
 I think that's important and to maybe just take that to the final degree so right now those fees
 that you're charging is the manager of the right-of-way because that's all you are you're
 the manager on behalf of the public of the right-of-way and you charge those fees and
 those fees are then passed on to actual consumers that use those services and benefit from being in
 the right-of-way now this is being subsidized to your point potentially across all municipal
 finance in form of property tax so you have people now saying I don't I don't subscribe to cable I
 don't have a telephone line why am I now picking up this financial burden when I don't use the
 service was there any presentation during this and I'm not going to belabor this but was there any
 data presented on how much the industries will save overall because this is a statewide law now
 so every municipality I mean we're 650 000 some of these larger cities are in the mills I think the
 number was something in the in the neighborhood of 150 million dollars statewide and that was an
 estimation right when asked in committee directly about the anticipated savings and dollar amounts
 the industry always said they didn't know yeah council member rakes just while we're on that
 topic I would like to request more information on the lawsuit and what other cities are are in it
 specifically for that bill also under the heading of financial impacts on the on the debt financing
 side of the equation the legislature passed several significant pieces of legislation and
 I'll start by saying two things quickly about debt in general one this has been an issue of
 contention back to sort of the big big picture of where are hot spots with the between legislatures
 and cities there's been a an ongoing drumbeat that debt is a you know quote unquote problem
 as a result of that you see these kinds of bills being filed and now passed and the second thing
 I'd say is I think this conversation is going to continue on there's this again big big big picture
 global rub if you will between you know some people some stakeholders and interested parties
 and and the issue of municipal debt so these three bills you know do a variety of things
 477 that bill in the middle is is pretty significant it's going to require you to publish
 and produce a voter guide for any local debt issuance prescribed some additional ballot
 language and some specific notice that heretofore wasn't a part of the law and senate bill 30 is
 sort of the the you know first cousin to all of that and it requires each bond proposition to have
 its own measure on the ballot you can't have a combined bond proposition and a quote unquote
 plain language description on the ballot for each proposition so again a lot for legal counsel and
 management to wade through in terms of the city's next bond issuance we got a council question for
 councilmember briggs and then councilmember davis so we have one that we're discussing now so does
 this automatically go in or is there a a future date I believe all of these either had a september
 first or you have a better answer to that so all of these will apply to our next no actually they
 won't the september first is the effective date but we've consulted with our bond council and
 because we're we would be calling the election before september first and by october our august
 19th we're not required by the new legislation internally we've discussed trying to do everything
 we can in the spirit of the legislation as we go forward if we go forward with the bond election
 this year okay thank you councilmember davis and councilmember bomter david you might be best
 suited for this one and if it's an email offline that's just fine too but on 440 hp 440 and some
 of those new requirements specifically the bond maturity not extending beyond 120 percent of the
 life of the project i'm just really curious about the practical application and and how that is that
 a filing with the comptroller i mean the how is that tracked and enforced and and who comes knocking
 on our door when the life of some project is not when those things don't mesh up i'm just really
 having trouble processing that sure i can definitely we'll follow up with on that
 question until i get a good answer for you councilmember obdur yeah um so about the about
 sb30 i just wanted to say um i like a lot about this this bill and um it was uh i wanted to ask
 because having attended a couple of the bond committee meetings i got the impression and
 correct me correct me from wrong that that uh by um providing this information in the spirit of the
 bill uh the emphasis was going to be on the plain language just on the plain language description
 and can can you speak to you know to what extent are there going to be this separate propositions
 for each specific purpose or uh or was the focus going to be more on the plain language description
 so i think next week on the first we'll definitely get into detail on that but right now we have two
 propositions one for streets one for um the public safety facilities and it would uh follow assembly
 would be as you know plain language and i think we can bring some of those examples next week okay
 yeah so that and that's how we were originally going to uh present them anyway before the bill
 so okay thanks couple questions when they talk about the life of the project let's just think
 of something hypothetically you got a road project uh are they talking about the life of the asset
 in other words the road is a 30-year life a 40-year life or a vehicle is a five-year life so they say
 that it can't be your bonds can't go beyond the maturity of that 120 right i think that's the
 intent okay uh and then prescribe how unspent bond funds may be used now sometimes we have bond funds
 that are unspent and the council uh together with uh management makes a decision on how best to
 apportion that exactly how specific is that provision as far as prescribes how unspent bond
 funds may be used and if you don't have to if you don't know specifically just a i think an email
 out to all of us so that because we do have that come up quite often i want to know how much of an
 impact that's going to be we can we can follow up i'll say okay high level it's you know if you
 have bond funds unspent and they can't and you restrict it and they can't be sitting on another
 project they would just go to pay off debt service but we can follow up with more precisely all right
 thank you great yep the last thing i'd say about all of this and uh to a comment that was made a
 moment ago about uh liking some of of what's in here that's that's sort of the the debate and the
 narrative of transparency and sunshine and and good government on the one hand which you know
 everyone is for then at some point some of these pieces of legislation not necessarily these but
 others that we saw this session begin to become what feels like more of a design to fail where
 ballot language and information it seems to be designed more to scare and confuse and
 potentially crush the the proposition as opposed to actually trying to be helpful and transparent
 and so that's that's what the the debate in the legislature has been about and will continue to be
 about uh moving on to non-financial issues house bill 3834 is a cyber security training bill
 that's going to require the city to produce a list of all employees and officers
 that have access to the computer network and for there to be a an annual cyber security training
 the department of information resources which is a state agency is is currently working with tml to
 come up with this course it will be free and and and what we think will be available online
 and so details forthcoming on that your hr department and your it department will
 follow up with them as we learn more about how that's going to be implemented
 and the election and open government category we saw a number of pieces of legislation as we always
 do our public information act in particular is a bit antiquated especially as it relates to
 technology in our modern world so we see a lot of activity in this subject every session
 house bill 2840 is going to require an opportunity for a public comment on
 every agenda item at all public meetings there's an ongoing discussion about what that really means
 does that literally mean every single public meeting or does it mean just when council finally
 considers it for action and there's sort of an active debate about that going on right now with
 city attorneys senate bill 1640 is the the walking quorum bill that the supreme court struck down
 in the middle of session or at the beginning of session i should say and the legislature sort of
 scrambled to to do something at the last minute to address this what's important for council to
 understand is that it now applies to written communications and that there is a knowingly
 element to it so you have to knowingly have a communication that would circumvent the quorum
 requirement so and interestingly that while the court struck down the law because of the criminal
 offense the legislature kept the criminal offense in this bill so i a lot of us believe that there's
 possibly still more litigation to come on this and it's ripe for challenge so i know tml is working
 on some some analysis of this bill and in the new toma laws i'm wondering also i know the city
 attorney is kind of evaluating the public comment and how that affects our agendas and our our
 meeting flow are we going to get some direction also kind of a local opinion on the on the new
 toma stuff i'm specifically worried about written communication and social media happens at least
 once every couple of weeks that somebody will tag everybody who's on facebook and on the city council
 into a post and there we all are called into one forum and then someone one one or more of us will
 comment on that post and there we all are in one forum uh convened if you will and then somebody's
 talking in that forum so i'm very concerned that the unintended consequences here that we're not
 maybe thinking about um i don't want to be to get bitten that way
 council member obama yeah i was wondering um about uh 2840 uh does this you know i'm not sure if this
 question for you or our city attorney and you're still in the process of evaluating it um but uh
 could this potentially affect our current rule about the submission of blue cards that you have to
 to fill out a card uh to speak before the item is called because i know it specifies you know before
 or during or is it just um uh mandating simply that that people be allowed to speak at at some
 point during that that's basically what the statute is saying uh we are allowed to impose
 reasonable restrictions on how that process plays out so for the most part all our agenda items uh
 there is a a citizen comment available in the beginning of your work session you have citizen
 comment for public for uh consent agenda items and you've got the the blue cards public hearings and
 then public comment as well what we're evaluating is actually the work session and the rule of
 procedure that's tied to that and so that and so that that's what specifically we're evaluating
 under the new law okay so so this could potentially um allow uh members of the public to speak on any
 topic at a at a work session it is possible i know that we'll be working once we have our findings
 we'll also bounce it off with tml and some of the other city attorneys are interpreting that provision
 and see where a general consensus might be statewide okay for what you know for what it's
 worth uh i like the idea i've always uh thought it would be uh good to have uh members of the public
 speak out at a work session so even if it turns out we don't have to do that i hope we'll at least
 consider it
 to public information act uh bills senate bill 943 and 944 943 is a continuation of
 of uh what is known as the boeing case whereby uh private sector you know so-called third party
 vendors take exception to uh trademark uh trade secret and proprietary information being released
 under an open records request this piece of legislation attempts to continue to thread the
 needle between what can be released and what should be protected i would continue to expect
 more litigation on on this as well from the private sector and senate bill 944 is a result of a court
 case i believe that involved the city of el paso that has to do with using a private i.e a non-city
 device to um uh used for public communication and uh what happens uh and what is the framework for
 accessing that information especially after you leave office so your mayor one day the next day
 you're not someone's trying to get someone wants to get a public information request of the emails
 on your phone your personal phone that you were using and we were sort of collectively in a
 situation where a former officer was saying i'm not the mayor anymore you know and the city was
 going we have no real recourse or framework for getting that information from these former officers
 so this attempts to set up that kind of a framework it it has the chance to be burdensome
 and and something that that staff will have to really think think through that framework
 it is the beginning of trying to to create that that type of process so as like i said
 as always a lot to wade through when it comes to the open meetings and the public information act
 because technology in the modern world just far exceed what the what the current act contemplates
 it was a very very busy session on the development front
 house bill 852 prohibits cities from establishing permit fees based on the value of the project
 that's more or less now has to be a true cost cost of delivering service not the value of the
 building itself house bill 2496 is a historic building designation bill that requires either
 consent of the landowner before property can be designated a historic building or a super majority
 vote of council three-fourths of the council has to approve it and house bill 2497 is a bill that
 requires the council to now sign off on on rules adopted by any board of adjustment and expands the
 parties that can bring in a appeal to a board of adjustment decision yes memorandum
 does that does that mean that the board of adjustment is no longer technically a legislative
 body or is it still still alleged a legislative body but they just there's just that extra step
 i mean i defer to your city attorney i would describe the board of adjustment is an adjudicative
 body more than a legislative body but to your point is they is they adopt rules now the new
 state law says really that power ultimately rests with you yeah i think that's what i meant
 adjudicative as in yeah isn't that that's what makes them unique you know compared to any of our
 other uh committees and they're the most unique board the city has because they can actually be
 sued and they're in the board capacity so you're right uh two of the most um talked about bills and
 significant bills are the two here on this slide especially house for house bill excuse me 2439
 which is the the so-called brick bill and the building materials bill this is another example
 of municipal preemption bill um pushed by a number of of stakeholders very significant
 stakeholders uh that now says the city cannot regulate um building products above the standards
 articulated and adopted in national codes so you can have more stringent local standards
 for requiring the type of building products or materials for construction this is in both
 residential and commercial uh the bill also uh applies to uh aesthetics as well so it's not just
 materials it's it's aesthetics i'll be plain spoken this bill is causing a significant amount
 of heartburn across the state there was a very very strong push um for the governor to veto this
 bill uh and and we had about half a suspicion that he would it seemed like this bill was maybe
 a bridge too far and was causing too much concern at the neighborhood grassroots level uh but the
 governor signed it and it's now the law um i i won't be surprised if we revisit this next session
 because of the concern that we're seeing across the state on this and the candidly some of the
 legislative feedback that we're now getting this is starting to feel like one of those oops bills
 or some members of the legislature are saying i don't think i quite understood how far this
 bill went well i gotta tell you i don't buy that argument at all uh so i want to make sure i
 understand on this because you said you added something that i haven't heard before and that
 is the aesthetics so i i certainly want to make sure that our staff uh it concurs with that
 definition or that that kind of impact because if that's true then what i'm what what i know to be
 true about at least on certain types of residential development multifamily or homes that you have to
 have so many windows so much coverage of windows on either street facing side or in other words
 an aesthetic type of regulation so i certainly want to get some greater detail information on
 that because that and does not affect again this is in comparison to a national adopted standard
 right right so there's not one that's right if there's not one you're free to you can't
 do whatever well if there well if there's not a standard does that mean that you're free to do it
 or you you can't do it so that that's that's the question i mean is it but on does not affect
 development agreements does that and i'm sure we're going to get a briefing from our city attorney
 office yes and excuse me i should have led with i apologize the very next item on the agenda is
 going to go into greater detail on these two bills okay all right then i'll save my questions for
 that okay i think council member riggs had a question you can save it for the discussion
 anybody else okay all right sorry yep thank you 31 67 again will be discussed here in greater
 detail by staff uh but it's the it's the shot clock bill uh and we were we were significantly
 involved in both these pieces of legislation so we're going to stick around for the subsequent
 discussion and and be here for for additional questions if necessary so that concludes the the
 quick highlights of the legislative session and bills that impact the city of denton
 we we look forward to returning here and visiting with uh tod and staff uh to talk about an interim
 work plan uh and strategies uh to begin to get ready for the 87th session um and as mentioned
 there's a briefing immediately following this to go into further detail on those two pieces
 of legislation with that i'll answer any questions so the last two that we just saw are some with the
 the building um i don't remember this body talking about those so much um when we were
 doing our legislative agenda did those come in later on um or were they there at the beginning
 we just they just got past us or well i mean you know both of them are you know
 i won't say late bill filings but they're they're certainly not early bill filings but
 these were significant pieces of legislation uh that were discussed you know statewide for a long
 time um and i'm not you know i don't i don't want to paint a picture that you know suggests that
 anybody overlooked anything um we wrote about house bill 2439 eight different times in our weekly
 newsletter uh for our clients i know that because we had a conversation about this with another
 client recently and with that what i'd say is that you share a sentiment that i think
 cities across the state now share and it's sort of a this one feels like it just got kind of through
 and maybe didn't get the discussion uh that people now wish that it had and i'd wrap up my
 answer by saying inevitably in every set i've been doing this for 27 years and in inevitably
 there's a bill like that every session that that a lot of cities end up going i didn't hear i feel
 like we didn't hear enough about this one and it's got a big impact that's why i say i think
 there's a significant chance we'll come back and address some of this again next session thank you
 yeah um what was the vote or roughly what was the vote how you know how strong was the majority
 uh i'll look that up while staff begins to uh go into further detail with you it's easy for us to
 to pick up what i'll what i'll say is that uh in a in a different version of this presentation
 that we've done in other cities um we've presented the council with the witness list
 uh the official state record of who came and testified for these bills in other words who was
 sort of on the other side of you um and it is a significant significant witness list that involves
 the texas association of builders the fort worth chapter of builders the dallas chapter
 the houston chapter the texas association of realtors the texas chemical council the texas
 many fact it is a who's who of of uh heavy hitters uh in in the lobby um and and a long list
 so you you had a lot of um friends uh the texas apartment association um the list goes on and on
 but i'll i'll get a vote count for you council member davis so the last house record vote was
 133 yeas and nine nays and my question i think you started to answer was uh i was going to hold
 off on this till the next agenda item but we're talking about it now um was it just across the
 board the the builders and the builder lobby and the builder packs um and kind of council member
 briggs point um you know can give us a maybe a better idea of of how we how we didn't see this one
 coming when all those heavy hitters are are coming after us that way i mean it's it's an enormous
 impact across the state i'll be happy to respond to that and it's the second bullet point up there
 on the on the current slide about next steps and it echoes the comment that i made about the telecom
 and cable industry you as a city council and and other large city councils like yourself across
 the state have a an ongoing relationship whether that's political or regulatory with all of these
 associations and industries and and so i feel the first part of the answer is a failure
 in a part what i we historically have considered a partnership with apartment builders and owners
 and home builders uh and and real estate agents and and those professions to come to city hall
 and talk about what their intentions are in the legislature and visit with major cities
 about the impact that that will have and for there to be a collaboration and try to negotiate
 through that um so i i i think that the breakdown begins with a failure by industry
 to do their part to keep that partnership ongoing um and i i'm not an attempt to be critical but an
 attempt to be fair i this is again back to the second bullet point i think cities generically
 speaking are not engaging them proactively enough to talk about these very kinds of issues
 that's a long way of saying it's turned into an art of run down to the legislature and surprise
 municipalities with legislation and refuse to discuss it um and and to some degree a complicit
 legislature that's willing for that to be the process sure um i promise it is quick as i look
 down this list of supporting votes in the house and the senate we see some familiar names and we
 see the names of legislators who have in the past been worked very closely with their municipalities
 what bill of goods were they sold on this particular bill when you say the industry runs
 down there and gives them you know their version of facts on the ground and convinces them to vote
 this way how did the industry build this to them in in such a way that they uh they kind of forgot
 how we do things that's a trickier question um there's a it's a great answer there's a there's a
 you know the art of getting any bill passed involves so many different facets and aspects
 it's there's never really just one thing that gets a bill passed and as we're fond of saying
 it's usually not the facts um the narrative uh matters don't get me wrong uh but it's everything
 from who was the bill author on down uh they had strong bill authors um they had a lot of friends
 involved as i said uh in that uh process andrew was real involved in this if you want to jump in
 real quick and say something hi councilman my name is andrew keifer i'm here on behalf of focused advocacy
 and um if you were to ask the association texas builders association what i think they would tell
 you from what i heard in the committee is that certain city ordinances drove up housing costs
 and because they drove up housing costs we are having a um homeowner affordability crisis in the
 state of texas and that would be the basis of their argument as to why these needed to be
 preempted to make housing more affordable for texas across the state
 and and then to brandon's point there are all the dynamics of the legislature involved
 councilmember briggs so then we can infer that houses will become more um reasonably priced now
 and if if if that was their main argument i mean i'm just so just leaving that out there you don't
 have to answer that question i'm just hoping that you know that's the case so my comment is and um
 you asked the question councilmember davis how did this slip by us first of all we have to define
 who the us is and i'm just going to say i'm a little disappointed i mean i heard about this bill
 i think literally after the fact and um i'm disappointed in that because i think these two
 bills are probably the two of the bills that impact the cities the most out of all the ones
 that you've presented to us and i hope that in the future that there's a better line of communication
 between everybody involved that helps the policymaker whether we could have changed
 anything or not but i certainly could have had a conversation with some of our legislative delegation
 as i did on several bills in that regard and this happened because of politics i mean that's the
 simple answer i mean um you know i don't think anybody thinks that whether you put hardy board
 on or 40 percent brick that it's going to change the price of a home to the point where it's going
 to change the affordability i mean that's that's that's a phrase that's been used to justify a lot
 of things so i mean it was voted on that's the process it was voted on it passed i think it's
 incumbent upon us now to figure out how we deal with it in the interim of the two years and to
 make sure that we now communicate with our legislative delegation the potential impact
 and by that time we will have actual impact of these bills on again this isn't about the city
 governance the the people here or staff this is about how it affects the citizens in our community
 so that that's really what i want to hammer home on some of the times when we hear these updates is
 we're hearing them as a body but these affect the people who live in our city
 so in the future i hope that we can figure i hope we have a discussion at some point among whoever
 needs to have it of this issue how are we some of the council members here saying how come we
 didn't have you know didn't know more about this because i think it would be a good you know
 exercise to help us improve in some ways how we how we do that one second yeah i don't take issue
 with any of that whatsoever and i've now messed something up all i'd add to that is that and and
 i i feel strongly about this because i've seen this before it has a lot to do with those numbers
 right yeah yeah i understand it gets lost it will it every session when you're working on
 critical you know sb2 and annexation and this and that and finally you get down to well here's all
 the bad stuff that died then you start to lose perspective about okay what what died versus what
 past sure and there's but i don't take exception at all with with anything you said you're right
 i was not that's not pointing fingers blaming it's just oh i know to understand how do we improve the
 process 100 percent and couldn't agree more mr manager well and i think it's important for the
 the council to understand you know when you when you do see the 2000 bills filed it's it's sort of
 a case of look over here not over here we were so focused on the property tax rollback the telecom
 issues and at the same time all this is going down we had the the three big weeks down at the
 state threatening to pass legislation not allowing cities to have representation in austin
 so all this was going on and all of a sudden it was late april early may before it was too late
 that we started seeing plano and frisco and you know getting everybody together saying hey this
 bill is it looks like there's something to it so i mean that's really how it goes down and to
 expect anybody to monitor 2000 bills and to know which ones to take seriously it's not reasonable
 and you know so i i just think that it's one of those things that i don't think there was any
 breakdown at all i don't think any state around here including our largest ones with huge staffs
 of ids caught this so you know that's how this game's played every legislative session this this
 game is goes on where there's some bills that you're you find out at the last minute that might have
 real traction on them so that's really that's what happened and they did a they did a marvelous job
 of sort of keeping the cities at bay by scaring scaring everybody to death that we would not be
 able to have a presence and at one point there was a bill that was being talked about not even
 allowing us to talk to our legislators during session so you've got to remember all this stuff
 was going on at that time and then this bill pops up right before it's too late to protest it so
 that's kind of how it went down it was it was interesting to watch okay somebody had their hand
 up over here councilmembers yeah i had a question about two bills not included in the presentation
 but included in your summary that are relevant to denton one is the house bill of 43 47 about
 the hotel occupancy occupancy tax and the other is house bill 1960 about the the broadband development
 council and i'll ask about the second one second one first it is because i have i didn't actually
 go through and read the whole bill i just read this summary but it looks like you know this is
 about forming a a statewide committee to look into the possibility of statewide broadband and what i
 just wanted to ask you is to your knowledge is there a timeline on it or are they saying that by
 the next legislative session we're going to have a proposal or is this just this one one of these
 open-ended we're going to look into it i'll have to get back to you on that okay and i understand
 again back to the issue of so many bills i was just just pulling these out of the summary the 43 47
 the hotel occupancy tax bill that it says that that provides that a city may authorize a non-profit
 corporation to act on behalf of the city for any purposes related to the use or allocations of
 hotel yeah tax revenues so you know i do know about that bill uh and that's a bracketed bill
 that only applies to certain cities denton is not one of the qualified cities okay okay is it and
 it what that has to do with is the um the use of uh and the potential qualification to receive a
 rebate of state taxes to finance the construction of a hotel and convention center yeah okay thanks
 yeah absolutely so i just want to address your comment if i could um i i was not implying that
 something was reasonable or unreasonable but um so i do want to have a conversation about
 when did we all know when did when did we were aware of this just so that we can understand that
 we can look for this in the future i'm not disagreeing with you that 2300 bills or whatever
 how do we monitor all those but honestly we i mean i think that's what we strive to do to the best of
 our ability i mean some of you just look at me go that doesn't apply to us at all i mean i mean it's
 very focused on a municipality so um i would like to have some understanding it's not a matter of
 being critical it's just how did you know how did we do this how did it happen and and how did it
 happen sounds negative but how do we avoid this because if we don't try to figure it out well then
 we just we don't want to be having the same conversation year after year after year i think
 so yeah it's it's not comments weren't meant to be pointing fingers or anything like that it's just
 a matter of trying to improve the process yep absolutely and and i think we'll be having a
 healthy discussion as as i concluded by saying we look forward to coming back and i think that is
 the discussion of how do we continue to improve our strategies and our efforts in the ig uh uh
 world right uh to mitigate these kind of bad results okay yeah council member melzer um
 if would it be easy to put together uh just for our background a roster on each of the items that
 you represented uh just our local delegation voted on on each of these items absolutely thank
 you very much yes sir okay any other questions on this agenda item we'll go into more detail i guess
 on two of them in the next agenda item absolutely thank you questions all right appreciate it lunch
 is served so let's take about a five minute break we'll grab some lunch and we'll go through a
 working lunch and then we'll i'll call welcome everybody back to this meeting of the bitten city
 council on tuesday july 23rd 2019 it is 1207 we're now moving on to agenda item three b which is
 received report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the status of the 2019
 development code and the efforts of recently passed house bills or effects excuse me not efforts
 effects of recently house yes good afternoon mayor council scott mcdonnell director of development
 services um you've heard a little bit about these couple of bills and i'm going to kind of jump in
 just right at the get-go and i'm going to say that these are obviously bad bills for dentin and bad
 bills for texas um we were we were working through this have been working through this for the last
 couple of months um our legal staff along with our contract legal staff um have have been discussing
 it over the last couple of weeks we're trying to get a summary of what we think we need to do
 looking for a little bit of policy direction today um cynthia kerchoff and myself went to tml
 yesterday so we were in austin spent the day um with a with a group of i think about 25
 land use attorneys and a couple of planning directors um trying to get a handle on you know
 what everybody's looking at and how it is that this may this may work um but i guess i'll start
 with house bill 2439 which i think you have the general understanding that ultimately cities are
 not able to enforce any provisions that are going to deal with the materials and or methods that may
 be under a national code this affects all building type so residential and commercial and so if i just
 summarize in essence where it is that um we may have uh industrial buildings where we specify that
 they have to have um certain materials this bill is going to allow them to build a metal building
 that's the bottom line um we recognize between this bill and the other bill that that um we're
 going to we're working on a on a public campaign piece and i believe that came from council member
 briggs or the the mayor that we uh we inform our citizenry that this isn't what the city of denton
 is asking to have done that our legislature and governor did this and i think it's important that
 if anything comes out of this that that we allow our citizens to be informed that they need to make
 sure that the legislator knows that they don't approve of this um that ultimately that the local
 local control local level that um what we put into into effect is is really what we want our
 community to shape like and and what planning is all about um so we're gonna we're gonna come
 forward with a with an article for at least for our resident newsletter as well as something that
 we can put out council member briggs you had a question i did it was one i had during the
 other presentation but it's more likely for um mr mcdonald so um brandon mentioned when he was
 talking about the the bill originally safety and aesthetics and for me when i first thought i went
 you know aesthetics because that's usually you know one of the ways that we we do buildings but
 then i hear safety and i'd like for you to um kind of comment i think you made a comment once before
 like in certain internal materials right um that we require so if there's three different levels
 level three is the safest um the builder any the residential commercial could go down to the lowest
 right is that am i correct here like the lowest grade that is that is that is correct right and
 like so national standards are just basic minimal standards and up until now we've had the opportunity
 to desire more from builders for safety and now we can't um that that's correct so let me let me
 try and maybe a simpler a simple analogy um wood shingles wood shake and wood shingles are allowed
 by the national code many texas communities do not allow for all types of wood shakes or wood
 shingles they may restrict those to a a particular classification um for both being fire retardant
 and for some other for some other reasons depending on where you're at high humidity
 so the codes are flexible in the fact that they typically address um climatic conditions and and
 different weather perils that we may have um so ultimately where we may restrict the use of wood
 shingles where the national code allows for all of these types of shingles those wood shingles can
 now be used in denim as you were maybe alluding to is is fire alarm wire was an example that was
 brought up where we may want to a plenum rated wire or a higher classification of wire used
 throughout any alarm system where the code does allow for a non-rated wire to be used we we cannot
 amend our code to say you must use plenum rated wire for example so we're looking at um we had a
 series of codes that were coming forward for the 2018 codes and our current codes
 but we're reevaluating all of those to make sure that we don't have
 any conflicts of of what the legislation has in it um we do recognize that there are some aesthetic
 components that we can address so it's the methods of construction so we couldn't tell someone they
 had to build an all glass front um just as we we can tell them that they can't put the garage door
 facing the street so if we wanted to have an ordinance that said all garage doors must face
 you know to the side or rear we could we could do that which is an aesthetic component and
 furthermore that the national code doesn't address those types of aesthetics so articulation of
 buildings um some other some other pieces what we can't do is ask for them to have 40 glass um we're
 we're looking at or evaluating whether we could have 40 opaque not specifying that it's glass
 similar to that of being brick um that we can't specify that someone has to have 40 brick that's
 any material that they could use so it's a it's it's rather it's rather complicated it's rather
 simple in the fact that um we're just not going to to be able to address the aesthetic component of
 what type of materials are used anything that's allowed under the code is what we'll allow
 if that answers that customer market do you have a question did you have a hand up no okay
 um okay so we do have some some carve outs which relate to our historic districts we are a certified
 local government so we have some provisions where some of the standards that we have in place will
 still be in play um as we discussed things at tml yesterday there were some um some other
 considerations on pds um where we may have some provisions within there just the bill speaks
 specifically to that it's not going to be and anything that's enforceable via ordinance or a
 regulation we can use um developer agreements if developer agreements are not by ordinance so if
 they're done perhaps by a resolution or if it's done at a staff level um whether the city manager
 has whatever authority on a developer's agreement that it isn't necessarily um if it's over a dollar
 figure then it's a resolution rather than it being an ordinance can i ask a question about that yes
 sir we've asked we've talked about this in our committee so i really want to have um i mean we're
 obviously going to have at some point i would think a legal briefing that on some of these questions
 are going to arise like the one you're talking about in other words because i think developer
 agreements i might be misunderstanding how you're using them in that context but when we have sup's
 sometimes we will add conditions when we have um either platting or all kinds of things that
 most typically all developer agreements even if they're third-party agreements for infrastructure
 and all that i think those come through the council if they're not if they're if they're
 over certain but they may not be but i i just want to make sure i understand what what our process is
 today and how that this affects that and that if we're proposing that we change our process to
 maybe not be applicable to this statute that are we change our process to where we were able to
 achieve the same goal with a different process that may not be subject to this and i see
 brenda is getting up so i think yes please i want to add one thing before she starts at least that
 tml will be providing a question and answer component which should be out tomorrow and
 they'll also put it in their friday update we've been working on those for a couple of weeks and it
 took a matter of the meeting yesterday to make sure that we could refine that as much as possible
 so those those land use attorneys from a variety of cities we're trying to trying to vet that out
 so that will be forthcoming and then ultimately i have some policy questions in the end of this
 presentation which are going to address yes we will have changes okay so i'm brenda mcdonald i'm
 with the law firm of messer fort mcdonald we're your outside land use council and um we've been
 concerned about this bill for some time we we really did think that the governor was going to
 veto it um and i was watching i think the deadline was father's day and when he signed the bill i
 believe the friday before father's day i was very surprised um i do want to assure you that we're
 working with the staff and with the city attorney's office to bring forward ordinances
 that address both of these bills in the next month and i provided those sample ordinances
 today so that you can take some interim steps to deal with what we know about the bills
 and um allow for time for us to parse the words you know every word that's in the bill and so but
 what i want to say about developer agreements is the the concept of a developer agreement is that
 the city is going to provide some consideration to the developer and the developer would agree
 to certain development standards and the difference between a development agreement
 and an ordinance is that a development agreement for a breach of a development agreement your
 remedy is a contract breach so it's a contract claim it's not enforcing an ordinance so the
 remedies are very different and that's why um the the i believe that development agreements
 are going to be one of the ways that the cities can work with new communities or redeveloping
 communities to incorporate certain materials standards and i think that's going to be an
 important way going forward um and but the the primary difference is the remedy for a breach
 isn't you get a ticket it's we go file a contract claim so that's a big difference so if i can ask
 a question of clarification on that sure let's just say for instance somebody's coming forth with an
 scp in the discussion there's agreements and consideration given by both parties for mutual
 benefit to regulate some of the external building materials in exchange for some things that the
 developer's wanting that's memorialized in an ordinance right all right so when we're talking
 about development development agreements as we know them today do the question becomes for me
 is today do not development agreements come before the council and in the ordinance it's
 the ordinance says we are authorizing the city manager we are authorizing or his designee to
 execute this attached as exhibit a let's say so there's an agreement that is sort of precipitated
 or created or authorized by an ordinance is that is that our practice today or am i missing something
 it is in limited instances uh using the example that's up there the pre-annunciation development
 agreements that we've done especially along i think it was ryan road that was a negotiated
 agreement between the council and the developer and the remedy and for that if i remember correctly
 was exactly what brenda had described for each of the contract with i think one of the remedies was
 annexation a voluntary annexation at that point so that's a much different um in in a different
 position than your typical enforcing the different zoning regulations or building code regulations
 that you do in an sup so let's use your example because that came before council and council
 approved that agreement yes is was that approval not memorialized be in an ordinance with the
 development agreement attached yes to the extent that it because this the charter requires that
 all items all action items be approved by ordinance then what the ordinance is attached to
 the agreement is basically reflecting that the agreement is being entered into between the city
 and the developer okay all right so then and you don't have to answer this question david to me
 that's going to be one of my questions is in that paradigm that you just described is that sufficient
 bifurcation of the development agreement there's enough distance of separation from the development
 agreement and the ordinance to where somebody couldn't say even though the the breach remedy
 is located in the agreement not necessarily in in the ordinance is that sufficient to but you don't
 have to answer that now but that'll be one of the main questions for me and i'm talking about a
 different type of development agreement not the one that you enter into as a part of an annexation
 plan or program i'm talking about a developer agreement with a developer who wants to do a
 subdivision and they want some relaxation of certain standards and in exchange for that
 because you know for a contract you have to have consideration they will agree to certain building
 materials and i see this bill as a way for developers and builders to have some leverage
 in negotiating with cities if this was truly an affordable housing initiative i think there's a
 much less heavy-handed way for the legislature to have addressed that specific issue right okay
 so um so yes what the bill says is that a city cannot adopt an ordinance that regulates building
 materials so to the extent that a development agreement is approved outside of an ordinance
 process then i believe it would be outside the purview of the bill okay and many cities
 i understand didn't is does developer agreements by ordinance many cities do them by resolution
 and um so that might be something for you to take a look at the other question that was
 brought up and i just it just went out of my head um oh the question at the bottom and you mentioned
 the sup process so i'm concerned that in many public hearings developers or applicants will agree
 to certain things and those certain things are put into the ordinance i believe that not necessarily
 in this process but in another process would run afoul of the bill because you would then be putting
 it in an ordinance the bill does allow individuals to waive this requirement and i would recommend
 that that be a contractual waiver not a waiver that is enforced by ordinance
 if that makes sense because what is adopted oftentimes what's said in the public hearing
 isn't a part of that ordinance i always put in the whereas's when i draft an ordinance when the
 applicant has agreed to something i put that in the whereas clauses and of course we incorporate
 those but that's still in an ordinance format so um the the ordinances that we brought to you for
 both 24 39 and 31 67 we sent out an email about a process to get those adopted before september 1st
 but both of those ordinances then direct the staff to do further investigation into the
 city's ordinances that may need further revision and so what we're trying to do is address the
 immediate issue and then also provide an understanding that we're still dissecting
 the language in the bill and one of those things is the definition of plans and whether that
 definition applies to chapter 211 plans or to chapter 212 plans we always think about plans as
 being a part of the zoning process but the subdivision chapter which is chapter 212 also
 has plans in sub in sub chapter b of chapter 212 so we're trying to figure out that issue and i
 know that's a big one for denton and so it's one that we will focus on in the immediate future
 any other questions for brenda why she's there yes councilmember davis
 i understood the the first part of your kind of uh because a second ago but can you
 explain in greater detail even if uh an individual applicant can waive
 uh can waive these requirements why even with the waiver written into the law you're advising
 a contractual waiver and not a waiver in the ordinance in the way that we've been
 been doing it before i believe the bill says in writing am i right about that i believe the bill
 says in writing and so that that waiver can't your adoption of an ordinance is not their agreement
 in writing and so i think there's a difference between those two could we let's say something
 closest i'm trying to think of what's closest to our current process could we go through something
 that's very close to our current process we have the back and forth with the neighborhood meetings
 and the conditions that they're willing to agree to and the staff recommendations and then we come
 down to the council vote on the ordinance on whatever the issue is and we have the conditions
 lined out in the ordinance as we vote on it um is that a it can a written waiver be executed
 you know at that time before the council takes its vote and incorporate everything that we've
 worked into the ordinance so it's kind of the waiver is contractual but the conditions are
 still in the ordinance in the way that we currently do it kind of a blanket waiver so if you wanted to
 do that my really off the top of my head response would be to include that written waiver in the
 ordinance as exhibit a but even that i just need to think through because the bill is very clear
 that you can't adopt an ordinance that regulates building materials and that process still is an
 ordinance and so i need to think that through understanding that you want to preserve the
 process that you have as best we can
 council member breaks so my question has to do with the charter because our city attorney said
 something a while ago about ordinance our charter has the process where um certain approvals go
 through ordinance so um in in the discussion later on can you talk about if we need a we're
 going to need a charter amendment um to to change our processes no i think what i was referring to
 is that this the the way the council acts on any particular agenda item on its agenda is to adopt
 an ordinance there are some resolutions that are adopted for internal policies but it's your main
 vehicle to speak on behalf of the city's is being an ordinance and that is usually attached to all
 your different agreements that you that you enter other purchasing agreements i mean the the actual
 meat of that ordinance is the agreement not the ordinance itself the ordinance is just saying
 the council met on this particular day this was the item considered and we adopted it
 so it's something that we'll definitely take a look with brenda and development services
 to look at more closely to see if there's there's an argument there that that is much different than
 the typical zoning ordinance amendment that that comes before you to adopt which actually all the
 all the meat of the ordinance is within the ordinance itself and so to me i see a distinction
 between the two but you know it's something that we'll definitely look at close more closely and
 you know as as brendan scott have said city and brendan cities across the state are all struggling
 with this and how to interpret it's it's another example of how legislation is drafted by people
 who do not understand the the specific statutes that they're that they're modifying and to erin's
 point i think the bill complicates the charter issue a little bit more because it says specifically
 a rule charter provision ordinance order building code or other regulation adopted by a governmental
 entity that conflicts with this section is void so i think that really is going to we're going to
 have to sit down and really think that through and think through consequences of each course of action
 and then the final thing that i want to say is with regard to the public campaign on this
 you know i've been working with cities for many years and i know brandon has too and i think that
 the legislatures legislators have become disinterested in what city officials and
 city employees think and so to the extent that you are engaging in a grassroots campaign i think
 letters or phone calls from 300 residents have a disparate impact than a call from each of you or
 a letter from the city i think that residents are going to have to say you've passed a bill that is
 going to harm my property value you know i've invested in my home and now my neighbor can go
 put up an accessory building that you know looks like crap so i think they're going to have to
 hear from residents i think in some ways we've lost our voice a little bit with the legislature
 and so i would i think a grassroots campaign is definitely should be a focus and a priority in
 terms of let's see what we can do next session councilmember melser is there any indication
 i'm very sympathetic to what you're saying but is there any indication of what public sentiment is
 on this i mean i kind of think people are more inclined to feel like why why do you get to tell
 me what to do with my property more than you know please regulate me more you know so where's the
 hook well i think the difference is people who have really invested in their home and they see
 it as an investment want to be able to protect that investment and i'm not sure that we have the time
 to have this filter all the way down past the staff level to the resident level i can tell you
 i don't believe residents had any knowledge of this bill and i and i i don't think that
 i mean if you're an individual homeowner you're not going to understand necessarily the significance
 if you're not in the development community how many times do we have individual homeowners coming
 to us advocating for either a lesser restriction on building which it's when people come in to
 develop a piece of property when they come in to build an apartment community when they come in
 to build a subdivision that's when those things get and so yes there is a sentiment i don't want
 to be regulated however uh that's a really broad statement but when you can go in and put let's say
 hypothetically you've got an infill residential lot right and that residential lot now could be
 built hypothetically now whether it will happen or not based upon just someone wanting the developer
 or the builder wanting to make a profit you got to be able to sell it right i mean so you have to be
 able to sell it but if it's an individual homeowner or someone they could go in and they could literally
 put up a metal building as long as it conformed to the energy codes as long as it conformed
 to the international codes or not the international whatever codes we've adopted the national
 building plumbing codes electrical codes and those kinds of things so it's one thing to say i don't
 want to be regulated it's another to say okay well how then when we get down to it does that
 lack of regulation begin to really impact because i think there's a floor i think when people say i
 don't want to be regulated there's some probably assumption albeit subconsciously that they're
 saying as well we i mean i don't want to be regulated but i don't want this beside me i don't
 want this to be here uh and i don't and i think that's what's been missing here so it's um this
 has consequences that we can't even in this time here limited time here today begin to try to unpack
 for our citizens and for our community and how we what expectation we have for the aesthetics
 and also just the quality of life so yeah it's it's it's a it's a it's a big deal one of the
 best things that could happen is for this impact to affect a legislator or two in the next couple
 of years and then they realize oh my gosh what have we done it's in it's next door to me it's
 on my drive to work it's in my neighborhood and then they'll realize the impact of the bill that
 was passed councilman robert and then councilman ron yeah so i just want to just kind of make a
 statement about um to where i'm at personally you know with this bill i'm and that is essentially i'm
 still thinking through it and learning about it um i am myself don't definitely don't feel comfortable
 saying um i am against this but neither do i feel comfortable saying i am totally for it uh because
 i'm still learning but i will say you know that that uh as far as kind of what i've learned and
 um read so far about this bill there's a lot that's um appealing to me about it uh so um i myself
 um you know might not end up feeling comfortable with a uh a um you know council approved you know
 push of the grassroots to speak out against it i'm kind of more um along the lines of it i'm not sure
 if this is where you were leading council member melter but i'm curious to know what the public
 thinks about it and then as we see it uh implemented and we see people both complaining about it in how
 it works out in practice uh and people saying hey i like the way this worked out in practice i like
 that i can make my metal building uh i'll be i'll be curious to see about what the effects are on
 on dentin so i'm just kind of saying that just as a statement about where i where i where i stand
 personally just so there's no confusion well i mean i nobody here is speaking for the body
 i don't think anybody who's articulate i'm certainly not speaking for this body i'm not
 speaking for your opinion or anybody else's at this body um and as far as the the public uh and
 and the general citizenry i mean number one it's going to take a huge educational effort and again
 it may not have the disparate impact that we think the point is it can and all you got to do is have
 one uh and we will hear that there's no question about that so uh but yeah i think it's an educational
 process for everybody still uh so council member ryan thank you mayor a couple of questions first
 one uh i don't believe right now the city enforces deed restrictions but is there a mechanism
 something that we could do that would allow us to enforce deed restrictions because quite often a
 developer will do that to make sure that the whole development ends up the same um nobody wants to
 those deed restrictions are private to the homeowner and whoever the developer in hoa might be so
 enforcing cities don't enforce a private restriction as against a property i mean we're
 entering outside our role as a governmental entity um and so you trying to enforce those would be
 difficult problematic understood just trying to look at some of the possibilities um is there
 any discussion right now about adding a development agreement as part of our process for any rezoning
 or sqp so that we can possibly put that development agreement in place prior to
 or during the process of that that would be under resolution i think that's a very interesting
 question but i don't know if passing an ordinance that required that
 would run afoul of the prohibition so i'd have to really would have to take a look at that yeah
 no
 okay yeah we have a little sidebar so if you're yeah if you want to if you have a comment love
 for here if not let's yeah yes councilmember davis um i don't want to go to field of what
 you all are presenting to us but uh when we talk about contractual agreements can you give us some
 examples of the kinds of things um that we can offer as consideration because again we're accustomed
 to deal with these and we know what the consideration is you want your zoning case approved you want your
 sqp approved and that's the consideration we have to offer and the kind of thing you're talking
 about what does the city have to offer what's the incentive to get developers or home builders or
 whoever to enter into these agreements i think i i believe we're going to become
 better informed about those types of things right now we're we're looking at options for
 dealing with maintaining a community's desire to be what it is i'll have we do a lot of development
 and developer agreements and they typically involve some type of incentive either economic
 or infrastructure participation or something like that that helps their bottom line their
 their spreadsheet of return on their investment and that can happen in many ways a waiver of
 permit fees or inspection fees even is something that is valuable an agreement that inspections
 might occur within a shorter period of time for that development an agreement that
 a reduced i don't know water tap fee i'm trying to i'm brainstorming with you but i think there
 are a number of things that would be seen as valuable to a developer or home builder that
 could be a part of a development agreement kind of follow up well council member did you have a
 question i'm sorry no no what i want to say is we're we're going to probably have many discussions
 on this so this is sort of an overview and i've certainly asked very detailed questions so i'm
 part of what i'm trying to say is let's sort of try to rein it back into the general overview
 and then we'll have a significant amount of time to i think dive into the weeds yeah but you read
 my mind correctly i was thinking of raising my hand yeah uh on the fourth bullet about this not
 applying to historical cultural architectural areas designated before april first if they're
 designated after april first 2019 and there are and there are national standards associated with
 those districts that do have something to do with materials does that you know does that provide some
 protection for those areas yes i mean ultimately if we use the squares an example
 and and we created those standards absolutely enforceable okay but uh
 i don't remember first before after april first it's all after april first oh okay and okay you
 answered the question thank you okay yes okay so we will carry on um
 i think for the most part we're we're uh we're going to do everything we can to be compliant
 um we don't anticipate that um we'll bring forth the changes both to the building code and the
 development code um over the the coming weeks we've been working on it for weeks we have work
 sessions scheduled um which i'll get to here shortly um it really kind of gets in and we started
 kind of bridging some of the policy questions um that i that i think we started bridging it
 to 3167 so i'll try to expedite this maybe a little bit um that what we've done is is
 we're starting to work through what our definitions are and and the biggest piece in 3167 which is the
 shot clock bill um really revolves around what is um a a plan or a plat as as brenda had referenced
 it really kind of bridges a couple three different parts of of the local government code so 211 does
 zoning 212 does platting or subdivisions um and then 245 has a provision for vesting but it gives
 city staff an opportunity to do a completeness review so do we have all of the documents that
 we need in order to process a an application so as we work through that we know that if we take an
 application in if it's deemed filed we have 30 days to act and that act is approve approve with
 corrections um or disapprove and that has to be done by p and z or the governing body depending on
 what those application types are and and i kind of get into that i think just because what i
 indicated for p and z which is true to this body is that both the p and z and council have lost
 any discretion where it is that we may say we want to have a particular building material or we want
 to change a driveway location everything has to be cited within the law so if we take an application
 in we deem it complete it complies with our development code it complies with our criteria
 manuals and it complies with the local government code p and z and or council will not have the
 ability to make changes on the fly and say well i would prefer to have um so that's the very
 challenge in all of this so i guess that kind of takes me to the it's it's a pass fail um and and
 so in this it's really what is it that council wishes to see currently um there are an awful lot
 of plans that we do not bring to council some of the original thought in this is is that we would
 because this allows 30 days the 30 day shot clock then there's an additional 30 days if we brought
 it to council for the approval so that would give us 60 days um it really is kind of a a little bit
 more of a challenge because we would be hearing at council five to six more um hearings in a given
 week or during the busy times it may be anywhere from 10 to 15 more if we can delegate or relegate
 as much of that as we can to staff if we can keep as many items as we can away from it going to p
 and z and or council the law is very specific in the fact if it is not approved approved with
 corrections or disapproved within 30 days it's approved so if we don't have a quorum if we can't
 make a decision or if we don't cite the law then that plan is approved and i'll read what a plan
 is a plan is a subdivision development plan a subdivision construction plan site plan land
 development application and site development plan a plat as a preliminary plat general plan final plat
 replat so between all of those that would be an awful lot of application types to bring before
 council and we're not recommending that we do that was just some of the conversation that occurred
 so i'm ultimately i guess looking to try to get some sense of consensus that um council wouldn't
 want to see more plans or plats that we keep that at a minimum
 okay that's that's a question to the body councilmembers yeah uh so for me i mean i
 would want to see uh theoretically anyway anything again this this might in practice turn out to be
 too much but i would want to see some anything to come before us where um members that members of
 the public uh or the applicant where where they have a real uh problem either with what's being
 um either where members of the public have a problem with what they see as being proposed
 or in the process of being agreed upon or where the applicant uh you know feels like they're
 being too micromanaged or you know something like that anything where there's kind of controversy
 i would want ideally for that to come before council however you know pragmatically um that
 you know that might not work as far as the you know the numbers that come before us um so but
 that's just where my my thinking is those are the kind of things that i want to see where there's
 not controversy um those are the areas the the kinds of applications where i feel more
 comfortable letting it uh you know delegating to staff
 so let me make sure i understand what what you're what you're saying or what you're asking
 currently under our our current processes things come before pnz things come before council
 all kinds of things pnz gets preliminary plats and final plats on a ministerial basis uh council
 will see and pnz will see all kinds of zoning changes plans according to this so you're asking
 so i'll tell you where i what i'm hearing is the distinction between what we're doing now
 and what we're doing under this new bill the primary impact is timing in the sense of
 you're calling it the shot clock so let's say for instance something comes before pnz
 before in our current process now there's not a requirement to have it come before that body
 within a certain amount of time i mean obviously staff works very diligently to get it to them as
 expeditiously as possible but to also ensure that it's a complete file if you will it's a complete
 presentation it's not just sort of a hodgepodge thrown together because you're under a time frame
 so if we don't change anything what i'm hearing you say is well most likely things will have to
 be coming sooner coming to the respective bodies sooner and that our only options are if it's if
 it's incomplete and we cannot make a decision on it because there's not enough information there
 we now have very limited options the options primarily are you either prove it with its
 incompleteness or it's you know it doesn't seem like it's fully fully vetted or you prove it with
 condition which then means you've got to specify which code so forth and so on or you just simply
 say you deny it you don't have an option to postpone it because of the time frame so to follow
 the letter of the legislation under our current process is to overlay that would simply probably
 result in a lot more than flat out denials if they're not fully vetted which means now people
 are starting you know you're having to come back again and and those kind of things and so
 me personally i guess i i hesitate to say i want less coming to planning and zoning and council
 because i don't know exactly what that means i don't know what it means that
 we would not be seeing under maybe a new paradigm that we're seeing now only and the only reason is
 because of the shot clock provision of it has to come and we're trying to avoid this real hard
 deadline this real hard time frame i don't necessarily have such a hard time with the time
 i mean i i discussed this all in the the development meeting anyway so i'm not saying anything that's
 not new to anybody at least that was in that meeting so i i don't know if i have an issue with
 that except just understanding that it may mean that you because of the legislation
 councils all over the state are given very few options on what they can do with something and
 you're certainly not going to approve something that's not complete i mean and sometimes can you
 get it done in that amount of time and i think you're probably what you're saying is it's very
 difficult because it's not just dependent upon staff it's also dependent upon the applicant
 has the applicant submitted the required information to get this thing through approval
 at whatever body that is presented to so i would have to know more specifics about what the
 what you're wanting to maybe go outside of that process that we normally do already just to see
 from a policy perspective is that really because i don't know if you're going to be able to
 bifurcate between what's controversial and non-controversial i i don't even know if that
 would would pass uh you know the attorney the attorney's office uh city city attorney's office
 because then you're sort of whose definition of that uh it's either you bring them all of what
 you've decided or you don't bring any of them with what you decided um and that does give me
 a little bit of pause not knowing what those specifics are so uh yes we'll go to city attorney
 and then we'll go to council member ryan if i may i think at this point if council wishes to proceed
 we can distinguish between the two words up there plats and plans plans is something totally new
 that was put in in chapter 212 the subdivision statue plats we already have that process that
 has been operating for years in this city and that is the pnz approval those are for the most part
 ministerial approvals there's no uh subjective requirements that are imposed such as like what
 the council may do on a on a sup or an overlay condition on a zoning ordinance so the plats
 could possibly because those are the those are what staff and pnz sees the most and they're
 they're used to that process that's probably if you would ask for my recommendation should stay
 within the the pnz plans i get that gives us some time to also discuss further with internally
 with outside council tml to try to come up with what exactly did the legislature mean when they
 include the term plans is it simply because some cities they don't call them plats they call them
 some other name a development plan is that what the legislature intended we don't know but at
 least for at least to get some process moving you know i think plats could remain within the purview of pnz
 it's it's tried and true and that's been the process for years in the city
 well just as a as a comment to that now i know that's what they've been doing but i don't know
 if there's been a time frame like when they submit a plat a preliminary plat or something to to this
 to the development staff under this you now have 30 days to get it to pnz and you're right pnz is
 ministerial i mean there's really no action they can take other than that i mean it's just they
 they look at it the final plat and they approve it but the point is if it's not with if if it's
 when within 30 days and it's not ready and it still has to come to pnz if it's ministerial only then
 that means it's approved it's approved in on an incomplete basis so that that's my only concern
 with that and and i totally agree with you mayor on that i think what you said earlier about
 this will result in more denials and i think that is certainly true because what usually happens so
 that everybody's aware when flats are filed with with the development services department
 very few of those plat applications actually nail all the technical requirements we have in our city
 codes and and criteria manuals so under the under the vested rights statute we simply will send a
 letter within 10 days of the other filing allowing the developer up to 45 days from the data filing
 to correct those defects so this this in essence impacts that so right and so i i think your
 assessment is a correct one that will result in more denials of local of flats that are filed
 with the city and uh which the local development and builders association will probably contact
 their legislatures that this is turning out differently than what they anticipated okay
 council member ryan then council member armature thank you um did i understand correctly that this
 bill also takes our ability to put our likes into something that everything if we approve with
 conditions we need to cite wherein our criteria manuals or codes that they're wrong in in if we're
 denying we have to specify what's already written that that that is correct and and i think the city
 attorney's point was well taken as far as separating plans and plats um there's a little
 bit of a challenge when it comes to plats and site plans so site plans are now rolled into this as
 as um some of that being maybe some even zoning provisions within that this this was traditionally
 really all subdivisions now that it's melded some of zoning with that and it's trying to separate
 those two but to your point you can't come up with likes well i'd like for them to keep more trees i'd
 like for them to move the driveway i would like for them um if it complies with all of our rules
 there is no it and actually it speaks to it cannot be arbitrary so um certainly trying and and really
 the question might be is when we get into um ceps or we get into the site plans it really shouldn't
 be an act that comes to council so it's really trying to to to separate out the fact that
 if if any council attempts to look at a site plan and to make a determination of whether they approve
 it or they disapprove it it can't be arbitrary so you can't go into it to say well i'd like for the
 driveway to move if staff meaning staff from a variety of departments say that it complies with
 all of our provisions what act is council doing at that point
 yeah i think that that's probably to me i mean the 30 days is what we think about when we see this
 bill that it's the shot clock narrowed down our time frame but that's a bigger issue on this bill
 to me than what the the time frame is and if we can't really if it's all got to be according to
 what's on the books i don't see where there's too much of a difference of just staff approvals where
 we feel they're they're best and maybe status reports on a regular basis to pnz and council
 that let us know you know what's what what has gone through staff that may be used to have gone
 would have come up to one of the other levels that way we can kind of judge and say look
 can we look at this code or criteria manual and you know do we need to make some changes there
 so i want to kind of follow up with a question um something that city attorney had said you
 mentioned that you know it looks like that this bill um might end up having different
 effects than those who lobby for it had hoped um so you know just to kind of follow that out so
 if since since denial is seems to be the one tool or the most obvious tool at our disposal to um
 to stop a uh a train wreck or what you know whatever you want to call it something that that
 is um uh that is not absolutely right um they won't have time to be fixed within that 30 days
 but when we uh if if this gets denied um because the original plat submitted is not perfect then if
 they resubmit they have to uh pay another fee right with they have to pay more fees when they
 when they submit it again is that correct well we we haven't determined that so how the
 how the law reads is that um whether it's the municipal authority p and z denies or council
 denies um the applicant has no time limit to to respond so it's good forever if you will um but
 once they do resubmit we have 15 days to to either approve approve with conditions or deny
 so it could linger for five years they could come back with their responses and then we have to
 bring it for the before the appropriate body and then hear what whether or not it it complies or
 doesn't comply the jury is still out on whether or not that goes on forever or if in fact that
 that second denial is the end of it but it may be very cyclical that it could just go on and
 and on and on but i think that the the biggest question in this is is that and and to council
 council member ryan's point is that it where is it and when we talk about and some of that is
 sups whether we want to continue to go down the path with sups or if we want to look at site
 specific um criteria or or conditions so so instead of bringing a site plan forward on a drive
 through that we have that certain criteria that that manages the drive through because if you
 can't look at a site plan and say i don't like where this driveway is at because that's a land
 development application then that's another question that we're trying to get answered but
 it really revolves around the site plan so brenda has something and then i think council member
 davis has a question after after your comment so i just i counsel you to be careful about
 taking this to apply to site plans that are a part of the zoning process so chapter 212 most
 people don't realize this has a sub chapter b that uses the word plan liberally and in fact
 212.044 this applies to subdivisions in the etj okay most cities apply their subdivision
 regulations in the etj sub chapter uh section 212.004 is titled plans rules and ordinances
 and throughout sub chapter b and chapter 212 which is the platting chapter the word plan is used
 and i am gonna heavily counsel our cities that the word plan used in this bill is talking about
 plans contemplated in the subdivision chapter not the zoning chapter and so
 i wouldn't go all the way there yet we're still talking about it but i think there's a very strong
 argument that this 30-day shot clock as erin mentioned has existed on plats for some time
 and cities are familiar with it i don't think that this is going to extend to your site plans
 as a part of sup process plan development process any of your other kind of zoning
 legislative remember zoning is a legislative act platting is a ministerial act i think it would be
 very difficult to put a shot clock on a legislative act i think it's easier to put a shot clock on a
 ministerial act and so that's why i'm absolutely not prepared to say that this affects your
 legislative process on zoning so i encourage you not to go there quite yet council member david
 first of all brenda thank you for that answer that that answered a bunch of my questions because in
 our conversation so far we've kind of blended some things together and i understand we want to
 be proactive thinking ahead about the possible application but at the same time i read it the
 same way that we're talking about a very narrow subset things that council typically doesn't see
 that our pnz sees maybe but the council doesn't see and where we're more familiar with putting
 in the conditions that don't tie to specific criteria trees driveways all that kind of stuff
 the sup process those sort of things my question is as far as remedy scott you've talked about
 some of them you know if we if we don't complete these ministerial acts the remedy is generally
 automatic approval of what was of the application what was submitted but let's say there's approval
 with conditions and the conditions are not specific they don't reference in writing this
 condition ties directly to development code a b and c and they and there's an argument they're
 more arbitrary what's the what's the route at that point is it that they get reconsideration
 of the application is there a cause of action like what happens next so such an interesting
 question we had a very good discussion during the subcommittee on the development code update about
 plat approval with conditions and we talked about whether that was even lawful and i had a
 meaningful conversation with a gentleman named art anderson hill love that i spoke as i said
 his name who represents developers and is um he is probably the attorney that we see most often in
 land use litigation without exception and i talked with art about conditional plat approval and i
 said art can we do it and he said yes and that what we added in the new development code was that
 plats that were approved by with conditions if the conditions are not met that the plat has not
 it's really not approved right so if you get to the end of that the development process
 well the plat won't be filed number one and it's difficult to sell lots in a subdivision where the
 plat's not recorded so we added actually we added language into the new code that specifically
 acknowledged plat approval with condition and says what happens if they're not met
 what about the other direction though what about a developer or whoever that applies for a plat
 and we have we reply with approval with conditions and then there's an argument from their side that
 those are not lawful conditions that those are arbitrary staff invented these there are no criteria
 that we could have known about beforehand what happens at that point we have to remember that
 platting is a ministerial act so the conditions are the compliance with certain ordinance
 requirements so they're not things that are not envisioned already in the ordinance so it wouldn't
 be something that they didn't have notice of it would be we've been required by the legislature
 to act we're not satisfied that you've met the requirements of what's one of the unique
 provisions the stormwater or floodplain or whatever it was environmentally sensitive areas
 i think is maybe one that i can come up with and so the plat's approved with the condition that you
 meet these requirements that we're not sure are met in your application and then i guess if they're
 not satisfied that those conditions are applicable to them or are significantly reference to you know
 whatever tcq requirements they're talking about right that triggers the response by applicant process
 with the 15 days the written response and no deadlines all that kind of stuff that we talked
 about a little while ago yes but i also think there is an appeal procedure but i'm in in litigation
 now with mr anderson where he went and filed a mandamus requiring us to perform the ministerial
 act to sign the plat so if he says these conditions were unlawful judge i want you to make them sign
 the plat then that would be a process that the developer would go through so you had started out
 this presentation or as you moved into looking for some direction you said we're looking for
 some direction yes and so i'm trying to understand well what direction because i what i heard just now
 was a question of whether this applies to zoning processes and things such as that which in our
 last subcommittee meeting we sort of talked about that because that's a big question mark i mean that
 that's to me that's really the biggest impact on us from a policy perspective and from a process
 perspective so i don't know how i can give direction if i don't have a clear understanding of
 the answer to that question if that makes sense yes it does and and that was part of the conversation
 that occurred yesterday um and and so brenda and i had a little bit of time to visit today
 but i don't there was not consensus from the group as to how this applies and to go to the
 conditions um that was one of the topics that you so you could approve the plat with conditions they
 get a tech stop permit well you can't do that anymore because then it has to come back to the
 body to to remove the condition so then it's approved and so it's a circular piece and that
 was the conversation that was occurring yesterday well i'm talking about something other than plats
 i'm talking about you know we talked about site plans we're talking about people who are coming
 for rezoning if somebody submits a rezoning application does that mean that the 30 days
 on the zoning application does not apply the the zoning does not and we're and we're not suggesting
 that it does so you just don't know the definition of plans what are plans what correct because the
 the law defines a plan which to brenda's point not knowing where that is where that comes from
 or what that applies to is the unknown so what we're trying to figure out is is if we can get
 direction from council on if we want to keep kind of the status quo if we would like to delegate
 whatever it is that we can to make certain that staff is doing it rather than it being part of
 the 30-day shot clock so anything that we can remove from this provision of the law that says
 this must become before these bodies that's what we're trying to we're trying to get a handle on
 we've been we've been going through this for for weeks literally trying to trying to understand
 and trying to get a position so that's a good point so what you're asking of this council is
 are there are some things that we do now that go before body that we want to get a policy direction
 of whether we can redirect that to a staff level decision making process therefore it wouldn't fall
 under the purview of this statute so do you have that list i mean i can't make that decision or
 give you direction without knowing what's coming now and what you're asking to be removed uh does
 that does that make sense so i'm not sure what direction i would i would prefer to not continue
 the discussion this way and instead ask scott to get with staff and brenda i'm putting a matrix
 together that clearly lays out plat plan what is what is the uh was the current process what are
 you recommending that stay what what could be moved over to administrative process i i think it's too
 it's too ambiguous right now and they need to they need to be working off a chart yeah okay all right
 i appreciate that thank you yeah uh council member melzer so with that we're going to be drawing this
 discussion to a conclusion council member melzer yeah i'd like to understand a little better the
 deny written statement is required part if if uh it's going to be more difficult to apply conditions
 and denial is going to be more you know frequently um or you know way to register objection uh you
 know what what needs to be in the written statement and uh let me just say a little
 bit more about that parenthetically before you answer uh you you might be able to correct my
 memory uh but my perception is not that council members say i would like or i would like my
 perception is the community members of the community come and speak and then council members respond
 to what they hear and try to get some kind of accommodation so it's usually the neighbors would
 like uh and so if we have a situation where there's some kind of uh request that's coming out of the
 neighbors um and we don't see movement on the part of the applicant can that be a reason to deny
 or does that go into the written statement even though that might not what they're talking about
 whether it's shutting off remember the last last session it was about turning off uh a well before
 they begin construction you know it's probably not a condition that that's in the code about that
 they were willing to do it but if they hadn't been might would might be in a position to deny and then
 have a written statement that says uh applicants didn't seem responsive to community requests or
 how would that work so let me speak to the first part about the certification of the reasons for
 denial that language is actually already in chapter 212 but we have to provide it if the
 applicant requests it now it says we have to provide it whether they request it or not so
 that the reasons for denial is already in there there not a lot of applicants request it but some
 do with regard to the neighbors coming to speak this is one of the problems with the plat approval
 process is there are some instances in chapter 212 that require public hearings that gives the
 public the incorrect belief that they have the ability to impact the decision remember we've
 already said that plat approval is a ministerial act if it complies with the ordinance you have to
 approve it regardless of what the public input is and so i've always philosophically had a problem
 with requiring public hearings on plat approval because it's a non-discretionary act and so to
 your point if the well is not required if if capping the well is not required by some other
 statute or ordinance i don't know that you have the ability to impose it as a condition if the
 applicant agrees to it then i think that's fine but does that answer your question
 well i think so i think you're saying there's unless it's something in the code there's no way
 to impose a condition or to deny because of that condition that would be correct and i think that
 city manager's right i think what we're doing is we're conflating we're intermingling sort
 of plats and stuff then because the well issue was a zoning case so the well issue was a zoning
 case so i think it'd be best to have a chart to show exactly what you're what what you think this
 applies to and what you're making as a recommendation putting forth as a recommendation to maybe change
 the process so it would certainly make the the discussion probably a lot more streamlined and
 and would help us understand that a little bit better and i do want to say that the ordinances
 that we've drafted two ordinances one to deal with each of these bills the ordinances adopt
 the statutory language and super say you know this supersedes any other provision you may have
 and then it also directs the staff to begin investigating exactly what the impacts are
 so we want you to comply by september 1st but we also recognize that cities do not have the
 opportunity to create these charts fully and understand fully the impact and so they speak to
 future um review and investigation of the impacts in your particular situation and so that's why
 you may not um i don't know whether you all will adopt these ordinances or not but i think it is
 going to be impossible to deal fully with all of these issues by september 1 okay all right
 real quick customer monitor yeah so anyway i just wanted to thank our um uh council uh brenda for
 your uh your uh insight into this i was very i was worried about it um i'm still a little
 worried but i feel more reassured that that it does not apply to zoning i think that's a good
 way to proceed i wanted to and i agree that um it only makes sense for us to discuss this when
 we've got a list of of everything that's involved you know in this process um i i want to recommend
 that um because planning and zoning is the body that deals with these factors hands-on
 that uh that this come to them uh before it comes to us so that we could at least hear uh you know
 their their insight into you know what they think should um uh you know should should uh go through
 should should just be delegated to staff and and where as opposed to what should go through
 governmental body i i would want their their opinion um before weighing in on it and i don't
 know um if that would throw off the the timing too much but for me it would i'd be nervous about us
 um weighing in on this without getting planning and zoning's opinion okay i think we can run both
 those processes concurrently and have them weighing in at the same time i mean the bottom line is the
 bottom line is those items that require to action within 30 days making sure that we know that we
 can get them in and out of the processes it's fine if there's stuff that's more prescriptive
 in nature we'll identify that um but we'll bring you something to work off that that really cuts
 cuts to the quick a little bit better than this okay good deal thank you all right very good thank
 you thank you very much appreciate it scott thank you so much we'll move on to agenda item uh three
 c we'll take a break after this receive report and hold discussion give staff direction regarding
 potential amendment to the 2018-19 internal audit plan
 so
 uh
 good afternoon mr mayor and city council member
 okay this is going to be a very brief presentation
 in at the end of uh june uh 2019 uh we were approached by when we just kicked off our capital
 project audit process audit uh we were requested by management to postpone that audit
 and uh i want to talk about that and uh get some directions
 basically up until this point we we are done with most of our audits i mean we have completed
 most of our audit audits in economic development and uh capital projects are the two audits two
 major audits that are remaining now when we met with uh city engineer or engineering services
 uh we were told that uh management inherited uh lots of project from the previous administration
 and uh they were trying to trying to complete it but in the process they did not have established
 processes procedures uh and uh they would say that they they said that if you postpone it
 they have some policies and procedures prepared or established to handle the next bond election
 in uh which is going to happen in november of 2019
 so one of the things i mean there there's some options here uh city council may want us to
 continue with uh conducting our audit as it is planned uh the issue there is that
 we have a very significant bond issue that is coming in which is also leveraging
 state and federal money so it's going to be a much larger uh issue uh if we know at this time
 that we don't have policies and procedures established and processes established you may
 want me to evaluate whether the policies and procedures established are working before
 we authorize or approve the bonded bonds approve sell of bonds so that is one option
 if you choose uh to amend the plan then my options that i i offer is
 there is an audit that was done by my predecessor which is due for follow-up so that is a vendor
 master file audit so we would like to follow that up and uh uh there are two options that
 in addition to that is either do park land dedication project audit uh or water meter
 reading process now parks land uh park land uh dedication
 okay on that particular issue uh we have budgeted revenue of 0.3 million dollars
 and expenditure of 2 million dollars however this process directly affects the development
 community and indirectly affects the citizens access to the parks
 and we we were told by management that they are working on uh making changes to the ordinance
 uh the second option is audit of water meter reading process which will examine the process
 process is used to collect and process water consumption information
 uh we will be looking at effectiveness of controls uh for f-519 the uh budgeted expenditure is 2.5
 million dollars but however this directly uh impacts metering of the citizen water use
 so i need some direction whether you want me to continue with the plan or you want to choose the
 options before we uh you want to grab your yeah i just you're about falling under the table to
 grab it so she knocked something else i wanted to yeah okay uh first of all i mean did did you
 want to comment now you want to wait to hear council feedback or any comments on this i mean
 you don't have to i'm just wanted to well i guess i can certainly comment on a few of these um i
 wasn't part of the conversations with with todd estes but uh i think the i'm not sure that the
 forthcoming bond election has anything to do with the capital project audit it's much more of a issue
 that he spent the last 18 months putting together a team uh getting getting the processes straightened
 out when we first took this on we couldn't even tell you where the money was in the bond program
 so um you know i think he's making terrific progress and we haven't we've got we're finishing
 our first year right now just to see if we're able to move the projects along that we thought we were
 in the coordination with finance has been greatly improved i think an audit's going to tell us
 exactly what we told you a year ago and we don't have enough data to really show if there's other
 breakdowns in the process the master i don't really have much to say on the master file audit
 or the water meeting process the water meeting process would actually get to be kind of interesting
 um parkland dedication process we've currently retained a professor down at texas a&m to help us
 he's renowned in the parkland dedication and parkland impact the um uh processes in texas so
 he's helping us rewrite the 9 15 16 ordinances to bring to council later this year and again we
 know the process is broken it's been many many years since those have been looked at so it's kind
 of where we are at this point um the capital projects i just think it's treading old ground
 and um but i think i see definite value in especially in the water meter reading process
 and in the vendor master file audit that's something that it would be nice to see if we've
 made progress since that last audit there so i believe council member melzer you had a question
 you know i wanted to know umesh if if we were to opt for option a would you do anything differently
 to accommodate the um objections that were that were raised you know to distinguish between kind
 of old stuff done under old processes versus current basically if we do that audit we'll be
 looking at internal control over the fund use for various projects and we will be looking for some
 kind of consistency and uh checks and balances basically uh in compliance with law okay councilman
 marty and then council member reese yeah um as far as my direction uh for me it's imperative that
 we continue with the the uh the capital projects audit uh and the reason why is precisely because
 we've got this bond election coming up uh and people are going are being asked to vote on
 capital projects and i think for the sake of public trust uh it's best that people see that
 we are proceeding with this um even though i understand what what you were just saying that
 you're uh mr city manager you know you're feeling that that b might be better um doesn't necessarily
 doesn't have to do with the the bond election i think that um the public uh will see that the
 timing and uh uh might feel uncomfortable with that uh and i know i would feel more comfortable
 you know much like how you know when you go to it go to the doctor even if you know you have uh the
 flu uh because you've already you've had the flu before you know what it is but when you go to a
 doctor and you get it checked out and they say yes you do indeed have the flu that's something a
 professional doctor can tell you a professional auditor can tell you um and it's it's it's
 reassuring to see that so for me even if it does come out that yes um the things that we knew were
 wrong really are wrong that for me is valuable information coming from a professional internal
 audit so that's why that's extremely valuable uh for me and and for the for the public trust given
 the timing these other two issues are are really important um but i don't see as far as time
 sensitivity uh i don't see them being as as time sensitive as uh option a is yes that's actually
 um although uh b the water metering uh reading process seems um very interesting and i know that
 there were some issues in the past about you know um inter reading interpretations um i'm
 i feel that we should continue uh with the plan to conduct um the capital projects administration
 audit um which is a um mostly well you know did mention the bond election and i i personally feel
 that it has some bearing on that and um i would like for you to be able to help them with policies
 and procedures just because they're not in place um doesn't mean that we shouldn't even look into
 it uh we approve street projects capital projects millions and millions and millions of dollars
 all the time um and so it's really important to me too to make sure that um the money is going into
 the right place and that we have policies and procedures in um in the future and it's you know
 i understand that they have had a lot going on there were a lot of past issues but to continue
 would mean that we don't repeat the same mistakes in the past and that's really important to me
 anybody else because my melter now on uh similar lines um i would be for option a not that i assume
 there necessarily is anything wrong there maybe there is maybe there isn't uh but it's just where
 the money is it's just such a big part of our expenditure that that seems to be the prudent
 place to put the auditing resources council member ryan well and i guess i'm more for probably the
 water metering or the vendor master file would be would be my preference and it's just for me it's
 something if we're in the middle of redoing all of the processes and it's kind of like if you're in
 the middle of construction on on a project you're not as concerned about how that room looks i mean
 you're not going to be uh dusting off your your cabinets while you're still sanding down the walls
 because you know that it's going to there's still more to be fixed in that process so i would like
 to see that one on next year's plan for sure they you know that should give them enough time to
 finish getting the processes in place council member david um honestly i'm not sure that i
 have strong feelings either way i think you know a and b right they all need to at some point very
 soon be audited whether it's this audit year or the next um but i also don't know that i see the
 harm in continuing i understand the argument but i don't know that i see the harm in doing an audit
 of the capital capital projects because even if you're in the middle of making some changes that's
 an opportunity for the department to say we're making these changes we you're right the auditors
 have identified an issue but guess what we've already identified that issue i mean that's a
 that's a win for the department right to say um we we saw this issue coming um we've identified
 it and we're already in the process of it and thank you to the auditor for for helping us
 understand the the degree to which we're making this change or that we need to make this change
 so again i don't know that i have strong feelings either way but i don't necessarily see the harm in
 sticking with this year's plan um and maybe helping their process along a little bit
 could you go back to uh your first slide or your second slide
 uh i'm sorry next slide next slide yeah uh i just want to read that for a second
 so um i'm trying to understand
 and maybe you can help me understand mr city manager uh so yes i mean over the last two years
 there's been a new administration new city management administration
 uh that inherited a tremendous amount of uh well stated projects i don't know how far long we got
 on them and that's sort of what we've been trying to iron out so um i guess i don't really understand
 what and so pardon me i thought i was i don't understand exactly when you say an audit you're
 you're going to go in there and look at processes and procedures and if you find some that uh are
 there and they either need efficiency or they're they're good or there's not some there that need
 to be there that's what you'll put in your audit and things such as that i think what's important
 here is that uh if if we go ahead and give you direction to move forward with that that when
 that report comes to this body that this body remembers that i mean if there's some some
 deficiencies that uh that are there that you know some could be very minor some could be very glaring
 that we make sure we put a context around it in the sense of that who's i want to say under
 whose watch did this happen we've been trying to correct all this so uh i don't have a problem
 with moving forward on the capital projects audit but i do want to be very clear and and very uh
 transparent about when we have the report that there's some kind of uh indication of
 where these were lacking what what just so that we don't come in and all the sudden blast current
 management for things that have been sort of potentially lacking for many many years uh but
 it's always good to have an opportunity to look at our processes and determine okay and and what
 the time frame is really doesn't matter as long as they fix it but still that kind of perception
 though can really create certain types of responses and and beliefs and those kind of things that may
 not be absolutely accurate so i i don't have a problem with continuing it um and when it comes
 forward we'll just have to make sure we make those those clarifications if not in the report we can
 make them here uh in the in the yes councillor melzer you know when we hear the term audit it
 immediately triggers this notion of like a you know green eye shade scoring you know and it's
 black marks and uh and red marks but i correct me if i'm wrong uh can't it and it be kind of
 consultative in nature so that you know now that i when i read that consistent processes and
 procedures have not been established could that be kind of a constructive consultative engagement
 to help establish good processes and procedures rather than just like a scoring
 well i mean i think it's both i mean it's i don't know if it's scoring in the sense of i mean when
 you when you in a report factually represent that this isn't here and these are the potential results
 and of it and the impacts of it i mean it all i mean everybody applies a score to it i mean a good
 or a bad to it but it is consultative in nature also absolutely but i think in the past we've had
 some uh some audit reports where that's been the the request of council and i think of city management
 that hey you know tell us what we're lacking or what we're deficient in what we're doing good in
 but also if you see things that you think are some good recommendations to bring those forward as
 well am i incorrect in that as far as on some of these audits to get some some idea of how do we
 comply in other words how do we if there's something that's not an issue that it is an issue
 can suggestions come forth uh maybe i misunderstood some of those yeah i think he's breaking it down
 into two parts one of them is just the uh audit of you know or the bond money spent in the proper
 places proper way i think that's great uh to have that sort of information this is very similar to
 procurement audit you're gonna be seeing you know it took months to get everybody together just to
 kind of talk about some of the issues that you know were inherited by cassie and that we're in
 the process of fixing and things just really got crossways and i i think if we're if we're
 if we're focused more on you know if in this next bond package here's some additional suggestions
 that we see that that should be addressed in order to ensure the transparency and the management of
 these projects i think that's fine um you know these are highly intensive um audit programs and
 i'm just not sure that from a management perspective you're going to see anything
 different than todd brought to you a year ago but i i also think that if there's some suggestions
 that moving forward that hey these might be some some better some ideas that you might want to
 consider i think we're always open to making things better it's just the redundancy is what
 i'm concerned about okay all right so okay uh it sounds like um the direction is to just continue
 with the audit plan as presented and i would certainly ask that uh because this is also sort
 of a process ongoing process of how management internal audit department work together to ensure
 that we don't get crossways as we might have done in the past so just really encourage uh that
 cooperation and not you know superseding or impugning anybody's independence in that but
 they're just to continue to work together to find the best process that works to get us the best
 information um so any other comments yes councilman briggs you look like you have a comment well yeah
 just a comment um thank you for bringing this to us uh for the decision and i i'm glad council is
 proceeding and and i don't i don't know that it would be redundant um i feel like we really haven't
 heard that much about you know policies and procedures and we haven't heard your take on it
 at all so you know just to get some clarifying information and know and you also mentioned that
 money it comes from other other sources when we're talking about matching you know and so it would
 just be um very informational i think for for me to hear that sure okay fantastic have your direction
 let's take about a five or seven minute break we'll come back to agenda item 3d
 welcome everybody back to this meeting of the dent city council on tuesday july the 23rd 2019
 at 152 we're going to move on to agenda item 3d receive report hold discussion give staff
 direction regarding broadband internet options in the concrete neighborhood
 good afternoon mayor city council my name is stewart birds i am the assistant to the city manager
 here and i'm going to talk to you a little bit about an area of the city it's a neighborhood
 there who doesn't have access to high speed internet um and take you through kind of what
 staff has been working on what we've been communicating with the providers and then some
 options for you and so back in may uh we had a resident come and speak about his neighborhood
 uh this located right here it's the preserve at pecan creek section b for your reference bill
 letter ford is up in this direction uh the preserve at pecan creek is this whole area
 this right here is lakeview uh drive and then a lot of development is here and they're beginning
 to build out in this area here so you can see that it's a little bit separated from the main
 development there is an apartment complex uh in this area here and so this is swisher road cross
 vine and crepe myrtle drive there there's 14 homes there a 15th is being constructed right now
 and just as we go through this high speed internet whenever we talk about that we're
 using the fcc definition of 25 megabits per second and that's download speeds
 so originally this neighborhood was plotted in january 2001
 and as you know through the development process when a neighborhood is plotted that's when staff
 addresses each lot and at that point they send it out to the post office to the providers service
 providers uh dme the county 911 things like that to get services to those addresses um so it's
 plotted in 2001 a lot of these homes weren't built until 2016 and and uh more recently than that
 in new subdivisions uh internet service is usually an agreement between the developer
 and the providers and so they build that into kind of the cost of the development and things like that
 um this area just wasn't part of that uh between the developer and the providers and so
 what we've been doing uh since the hudson's came and spoke in may uh we've been contacting the
 providers but kind of our city work goes back beyond that in january 2018 we contacted providers
 because we've been aware of this neighborhood for a while um to get cost estimates for what they would
 uh for what it would cost them to build it out and uh some of them gave us cost estimates of
 over a hundred thousand dollars and so it became clear that it's kind of a uh cost to benefit ratio
 for them a return on investment for why they're not in that area just because it's so expensive
 and it is only 14 15 houses um so what we did we contacted again them again in spring 2019 so
 just this past spring to resume those conversations uh we contacted the three providers uh that are
 hardwired in the area uh so frontier they responded that this is out of their district so lakeview
 boulevard here is kind of their district on that side uh so they cannot go to that area charter
 they've added the neighborhood to the list for future considerations they also made an additional
 ask uh to get letters of interest from the from the residents there so that they kind of knew
 how many homes they were looking at because if their typical model it's 20 percent of the homes
 well 20 percent of 14 isn't that many homes but as uh they presented and as we've kind of heard
 the majority of those homes are interested right so they'll better be able to build out what their
 costs would be there and century link looked at it uh and they asked for a forty two thousand
 five hundred dollar uh contribution so they have cost above that but that's the contribution that
 they asked for uh from a from the residents or from uh somebody else there presentation
 yeah and so what we did uh as staff we took this information that that we received from
 the providers and we took it to a neighborhood meeting on monday july 1st uh at that meeting
 12 of the 14 homes were represented one was out of town and uh one just chose not to participate
 some of the residents there stated that right now they're paying over a hundred dollars a month
 for four megabit per second uh service so very slow and we talked about the options that were
 presented uh during that meeting i just want you to know that they didn't present it as a want
 they want internet service they presented it as a real need and so they have security concerns
 they're unable to communicate with security systems and cameras they can't access emergency
 information conducting online business internet internet based homework things like that are what
 they talked about the residents there so the century link request of forty two thousand five
 hundred the city of denton uh as a city we cannot pay for that um it might be considered a gift of
 public funds uh so the extension of the infrastructure would need to be paid for by the neighborhood or the
 hoa or somebody like that so one thing that i wanted to talk to you about is that there may
 be an option of our neighborhood beautification grant which is up to a ten thousand dollar matching
 grant so as long as they spend beyond ten thousand dollars we can uh reimburse half of that cost so
 if they spent twenty thousand dollars we could do ten thousand if they only spent ten thousand we
 could do five thousand things like that that grant hasn't typically been used for something like this
 and so one of the options that we'll talk about is whether or not you uh would like to amend what
 that grant covers to include things like this and what that would do is allow other neighborhoods
 who might fall into this and we're not aware of any neighborhoods right now who do not have access
 to at least one provider but it would allow them if they're in similar circumstances to apply for
 this grant in the future the residents did express an interest in a possible surcharge to pay for this
 over time that's something we haven't really gone further with as we're continuing to gather
 information but that's a conversation that we can continue with uh the charter spectrum uh they asked
 for letters of interest i received letters back from 12 of the 14 homes uh so everybody who is
 president at the meeting i afforded those two charter as they requested i haven't heard back
 from them yet but that's not to say that they aren't working on it they've done a lot of work
 in the background and just communicate to me kind of after they come to a conclusion
 so right now there's no timeline for a resolution with them but we'll continue those conversations
 so here are the options uh we can not take any action uh and we can now kind of turn it back
 over to the residents that we've done this initial legwork uh if you'd like us to we can continue to
 facilitate conversations between the residents and providers as we are doing now um if amending the
 neighborhood grants is something that you'd like to to proceed with that's something that we can
 kind of do parallel to continuing those conversations and we can work on the the back end to uh
 amend that neighborhood empowerment grant for that purpose and then uh we can facilitate kind
 of a price agreement for the residents to pay on their own to access these services
 council member amater and council member melzer yeah so so several things um so and first of all
 thanks so much for um staff's work in this and work working with the neighborhood and and listening
 to them um i'm concerned not just about you know this neighborhood but but moving forward um as
 we as denton grows and get developed you know what can we do to make sure we're not in a situation
 like this uh again um and uh but as as far as this specific issue my first question has to do
 with the cost of that that that 42,500 you know has the the provider have they given a kind of
 itemized breakdown of the cost it seems so so big to me given that they've already got something
 there yeah so they said that their total capital cost was 53,668 to get there so this would be
 a portion of that 53,000 what they said was that they were basing that number on a i'm going to
 read this because i want to get it correct uh seven-year revenue number of 2100 dollars per
 projected customer based on purchasing a 25 dollar a month product so because they offer a range of
 products some will get the cheapest some will get the most expensive um they kind of have to do that
 revenue projection based on that i see oh i see so that so it's it's about it's about revenue
 projection not about actual actually the cost of you know providing of the material not not not
 exclusively the cost of whatever the materials and the labor correct so they they have the capital
 expense of the 53,000 the reason that they ask for the 42,500 from them is because they're basing
 that on subscription rates so that they they're sure over that seven years to recoup that cost
 yeah and then so another question i had so about uh charter this other provider so we haven't they
 haven't heard from them um uh and if um in the options uh i mean is do um providers typically
 compete with one another i mean if it seems to me like they've been kind of you know charters been
 dragging their feet uh so i would think if they were interested they would really interested they
 would try to come in with another a lower price and charter actually reached back out to me to
 ask for those letters of interest so in a way they were being a little proactive i know for me
 personally at my house i don't have charter there and so i asked them what it would take to get them
 there and they told me it was going to cost about 3200 just to get to my house my neighbor across the
 street has it so i think that there's a formula that they definitely use for all this yeah they
 just have to the reason for their letters was to kind of get that estimated subscription rate so
 that they can build what their cost would be okay thank you and then two more questions um
 next question is and this is when i got kind of question from the from the public or question that
 formed uh for me from responses from the public not as you know some people uh approached me or
 just kind of spoke out um online in in response to the the story about this in the debt and record
 chronicle saying now i don't have coverage in my you know in uh in my um home or apartment uh and
 and then i would have to kind of tease out by asking questions okay do you have a provider
 you know that you pay and and what i came to find is that as you probably know that people have
 different definitions of you know what counts as having coverage in it what i what i find is
 everybody who feels that they don't have coverage they've got a legitimate complaint because it is
 you know it's not satisfactory to them right so um you know it would be important to me that
 um as far as number option three which i support i i support two three and four um but you know i
 want to make clear that there's a clear definition of what counts as not having access to broadband
 and you know uh and if it's i'm not exactly sure how it would have to be worded
 but because i know that some people in this neighborhood they're paying somebody for
 something you know a satellite so it is something but it takes like you know three days to do
 something for their work um that their co-worker could do in a minute you know absolutely so our
 definition we went by the fcc definition at 25 megabits per second download they have a map online
 where you can look at the entire city and that was provided in some of the um isr someone out um and
 so this neighborhood this you know even section of a neighborhood is the only one that we identified
 right now um that's not to say that there aren't we're always open to talking to people and
 and finding them but according to the map according to the resources that we have this is the only one
 that we can kind of locate yeah so if somebody has like 24 uh bpm you know that it would have
 shown up on that map yeah uh so i did have you know somebody from that i think they're called
 the pecan creek creek apartments who mentioned to me you know they have this and i said well do you
 have somebody who you're paying and they did have a um and i i don't want to speak now because i
 forget exactly which one it was a frontier charter i feel like it's frontier but um someone they're
 paying it's just they weren't happy with their service so that you know that would be a question
 for me just to make sure to define that but i do support that and then finally and for me this is
 the most important issue you know moving forward and it's something i talked about with staff i
 thought might be um a part of this discussion uh but i guess it'll be something would be something
 for for future consideration and that is the larger question of you know what can we do to ensure that
 this doesn't happen again as we grow with the new development you know and and what i learned if i
 understand understand correctly you know we can't uh require we can't legally require a provide a
 providers to do anything um but we and we can't require a developer to have a relationship with
 you know to guarantee that you know you will have access to frontier or charter whoever
 but that we can as i understand it councilman barmiter is if you could go ahead and sum up your
 because i i think you're off topic i mean i think you're talking about a broader question
 well this was so respectfully this is something that you know the residents and we had talked about
 i've talked about with staff and i am i am wrapping this up um but that develop but that as i understand
 it develop a developer the city can require that a developer uh provide the uh have the underground
 infrastructure in place so that if a private company wants to come there uh you know they can
 hook it up that we can is that is that correct council member that that's not an issue here um
 because it's not there we wouldn't be having this conversation so i know that you have some some
 other some other policy questions about internet access in general in the city but that's not
 for this discussion so if you have any other questions or comments about the specific subject
 of this agenda item i'd appreciate you asking them now okay so anyway so i'm i'm sorry i i had
 thought that it was i i thought that it was going to be part of this discussion so then i will
 request that that we um discuss this at a future time because i think it's important i think it's
 extremely relevant um but as far as this specific issue yeah my i recommend uh two three and four
 all all together and and i'll say that your concerns um are planned to be included in our
 future work session coming september for municipal broadband as a whole excellent excellent okay
 that's that's that's very good to know thank you okay i look forward to that too um i uh i keep
 you know asking question and i and i don't uh kind of offline and i haven't heard the answer back and
 the way i expected i think evan has to write but have we looked at other technologies like you know
 the uh because uh fibers awesome and super expensive to install and i was a broadband
 exec from 1997 to 2012 maybe it's cheaper now but it was super expensive then franchise agreements
 generally meant local franchise agreements which were everywhere meant that you had to serve all
 residences but commercial was constantly their whole business was estimating fiber bills and
 trying to find out if there are enough businesses that would want to pay to make it worth doing um
 but uh there are other technologies like fixed point wireless and and those are generally
 independent companies that come in and uh get their own attachment to the big internet and
 you know it's a it's a different kind of uh device but they can deliver broadband speeds
 and i know that they exist in north texas i just spent you know 30 seconds on google here
 i don't know you know i don't know if these guys sero networks have any way of operating here or
 not but you know that that was 30 seconds of looking wouldn't that be constructive for now
 before you answer i don't know that this is actually a responsibility of dentons i think
 it's great that we're helping out here but to the extent that we are why don't we look at you know
 help them look at this avenue so uh i answered your question at the end of the day yesterday
 at about 11 o'clock today i got an email from our it they had done some research
 on exactly what you were talking about i think they identified four uh providers but we haven't
 been able to see if they're in this neighborhood uh or anything like that well i'd recommend but
 they are in denton i know on the neighborhood grants um how frequently do we give those out
 and is there a certain um amount of money that that we allow per year per budget for those um
 there is a budget for those uh and development services uh isn't here right now so i i can't
 speak fully to it but um just in conversations they've said that it's not routinely expended
 throughout the fully expended throughout the year so there is money usually left but i don't know
 where we are this year okay councilmember davis so i i'm glad that councilmember melts are brought
 up um there are lots of places in denton county um outside the city where they have to use these
 other services or places in mountainous areas you know where you can't get satellite traditional
 satellite so you set something up on a on a point and everybody ties into that point um i i also
 kind of agree that i think we're getting really close to the point where this kind of leaves the
 city's area of responsibility um as far as facilitating an agreement i started getting
 really wary about city negotiating on behalf of private homeowners with a private entity and kind
 of we're picking one right we're kind of saying well the most likely one we could use here is
 century link so let's negotiate on behalf of these citizens with a private company i think we get
 into a really gray area that could be kind of dangerous that we've singled out this entity
 and we're now going to help them make a profit with these uh in these 14 homes and i think we
 have to kind of keep in perspective too that we're ultimately talking about 14 homes uh maybe 12 or
 13 uh users of the service i think the city's role i think the grant is a great idea that's
 creative um that's that's something the citizens didn't have available to them before this
 conversation started but i think maybe the city's best role here is doing what we've done in other
 places helping the homeowners organize helping them create a homeowners group a neighborhood
 association putting them in touch with the folks who can bring them the service the private entities
 that can do it and then kind of stepping away to say you guys now have to negotiate on your own
 with these companies um because that's how the economics of these things work um i i just wonder
 that we're kind of opening a pandora's box if we're negotiating on behalf of one neighborhood
 of 14 homes with a private entity um that's a it's a very dangerous area for me so i i think
 i'm i'm on board with um two and three i don't think i like four i don't think i like us
 being the go-between i think we put them in touch with the resources we provided that service as a
 city we make the grant available to them um but ultimately they're going to have to be as homeowners
 as property owners the way this is shaken out for them they're going to have to be on the hook for
 bringing this service to their homes if that's what they want or coming together and looking at
 another service that they could potentially maybe it's less than 42 000 dollars buy-in for them
 but i think ultimately it's their responsibility to solve this issue in their neighborhood
 so go ahead council member ryan i'll i'll have the last or semi-last or well i think i'm in favor of
 number two um and i agree with council member davis and number four on number three i worry
 yeah it might be a good idea but i'm worried about the the purpose of that grant getting out
 of control that we set a precedent for for uses that it's not supposed to be used for i mean we
 could have another neighborhood we've got neighborhoods that are 100 on septic that
 you know the city provides sewer but you have to pay to get it to your house well will they come
 ask for a grant to get you know get off their water well or get off of their septic system it just can
 get out of hand if you're doing something other than the original intention of that empowerment
 grant which is for beautification of the neighborhoods yeah i uh first of all appreciate
 the the residents bringing this to our attention and i appreciate what staff has done up to this
 point to help facilitate at least some information gathering because i think that's helpful i um
 i think what what i'm curious about is when i did some research on the neighborhood
 uh apparently this is a fairly new neighbor most of these houses have been built in the last couple
 of years i think the houses on the assessed value on the tax rolls are anywhere from i think i saw a
 couple at 300 000 several of them are at half a million four hundred fifty thousand dollars to
 half a million dollars being in the real estate business i understand that you know there's
 certain responsibilities that sellers and buyers have to one another in a transaction and there's
 certain responsibilities that buyers have in doing their due diligence so obviously internet high
 speed internet is a perception it may not be a utility with the municipality but perceptually
 people expect that that's there so i'm concerned that we're trying to address an issue that occurred
 at a transaction between two private parties a developer selling a home and a buyer and was
 that information not disclosed or was i mean i don't know how that piece of information got
 overlooked so that's that's my concern and when you really think about it the forty two thousand
 dollars if you split that up between 14 homes that's less than three thousand dollars a home
 which is probably less than close to about only less than one percent of the purchase price of
 several of those out there so from the standpoint of an investment in that kind of infrastructure
 from the homeowner that well i can tell you now just as a matter of understanding the law
 surrounding it if someone were to sell their home out there they're going to have to say we do not
 have access to broadband high speed broadband internet what impact will that have on property
 value so i think having access probably would create more value than what it costs i'm really
 concerned with the grant of ten thousand dollars as i read through the backup and looked at the
 beautification grant what it's for it's primarily for the enhancement of a neighborhood with either
 their entrance or a fence or something that's going to improve the aesthetics of that this
 is going to someone adding a specific asset a specific utility asset to their home and i get
 a little concerned with that when i really think about what this grant was set up for i don't think
 it was set up for that if they wanted an entrance you know some type of entrance into their their
 neighborhood in a median area or something like that totally get it but to to provide a subsidy
 for private kind of service to come when i think that that's probably something i just don't know
 how it got overlooked at the transaction stage and so i'm not making any assumptions i'm just
 saying that i don't know if it's the city's responsibility to somehow make that right i'm
 thankful that the city has been able to to facilitate these conversations because quite
 honestly i don't know where on this map where is century links line do we know i think
 from what i understand it's kind of running along here anecdotally
 residents there have said that on the shady shore side of swisher road here that one of the houses
 there has century link hooked up so it's it's kind of in this area here okay and as far as the cost
 it doesn't surprise me this 42 000 when you start doing borings i mean those will be underground
 you've got utilities in place you've got electrical lines in place you've got all kinds of infrastructure
 so the cost of it that that doesn't seem unreasonable to me and then when i think about
 the per home cost now that's if everybody contributes you know and then you've got your
 whole organizational uh endeavor of trying to to make that happen but i i think that that's really
 up to the neighborhood as a private organization instead of the city i don't think we should be
 in direct negotiations as far as facilitating pricing because that could almost be a conflict
 i mean here we're negotiating with with people in the city and you know what are we going to ask back
 and we don't want to get into that so i'm okay with number two but i i can't get behind using
 the beautification grant for this particular purpose and i do think it's a very reasonable
 cost that if you could get even the 12 homeowners who who want it out there when you look at what
 they're getting for that value over the stretch of time and how it enhances the value of their
 property yeah that that wouldn't it just seems like that's a that's a and then given that it's
 less than one percent of the purchase price of the home so that that's why i can go with number two
 but i really can't go with any more of those recommendations council member armeter oh yeah
 so i wanted to answer um two of the concerns that were raised um the number one about the uh the
 neighborhood empowerment grant so looking over this language just from a layperson's layperson's
 perspective not from a legal perspective it appears to me that you know appearance is just
 one of the many factors uh listed the emphasis to me seems to be the quality of life provide
 long-term public benefits to the neighborhood um be located on public access right-of-way neighborhood
 or other public access property have demonstrated neighborhood support be compatible with adjacent
 properties involve neighborhood residents et cetera et cetera so these are the kind of criteria
 um uh so you know to me again from a layperson's perspective it would seem to be very much in the
 spirit of um what this kind of grant is is for um um the you know beautification just being one
 of the uh you know number of different uh possibilities as i understand it um secondly
 you know i want to just speak to the question about you know how did people not know um from
 just you know from having spoken uh to the residents and some of this is accounted for
 in the letters if you know uh y'all have you know read the letters it's a number of them if not
 not all um had moved from elsewhere within the the same development so they had homes within that
 development that had uh broadband and then they moved to another home within the development uh and
 so you know the assumption was that the development has uh has broadband because everybody they know
 who's in homes in that development have broadband uh so um there there's also another component that
 is again this is not the city responsibility but it just it it explains some of why um nothing has
 has happened so far um as i understand it they have an hoa uh that has no community representation
 on it i didn't even know that was possible that it's it's um it's it's called it's called an hoa
 but it seems as i understand it it's kind of a corporate it a sub it's a uh someone who's
 contracted out with by the developer to kind of manage the property that that was kind of my
 my impression um so you know there's kind of a number of different factors where you know they
 they don't have and of course in hoa that that's who you would expect to be to use their fees to
 can you know contribute to this um i wanted to ask has since this is i think it's district one as i
 understand it and you know councilmember hudspeth isn't here i don't know if he had um you know
 given any kind of communicate any direction that he wanted to pass on that's in material he's not
 here so we can't really factor that into the into the decision or into the consensus so um
 councilmember riggs i think you had a question so has the developer i mean are there any more
 available lots out here from what i understand the one remaining lot is beginning construction
 either it has just begun or it is about to begin so there's not really any leverage with the
 developer to have the developer do this uh they haven't indicated that that they're willing to do
 our talks with them now okay with the residents so let's let's try to get some direction here
 uh we'll take the probably the most uh i don't know if contentious or the i don't know where we are
 on the the beautification grant being used to provide some type of uh supplement for this uh
 councilmember melzer wouldn't it be better to have the facts first i i think i went too quick i don't
 think i was as clear as i should have been but uh understand that if you have to run fiber from
 some kind of access point to the internet to every single home that's super expensive if you don't
 have to do any of that you have a device here and a device here it's way cheaper so you know we have
 four providers that have been identified that may or may not be able to provide them a service to
 these folks okay councilmember melzer i'm gonna please forgive me but when you say can't we have
 the facts here whether or not you're talking about we do a pole attachment or they put it
 underground there's still some there's the option on the table of do we use the beautification grant
 to supplement whatever facility they choose i was about a sentence away from okay thank you i
 appreciate that if if we find that i i don't know what the cost will be but if it's a thousand
 dollars a home i don't think we'll be talking about a beautification grant i think that's well
 within you know that's like the price of a high end tv in a you know suburban neighborhood so i
 don't think you know i think connecting them with the appropriate providers with the appropriate
 technology at a palatable cost really makes that issue go away that was the point so as far as the
 direction though i mean there's probably people watching or they're going to be you know they're
 interested in the outcome here uh let's say for instance that that doesn't pan out to be that cost
 that this these are that century or whoever at least based upon the facts presented they seem
 to be the most cost effective of the providers who've actually given a cost nobody else really has
 on the the use of the beautification grant for that some type of supplement yeah i'm disinclined but
 it's it's to be very hypothetical and i think this whole thing will look different when we have
 okay we have those facts okay all right all right anybody else yes councilman oh yeah i just to
 just to clarify as i understand it's a neighborhood empowerment grant it's not
 it's not called a beautification grant okay the neighborhood empowerment grant absolutely so you're
 for number three okay all right council member brian council member yeah i would i would be
 inclined to to find more information about the grant i would like to know how many people apply
 for it how you know what it has been used for i i would like to consider it as a potential possibly
 with more information i'd like for staff to continue the conversation with more providers
 i think there's still some routes that haven't been explored yet that that we could do for that
 council member davis i'm not a hard no but i i think i am disinclined to use the grant just because
 the more and more i think about this issue the more and more i think it's a it's an amenity to
 the property it belongs to the property owner the the property owner gets the benefit of it
 i see less and less the purpose of spending city funds on it yeah i i would be disinclined to that
 and i think the staff can continue to facilitate the conversation but i really believe that this is
 an issue that is primarily that of the private property owners and if we can do some if we can
 help in facilitating some conversation and maybe some fact-finding as council member melzer had
 pointed out i think that's i think that's good because even as council member melzer had said
 if it only cost a thousand dollars well then that's the cost of a decent television or large tv
 well we're only talking about if everybody participates only a couple thousand dollars
 more above that and so i just don't see this as as something that the city from a financial
 perspective it's not our role number one and number two i think it sets a very dangerous precedent
 in that and i would also say that appreciate you continuing to facilitate and if there's some
 facilitation of different types of technologies i think that's great and if you can get people
 in direct contact with the century link people and if there's an anecdotal story that somebody's got
 it across the street i mean obviously there's a lot of facts here that that still need to be flushed
 out so i think council member melzer is right in some sense that this might not be right for
 a city policy decision but the neighborhood can choose the path that they they want based upon
 some of those facts so i think the direction is continue to talk and as you discover more facts
 bring back more information on the you know what the grants have been used for in the past
 how much money there is and these kind of things i think that'd be helpful
 absolutely i appreciate that thank you very much thank you okay now we're going to move into
 agenda item 3e and so this is 3e and 3f i'm going to call 3e but apparently we'll have
 several budget discussions within each one of these agenda items is that correct that's correct
 okay all right okay so we're going to call is it hello good afternoon good afternoon 3e receive
 report hold discussion to give staff direction regarding departmental presentation and presentations
 in preparation for the fy 2019 through 20 projected budget capital improvement program
 and five-year financial forecast good afternoon mayor city council members my name is nick vincente
 the city's budget manager we have several department schedules to present their 1920
 budget to you today a couple changes the departments are listed in your backup material
 the municipal judge is currently in a court docket she'll be presenting a little bit later
 in the work session and then we have moved traffic to the august 1st meeting with those
 two changes i will ask jennifer to come up and present the library's budget
 and if possible could we hold council questions for the ends of the budget
 presentation just to provide some continuity that's possible thank you each one of these yes subset
 yes thank you
 all right thank you for having us i'm jennifer becker director of libraries with the
 denton public library i'm here to talk about our budget so our goals and accomplishments
 our accomplishments for 1819 we really wanted to highlight we finished a strategic plan which we
 were very excited about and presented to you with our mid-year update earlier this year and then
 this spring we instituted automatic renewals so if you have items out as long as there's not a hold
 on them or you haven't hit your renewal limit your items will automatically be renewed so when you
 get that email saying your due date it should be an extra amount of time our goals for next fiscal
 year are to eliminate overdue fines more on that in a few moments and then also one of our big goals
 is to start circulating wi-fi hotspots so our budget emphasis is to reduce barriers to service
 provide patron-driven collections develop our municipal archive expand technology access
 and we've got some improvements to the north branch library facility for noise abatement
 and that's actually going to start happening this week or next week very soon before school starts
 it will be over we did quite a bit with our cost containment this last year our cost containment
 strategies listed on this slide alone total forty nine thousand nine hundred fifty six dollars worth
 of savings to the city in addition to this we have something coming before you in the next couple
 weeks and we are looking to switch our overdrive or the libby app for digital resources to a new
 resource that will have additional significant cost savings as well as additional resources to the public
 so our process improvements include that strategic plan which keeps us on track throughout the year
 make sure that we are focused on our big goals and making sure we're finishing our projects that
 we've laid out and we've worked on some improvement to collection management and maintenance making
 sure everybody's accountable for keeping those collections up to date we have several new
 departmental committees and we did some little small keystroke changes but if you're doing those
 keystrokes a million times a day that adds up to some savings and time for staff and then we also
 instituted a new newsletter for staff city admin and council so our budget highlights these are our
 revenues we expect the non-resident fee to remain the same however in the next slide we'll be talking
 about our request to change the library fines and fees so our recommendation this year we are not
 asking for a supplemental funding package but we are asking to eliminate overdue fines and just to
 clarify overdue fines are a financial charge assessed after an item has been returned so this
 is not an item that has been lost or not returned the item is back it's gone out to the next person
 this is a punitive fine and that's charged if somebody keeps something later than their due date
 so we are asking to reduce this or remove this currently we charge 25 cents a day and we'd like
 to charge nothing what would happen to keep patrons accountable for the items are if your item becomes
 overdue you can't use the library until you return it so if your item was due on the first of the month
 and you didn't return it on the second of the month your library account is blocked and you can
 check out no further items until the item comes back if you do not return that for an extended
 period of time after 21 days of it being overdue you are charged the price of that item as though
 you lost it if you do return the item at any point in that your account is cleared and you
 can begin checking out again but you won't have that punitive fine attached to your account
 so why are we asking for this we're asking for this because overdue fines are a barrier to service
 studies have shown that libraries that have implemented no overdue fines are not seeing any
 change in their return rates so suddenly people are not absconding with tons of library materials
 there is still accountability so patrons are still responsible for those items we have a lot of
 underprivileged community members who could use the library but they can't if they have fines and
 we'd like to make sure that they can come in and not be afraid of accruing fines and we want to
 make sure that they are welcome and feel welcome and that there isn't going to be a barrier there
 with it libraries that have also reduced fines or eliminated fines have seen an increase in
 circulation and visits so we expect our usage to go up and we expect to see some new patrons as
 well as returning patrons from patrons who maybe felt that they weren't welcome at the library now
 they can come back and those customer service interactions can focus better on a serving the
 patron rather than trying to get money back for something that they have returned fines
 fines disproportionately affect those who need library services the most and so that is why
 this is our one request this year so in terms of who this would affect we wanted to show you the
 impact we have youth and adult cards and then within those categories we have active and
 inactive accounts an active account has been has been updated within the last 12 months those are
 the yellow items the green items are inactive accounts so those could be anything from 18 months
 to 14 years ago and they stopped coming and they may have stopped coming because they had overdue
 fines so these are just the accounts with overdue fines so we are thinking of the active accounts
 that totals 3764 accounts we expect to see many of those patrons coming back because those are
 current users that just may not be coming back they haven't moved away they've used the library
 within the 12 months we have another 30,726 accounts of inactive users but like I mentioned
 some of those may be from 15 years ago they may have moved but some may be as close as two years
 ago so we expect to see some of those patrons back the remainder of our budget looks like this
 we've seen a few expense areas go up slightly we've got some fixed costs that went up with
 salary personal services which has to deal with just raises and benefits materials and supplies
 went up by a small amount maintenance went up by a small amount also mainly our cost of service
 is the main thing that went up this last year we have our pcs replaced and we are a high pcs
 we have our pcs replaced and we are a high pc usage department in addition to all the staff pcs
 we also have 125 public use pcs and almost 50 laptops
 this is our position summary so very little change
 questions or comments questions comments yes councilmember briggs thank you for your presentation
 um so on the um the overdue fees just to clarify you said that the fees will be removed but the
 items have been returned so correct the request that we're making it's only for items that have
 been returned yeah not lost items and lost items we call it lost because they're lost to the system
 whether you accidentally lost them or they were just never returned for whatever reason this has
 nothing to do with those that remains just the same as always all we're asking for is overdue
 charges which that's a punitive charge you've done your job you have brought it back but it's a
 punitive charge because you didn't bring it back on date x and so the idea is to um those families
 need to come to the library they need to check out books for whatever they're not allowed to until
 they pay that fine and so by getting rid of this fine will allow them to have access again yeah our
 number one goal is to get the materials back and back in circulation because that's the biggest
 lost for loss for us we don't want to lose those items um if somebody keeps in an extra day or so
 that's not great but at least the item comes back and the next person can use it and that's
 our goal is to remove that barrier because we do hear stories of patrons who say oh well i had
 already i was already blocked so i just figured i'll just keep the item well i'd rather you just
 return it so that the next person can have it right councilmember armature yeah so i i am strongly
 in support of this change and i'm aware that that this is uh the way that libraries are going all
 over the country i was wondering if you could speak uh to that say a little bit about you know
 what effects other libraries have been been seeing when they when they remove the the fees
 so there's no um large-scale study there's one going on right now through the public library
 association um but what we're hearing anecdotally especially from the area libraries who have already
 done this is they're seeing an uptick in circulation from 10 to 25 percent um they're seeing uh card
 account increases um so they are seeing people come back and people actually using the library
 without fear and they are not seeing loss rates so items are not being lost at a higher rate well
 thank you and i think that's the key point and especially it's a great reminder that that is why
 we have libraries to be used and so what we whatever we can do to increase use um you know
 without losing those those objects that that are circulating it's just a win-win so i'm excited
 about this i hope we give direction for it and i do have one additional thing i forgot to mention
 earlier if approved we are looking for direction on what to do with those existing fines we have
 two options one is to keep those on the books that was the policy at the time when you accrued those
 if you were blocked then you would continue to be blocked the other option would be to just make
 those inactive so it wouldn't affect um the person's account so we cannot remove or waive fines
 because that is a debt to the city but we could make those inactive where it wouldn't affect a
 patron's account and so we if this does move forward we are looking for direction on that
 councilman mouser now just say i don't think i've heard of any other program that would increase
 circulation by 10 to 25 percent and if that's a proxy for the value that the residents get from
 the libraries you know that that seems like a tremendous return a couple questions if you go
 back to the the um the uh cost and revenue slide right there on the cost of service it what is that
 i noticed that in uh eight to 17 18 it was at a billion then it dropped and then it went back up
 what what what is all included in that it's not a transfer like in our budget that's not a i don't
 think that's a transfer is it or what what is that cost of service transfers well for for our
 department it's the interfund transfer to tech services fleet management okay and capital
 projects okay so it's sort of it sort of does represent the transfer that i see in typically
 other okay uh so uh i would be curious offline i don't need this today just you know a sort of
 a breakdown of what that is because that means that you're getting a charged more from other
 entities in the city for that inner transfer not that that's an issue i just i just like to see it
 went from 850 to 988 so i mean it's not heartburn i just like to know the dpa and one of the things
 we've done with all the internal service funds is when i started here they they all had fund
 balances and some of them even had a small rate of return on them and so basically every one of
 those internal service funds now in the budgets were presented they're just zeroed out each year
 so they're they represent pure pass-through and pure work effort so is that why the the reduction
 from 18 to 19 do you think was because of the implementation of maybe reducing those fund
 balances so you weren't charging people's money yes okay all right um and lastly i want to say
 i always look forward to the presentations of the library you guys are cutting edge you you make
 sure that you you are doing best practices and i so appreciate that because i know so many people who
 do enjoy the library and as far as the direction on the fines let me make sure understood so if
 somebody let's say i've got a oh i've got something at home and i've got an overdue fine
 the implementation of this policy if i bring that item back then i'm unblocked okay so i would say
 if someone has a this is just me has a fee an outstanding fee and they bring the item back
 then i would say okay because the object is to get the item back right how much does how much in
 uncollected fees do we have i'm just curious i have that hold on
 total and this goes back to 1994 um is 458 thousand six hundred twenty two dollars and
 71 cents but we can never delete those accounts because there's a lot of those old accounts with
 five bucks ten bucks sure yeah yeah well i sure wish that number didn't sound that high but that's
 you know each year how much but that's a lot of years i mean that's 20 something years each year
 it's about um 17 to 20 thousand dollars okay and then in revenue what we're getting in is about
 a hundred thousand dollars because people move away and they come back and they want to clear
 their 25 dollars from four years ago so the revenue doesn't match what's of course being
 charged in that snapshot all right well i think um well that's interesting uh what would be
 interesting is to provide a time frame a window of whatever council would decide a six-month window
 a 90-day window just enough to where we are able to get the information out to say look here's our
 new policy if you bring your items in within so many days or months or whatever then if you have
 a fine we will we will waive that fine i just if somebody's got a lot of or we have a minimum i
 i mean i don't mind necessarily saying okay let's just start over king's axe
 the items that the overdue finds though the item is back oh okay so okay this is just your punishment
 and we don't want to punish anymore okay so you're saying that all these accounts
 okay so it's not like we have all these outstanding articles they're already back this is just that
 okay that's different i got you okay well so yeah the question is if you already have five dollars
 just on your account you haven't been using the library because you have five dollars
 if we go to find free what do we do about those existing charges so is there is there a way to
 i guess what you're saying is we can we have to leave them on the books right but we can make them
 inactive or active right and that's what the direction we're looking and so in when it's
 active does that mean you're sending out letters does it mean you're saying you're doing some
 collection act means you earn that charge when that policy was that there were overdue fines
 and since it's on the books if you come back in six months you're going to have to pay the 10 bucks
 to get it to get to become to clear your active or unblocked the other option would be just to say
 whatever you've got on your books we can't delete it we're just not going to collect it yes it's
 uncollectible okay council member briggs and council member robert so remind me is there anything
 in our cost of service or operations where we pay a collections office to try to get any of those
 back we're kind of offset that so we do have a collection service and just to make clear it's
 not a credit service nobody can no library charges can ever go on anybody's credit reports so this is
 just a gentle collection service they only work with library systems they have a specific they
 call it the light touch approach so if an account has 25 dollars or more at that point we send it to
 them we send it to them it's usually been on the books they've received regular notifications
 throughout the process for about four to six months and then it goes to the collection agency
 and they will get some letters saying please pay and then get your account clear so that
 the charge that we pay and then the collection charge that moves on to the customer's account
 if we were no longer collecting overdue fines we just wouldn't do that now we would still have lost
 item charges things like that or damaged charges and so for those accounts that we're still accruing
 those kinds of charges then we would still use that service okay so we wouldn't we would still
 be paying them the same amount no matter what they're showing right now because i met with them last
 week to ask how this is affecting their business and they said actually it's kind of a wash um
 people are if people are going to keep the item they're going to keep the item but the item cost
 is usually more than any overdue charge that they were going to be charged so in the end it evens
 out for them but if they return it at any time there is no charge so so councilmember barbara
 just let me just one accommodation we seems like we uh let's give direction on at least the new
 policy of um going to the no fee policy the ones that you had recommendations on the other side
 is there any objection to that policy okay so the only really other direction you need is what do
 we do with the inactive accounts okay councilmember and so uh so i support i strongly support um
 having making those accounts inactive meaning that people will not be expected to to pay
 um the uh they're not paying for lost property as you mentioned or damaged property it's just
 a punishment and is there people being punished for holding on to a book for two i guess other
 other items to book movie whatever items from the library um you know that's not the kind of
 punishment that i want to enforce um drunk driving yes you know holding on to a book too long no as
 long as you return it so yeah so i i feel really strongly and i think that um will also do a lot
 to you know not only to get people to come back to the library but to get people excited about
 about the library uh so i feel pretty strongly about about about that i think that that these
 two changes really work nicely together uh to renew interest into in the library and
 just to remove that stigma and just shame of you know such a large fine for you know
 the cat in the hat or you know whatever it is and then you returned it okay uh anybody else
 uh on that particular direction is there any objection let me just put in this contact is
 there any objection to making those items those charges inactive who have returned
 the item so you're saying all these inactive accounts it's all been returned we're only
 talking about overdue okay not lost or something is there any objection to that council member
 melser not objection uh but don't have the answer but i wonder if there is some way to still give a
 gold star to somebody who pays up anyway just a thought for creative uh exploration at another time
 yeah we never mind
 okay um all right any objections to making those balances inactive
 okay i see none any other questions for jennifer
 thank you so thank you very much you bet thank you appreciate it
 good afternoon council my name is deb raviera i'm with the environmental services department
 and i will be presenting to you the budget for gas wells inspections
 i have heard that we have a long list of uh department uh presentations so i'm going to be
 very short and i'm going to skip some information however if you have any any specific question you
 stop me uh in the past uh year we have been uh focusing on improving our citizen outreach
 we have been providing pca videos i'm sorry psia videos on the website we have provided automatic
 email notification about activities going on on gas well if the people sign up for that type of
 notification we have provided the locator map as well we have completed all the inspections
 through the third party contractor as well as the city of the inspections and we have uh actually
 survey our operator uh gas well operators about the city services to them um they have given us
 some indications about things that they consider that could be improved we have taken notes about
 that and we have been in this coming year we will be actually making some small changes in
 internal processes to address those issues um the goal for this coming year will be pretty much
 building on what we have done in the past year we will continue the cross training among different
 divisions uh we are going to start reviewing and upper and updating our operating procedures
 something that we have not done for a while and we are going to increase our communication
 process with the operators which is one of the things that they have indicated that could be
 improved uh for the budget emphasis um we are going to keep building on on the awareness
 of gas well compliance by providing that data uh online made it available to the public uh we will
 continue uh maintaining our equipment and we are going to focus on training uh the uh city inspector
 gas well inspector what we have to uh to contain our budget is just to keep using our third party
 inspection services that allows the city not to having to uh pay for the overhead cost
 um we are going to coordinate better our uh follow-up inspections and re-inspection so in
 that way we uh we are more efficient and we are going to keep assessing what technology is out
 there to make our process faster and easier um on the improvement that we have done for the city
 we are already have implemented a few of them uh we now have uh included technology uh make it
 available to to the gas well inspector and we already have updated our software management uh
 the thing that we want to move on and do is to improve the communication among the city of the
 inspector the third party inspector and the operator
 we are on track on our revenues for this uh uh fiscal year uh we're expecting to have a decrease
 of 3,500 dollars in revenue from uh for next year due to three block uh three gas will be blocked and
 um we have made some changes in the budget to reflect the third party inspection services
 in the past you uh we uh had four fte's and the cost of the third party was was coming from the
 saving of of those three fte's now you will see and we will see it later in in the a couple of
 slides that now we are down to one fte in in the budget and then the cost of service have been
 uh updated to reflect what the third party inspector cost um just a highlights uh we are
 keep seeing a decrease in revenues mostly because the plugging of wells and for the next fiscal year
 the new revenue reflects the 3,400 dollars that we're expecting to uh not be part of the revenue
 for cost mainly we have increased our uh borderline by approximately uh three and a half percent which
 is mainly drive by personal service cost at this point i just wanted to point out that between the
 revenues expected and the cost there is a 95,000 gap between the two so those are would be subsidized
 by the general uh uh fund uh those are the three um the three fte's that we have removed from our
 budget and those savings now are reflected on the cost of services for the third party
 inspection contractor and pretty much that is my presentation uh i've asked offline uh why we
 wouldn't adjust our revenues to cover our expenses and the explanation had to do with it being
 unconstitutional because uh it didn't match our cost of service study so is that a hard thing to do
 to update our cost of service study to show that this is what our costs really are and have the
 have the fees cover that
 who i'm asking i can answer the question i know that uh we have done is it's approximately every
 three years we have brought in an outside consultant to actually do the cost of service study
 involved in the entire process related to gas well production and so that person will come
 and interview everybody involved in it all the activities that are being done
 and then actually come and breaking it down into cost estimates that reflect our cost of service
 it's been over three years and that was one of my recommendations to
 dr banks and deb viera to probably propose that cost of service study especially now that
 a lot of drilling activity has lessened and as deb pointed out some wells are being plugged and
 abandoned is that a if i may is is it a requirement that would be based on a cost of service study
 rather than just our actual accounting of our costs of service it's it's not a requirement but
 it's the previous councils have considered this a prudent exercise to do not just for this but for
 other areas and you know because once we do exceed a cost of service or the cost of what it actually
 costs the city to actually provide the service we expose we enter into an area where we could be
 exposed to a what is known as an illegal occupation tax i i've you know this city has had a practice
 not just in this but in other areas to make sure the cost of service is actually reflective of what
 we're doing okay council member arman yeah um i have a question about the increased communication
 between staff and operators so this is something you meant as i understood requested by the
 operators um were they are they requesting an increased communication at after the inspection
 or before before the inspection or during or some combination it was a combination for example they
 indicated that better scheduling of the inspections and uh will uh be a improvement of the process
 between the third party and the city we're working on that they also indicated that uh the reports
 that we issue back to them identify the uh deficiencies or action items uh that could be
 improved to be more specific to the things that needs to be repaired or to be fixed so those are
 the changes that we are making just to be more clear when we identify a deficiency and thank you
 just to ask ask a follow-up to that um so i love the idea of making the um of you know making it
 clearer what exactly what deficiencies were found and what need to be done um is um as far as the
 kind of the scheduling um is this is the scheduling uh was the scheduling typically done as kind of a
 you know we'll we'll be here within this range of time but we're not going to tell you exactly
 because we want you want to have some element of surprise in it i'm trying to remember no no it's
 not uh most of the time we tell the the applicant or the site operator uh and again remember we
 have three categories the um the high priority who is inspected twice a year the uh middle or
 medium and the low priority that is inspected every other year so pretty much we uh list our
 inspections based on on on those categories and then we try to um deal with all the uh wells of
 the same operator at at one time so those are the things that we were having they know when
 when we are coming out some of them are required to uh or have requested staff to to uh for them
 to be present to during those inspections and that is uh afforded to them so it is more about
 scheduling but not giving them any surprises okay thank you
 on the difference between the uh revenues and the expenses i think you said it's 95 000 dollars
 the maximum would be 95 000 yes do you have a slide i couldn't remember if i had a slide that
 showed i know you had the permit you had the inspection fees and then the permit fees somewhere
 those are the revenues okay these are the revenues and so um
 how many wells does that represent i mean do you know how many 247
 the uh it's a combination of the number of wells in the etj number of wells within the city
 in terms of the number of wells within the city limits which are the ones that are paying for the
 bulk of these fees right 289 okay and so each one of those wells are paying an inspection fee
 on an annual basis correct and are they paying a permit fee on an annual basis i believe that
 the permit fee is i believe on a on a one-time permit issuance base okay that's helpful um so
 then what i'm hearing you say is that if we've got 200 i'm gonna say 300 300 wells because i
 know that's been the number i've known but if we've had some plugged one i know y'all are going to get
 some information about how many have been plugged and so forth and so on right but so at 300 uh
 you're looking at if if it were um is that is that 300 or it'd be 300 more to make up to 90,000 or
 is that three is it that somebody do the math real quick who's got it that that gets a little
 complicated because what you end up having is you end up having discounts on a per well basis for
 multiple wells per pad okay and so it's not only about the total number of wells it's the number
 of wells on a right given pad site with the idea being that if you go out to inspect a pad site that
 has four wells it takes less time money mobilization etc than if you go out to inspect one okay on a per
 well basis is the is the charge this so the charges are different too the charges are based on the
 number of wells per pad site okay so the more you have the less the less you pay per well per well
 correct all right i guess my point being uh sorted towards council member melzer's is that
 to to make up that difference or even cut into it even just 50 it's not going to be an
 exorbitant amount additional but based upon what you're saying that calculation might get somewhat
 burdensome but yes it's it's just it's not a straight calculation because you have to take
 into account all those other variables all right okay any other questions okay thank you very much
 i appreciate that
 good afternoon mayor and council jessica rogers director of economic development
 right so continuing the tradition i'll kind of go over the high points but certainly stop me
 if you have any questions or wait till the end if you have any questions
 so going over our accomplishments for the prior year certainly we're securing the renewal of the
 stoke contract and completing the tyson incentive war two big projects but also completing the
 cultural district application process which we should be getting final word from the state in
 september um looking forward to 1920 um our goal would be to complete an updated strategic plan
 we'll talk about that in our supplemental request section um but also looking at ways we can leverage
 our partnerships in the community whether that be with the chamber or the cbb but also with other
 city departments to accomplish some economic development goals um our budget emphasis for
 this year is that we are focusing in our six key areas business development entrepreneurship
 workforce development community engagement project administration and a focus on our
 developing creative sector um our cost containment strategies one thing that we're working really
 hard to do is making sure that we're not duplicating efforts across departments and also making sure
 that we're cross-trained um in each area sometimes we can generate more work for ourselves by not
 knowing how another department might respond so learning what their processes are and making
 sure that we're educated so that we can help answer questions the first time that they're
 presented to us our completed process improvements include in utilizing a customized excel spreadsheet
 that we built to track our performance measures and those are reported monthly to the economic
 development partnership board and then one thing that we are working on and that is of high priority
 is documenting what our standard of processes and procedures are for items that come to our department
 and certainly for our future process improvements it's aligning our work plans and our job
 descriptions to make sure that they're in alignment with those operating procedures
 so getting into the numbers themselves our operating budget is about seven hundred and
 fifty thousand dollars less than um our budget in the previous year the reason for that is
 primarily on the incentive side um certainly we do a forecast on those incentives and if we notice
 that sales tax is tracking down or property tax incentive is tracking down we make that adjustment
 on the expenditure side since those fall within our budget and i'll detail those in the next few
 slides so i'm not going to linger on this slide because it does show both of the hbus for economic
 development which includes our actual operating department and stoke so i'm going to just show
 you the split it's easier to understand if we split them apart so this is the stoke hbu the
 primary increase that you see here is the rent and triple net increases there's been a few other
 increases on the operation side we presented you an isr for on friday last week that detailed the
 revenue side of that december 1 2018 they started making a one thousand dollar per month payment
 we don't account for that in the economic development budget that actually is going
 into the general fund but they are making that one thousand dollar a month payment so that revenue
 is being accounted for you just don't see it here um and then getting into the actual operating hbu
 which is the department um you'll see we're pretty standard across the board um pretty consistent in
 our expenditures from prior years um the main difference like i said being right here in that
 chapter 380 agreement line and that's again based on our our forecast of those incentives
 so to give you a little bit of a breakdown um of those incentives further it's about seven
 hundred and seventy thousand dollars that go towards our chapter 380 um ad valorem agreements
 and about 2.8 million going into our chapter 380 sales tax or the construction sales and use tax
 grants um we're staying flat on staff at five point seven five staff members so we're not going
 to be having any changes there and then as i discussed we are asking for a comprehensive
 five-year strategic plan and the estimate we have in there is about a hundred thousand dollars we're
 not 100 on what the final cost would be it'll of course be determined by the scope we think
 a hundred thousand dollars is a pretty fair estimate um but to kind of set the stage for that it's been 16
 years since the last comprehensive economic development strategic plan was done for the city
 um and our goals with that would be to really um review best practices and increase our
 competitiveness with other communities in the metroplex but also develop unified goals and
 actionable work plans that we can work towards um if we're going to increase our partnerships
 we want to make sure that we have shared goals that we can all work towards so that is it for
 my presentation so two things so first of all i i really like the idea about having that conversation
 about what the goals are for you know comprehensive um uh five-year economic development strategic plan
 and i was wondering if there was any plan to get um public input in that outside of the usual you
 know people talking to council of course that would depend on how we design the scope of work
 but we could require that um in the process as we go through and ask for rfps from developers to say
 you know one of the requirements of this is that you have to hold public meetings to solicit
 public feedback so we could make that a requirement yeah i would i would support looking into that
 um i think that i think that that could be really really productive for for for the city um my
 second question about stoke so i was surprised to see that the um and maybe i shouldn't have been
 surprised but that the ask for this year was higher um i know that that's is typically i mean
 because costs are uh higher every year but um you know my hope was and i guess it was more of a hope
 than anything was that we would be kind of moving towards towards independence for for stoke now
 that they're more private sure so i was wondering kind of if you could speak on on that and and what
 what do we call them as far as you know we're like we're public they're private what is our
 agreement what you see kind of here that we document in the budget is the expenditure side
 of the agreement so this is the city as the lease holder of the building um hickory and rail ventures
 which operates stoke is our sub lessor so they have we have a separate agreement with them so
 this is the agreement that we have as the lessee of the building um our payments that we're making
 our rent our triple net costs and our operating costs the agreement that we have with hickory and
 rail ventures is the agreement that establishes the payments back to the city the monthly one
 thousand dollar payments it doesn't impact what we pay in the lease cost thank you so thank you so
 much for explaining that clarifying that so this is just about on our end the building yes thank you
 thank you and that goes away i i like to keep getting refreshed on this so that every time i
 see it is it next year it's 2021 2021 yes okay yes it's i believe it's february 28th 2021 so
 it would be the not the fiscal year we're talking about but the next fiscal year and not just a
 question yes go ahead and so in the supplemental is what tier is that in i believe is in tier three
 but incorrect yes and it'll be one that we'll be recommending since it's a one-time cost okay thank
 you so on the um if you go back to the slide that shows what's rolling off or what incentives aren't
 being you know the difference the delta between the last year and this year as far as yeah there's a
 this one that's the it was you had a you had something that showed the difference yeah that
 right there yeah um okay so i know that we've talked in the past about um when incentives roll
 off what do you want to do with those if you want to provide them so my understanding slumber jay's
 incentive has concluded how much was that do you remember or can you say um i mean i guess on the
 revenue i haven't i think i'm going to defer to erica or else i'm going to have to sort through
 papers up here no no that's fine because i've got a couple questions um but i will say we did provide
 a pretty detailed analysis on those rolling off so yeah yeah i don't have that with me no no that's
 fine yeah no yeah i'm just curious as these two
 so specifically for erica solvin on the economic development analyst so specifically for slumber
 jay what i did was a pro forma over 10 years at the same rate as the final payment and that would
 be three hundred and forty thousand three hundred and thirty six dollars per year so per year that
 would be 29 688 that did include a slight growth rate at three percent and then the salway beauty
 on an annual basis uh that one was i don't think that was that much uh because they didn't meet
 their threshold it was reduced by 29.5 percent and that last payment was only five hundred and forty
 two dollars oh okay yes there was only one payment right of the three years good okay thank you i
 appreciate that any other questions councilmember briggs it doesn't at the shopping center across
 from target um i'm going blank right now in the name of it doesn't that incentive roll up this
 denton crossing yeah actually it's going to roll off we just did our last payment to denton crossing so we just
 completed that okay how much was that i can't remember that didn't cross yeah yeah the denton crossing
 so i have based on estimates um the actual is probably a little bit different so this was
 completed prior okay um it was estimated 398 000 for 1920 but the roll off was based on three
 percent higher than the final year prior so that was 608 940 okay good all right thank you appreciate
 that yes it was only a partial year yep yep all right any other questions okay thank you very much
 good afternoon mayor members of city council carla romey director of human resources
 under the human resources umbrella we actually have three budgets so there's the hrs
 under the general fund and then which i'll be presenting and then scott pain will be following
 me to present information on the health insurance fund and the risk retention fund
 so you can see some of our accomplishments up here but i would like to highlight just a couple
 the first being the implementation of our oracle hcm software system so this is a new human
 resources information system when i when i was at council last year doing this budget presentation
 i had said that we were looking for a new solution we have multiple softwares we use one for our
 recruiting one for onboarding another software system for our performance reviews and the
 training database tracking and then another software for our online benefits enrollment and
 so that creates a lot of inefficiencies creates some end user frustration and some extra challenges
 for my staff and so with the assistance of technology services we identified oracle hcm as
 a solution and they've been a big partner for us this year in implementing the system to be
 effective october 1 the second accomplishment i'd like to highlight is the completion of our
 spark or igniting leadership training this is a nine month series that we did for
 any employee who was interested we ended up having two groups go through about 56 employees
 who completed the training training ranged anywhere from finance 101 to understanding
 government and the city's role in government problem solving public speaking leadership team
 building also probably more importantly it gave the employees an opportunity to interact with
 the city manager and his staff and vice versa and be able to learn really what he's looking for
 for leaders in our organization what's going on in the city it just created a nice comfortable
 environment where they could have some candid conversations and some open dialogue we have been
 getting feedback from the group and making some changes along the way and now what we're going to
 do is take the feedback in its totality and see how we can maybe tweak that program just a little
 bit and kick off a new program in the next couple months looking ahead for 1920 anytime you implement
 a new system there's a lot of training involved so we're going to be spending a lot of time
 training hr staff training supervisors training employees and then as we get more comfortable
 with the system and understand all of its capabilities there'll be a lot of process
 improvements that i foresee coming i'm going to skip over this and talk a little bit more about
 this when we talk about our budget highlights cost containment strategies and process improvements
 again i've already hit on the main one and that's going to be the oracle hdn system as i mentioned
 implementing october 1 we were able to realize some savings and then also some efficiencies by
 changing the way that we do pre-employment drug testing for our park seasonal employees
 we do urine collection for most employees unless we do post-accident we do the saliva and this has
 been it's worked out for us well so we use the same procedure for the seasonal hiring
 looking at our expenditures our personal services increased slightly due to some
 reclassifications that we had this year as well as the budgeted merit increases for 1920 and the
 associated impact on those benefits we had some insurance which is a fixed cost that's decreased
 a little bit and then we were able to transfer a little over a hundred thousand dollars to check
 services so by not using some of those softwares that i mentioned we were able to realize those
 savings roll it over to tech services and then use that to offset some of the cost of the oracle hdm
 system so here's our budget highlights as with any general fund department most of our budget is
 personal services over 70 percent of our budget is personal services if you back that out and
 any other fixed costs like insurance or tech services and look at just our discretionary funds
 81 percent of our budget covers citywide training or citywide programs such as training tuition
 reimbursement service awards employee appreciation etc the change from 1819 to 1920 is less than one
 percent so not a significant impact for hr we do have 11 fte's although one of the fte's was being
 eliminated from the hr budget and being allocated to a different department but what we did is we
 looked at some of our structure responsibilities of some positions and there was an fte that we had
 budgeted a risk retention fund that made after talking to the finance department made better
 sense to move over to general fund but we will be allocating 40 of that back to risk retention for
 1920 and that concludes my presentation questions so i guess a question for sir city manager or
 maybe or maybe for you um so now i take it now is not the time to ask questions about the um
 you know pay parental leave option and uh the the living wage discussion is that that come
 later on in the budget season yeah those are both uh i believe on the uh workshop list yeah to be
 considered by council okay thanks any other questions for hr thank you very much thank you
 um
 i didn't know if i was going to get overruled by the judge there real quick so i had to make sure
 good afternoon mayors the council my name is scott pan the risk manager and i'm here to
 as kala said to present two different budgets to you the first one being the health insurance fund
 and the second one will be the risk retention fund the health insurance fund is a little
 misnamed as it's not just the health insurance it's pretty much all of our employee benefits
 so life dental vision all that flows through this so it's the fund where we collect the revenues
 from our employees and then also the fund we use to pay the expenses out of that so i'll have a
 couple of quick accomplishments for us the first one is this year beginning january 1 we implemented
 the united healthcare's real appeal program that's designed to be a weight loss program but it's
 really a lot more than that involves a face-to-face online counseling it's about um food education
 making the right choices when you go to restaurants and everything we've currently got about 11% of
 our employees that are participating in the program and from all the reviews we're getting
 from what everybody thinks very highly of it i know one of our employees who has lost quite a
 bit of weight and we changed their habits was featured in the most recent edition of our city
 limits newsletter and so it is having an impact on our employees and their overall health the
 second one was one in the we're in the middle of right now and that's conducting a dependent
 eligibility audit for all of our employees who have dependence on either the health plan or the
 dental and the vision we have about 2254 dependence on the plan so we want to make sure that we're
 only covering the ones that are eligible to be there i think it's kind of a fiduciary responsibility
 we have in that regard certainly for our goals for next year we're always looking at ways to
 improve our employees health and hopefully at the same time reduce cost one area where we're seeing
 that get some traction across the state and the country is in narrow networks or skinny networks
 or accountable care organizations where we limit maybe the choice of doctors but allow more high
 quality providers to be part of that we looked at as an option for this year but there really
 is not much of a robust facility and we're provider group up here in the area right now
 and so it did not make sense for us but we're going to continue to look at that
 obviously the main driver for the health insurance fund is the health and prescription drug costs
 we'll talk a little more of that in detail another item that is fairly expensive within that program
 is our stop-loss insurance we purchase stop-loss insurance protect our self-insurance plan from
 catastrophic claims it essentially caps our liability for any member on the health plan
 at 185 000 so currently that's about a two million dollar insurance policy we purchase
 and we expect that to go up again next year as well as far as cost containment strategies one area
 where we uh revealed some savings this year was we went up for a request for proposal for our life
 and disability programs that resulted in about a 16 savings to the city for the city paid life
 insurance and short-term just excuse me long-term disability policy we purchase uh the good thing
 about that also is they held the rates steady for our employees so they saw no increase as well
 the thing i want to highlight is that we again this year uh coordinated and partnered with our
 fire department to conduct the firefighter physical the lab portion of that at our clinic
 to save them some money and also allow our firefighters to get credit for our healthy
 incentive program as well here's the budget summary the first piece of this is our revenues
 the first four lines are the revenues that come in from our employees for the various
 coverages that they purchase and the next one of course is retired contributions then we have the
 ones for the city contributions toward like long-term disability life and the health plan
 then we have some other sources of revenue that come in on this page as well
 last page then is our expense summary and of course the the big item there is the health plan
 health insurance and all the pieces that go along with that so again that's going to be the claims
 both medical and prescription drug that's the administrative cost that's the stop loss insurance
 retiree insurance and then those types of things so with that i'd be glad to answer any questions
 you have about the health insurance so you kind of went through the slide really quick but i saw
 i think the city contribution to the health insurance was 22 million and then the health
 insurance was 28 so how does that um so they're just completely different or or they're still the
 same um so if from other revenues we have the city contribution with the 22 940 that ends ends also
 adds in the 3.5 million dollars for the employee contribution the 864 from the retiree contribution
 all go into funding the health plan and the 28 um is the cost of it cost correct okay so the 22
 is the city's portion of that 28 million correct a year yeah yeah okay yeah and we are uh proposing
 in the budget this year to keep the city's contribution flat um from last year to this
 year so that's a good thing there is a slight increase showing up on the revenue chart but
 that's because of additional ftvs that we've added to the to the city's you know employees base and
 that's results in additional contributions to the health plan on their behalf in some uh offline
 exchange uh you have a share that that the benefits consultant projects an additional 1.2 million in
 claims i just wonder if you have any insight into why the consultant would expect the claims to go
 up by that much um as i alluded to in the email it's looking at a lot of different things it's
 looking at our current legalization our existing trends it's also looking at medical trends within
 the overall market for health insurance as to what that's going into and so uh the consultant
 is trying to look out you know 12 months in advance this case probably like 16 months in
 advance and so um you know we want our consultant to be conservative in those projections and so
 you know there is some trend built into that and every month that we're able to replace a
 projected number with a real number when we're looking at that it makes it better
 we will keep updating that figure as we get closer to finalizing the budget and so the most recent
 projection actually had it coming down a little bit more and so that ultimate number will hopefully
 less once we get it plugged into the budget thanks so back on your your goals page i saw the last
 bullet point was evaluating a high deductible option so if we currently don't offer a high
 deductible option um and the kind of the the time to add some of those a lot of entities were adding
 those high deductible options a couple of years ago a few years back when there's big change in
 how we do insurance um so what's what are some of the the reasons we don't have a plan now what's
 some of the math that we're looking at and what are what's going to be different in 19 and 20
 that might make that a more uh more available option for us great question as you know how to
 help plans have been around for quite a while and we've always looked at it as maybe not being the
 best option for our specific demographics of our work group um you know we have a lot of
 a very diverse employee group um some with limited education some with limited ability
 when it comes to english and sometimes i think putting those people in charge of their health
 care can be dangerous we want to make sure that if we go into this that we have plenty of time to
 educate our employees on um what all that entails what that really means if you sign up for we don't
 want them to suddenly get sticker shock when that first bill comes through that's in their deductible
 and so um i think we've seen success in some of the the tech world some of the professional
 you know settings where everybody's in really engaged in that in that process of going out
 and shopping for health care but we've just always been a little leery about subjecting that to our
 employee base because of that reason and i think there are some studies out there that are starting
 to show that really um while the high medical health plans lowered the overall cost to some
 entities it didn't change the overall cost of health it just changed who paid for it so it was
 more of a cost shifting measure than actually what i think the goal was was hoping people would make
 better decisions because it was you know theoretically their money sooner in the process making those
 health decisions and i think there's some studies are showing that maybe it wasn't the case that
 people then just defer care because they don't want to send that money and so then we're back
 into that catastrophic health model that we didn't want to be in it's also a lever that we haven't
 had to pull yet because we've been able to you know manage our our health claims by the different
 incremental changes we've made over the years so that we didn't have to pull that big lever of
 shifting to it but again we know that the new employees are coming in the younger employees
 that's something they're more familiar with and something they're actually looking for some option
 and so we want to consider it again as a potential option for that next year yes i can tell you just
 anecdotally the county offers a high deductible option it's been very popular especially with
 young professionals and then folks they move past a certain stage of life and they're back
 into looking at that as a as a palatable option right and i understand what you're saying about
 the education piece and that's that's key but at the same time it can be a big savings for some
 families to have that option available to them so instead of shifting the cost it's actually
 saving them sometimes in my family we save hundreds of dollars a year with a high deductible option
 we currently have fairly low insurance rates to begin with and so it's a part of that
 that whole overall evaluation of the entire health plan as well
 yes could you go back to the chart about the clinic information
 the very last no i think it's just the yeah the health clinic cost yeah um because i remember
 is it last year we approved a contract for those services but that was for i guess the the actual
 doctor nurse services is that included in the 89 000 or where does that show up that shows up
 actually within the health insurance costs because we've always looked at it as kind of a diversion
 of care instead of going into the health plan and seeking care they're going to the clinic so that's
 where all those costs have always been since we opened it have been rolled up into that so the
 cost there for the health care clinic costs are kind of what's indicated there with the asterisk
 it's the lease amount it's office supplies it's our phone internet service and so how much can
 you remind me how much that contract is since it's rolled into the health insurance yes it's about
 three hundred and forty thousand dollars is what we pay to care here to manage the clinic and then
 the additional five hundred and forty thousand dollars is actual staff expenses for the doctors
 the nurse practitioners the ma's all the lab work that's done through the clinic all of our supplies
 that kind of stuff so about um whether it be about eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars
 on top of the 89 so that's just that's all for the okay all in yes we can certainly break the
 clinic out if you want if you if you think it'd be a little more transparent we can easily do that
 i think it would i mean for me personally i'd like to see that separate just because i couldn't find
 it and i was trying to remember like you know where it was yeah we can we can break it out into
 its own line is it are you talking about in the actual budget document itself or is it broken out
 in the budget document itself or are you talking about breaking it out just the presentation on the
 expense side as well here that for presentation purposes we get asked that question every year
 so we we should probably should break it out okay great yeah absolutely um okay any other question
 yes counselor and for the clinic their contract gets reconsidered how often the clinic contract
 we approved was uh we're in the second year of a five-year contract okay
 any other questions i will say that when you look at the actuals of course i'd be curious
 as what the budgets were for those you know 16 17 18 we already have actuals just to see how
 close we're getting on budgeting and actuals if the claims are but when you look at it it's not
 i mean there's obviously increases but it's not the exorbitant increases that you might think i
 mean it's less than 10 on from last year to the uh from the estimate to this year so and we've all
 heard about health care costs and such as that so i really appreciate uh your organization's
 just diligence and trying to provide the best cost-effective health care policies and procedures
 for our employees because it's it's it's one of the biggest issues that that people face that
 families face is their it's their health care costs so thank you for that i appreciate that
 anything else okay thank you very much appreciate it sorry can't leave just yet
 oh okay all right we're good i say that if i can find the presentation
 so second one is not nearly as exciting as health insurance but is the risk retention
 fund that's important definitely yes sir not exciting but very important so the risk retention
 fund is where more of the traditional risk type things are going in so that's going to be our
 property insurance our self-funded workers compensation and liability program and also all
 of the staff expenditures for the risk retention employees so even the employees who manage the
 benefit piece of it are also incorporated into the risk retention budget so i just want to highlight
 a couple of accomplishments we just got done revising our safety review committee policy
 and getting new safety review committees implemented in all the different departments
 and those are functioning which is really exciting at the end of this fiscal year we'll
 be updating our workers compensation and liability claims actuarial study to make sure that we have
 sufficient reserves set aside for those two exposures our goals for 1920 you're going to
 see a recurring theme in my presentation about property insurance but evaluating options related
 to our city's property insurance and excess workers comp insurance policies and then also
 exploring some things related to our strategic plan and some iso guidelines when it comes to
 occupational health and safety as mentioned before one of the main cost drivers the risk retention
 fund is our operating expenses for the risk management staff certainly liability and litigation
 expenses are a major concern as well we've had three large claims this year that total about
 four hundred seventy six thousand dollars that we have settler will be settling and then i know you
 guys saw in our contingent items today there's one for some property damage as well so that
 certainly is impacting the risk retention budget and they get my theme of property insurance
 some cost containment areas are working in and certainly we're working on finishing a safety
 strategic plan that i hope will improve the safety culture for organization and also continue to use
 field case managers on some of our more complex workers comp claims it's good to have a nurse in
 the field going to doctor's appointments with our injured workers making sure they have whatever
 they need from terms of physical therapy or um additional referrals to specialists those types
 of things right um when i talk about property insurance uh it's something that's not unique to
 us as the city of ditten it's really pretty much every public entity in texas that buys property
 insurance uh we're seeing shrinking markets in the words there are not a lot of insurance companies
 that want to write public entities to begin with we typically have most of our concentration of
 values in one location um school districts have lots of roof areas on other campuses and so that's
 kind of a risk when it comes to windstorm and hail uh same thing with our city locations we're not
 spread out all over the state of texas all over the country to diversify that risk so it makes
 insurance carriers a little bit nervous and so uh we're seeing like i said decreasing markets
 we're seeing increased rates if the rates aren't going up we're seeing increases to our deductibles
 especially when it comes to wind and hail we have about 403 million dollars in property that we
 ensure so you can see where a five percent deductible for wind and hail would be pretty
 extravagant and so we have to try and continue to manage those things and make sure that we
 don't have those types of exposures here's the budget highlights as far as the revenue
 the first three items are all internal transfers into the risk retention fund
 they're allocated back to them based on their number of vehicles square footage of property
 they ensure or their lost history when it comes to workers compensation and liability
 then we do have some little interest income and then the other revenue section is basically
 claims that we pursue against other parties who damage our stuff so we have a vehicle accident
 and we're not at fault and we go back after their insurance carrier to recoup damages that's good
 that goes in there to the other revenues uh here's the expense again the biggest piece of that is the
 personal services for the most part and then the actual insurance that we purchase which that line
 out of our insurance also includes our workers compensation claims the miscellaneous category
 includes the liability expenses and then operations actually includes the litigation related expenses
 and the last slide is just our number of employees i think carl alluded already to the change in
 in 1920 about the one that's being assigned back to hr and part of the cost being allocated to us
 we did have an increase in employees or fte's in 1819 we had two employees that were transferred
 over from the utility safety and training department into ours so questions about the risk
 retention scott if you could go back to the um insurance costs right there um so you say we have
 about would you say 400 million dollars worth of insurable kind of uh real property construction
 okay um so we've got commercial insurance which that's where your deductible gets applied to is
 that whether whatever that deductible is two or three or is that different classification
 commercial insurance i'm thinking of commercial insurance is we're buying insurance for on a
 building but this may be something different right this is actually purchasing our property
 insurance so of that 951 000 dollars basically 350 000 is our property premium for that okay okay
 okay and so the self-insurance isn't necessarily that's not doesn't have a property component
 correct that's going to be our workers company our liability component it's going to be that's also
 where the operating expenses get plugged into the allocation and comes back in that line item so
 basically we would if we had a large loss where we had to uh with a high deductible that would need
 to either come out of current year operating revenue or out of our reserves you mean as far
 as like if we had a hailstorm come through and damage a lot of our city buildings you're talking
 about that deductible correct and what is that deductible percentage-wise do you know is it i
 can get you a matrix it's kind of complicated it's all over the board well it's it's basically a
 three percent deductible with some caps on certain buildings and certain levels understanding that
 some of our values were such that three percent basically meant that we were self-insured for when
 inhaled there was going to be no insurance available to us for that and so there's a complex
 matrix where we went through with the underwriter and we identified each building and what the
 deductible is going to be okay great okay all right thank you appreciate that oh on the next
 slide just real quick question i noticed that it looks like the the major difference uh because it
 went down from the estimate to the proposed well that's yeah the estimate to the point actually
 the estimate went up from the budget so that's because of what about the liability claims we
 talked about the damage to the property from the 280 to the 681 got you so you're bringing it back
 down budget-wise to where you think it's going to be more in line with sort of the normal trends
 yes okay thank you yep all right any other questions fantastic thank you appreciate it
 yep i think we have one more left in this particular agenda item is that right is that
 the municipal court or the judge there's actually uh two or three more in this agenda item we asked
 the judge to come up next after that we do have streets we have fire and community improvement
 services okay we'll take a break after the judge's presentation then yep
 all right good afternoon holly fox the municipal court judge thank you for that opportunity
 primarily i can't speak as to the goals for before because those were the goals of the previous
 judge but going forward i wish to continue to develop and cultivate community service providers
 and other appropriate alternative methods to satisfy fines and fees given the nature of courts
 and a lot of the fallout after ferguson case where individuals don't have money and are getting
 jailed as a result of not having the money so trying to develop those and implement potentially
 a in-house community service program that would benefit not only the individuals but also the
 city of denton and looking at that and talking to tiffany a few other people and all the different
 non-profits that may be interested in participating in that secondly i think it's important to
 reevaluate and restructure some of the current docket control measures in order to have a more
 effective management system in place so the cases will just be taken care of in a more timely and
 effective manner than they have been in the past thirdly i'd like to well we have been implementing
 implementing the crystal reports within the current jail vision rms system so that way the
 judges uniformly print out the same forms and essentially do 15 17 hearings the same without
 missing any of the key components that have to occur in a jail it includes interlock orders
 protective orders commitment orders all the forms that are required to be maintained and produced
 to the defendants and through the court system through the oca requirements last basically to
 improve services assistance of information to pro se defendants i think that people are more
 likely to be successful in the court if they have an understanding of what their expectations are the
 court's expectations and continuing to talk about what we want them to to do and what we're expecting
 them to do and what the services are as far as what's available to the court and to them in order
 to take care of their cases within the court system on point is the surcharge system that's
 effectively repealed as of september 1st that has affected a lot of people and a lot of people have
 had a lot of fines and fees and been arrested as a result of having charges that result from those
 surcharges so we've been proactively providing information to individuals that have those surcharges
 so they can understand it and have an expectation of what's to occur starting september 1st
 so just making that more available to pro se defendants most of the court's budget is personnel
 bit primarily the salary of diana johnson and myself and just some fixed costs that pretty
 much don't change from year to year also the court does not focus on revenue because we're
 not a revenue generator we're legally and ethically obligated not to base any budget
 considerations on what revenue may or may not be from the court system thank you in advance
 for the supplemental request that you all have already provided with regard to weekend jail
 magistrations stipend the increase in that as well as the hourly rate and the increase
 in number of hours available to the court to conduct its business
 the increase $97,336 accounts for the increase in pay for weekend jail
 magistrations as well as the fee for holidays and other days that are specified on the schedule
 also for the increase in hourly rate from 70 to 100 and the number of hours increasing from
 1044 hours to 1572 hours for the year so that accounts for the increase but pretty much
 materials and supplies insurance operations cost of services those have remained essentially the
 same other than just general inflation rates things that are outside of our control
 the increase in hours essentially took it up from 0.5 employee to an additional quarter of
 an employee so 0.75 so it's an increase of 0.25 full-time employee due to the increase in hours
 so essentially that's the budget that we have for our office
 councilmember Briggs was the increase in hours due to an increase in cases or just trying to
 use your time more efficiently so you can get the cases moved through quicker looking at
 i brought the report here there have been an increase in the number of blood warrants
 over the years in 2017 it was at it increased by 62 from 2017 to 2018 and now it has just in
 half a year has increased 74 so we're looking at from 106 warrants just blood leader warrants in
 2017 we're looking at about 350 to 400 blood warrants in a year that's the judge getting
 woken up in the middle of the night for a blood warrant that doesn't even account for the number
 of warrants as far as other search warrants arrest warrants that can't be taken care of during the
 week because oftentimes they need a judge in times of the essence and it isn't necessarily
 monday through friday eight to five so they have to get a hold of somebody other than myself if
 they can't reach me okay yeah but the increase from 70 to 100 was just increase in the hourly
 rate which increased it and then judge ramsey pretty much was a one-stop shop and as he has
 told me he's a friend he never slept but i do as an aging woman value my sleep so i do want to be
 able to sleep and have a normal life but they do call me they have instructions to call me after
 hours after 10 if they can't get a hold of an alternate judge but i make myself available from
 6 a.m to 10 p.m every day but that's been the increase in number of hours and also i would like
 to utilize my vacation pay my vacation time and if i count for any sick time that i might have or
 the continued education being available teaching just education we're required to receive as judges
 and as attorneys maintaining our legal education and i don't think that was accounted for in the
 past okay yeah that's my problem can i ask just about the the blood warrants so these are for in
 like a a stop where is this where somebody suspected of um of driving under the influence
 or something like that and they refuse to do a breathalyzer is that the kind of situation
 yes that we're talking about yeah um over the years blood warrants have become um more
 they're utilized more often um the da's office has a directive as well which has increased the
 number of blood warrants but uh going back a few years um the pd did not require a blood warrant
 and then the law changed um at least case law indicated that judges or police officers needed
 to actually acquire a blood warrant uh in those situations where they didn't necessarily need one
 in the past and because uh people who are driving on the redway um out of the influence of alcohol
 they have the ability to essentially control the evidence in their case by merely refusing
 to participate in any standardized field sobriety test refusing to consent to a blood draw
 so law enforcement has critically uh they've been needing to acquire that as evidence in their cases
 so they call a judge but what's required is that the defendant refused and then they call a judge
 but they have to they give them the opportunity to consent if they don't then oftentimes they
 will call a judge and more often than not most pds are going to no refusals any other questions
 comments okay thank you thank you appreciate it all right let's take a five minute break
 welcome back to the meeting of this meeting of the dent city council on july the 23rd
 2019 it is 3 58 p.m and we're at our agenda item work session 3e going through our different
 departmental uh budgets so we've got a few left for this agenda item so we move forward mayors
 city council members i wanted to go over the departments that still are going to present
 today because you asked the question earlier we have six legal city managers city council
 internal audit streets fire and community improvement services
 just as a update to council members um if we are not able to get closed session in within the
 time frame between the six before 6 30 we'll have to come back at least on one item for sure
 if not both so just trying to give that update go ahead good afternoon mayor council larry calls
 to the city attorney's office uh council member briggs made an interesting point about me being
 in here right now is this is probably the first time most of you've seen me in an open session
 it's usually the windows are dark uh i wanted to recognize two people before we get started and
 they don't want me to do this it's like my children elaine ortolani who is our office
 administrator i asked i asked her to stand up and and gerard cal he's our management analyst
 and they both been instrumental and preparing the budget uh if you want to do it quick the
 short part is is our uh budget is mainly personal services and we need a pair of people and that
 would be it if y'all have any questions we can go on from there uh continuous office uh our
 office process improvements first one we've done that we're really proud of this year is fully
 implementing the uh smart sheet program this has been able to allow us to track all of our work
 and what it is it's a it's a portal-based system where the departments will submit their request
 illegal and we're able to sign internal and track it i think you're all pretty familiar with a lot
 of this next is uh we've implemented gerard's position the uh management analyst position
 we've staffed all of our attorney positions as you're going to see in our budget um counselor
 directed new that we hire a new deputy city attorney primarily for development services
 and the management analyst that was funded last year but it's really taken us until
 four months ago to get those positions filled and so we're fully staffed now
 improving work relationships with the city manager's office through consistent meetings
 and implementation of uh mr homin's legal priority system and then we've uh created the and this is
 really gerard you can thank gerard for this is the legal department's website which we're updating
 the weekly case law update on that just keep the community apprised of what's going on
 both in texas and national and municipal cases continuing uh we've worked with the city secretary
 to work on a new agenda process that we're implementing right now which will enable us to do
 more front-end review timelier instead of having things happen towards friday and just getting
 everybody kind of acclimated to working through that now um improve written communication with
 the council as you'll see we'll both do week the weekly legal status reports and we do special ones
 as they come up we do the same thing with pub um we've really backed off and we're running the
 numbers now on this about the reduction of outside council we're trying to do more in house and then
 just really focus when we need them as you've seen brend mcdonald up here and then we just selected
 our uh it's kind of a matter management software clio and what we're going to be able to do is
 access that 24/7 it's browser base so we can we're going to have meeting meeting uh meeting notes
 emails documents that we can be anywhere in access that particularly aaron myself and jerry drake
 and then we trained operational staff on the processes and smart sheet
 we've done the public information request training we've we do weekly one-on-one meetings between
 the first assistants and the attorneys they have assigned we have uh weekly our own staff with all
 the attorneys and elaine and our legal assistant we conduct weekly meetings with real estate to go
 over their items bi-weekly meeting with um cfp engineering same thing with development services
 and that's both the items pending and the agenda itself monthly meetings with economic development
 monthly training on purchase with purchasing then you get a monthly litigation update through legal
 status our metrics in what you're going to see here is the first two columns are comparing
 period to period then you've got all of 17 18 i'm like you've had the chance to read this and
 one of the things i wanted to kind of highlight on this i've heard you talk about the municipal judge
 these represent the number of cases that have been filed in municipal court and then the cases
 disposed of that those are the ones that the city attorney's office is directly involved in as a
 prosecutor on that and then the dockets those are actually dockets that that that an attorney will
 cover that there will be there to be tens of cases i don't know how you know i've never been over
 there it's probably upwards of 100 when you have everybody come through uh this shows all the
 agendas that we've reviewed during that same time council meetings attended and this doesn't
 represent all the attorneys that represent the council meetings this is primarily just in this
 case it would be mr leal sitting here at council myself at pub jerry drake and soon to be sentia
 kirkhoff at a pnc and you can see the rest of them on there and what you can do you can see some of
 the meetings trending up for the period so this is this will take quite a bit of time out of the
 day depending on the length of the meetings our instance this year is really same as last year is
 get a responsive highly capable and cost-effective office and we have to work against the metroplex
 and competitive salaries we're using more technology that will enable us to work offside 24/7
 and really reduce our physical footprint with the use of paper and things like that i mean it's
 we're really turning into a 21st century office and then the training is really topical for areas
 that we're primarily in and then relevant training particularly areas of homelessness
 and affordable housing those are things we've been sending attorneys to lately cost containment
 strategies we're continuing to develop through cli and mentoring um our attorneys on specialty
 areas so we reduce outside council cost same with and this is where we're really trying to get this
 is the kind of the fiscal aspect of it is we're really trying to get to where we're using pdf's
 more and keep everything electronic you all this stuff can be converted to searchable database and
 you can access it anywhere and there's plenty of times where we'll get contacted different hours on
 the weekends we can access now this browser-based system clio all of our information uh one things
 we're doing i'm working with with both elaine and gerard on this we're looking at what staff does
 versus the attorneys and trying to push down to kind of the lowest level of ability they can get
 it done so we can free up the attorneys to do more of what they need to do and just have the
 attorneys review it tied into this will be template development we're doing with purchasing
 development services real estate and engineering this will increase both efficiency and it's also
 going to impact um litigation prevention in that we're not reinventing the wheel some of what i've
 noticed that we've done here is the old type of law practice is when it was paper-based and the
 mayor probably remembers this you may not have been in practice yet for this to happen but they'll
 what did you do in the smith file hopefully your legal assistant can remember that they'll go dig
 it out of storage and try to figure out what to do that's we've seen that's been completely
 eliminated and so we don't want to go there so one of the things on litigation prevention we're
 trying to do is get more front and involved with the operation side of the building on high-profile
 high-risk matters through training and also development and the use of templates
 ongoing and future process improvements these are i'm going to this is happening right now we've
 just assigned attorneys to departments and this is to improve communication and efficiency and
 we're having them reach out weekly through either one-on-ones with the department or by email
 this i think is one of the most important things we have done to make sure everybody
 understands what we're doing is when attorneys represent in a meeting whether it's the
 departmental follow-up or working on anything as we send out an email sending out everybody's
 understandings expectations and what we're to do because we're i was i was talking one of the
 attorneys i said you know the city i remember what movie was from it's high speed and low drag
 around here and the more we communicate the less likely there's going to be any issue of anything
 falling between a crack we're going to move to weekly meetings with cip engineering this is
 really important and it's going to combine purchasing with this because the upcoming bond
 election and so much that's going on we're cross-training a lot of the younger attorneys and
 more of the traditional areas of municipal law that we do on a daily basis where they would be
 open records purchasing real estate hr we we're going to be assigning attorneys to council
 committees boards commissions and have them attend as they're needed and again the template
 development and then like so we're and this is kind of the the whole green movement but it's
 also one of efficiency is is getting rid of paper i mean i ask everybody to send me everything in
 email i mean i didn't you know on a pdf and my truck some type of electronic file are highlights
 this as you'll see here 17 18 to 18 19 represents the addition of the two new positions
 and the rest of this stuff is really kind of locked in on there's not much we can do there has
 been an increase in travel and cle because of the addition of a new attorney but other than that it's
 just it's it's a cost in business i was looking before i sat down here the city attorney's office
 is the third largest law firm in denton county behind the da's office and hazeberry here in denton
 the attorneys we have one city attorney we have staff attorneys with the two first assistants
 debt the deputies and then one assistant city attorney and then you can see the staff we have
 administratively accident
 yeah can you go back to slide five
 let's do this
 okay thank you yeah so um that was so i was trying to look at this and compare it to what
 we have in the backup uh and or at least on the in the posted agenda it looks like this has more
 this is more updated this goes till through june and what we have um goes through march yeah so if
 that could be updated and have an update on that and what i wanted to know and i was trying to while
 you had that slide up there i was trying to look back and forth at what i have and make you know
 these calculations while listening um wasn't able to fully do that but um there's also a slight
 change in the wording and i wonder if if if that changes anything substantive besides the date so
 what we know okay yeah so we've got um and it's so that for the public information requests um it
 lists uh you know i'm not going to go over each item but it says that from from october of first
 of 2018 to june 30th 2019 it says we've got 97 but then here it says within a shorter time frame
 one thousand one hundred so i'm trying to what this is and gerard can you help me out with that
 number the public information request oh you'll need to come to the front for the microphone yes
 thank you hi good afternoon so that one thousand number it included the police public information
 request request that the city attorney's office may have reviewed or maybe had some kind of
 decision making uh interaction with police and this number represents solely our office city
 attorney's office then with only cases say office of attorney general request letters
 okay so so this is everything so just so this 97 is excluding requests for police information
 and then okay yeah and and then what did you say about the attorney general these public
 information requests are solely office of attorney general solely office of it so these are the ones
 does that mean that these are the ones that end up going to the attorney to the letters yes
 okay okay so of the and so that but that a thousand one hundred number that's correct about the total
 including police and then of those then these numbers go to attorney general okay maybe um
 you know when when this is when it's updated it would be nice because i find both those numbers
 valuable to have uh since they've been calculated anyway it would be nice to to make that clear
 you know when that when that when that comes comes back to us
 because that's good information to have thanks
 any other questions
 okay thank you you bet who's up next
 good afternoon mayor and city council i'm rachel wood chief of staff and i'm going to be presenting
 for you the city manager's office and city council budget and a quick reminder the city
 secretary's office is a part of the city manager's office budget so really quickly just to highlight
 a few accomplishments we collaborated with finance and all city departments to help bridge a 3.5
 million dollar sales tax deficit in the current fiscal year we also supported large-scale process
 improvement and strategic planning efforts across the organization one of which jennifer
 becker mentioned earlier moving on to goals for fy19 2020 we'd like to facilitate the completion
 of critical capital infrastructure projects including managing the bond program if directed
 by council and approved by the voters in november we also want to continue implementing your goals
 and priorities throughout the upcoming fiscal year our budget emphasis for fy19 2020 is responsiveness
 to use our elected officials as well as to the residents leading efficiency measures and process
 improvements across the organization as well as maximizing available funding by seeking outside
 resources at the regional state and federal level some of our cost containment excuse me cost
 containment strategies one of which may seem relatively minor we switched to an paperless
 friday report instead of printing it out and putting it in your paper in your packets each friday
 that reduces about 30 000 pages per year and equates to about 11 000 dollars in savings each
 year just going paperless with the friday report alone also we're working on implementing a project
 bundling strategy for facilities projects that will help create economies of scale and hopefully
 make some of our smaller facilities projects more attractive in this hot economic development
 climate we have right now so budget highlights we have not requested any supplementals
 actually the only notable increase that you'll see is in our miscellaneous category and that's
 where we pay for elections so given the increase in the number of polling locations as well as
 the fact that we're likely to have a bond election in november that's the reason for the increase for
 that line item in terms of positions we did have a mid-year increase of one position and that's
 actually for z parker our deputy city secretary during the time period that i served as the
 interim city secretary we did a pretty intensive assessment of our needs in the city secretary's
 office and agreed that there really was a need for another resource over there so we transferred
 a vacant fte from public affairs to the city secretary's office so that we could have
 more bandwidth in that office city council budget highlights honestly your budget is extremely flat
 the only noteworthy change is the miscellaneous line item this is really more an administrative
 cleanup item we transferred funding from the city manager's budget to the city council budget so
 that there was only one line item where we were paying for council meals for different city council
 meetings out of so it's not really a net increase in the general fund it's just transferring from
 the city manager's office budget to the city council budget
 and that's what i have for your budget our budget questions
 i presume the additional cost and personnel services is the additional
 deputy city secretary and then just merit correct okay all right any other questions comments
 yes council member i don't know if i need to wait till the end of all the presentations just
 just to say globally i continue to just be impressed by the professionalism and responsiveness
 and thoroughness of staff of the city of tenton generally and management so just getting it said
 now thank you anybody else all right thank you who's next
 so
 good afternoon
 well the established auditing standards and procedures approved by the city council sets
 responsibility for providing independent appraisal of city's operation and policies to the city
 council and during this process we evaluate accountability over resources efficiencies
 and effectiveness of operations economy in use of resources and compliance with laws regulations and
 policies our last year's accomplishments we have completed four audits the three other audits are
 in progress but they are completed towards completion and they will be presented to the
 city council soon during this process we improved internal controls and compliance
 compliance with laws and regulations and policies we identified a need for comprehensive
 citywide internal control assessment during this process we have supported ethics board
 and i have served on dme risk management committee i also oversaw consultants work on a solid waste
 audit our budget emphasis is until last year the external audit contract was managed by
 finance department this year onward internal audit is going to manage it so there is a
 96 000 transfer to our budget from finance department and we in this particular budget
 we need 25 000 to retain an outside legal council to support ethics board which city attorney
 rightfully has abstained for from supporting
 basically our budget other than those two items our budget has not changed much
 if you deduct those two items that budget virtually is fi 18 19 budget
 we are fully staffed we got two are two auditors and an administrative assistant supporting me
 and basically that's my presentation yes council member riggs so i think you answered my question
 but the the item on the consent agenda is for the external audit and that 96 000 is what you're
 referring to here yes yes okay thank you any other questions okay thank you appreciate it thank you
 very much
 mayor city council just want to clarify real quick that that particular agenda item
 has actually been pooled yeah correct that's item i yes okay yeah
 okay
 good afternoon mayor members of the city council and he's ethan cox i'm the director of public works
 i saw tony come into the podium i thought he was going to do a streets presentation but unfortunately
 you're stuck with me so i apologize in advance our deputy director danny kramer is over streets he
 couldn't be here today so i'm going to fill in on his behalf a quick overview the streets department
 i think is pretty self-explanatory what our mission is is to provide safe and reliable
 transportation infrastructure throughout the city our infrastructure consists about 1300 miles
 lane miles of roadway in regards to that we we basically look at our roads and provide them kind
 of a scorecard if you will a grade point average or whatnot and that is called the overall condition
 index or the oci and i think most of you are familiar with that i really use the oci to kind
 of gauge gauge and give us an idea of what our maintenance and repair efforts should be focused
 on some of the other services that we provide are sidewalk repair snow and ice removal as well as
 emergency response clearing roadways of debris whenever a hazard or something gets out there
 oci i want to spend a little bit more time talking about that and so as we've been visiting with the
 bond council one of the things we provided them is basically a distribution of where all the
 lane miles in the city fall within the oci index and so again much like a grade in school zero is
 very poor that's about as low as you can get a hundred is about as good as you can get and so
 when you look at how our lane miles are distributed here about 24 of our roadways are either very poor
 or poor and so since 2012 that's really been the focus is trying to catch up and get that backlog
 is what we call it knocked down as much as we possibly can when you're talking about poor and
 very poor streets those are things that require significant maintenance major maintenance or a
 full-on reconstruction once you start getting to an oci of 45 all the way up to 100 you start
 getting into a little bit more minor maintenance and that's really where we feel as a streets
 department we need to step up our efforts i think that's been an objective over the last few years
 and we want to continue on that front okay go ahead just because we have that so that's a comment
 so when somebody says there wasn't anything wrong with my street but they came in and now
 they fixed it it's because of the it was a good street and so we're maintaining it so that it
 doesn't become very poor that's the exact intent is we want to try kind of kind of the way i've
 couched it in my head is if you get a cavity you want to fill it before it starts
 impairing the structure of the tooth same thing with the roadway is once we start seeing small
 issues on the surface it's much more cost effective and expedient for us to go in there with the minor
 maintenance and sometimes minor maintenance to us may be a little bit invasive we have to block off
 a street for a day or two days in order to do that work but it certainly saves us from having
 to block it off several weeks at a time or months at a time overall all streets have a fixed life
 cycle our goal with minor maintenance is to extend that life cycle as long as we can
 so to that end our budget emphasis is really in two parts that oci less than 45 those poor and very
 poor streets we've since 2012 been using the bond program to basically provide a shot in the arm
 and try to catch up and reduce that backlog industry standard is a about a 10 backlog with
 streets less than 45 oci we're currently at 24 so that's really the capital plan is really focused
 on that with the assistance of the engineering department and then the maintenance plan is
 addressed through the operating budget and our goal on that is we want to make sure we lay eyes
 on our streets at least once every five years we also do what we call a pavement analysis report
 where we actually get our oci grades but what i'm talking about is supplementing that with laying
 basically a windshield survey laying eyes on those streets and seeing let's not wait until
 we get that next oci report let's make sure that if there's something that needs to be repaired in
 the interim we get out there ahead of it and that is really what's forming our operational plan from
 year to year so a few charts here in terms of our performance okay a few charts here in terms of our
 performance so if we say we want to lay eyes on 20 of our network is about 286 lane miles a year
 that we want to take a look at understand after we get done with that we some streets may require
 maintenance some may not these little lines right here are the goals that we want to hit each and
 every year one of the things that we've had occur this year is a high incidence of rain so in our
 major street maintenance projects those are your mill and overlays and full reconstructions
 we're a little bit behind but now that the weather's cleared up a bit we are catching up
 we think we'll finish right around that 30 lane mile goal by the end of the year
 pothole repairs essentially what we'd like to do moving forward this isn't ideal in terms of how
 we report this we'd like to do going forward to say how many were planned maintenance plan patching
 that we caught before there was a complaint i.e. we found it before it's tearing someone's suspension
 up how many of those are we responsive to after someone's reported it and then how quickly are
 we getting to that and so we don't have that available for you today that's one of the things
 we're going to try to work on in the year ahead and then about two miles of sidewalk repairs each
 year is our target and we've been exceeding that for the last four years in terms of containment
 and process improvements one of the things that's a challenge is we do have an expanding street
 network that requires that us stay on top of that maintenance as much as we can be as diligent
 as we can about it one of the things that is an improvement that cip as well as public works has
 been working on is bundling a lot of these major repairs up and bidding them out in bundles what
 that allows us to do is capture some economies of scale it also allows our crews internally as staff
 to focus on the things that are really preventative maintenance in nature a few things were mentioned
 earlier today talking about process improvement one of the things we are working in kind of across
 departmental effort with engineering and utilities is we can't just look at processes in a vacuum i
 can't just look at public works or streets we have to look at all that holistically to make sure that
 we are all coordinated and that a process is basically connected to each of these departments
 on the streets we're downstream from a number of things that can happen there's utilities under
 our streets an engineering project that isn't really coordinated between all of us can lead to
 some really painful delays for those folks that drive on those streets and so we are going to be
 kicking off that effort in the next few weeks and really kind of taking a holistic look at all of
 our processes from a budget standpoint i'm only going to point out two or three things here
 from a street standpoint we have been very fortunate to have the benefit of an influx of
 resources over the last few years the most significant of which is the appropriation of
 franchise fees one of the things i want to point out here in terms of our adopted budget to our
 estimate for 18 19 we did lose about 650 000 in franchise fees by understanding that's due to some
 legislative action at the state so the good news is we do have a fund balance that can absorb that
 for the next two to three years and at a high level i think our philosophy is we don't want
 to be carrying a fund balance so i think that that works out in our favor by the time of the
 fund balance is depleted our franchise fees will catch back up with our operating budget
 one other thing i'll point out i think it was mentioned with one of the other presentations
 is streets had never contributed to the general fund in terms of transfers before
 that is something that you see down here in the line item expenses so that's that's the
 increase that you're seeing there and that is pretty much oh one last thing i want to hit on
 is transfers to capital projects we do have about 1.2 million dollars in unallocated funds in our
 capital projects so for the year ahead we're not going to be transferring any funds down to
 capital uh we'll basically use those unallocated funds to address some of the projects in that
 manner and that is pretty much the end of the presentation i'll be happy to stand for any
 questions that you have councilman melzer uh yeah you said whether i'm glad danny's out fixing
 potholes um you'd said that uh the national standard is 10 percent for poor and very poor
 and there were 24 so if we follow the program that's embedded in this presentation when would we
 order roughly when would we be uh likely to reach that national standard i think there's a couple
 of pieces that the answer right now is uh i'm not quite sure but there's two pieces um the next oci
 report coming out next year will tell us where we are in terms of our repair efforts that we've
 completed over the last couple of years and then i think the uh the recommendations from the bond
 council and ultimately what the uh what what ends up on the dock and what the voters approve will
 help us provide a better idea of what that scenario looks like one of the one of the things to try to
 answer that question we went into the bond committee we initially put aside about 35 million dollars for
 local road maintenance or local road reconstruction that number has now doubled to 70 million and the
 idea would be to try to add four or five points on to our oca rating and the strategy after talking
 through the bond committee a little bit is to try to really focus on those streets with a zero to
 25 rating to try to knock those out you're always going to have streets slipping down into the 30 or
 zero to 30 but that is exactly the point of this next bond package recommendations to try to knock
 those streets out and get that oci up so maybe we'll get to that that discussion we can talk about
 you know if we approve that what would be the implications for the timeline yes i realize oci
 and percent that are poor and very poor are you know related but somewhat distinct questions
 you know yeah kind of two pieces of the puzzle yeah they go hand in hand and so you're always
 mature you're always going to have that those streets slipping as they age and we try so the
 discussion we had was just trying to spend all that money we could right now keeping those streets
 that are in the 25 to 30 range from getting even worse and then the next the next bond program
 continue to focus that strategy and uh may i ask oh of course yeah uh the the two miles of sidewalks
 a year what that that's to achieve what goal what drives that as what drives that as the annual
 target you know to be frank um i'm not sure how we landed on that that's that's one of those inherited
 goals and so as we go through this one of the things that we're really going to be faced with
 the streets is kind of a reallocation of our resources in the past streets was not only doing
 the minor maintenance we were chasing actual projects ourselves as well as doing special
 projects like dallas and teesley and so i think as we start bundling some of these reconstructs and
 special projects together it's really going to be shifting our focus to what maintenance have we let
 slide and really kind of doubling down on those maintenance efforts and considering that you know
 you don't we don't generally hear you talk about this stuff that's pretty good i guess you can go
 back now to causing street problems we got the whole ecosystem over there you know we fix it and
 we break it again so if you could go back to the number slide sorry um where did we absorb
 a million dollars additional cost of service i mean what what what are we i mean that's that's an
 expenditure so that's coming out uh we've got a franchise fee reduction 650 000 and we've got some
 bond sales that are up but that's a big hit i mean where's that coming from i mean just looking at
 this slide just on its face sure and we would so we get the detail everything that makes that up
 i think as ethan mentioned for the first time we have the general fund transfer going out to
 the street fund previously we did not the street fund did not pay any of the general fund administrative
 costs that we sent out to all the other funds i see it never mind and we've also broken out
 facilities as an internal service fund which is it's the fund balance that's where that's where
 it's fund balance started out at 2.3 and now it's 1.2 so that's where it's coming from okay
 i'll just take out the fund balance sorry i didn't see that line down there okay any other questions
 comments all right thank you very much thank you then
 afternoon mayor council members number 12 and budget presentation so i do not know what i did
 to finance to upset them to get this position but we'll have a discussion with that later so
 um let's go through this start off i do have action photos just a few of our goals and
 accomplishments for this existing year first one open the argyle est station in cooperation with
 argyle to really cover the southwest portion of city immediate benefits is to the rubs and ranch
 residents they saw their iso rating go from a 10 to to technically overnight with opening this station
 so significant improvements there the other thing i want to highlight is actually in reference to
 this picture on your right it is our first annual kids fire summer camp that we hosted this year
 week of june we had a one-week class in which 22 incoming fifth graders in the dead nice day was
 able to participate in firefighting activities leadership and team building and that concluded
 with which this picture you see here a skills day that in which they were able to repel and we had
 an official graduation that evening and the kids were able to also walk in july 4th parade leading
 the fire trucks goes for 1920 really the one i want to highlight is complete construction of station
 three that was a 2014 bond program that is currently under construction we expect it to open fall of 2020
 budget emphasis really kind of focused on our response and the amount and the increase so here
 you see 60 66 percent of the calls actually were ems and if you look at this we realized about a
 four percent increase in call volume and if you look at the snapshot of the past four years that
 actually equates to 24 increase so the trend is we're getting busier we've got a very busy system
 it's just how do we manage that with the current resources cost containment something we have a
 little bit different than some of the departments is almost 90 of our employees are assigned to the
 operations division so they have a set schedule where they work 24 hours on 48 off within that
 set schedule they have unscheduled work so it just really depends on when the mercy calls come in
 they have set training we have incorporated using some of that downtime to actually start doing
 repairs of certain things and other processes to contain some cost one is the small tools all our
 power tools are now actually worked on in-house we're no longer having to sneeze out to the vendor
 number of things we're seeing a small cost savings there but the big thing is accountability
 we have a ready reserve fleet ready to go with a piece of hardware chainsaw something that nature
 breaks we're able to replace it immediately versus having to wait for a vendor at their discretion
 second is in-house uniform actually t-shirt pressing we have required by certain
 dishes who regulates our ems division has a requirement for your name and your certification
 rank to be on the shirt previously we had to send that out to a vendor to complete we're doing that
 in-house now and i'll show you a picture in just a second last thing is i'd like to actually point
 out the utilization of a second language program this is something that generated within our
 department crews actually asked to learn secondary languages and we collaborated with the library
 with a pre-existing software program they already possess at a no cost now our employees can access
 over 60 different languages 24/7 from the stations to learn just just some pictures there on year on
 the far left of the screen is actually crews while on duty not taking emergency calls pressing t-shirts
 for the entire department and those two pictures are crews at station when actually working on small
 tools so very proud of these programs and people that do it process improvements i really just hit
 on a couple third one down smart board technology this is a new technology that allows nine different
 decentralized locations because that's how many we have in the fire department to actually come
 together in video conferencing so it's smart what i call smart smart tvs they are actually
 touch screen we can now perform training one time for the entire department and then on future
 process really the last one we have brought in an out sack consultant and that project is getting
 near the end of a community risk assessment that's just more of a standards to cover
 and we hope to come to council this fall to winter and actually do a full presentation on that
 just highlight some notes on revenue amateur reimbursement that the federal program we
 participate in we will have a full work session on this item later in september so we can go
 in more depth at that point and then robes and ranch corporate had committed to donating 350 000
 for the opening of argyle est station the city's part so this is just a normal scheduled agreement
 so here's our revenues overall pretty flat there's nothing of significance here as well
 moving on to expenditures the thing you'll see is personnel services and that's just the inclusion
 of staffing for future station 8 it's a three-year program we're phasing in personnel
 absorb those costs and spread them out over multiple years position summary this kind of what
 i just referenced as you see in the bottom from 17 18 8 to 19 it's increasing at levels of three
 for three personnel every year with the side note the very bottom we are applying for a federal
 grant if we get that will actually add six new employees in 1920 instead of just the budget of
 three added cost savings in the first three years supply package very slim at this point so first
 one is a professional development program currently the department you test for a promotion if you're
 awarded that promotion through that process we just give you the position say go do great things
 that's the thing of the past we're not doing that no more we're working on developing these people
 really it's a succession plan on how do we train our current staff to be leaders for the future
 and then that was just a small station when to remodel that building is now 16 years old
 so it's just time for a little upkeep in the kitchen really a small kitchen remodel
 and with that that is it in short questions comments all right okay appreciate chief thank you
 last but not least
 at least on this agenda item
 good afternoon mayor and council i'm lancine bentley and i'm the manager with community
 improvement services and i know it's really late so i'm going to do a really pretty quick
 cursory review of our 1920 budget and also just a little bit of a look back on 1819
 in terms of accomplishments i'll just look at two or three of these second bullet we now have a
 third officer who has obtained his international code council property maintenance and residential
 housing inspector licensure we have three people that have that now two of those individuals are
 in our dangerous building program and one of them one of our senior officers is he does the interior
 inspections for rental properties by complaint i'm also working with some members of dme and
 facilities and parks and we're putting together a scope of work to have a contract for a city-wide
 graffiti removal services and the last thing is that we finally drew to completion several
 major hoarding cases that we had in denton some just came up in the last year some of we've been
 working on for a lot of years there's really been an uptick in the last few years in denton on
 hoarding but actually that's sort of a something that we find across a lot of cities right now i'm
 not really sure what that is but we've had a lot of success in recent years bringing some of those
 to a conclusion i threw in some statistics here just to let you know that nuisance violations
 essentially are what we call state law nuisance violations trash and debris tall grass and weeds
 junk and inoperable vehicles stagnant water i'm trying to think what else graffiti if i
 didn't say graffiti and open and abandoned structures dangerous buildings are also considered
 a state law nuisance but we separate those out you can see we have a separate dangerous
 buildings program we've had for about 10 years so we separate out those stats property maintenance
 are the other premises violations things like dilapidated fences parking lot improved surfaces
 illegal outdoor storage illegal outdoor storage can be items that cannot be stored outdoors
 or items that can be but that aren't properly screened minimum building standards simply
 looking at a structure broken windows missing roofing shingles missing paint that type of thing
 dangerous building program we have 14 in process right now 14 structures that we're working on with
 those property owners five have been completed this year four resulted in demolitions all of
 which were done by the property owner and one resulted in a rehabilitation we do a lot of
 education we have several brochures we have tip sheets they're in english and spanish
 we do our own internal graffiti abatement besides having a graffiti contractor that's one way we
 keep costs down only about 20 of those 229 were actually done by contractor we have two officers
 who focus on the square and fry street to try and eliminate graffiti pretty quickly illegal sign
 removal and public rights away we do that weekly community outreach neighborhood associations crime
 watch groups will be out on national night out those types of things i have a few slides with
 photos if you'll notice the top two slides before and after that would be a minimum building standard
 case it shows you that there is no or very little paint on the structure that leads to the elements
 deteriorating the structure so that was a really good improvement the one below is one of our
 hoarding cases that actually went on for a number of years the photo really does not do justice to
 the rest of the property this is just a driveway so that was finally done it was purchased entirely
 rehabilitated and now a family lives in this house the top one is another minimum building
 standards case but it's an interior it's that it's one where a it's our rental inspection
 by complaint program we're having great success in this program since 2014 when we started the
 program we've only had to issue one citation so we have virtually 100 voluntary compliance rate
 we work really well with the landlords and the property managers and and honestly we find that
 within about two or three weeks they managed to fix the problem the bottom one would be considered
 property maintenance a repaired fence this is um trash and debris which is your state law nuisance
 case and then i have two slides here these are the dangerous buildings you'll notice there's three
 before pictures um in our dangerous building cases we actually have an awful lot of photographs to
 make the case for us this property had been in bad shape for quite a while the property owner chose
 to demolish this property so that property now as you can see it's a vacant lot it's ready for
 redevelopment or ready for sale the top three are the before and this property had been vacant for
 quite a long time and was not only structurally unsound but really unsanitary it had not been
 lived in for years it was purchased by someone who then came in and did a full rehabilitation
 as you can see it from the bottom three slides at an excellent job and now there's a family back in
 this home some of our goals in the coming year is to work with legal on just some updates and
 improvements to the property maintenance code um i mentioned a few moments ago that we're working
 presently on having a city-wide graffiti removal contract so we're in process of working on that
 right now um something i think larry collister mentioned earlier um and maybe some other folks
 did too as well but trying to go more paperless we've been doing that for a number of years
 is not just a green process but it really does help with efficiency so we're trying to take our
 work order process we're working with it to take that more using laser fish so that there's less
 printing and scanning and emailing since since most of our budget in cis is directed at personal
 services and contracts um our goal is to try and obtain as high a voluntary compliance rate as
 possible and we've done that now for quite a quite a number of years it's it ranges between 94 and 96
 percent as you saw from the previous slide the goal in doing that is that it brings down our cost
 we end up not spending as much in bringing in a contractor and getting the services contracted
 the other one is the right-of-way maintenance program mayor watts may remember this from 2014
 the leadership class in in the city of denton the partial goal in this there were two goals
 actually in this is that um to have city entryways and commercial thoroughfares to do more than uh to
 mow them to actually do more weed eating tree trimming graffiti removal illegal dumping removal
 and do it on a very regular basis um and part of that goal is not just was an economic development
 piece but the other one was in terms of community improvement services our goal was is that um on
 behalf of the city we require private property owners to maintain a certain standard and so the
 goal was was to have our public lands also be maintained to that standard
 um as i just mentioned most of um a lot of our funding a lot of our is in operations and it's
 for contracts so 90 91 percent of our operational budget is contracts so one way that we can keep
 this um the cost down is that of course we do competitive bidding for the contracts and
 secondarily having a high voluntary compliance rate keeps us from having to continually utilize
 our contractors for these services we also have um our supervisor in-house is a trainer certified
 by the state and we can pick up our ceus in-house so that saves some money as well the only one here
 i'll review is basically the first one um this was several years in process and then we worked
 closely with tiffany when she was in when she is in customer service right now to help us with this
 but previously if a citizen wanted to pay an invoice for contracted services they could come
 to our office and pay it if they wanted to pay off or start making a payment on a payment plan
 we do have payment plans for citizens who can't pay their invoice they can get on a payment plan
 and pay it off little by little they could come to our office to make those payments
 but if they wanted to pay off a lien they had to go to finance now that it's all in customer
 service it's a one-stop shop and part of what that helped with also is they can they can pay
 it off with a credit card now or previously they could not um revenues the first um revenue stream
 there is essentially someone who is paying off an invoice an invoice is the contractor charges as
 well as the administrative fee the second stream is when someone wants to pay off a lien and of
 course the lien again is that invoice and 10 per cent per annum and that's per state law and also
 per local ordinance um our budget remains fairly flat from year to year as i mentioned the greatest
 amount of of our expenditures our personal services we have 11 members in our staff including myself
 and then you'll notice operations which i mentioned is 91 percent of the operations dollars are um go
 to contracts for the enhanced right-of-way maintenance uh dangerous buildings and also
 nuisance abatements and again that's a number of our staff is 11 and that's it
 okay questions comments yes council member yes a question about on um on slide three uh mentions
 in the uh well first of all so these statistics is for the past i take it it's for the the past
 fiscal year i know i should have mentioned that these go from october 1st of 18 through may 30th
 of justice past okay okay two months ago i should have said that and so of those so i'm looking at
 the cases opened by complaint versus open proactively in terms of the the numbers
 and also the distribution of the percentages would would you say just off the top of your head is that
 pretty uh constant in in each of those categories as opposed to you know same period of time last
 year is it um do we tend to have so many more uh you know proactive proactively open cases
 versus complaint right if you could that is a very steady number um right it usually goes
 three quarters proactive one quarter by complaint um and just to maybe get a little bit at maybe at
 the crux of your question um in in 2007 there was a um the i'm trying to say that the chamber did
 a a review and um and one of the things that came out was that the city needed to enforce more of
 their own ordinances and that we needed to kind of get busy on that so we went in january of 07 to a
 proactive system uh based on those findings from um that that chamber class and so we are now
 proactive as are most cities and this is considered actually to be a really good standard to be more
 of a three quarter one quarter so before that it was just complaint based years ago it was
 complaint based and that didn't that didn't seem to sit well so thanks all right thank you any other
 questions okay all right thank you thank you i believe that concludes this agenda item is that
 correct oh he's got one more no that's it oh okay so i'll call the next agenda
 yeah yeah yeah because on this agenda item uh which is the dme budget we're just going to go
 and so if it runs over 6 30 we're still going to be here until we finish it we're not going
 we're not going to break it up so just to give you that heads up and then if we don't
 get the close items before the council meeting we'll come back and get them after the council
 meeting uh okay we'll take a little five minute break and then we'll come back yep
 welcome back to this meeting of the dent city council on tuesday july the 23rd 2019 we're
 on to our agenda item f which is our last agenda item for our open work session reports agenda item
 3f receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the dme municipal electric
 fiscal year 2019 through 2019 through 20 operating budget and capital improvement program
 good afternoon mayor and members of council my name is david gaines director of finance
 so this is this is our preliminary review of the electric budget next thursday during our
 budget workshop we'll also we'll be bringing the budget back obviously so at that time we can
 answer any follow-up questions or go into more detail depending on how the conversation today
 goes given the the the time where we are right now and the agenda i'm going to just fast forward to
 the finance piece and skip over the first five or six slides that go over the goals and accomplishments
 from the prior year and looking forward to next year but if there are any questions on any of those
 from when you previously reviewed we have terry nolte and other staff from dme here to answer
 those questions and we could obviously rehash those next week as well but just for uh for expedience
 sake jump straight to the financial presentation so here are the objectives that we're going to go
 over during the financial presentation talk through the financial assumptions that we have going into
 next year the things that we feel pretty confident in as we look forward in the pro forma and just
 tonight the 1920 budget we want to touch on the debt our debt service payments for fy1819 and for
 the uh the remainder of our five-year forecast those have changed and we want to go over how
 those have changed and what impact that has on our forecast talk through purchase power and then
 ultimately how those impact our eca rate and then the options we have for the rates cip our t cos
 and then position summary and deck pro forma so here are the financial assumptions that we've
 baked into our forecast and all the different scenarios we ran up until this point and the
 options that we have for consideration for council today we have a three percent increase in our
 projected demand in 1920 we have a continued suspension of tcrf where that rate's no longer
 charged our we are debt funding all of our cip this fiscal year which is a slightly different
 than we had in fy1819 we have no supplemental requests for funding in the 1920 budget so there's
 uh nothing no new levels of service or new additions to the budget outside of of a status
 quo budget moving forward to the next year and then our new solar resources specifically long draw
 and the blue belt two resources are included to achieve the targeted operation states the options
 for consideration which will show in the coming slides of really what are those level levers that
 we have to pull to deal with some of the issues that are that this 1920 budget presents are the
 our rate stabilization how we want to utilize the rates to deal with some of the issues that
 are presented and then how we use reserves to deal with those issues so those will be the two pieces
 that we come back to numerous times throughout the presentation so here's some of the major
 budget variables that we um that we look forward to it that we that we see in 1920 a lot of these
 variables obviously are ones that we see year to year but specifically in 1920 how we how we're
 looking at the variables and but how they could obviously uh change and and have different impacts
 as we as we go into the next year we budgeted deck revenues conservatively i think as you see
 in the 1920 budget and then our deck performance we we've really we've kept that what we project
 in deck revenue low based on when we think the deck will could be in use we'll have more detailed
 discussion on that but especially since we don't yet have a full year of the deck running we don't
 know exactly what that baseline is so we've kept a conservative approach to when we would use the deck
 our renewable energy resource financial performance is definitely a budget variable
 right now when resources are producing surplus energy into the market at those low price market
 hours and then faster renewable build out is depressing the market further so any specific
 questions on that we can definitely dig into and then uh you know a big variable that we have that
 you'll see throughout the uh the forecast is the decommissioning uh and sale of gibbons creek we
 have decommissioning costs now in the budget from tmpa and those costs are uh spread out over multiple
 years of the forecast this coming year a little less than three million for the decommissioning
 cost and that increases in future years but the variable with that is if gibbons creek sales
 obviously the the proceeds from that and how it could offset some of those decommissioning costs
 so we wanted to just jump straight into the debt service uh line item this year and how it how it
 has a knock-on impact on our eca rate and it really changes our picture for the 1819 budget
 and the 1920 budget ultimately our debt service payments for the energy center deck will be 9.88
 million dollars higher than it we budgeted in 1819 this has no impact on our total debt service
 payments to the life of the of the issuance but in 189th in december of 2019 we have our first
 deck debt service payment that includes both principal and interest and we budgeted to pay
 off that debt service the same way that we budget to pay off all of our other debt that we issue that
 we issue over the past few years that issuance obviously was a revenue bond and there was a
 in a standard review of of the bond language in advance of that first debt payment that we
 that we did over the summer we realized that in the bond covenant the language is different
 in when we have to actually do the transfer from the the electric budget over to our debt service
 fund where we have a requirement in the bond covenant to transfer essentially one sixth we do
 two payments so two payments per year so every month we're required to transfer one sixth of that
 future payment over to the debt service fund we had budgeted to do those transfers in in three
 three transfers october november and december of next fiscal year so the entire principal would hit
 in fy1920 because we have to do this transfer sooner from june through uh september we have a
 larger hit to our debt service line item this fiscal year
 so just for clarification what did you think that like this
 slide appeared yeah and we see total debt service of 17.2 million for fy19 and 20 over here all the
 way to the far right correct or your your yeah yeah um 177 17 million 278 000 that includes this
 additional kind of reserve for debt service uh escrow is that right well so 1920 really that's
 not changing from our pro forma it's really uh just in 18 the 1819 estimate so they in the 1819
 estimate we said we know we're going to have our interest payment due earlier in the fiscal year
 and that's that 4.4 million dollars so we budgeted for that right the first payment in december that
 includes principal we budgeted for that to hit entirely in 1920 and that would be the schedule
 moving forward as we do with our other bonds that we issue where that would be lumped in through
 october through december of when we would actually transfer the money over to make that debt service
 payment so again over the long term at the last year in the 20th year or the 30th year it'll come
 back and and be fine but um so this is just a sort of front-end loading it's just a payment
 schedule issue of part of that and then part of the the the um reserve fund debt service uh reserve
 i think you have to pay it is that right you have to pay in um yeah they want to prove that the
 payments have been escrowed ahead of time right is essentially what he's doing okay all right it
 absolutely is over the long term that's true but we does create an issue this fiscal year and how we
 and how we do it for him yeah it's not we're not paying more in the aggregate over the debt service
 right the life of the debt service right we're just having to pay it at a different time
 this fiscal year and it's more than what we had budgeted for correct okay that's remembered so
 how did we because we've had this for a while now the the debt service how did you catch this i mean
 did they just send us a bill and we're like what what is i mean i don't know how that works or
 sure you know so it was really just part of our standard review internally with accounting one of
 our accountants reviews all of our language in advance of any of our debt service payments
 and he was reviewing this this bond covenant knowing that we had our first principal payment
 due in december and so it was caught internally then we once we caught it we emailed our bond
 council and our financial advisors to get their opinion on it and they were all in an agreement
 that we do have to make this monthly transfer and we can't delay the transfer to the next fiscal year
 so no uh you know actual dollar differences but but it's uh over the life of it i mean everything
 has moved forward a little bit then right not just this year i mean this year the differences
 versus budget but all of our payments are a little bit shifted forward so is there a a time value
 loss i don't know if it's that material a hundred thousand dollars something like that well it'll
 it'll really just be this year that we have the hit and then the last year that we have the hit
 each other each each next year 1920 we are we knew we were going to have a 17.2 million dollar
 payment in 1920 so that payment stays the same because we knew that we would have to pay
 two payments of principal and interest uh as far as the time value of money i'm that that's something
 i mean i don't know if it's worth your time to figure it out but there's some i know we don't
 make a fantastic rate of return but we're losing something uh so tony point the chief financial
 officer so this is just a simple um internal s growing of funds no cash goes out cash is still
 going to go out at the same time on december and june 1st so it's just for internal purposes that's
 it thank you appreciate that okay why didn't you say that that was a really good smart answer
 thanks tony uh as far as budget authority it it doesn't impact our budget authority this year
 because of this next piece on the debt service that has a significant impact if you if you recall
 heading into the fiscal year we had budgeted to pay off the remainder of our tmpa scrubber debt
 28.6 million dollars we had remaining we had budgeted to defuse that debt and say we're going
 to take this excess fund balance that we have over our minimum reserve requirement and use it to pay
 off our debt we decided after the fiscal year started even prior to unknowing the the situation
 with the deck debt service that we were going to hold off on making that um that large payment to
 pay off the debt a few reasons why are listed here we knew we had a lot of variables out there with
 t costs possibly changing in the next couple years which we'll talk about those decommissioning costs
 that we talked about and then we were also presented as we looked to the debt issuance which we which
 we issued last week with the opportunity to refinance the debt at this at a lower rate and
 obviously that rate ended up being significantly lower where um we had resulting savings of 2.2
 million dollars which i think in the in the presentation that went out it's a 2.1 million
 dollars as we finally sold the bonds last week they came in with an even lower interest rate
 that we hadn't anticipated so the total savings between now and 2025 on that debt will be 2.2
 million dollars at that lower interest rate so all those factors together had us hold off on on
 paying off that 28.6 million dollars which as we talk about in the next few slides really
 gives us this room to work with with some of our fund balance
 question council member brick not really i'm just the the statement when we were talking about
 closing givens and the debt for 28 million dollars is on something that we're not even using so it
 was just a sure realization not really a question but i do want to provide at least because i know
 we hear a lot about scrubber debt the scrubber was i don't know other than what type of facility
 it's an asset or it's it was a piece of equipment or a process whereby it cleaned it would it would
 basically scrub the emissions from the coal plant that dramatically reduced the emissions as far as
 and somebody probably could tell me over here technically what it reduced but so while it given
 this particular scenario it looks like that it's was sort of a bad bad move but at the time we
 really wanted to make sure that we had the cleanest operating coal plant that you could have that sort
 of seems like an oxymoron but still nevertheless and this really achieved that goal but because of
 just the changing economies the changing fuel prices and such that's why we're we're left with
 this what i would call stranded debt so the next big variable which has somewhat of a negative
 impact on our budget and both of these really play into an eca discussion that we'll have to have
 is increased to our purchase power expenses both in 1819 this fiscal year and in 1920 so we've
 listed here a few of those those increases a total in this we're estimating an increase in
 1819 in our purchase power of 6.4 million dollars and we've broken out a couple of those factors
 here 4.2 million dollars is an incremental increase by that is a result of not operating
 gibbons creek this summer when the budget was developed last year the budget did include in
 the purchase power numbers in the budget for purchase power operating gibbons creek so obviously
 by not operating it that's the resulting increase in incremental power supply costs that need that
 that we're anticipating in 1819 and then also just another 2.2 million dollars of market movement
 incremental cost mark for market movement a renewable energy value reduction some of that
 increase too was as we had a new management come in and one of the reasons that we've brought in
 the the budget is coming before council a little bit later than it normally has is really new staff
 coming in and taking a hard look at all of our assumptions in our budget you know finding the
 gibbons creek that gibbons creek was included in purchase power and better planning for and
 budgeting for those purchase power costs on more a more realistic basis so if there's any questions
 on the rationale behind those we definitely have staff that can that can answer those questions
 in 1920 we're anticipating an additional 2.2 million dollars in purchase cost over that estimate
 which is included in the budget and the projections moving forward due to our ppa's though as we look
 at that our five-year forecast we do see that dropping in future years from 21 through 24 where
 it really ranges between 40 and 47 million dollars you know i think definitely using using our hedge
 transactions and continuing to learn from the market experiences are important as we look forward
 with those purchase power dollars so both of those both of those slides really lead to this
 discussion on our eca rate so we wanted to step back and just kind of put this this this slide
 up here that just sets the stage for what is in our eca rate and what's in our base rates the two
 rates that are uh two of the kind of rate categories that are included in in our electric rates so in
 our eca rate the energy cost adjustment rate we include our purchase power cost our deck operating
 cost our deck in deck debt service cost additionally if we had any prior year eca balance that would
 also be included in the eca rate i think the idea behind the eca rate is it eca it's meant
 to fluctuate year to year based on purchasing costs going up and down whereas your base rates
 are really meant to stay safe stable and pay for those operating costs that cost that we can
 anticipate each year so you can see essentially everything else is is included in the base rates
 from personnel services operation maintenance and all of the other factors there
 what those the two slides previously the purchase power and the deck debt service
 due to our eca rate is since both of those are included in the eca rate we have a large jump
 in 1819 and 1920 in the revenue requirements to meet our our expenses for the eca so what we've
 done here is shown in over the five years but in the estimate for 1819 and our projected for 1920
 how though each of those categories are over and under recovering so you can see bottom line
 about 18.3 million dollars under recovering and then 6.99 in next fiscal year but for the eca rate
 we have significant under recovery in 1819 and 1920 and these assumptions are really saying if
 we kept our rates exactly as they are today what would be the impact on both if we kept our base
 rates and eca rates stable what would be the impact councilman melzer i want to make sure i'm
 following the narrative is this primarily driven by the 9.8 million dollar surprise it it is i
 think the 1819 is is is driven by the uh the surprise but i think you know we were in 20 we
 were going to have to have a decision no matter what because we did have our debt are those first
 big debt debt service hitting us with a large payment of principal and interest so this discussion
 in some form would happen regardless but those variables of purchase power going up
 and the debt debt service hitting us earlier definitely increase that increase the the picture
 and the the quickness we have to have that discussion council member does this include the
 three percent increase in power usage yes yeah all every all the forecasts have that included it's
 built in 1920 so with that kind of setting the stage we wanted to say what are our what are our
 best ways to approach obviously our issue with our eca being under recovered uh the goal is for the
 eca to completely recover itself each year at least come close to that so how can we mitigate
 accomplish that without having a large impact on on our rates so the status quo as we go through
 our options status quo isn't truly an option it's really just there for comparison if we left if we
 maintained our rates the way they are or we maintain our base rate the way it is and let
 the ec fluctuate all the way up to where it needed to go here's what the impact would be to residents
 which would result in about a 25 increase in the residential bill just to have that eca rate come
 up enough to cover the 40 or so million dollars that it needs to cover luckily we have a large
 fund balance right now that we can use next year to mitigate that in that increase and still stay
 above our our minimum reserve balance so that's what that's what we've we've shown here in these
 next two phases and the real difference between the two phases is how much of the fund balance
 do we use and how do we phase in any increases over the next couple of years so our phased approach
 is essentially saying we're going to utilize 44.2 million dollars of the fund balance to cover
 to get us to a point where we can say we'll do a one and a half percent increase on the eca rate
 next year and then an additional one and a half percent rate increase to the eca rate the following
 year that in combination with using 44.2 million of our fund balance gets us to a point where
 the rates stay stable and the eca rate can fluctuate as it should in future years
 council member braes and then council member matzer did you have a question
 well i don't think i'm ready to say it yet oh okay council member yeah i just want to
 understand uh you describe the amount of uh the fund balance you'd use as excess fund balance the
 excess of what level so uh i'll just switch to this slide quickly so you can see the numbers
 um and as i do this i'll talk about what the the second approach is as well so our our minimum
 reserve balance is we say 40 here it's really between 40 and 44 million dollars that number
 fluctuates each year based on having 60 days of working capital and some other requirements
 which i'll show later and it really makes up that fund balance but essentially it comes to about 40
 to 44 million dollars so you can see if we kept things um the status quo by the at the end of
 1819 obviously we would have about 55 million dollars in our fund balance if we allow that eca
 rate to go all the way up to where it needs to go just to cover those eca expenses we would
 essentially have that huge that large increase in our eca rate but it would just add to our fund
 balance because the base rates would be over recovering as well so we're trying to say how
 how can we not build up this fund balance by increasing rates so just trying to pull those
 levers together to um to mitigate the impact but also keep a healthy reserve balance so the
 two options that we put forward were to say we can do one and a half percent this year and utilize
 the fund balance that we showed previously or we can say okay we want to have no rate increase next
 year but anticipate a three percent increase in 19 and 2021 and utilize another couple million
 dollars of our fund balance so those are really the two options both of them do keep us above our
 minimum reserve um but i think our our approach would be to to afford with the phased option
 uh moving moving forward that would be our recommendation
 yeah i'm just a little bit confused on what's the difference between
 fund balance and reserve just looking at this slide there well i guess the better way to call
 this would be reserve over the minimum the fund balance and reserve are the same thing great thank
 you very much so i'm i'm not in favor of of an increase and i'm just a little confused because
 i'm trying to go back and i know that it's really not healthy to look at the past but i keep thinking
 that we weren't supposed to have rate increases with our current um power generation that that we
 have um so i'm just i'm trying to figure out what what happened are we not running it enough is it
 the gap i'm just trying to figure out why we're here because i i knew we would kind of be here
 a little bit but i didn't realize it would be so bad so i'm just trying to figure figure out this
 well you've got 13 million dollars in cost that you know one of them is just the bookable value
 of the debt the 9.88 he's explained we've got hit with the four million dollars from um gibbons
 creek that we're going to continue seeing for a while that had not been contemplated in there
 um you've got they're building in two to three million dollars net your losses on our renewables
 which happens you you pay x amount for them and there's certain times a day you're dumping them
 they're not worth that much so you've got to build that loss in so that accounts for about
 16 million dollars right there as we get more experience with the deck uh we'll certainly be
 able to continue honing this i mean we haven't had one full year yet of really operating we're
 getting there but yeah i mean there was there was obviously uh uh net price uh you know hedges
 hedging prices uh that had been projected in here that have not come to fruition yet i mean i don't
 know any other way to say it it just didn't happen that way yet in you know this team right now uh
 that is that is on board is trying to make sure that you have the best information reflecting
 what is happening they're going out uh using forward curve data on the gas prices trying to
 give you their best projections of how often the deck will deck will run how much it'll generate
 some of those early performance that you saw back in 15 and 16 it's not happening that way right now
 and we're trying to deal with it and have as little impact as possible until gas prices rise
 but you know we can't predict the future when that might happen so that kind of you put all
 those pieces together and that's the story he's giving you so it was a big big part of the reason
 that we decided to not pay off that scrubber debt is we needed that flexibility to smooth any
 uh hit to our residents the impression i got from um the uh five-year report or the the summary of
 that the five-year report was that that part of um the increased costs was also going to under
 underestimated uh o and m costs and is does that play just a small role or that's what i'm calling
 you know because they talk about how you know we don't just as far as kind of factoring in the risk
 we don't know are you know what parts will need to be replaced are you talking about o and m to the
 deck yes if anything i think they're probably lower than we projected because they're working with
 30 less staff that have been projected so there's a buffer there um you know chris brought or i'm
 sorry jason brought the item to you last week that we've got you know really one vendor uh that we can
 acquire the equipment from for the uh for the deck in certain instances but that's really having no
 impact on the o and m i think it's really more of the amount of hedging activity that is this
 occurring in the deck and with the deck is it generating the kind of offset in the power market
 that we thought it would that's really the issue okay okay so so that's what they mean when they
 say um because of because of the nature of physical resources there's a larger risk that costs will be
 higher than those estimated um you know they mentioned possible mechanical breakdown and
 outages that's not considered o and m or i could i'll ask uh i'll ask terry to hit that a little
 bit more head on and good afternoon terry nolte assistant general manager uh so on the deck o and
 m side we when we inherited the pro forma and we say we you know as a new management team
 and we reviewed that deck pro forma there were some things that were missing in the deck pro forma
 the the o and m piece uh there were some assumptions made about uh how we would maintain and
 operate the deck for a long period of time the initial plan was to enter into what's termed a
 long-term service agreement with the manufacturer those prices came in they were much too high for
 us to enter into a contract in my opinion we were going to self-perform that in order to save
 several million dollars a year so uh i would say that the o and m costs are on target with
 what the original pro forma was however there were some things that were left out of the pro forma
 because they were initially i think there was some confusion about whether they were going to be
 capitalized or whether they were going to be in the o and m budget and thank thank you so much
 that explains um what i what i read helps me make sense of it um the question about about the um for
 the the no interest um option i mean the no no increase option uh that uh three percent that's
 projected with that to come in um uh what year is that in uh 20 in uh 2021 um how how certain
 is that and and and the uh 3.5 percent in 2022 you know to what extent is that certain to what
 extent projection and it definitely definitely is a projection i think one of the reasons that we
 would recommend the phased approach is because it's a projection projection obviously it could be
 three percent in 2021 it could be one and a half that we would need in that situation but it could
 also be four and a half percent there's just there's a lot of variables out there right now
 in the budget so the idea behind the kind of phased approach is go up one and a half percent
 this year so that we can reassess so that if it ends up needing to be four percent in two years
 it's not as big of a jump but also it could turn out in 2021 we don't need anything after one and
 a half percent uh phased and i think just with so many variables it's hard to give a percentage
 uncertainty but um that that was the approach we thought best to take okay yeah so that so would
 you say that that so the three percent um trying to figure out if would you say it's a conservative
 estimate or is just following a kind of industry standard calculation that is not entirely certain
 or sure as david has mentioned you know much of our forecast is exactly that a forecast it is our
 best estimate of what future prices are going to be what future expenses are going to be uh one of
 the reasons why we're we're focused on a phased approach is because we know that the market will
 change between now and the next two years it could be better could be worse uh what we're the budget
 that we're suggesting is a budget for the next fiscal year where we have the highest level of
 certainty and in that year we're not recommending any increase so what we're effectively doing is
 we're saying we need to get more better information about the market better information about our
 operations you know i think david started the conversation about the fact that for the
 dent energy center we are very conservatively estimating revenues and that's because we don't
 have a year of data and we're not getting the data that we want this year because the summer
 has been very mild so we haven't seen the level of volatility that the deco is expected to be able
 to perform very well against so um those are the types of variables that we cannot properly
 estimate to give you a high level of certainty but what we can do is we can say that for
 the shorter line of sight for the next fiscal year we do have a high level of certainty
 and we don't believe that we need a rate increase in that period
 just just so just to clarify what i terry said with the two approaches we feel we feel comfortable
 with both approaches we wouldn't put the approaches out there for um council definitely want to give
 you the the options ultimately if we had to recommend an approach we would recommend the
 phased approach which it does have that one and a half percent increase next year
 so it wouldn't be no increase next fiscal year
 councilor davis i'm just a little bit confused between my slides i'm looking at your uh option
 slide um before that one so you've got a rate increase of 1.3 increase looking at the phased
 approach yep yep 1.3 percent uh increase in 2021 and i just heard a reference to no rate increase
 in 1920 but then we slide over a couple of slides to the average residential bill
 and phase approach does have a is that a increase in the base rate is that something else that's
 making that dollar amount go up or so the phase the phase approach is we are saying an increase
 next fiscal year and in 1920 so that that's the total increase rate by one and a half percent
 some when we go through the dme budget it does get we like to show the residential
 rate just as comparison so there's going to be variation when we say one and a half
 percent increase in the eca total it's going to affect the residential a little differently
 than it does everything else so our phase the phase approach does have an increase next fiscal
 year that's how i understood it i just had for a moment a moment ago i heard a reference to not
 having an increase and i wanted to make sure that we were we were be clear about that i misspoke i
 was the eca was intended to be a mechanism that could move up and down as we needed to maintain
 a value when i when i said no increase i was i misspoke i meant this fiscal year no increase
 this fiscal year a couple of questions sure oh oh okay thanks no go ahead paul yeah yeah monitoring
 sort of um yeah obviously you know nobody's got a crystal ball there's bands of variability
 but even and i think i'm rephrasing maybe something you've already been asked
 but if we did the no increase approach this year with our range of reasonable outcomes possible
 outcomes possibly not require three percent the following year possibly absolutely absolutely
 we could get to the point where we do no increase next year and we only need two percent or we need
 no increase the following year i i would say i think we feel more confident in the purchase power
 numbers than we have in the past few years i feel like there's been a deeper dive with the purchase
 power numbers from the dme staff so i think we have more confidence in it than we've had in previous
 years but there still are those variables out there so it could range from from needing a three
 percent to needing nothing in that it's not like in the really thin end of the wedge of probability
 it's sort of somewhere in the middle i think the policy question is would you rather look at
 increasing the rates one and a half percent now or risk having the increase in three three to four
 percent in two years is really the issue that's the policy discussion we we can't tell you it
 didn't to councilor Arbiter's point we can't tell you with probably 90 degree certainty that that's
 where the rates are going to be in in two years uh he's doing their best projections out on where
 the gas prices are going this next year and giving you the best information we can
 councilmember davis so in by way of direction where i'm at is
 it rate increases are never popular they're never what we want to do um and there's been a
 lot we've discussed already a lot of history that goes into what we're talking about today
 not all of it positive not all of it where we want to be at the same time it seems like the
 most conservative approach is the phased approach that staff is recommending i mean it's either we
 take the bull by the horns and acknowledge the situation today or this time next year we're
 talking about potentially a higher rate increase and what do we say almost every week you know
 a previous council put us into some situation or another i'd hate to be on the previous council
 that did it and the council that has to deal with it next year so it seems like the phased
 approach is the right approach councilmember ryan can you refresh my memory i can't remember
 it's last year year before before we did i thought a one percent decrease on electric is that is that
 correct last year and was that mainly because we took off the uh t-cost on the bill was that where
 that one percent came from that goes back to the tcrf discussion so that when that came off the bill
 and i i can skip to a slide where you see that so that when the tcrf came off the bill that's what
 that one that was that one percent okay so we we maybe should have we probably got ahead of
 ourselves at that point might be the whole situation well i i do i do think there's a
 different discussion you know the eca rate is is meant to fluctuate year to year where the base
 rates are meant to stay stable so um i think the the idea behind this influx of the reserve would
 be to stabilize it over a couple years and then allow it to fluctuate in the future years so
 cancer monitoring then i'm gonna speak um what's what about the effect can you speak to the effect
 on the commercial rate we don't have that number readily available but we can definitely follow
 up with it and have it on the first on thursday yeah because i mean for me you know those those
 two numbers are so um you know they work in tandem i mean they get the electricity residential and
 commercial electricity from not from all the same sources so that uh is as i consider um you know
 whether to go with the um no increase basically both involve the phased approaches are we going
 to start phasing it in now or phasing it in later as i as i consider way those i'm thinking about
 what's how will you know how will the commercial factor into that um so i don't i don't know if i
 feel entirely able to make that decision just based on residential and then seeing what what
 our options would be um if we wanted to keep residential you know if we wanted to keep those
 fluctuations the same you know well i would say the eca rate um goes out to all all customers
 kind of evenly so we wouldn't be able to kind of slice and dice the eca rate but the base is
 their base is made up a lot of many different rates yeah
 okay so our electric rates are made up of two components a base rate which typically covers
 o and m debt service those kinds of things the eca rate it stands for energy cost adjustment
 which that's where we use to to try to figure out how do we keep it stable so that when we have the
 like back in 2012 when gas prices were really high they just shot right up well some people
 had to really dig into their pockets to pay for those spikes whereas you know we were able to have
 a fund balance that helps sort of even that out like what we're doing here so we're talking only
 about the eca rate right now and the ec rate is charged to all customers at the same rate
 is that correct yes okay so now that i've i mean i looked at this presentation as i'm listening to
 it um it it i'm not gonna say i'm confused but this when you put up that x over the status quo
 like this 91 million dollars in in projected fund balance that's if you moved
 the eca rate up to if you go back to the extra cost that you show you know i think it slides
 prior to that uh it's where you broke out uh tmpa the deck the extra power um i think it's
 going to be this one and okay so so on this one outside of what we thought we're in current we're
 having to book internally an additional you said i was at seven million dollars or not ten million
 dollars to cover some kind of process that we sort of did in the course of a normal review
 correct so that's 10 million of that right and that's just the bond covenants that has nothing
 to do with a project except the bond covenants were for this project but it's not an increased
 cost in that project it's it's a different way of accounting for internally the the debt service
 correct so that's 10 million so then uh because your debt your deck debt service in the out in
 next year it's what we had correct perform it anyway correct so now the additional costs
 with the 10 million are 6.4 and so is that what we're thinking that we're gonna have to pay
 that much more in purchase power costs because the coal plant is not running in other words if the
 coal plant were running with it's because it's debt service is paid off so in other words all we'd
 be paying is o and m on the on the coal plant so if the coal plant were running then our purchase
 power cost would be 6.4 million dollars less than what we're projecting now because we're saying you
 take that offline now we got to go out and buy it and we're thinking it's going to cost us this much
 more money so 6.4 is the total we're attributing 4.2 of that to the coal plant yes okay 2.2
 right from market movement and so you're right i apologize so the 4.2 is that that's what we
 got to pay extra the 2.2 is on our renewables as we've pursued our 100 renewable goal which are
 wind energy out in west texas because we're not able to utilize all of that energy so we have to
 sell it in a market that is uh less than what we paid for it is that right yes okay so right there
 you've got sick you got 16 million dollars between things that are that really don't have anything
 to do with operations they the fuel cost here these two are really the fuel the fuel component
 of it these the 6.4 million right um so if you were to take out uh so if you go down to your slide of
 um your status quo options and all that in the sort of i would just also add to your and then also
 so with the 2.2 increase next year over the 6.4 that's 8.8 additional and 20 that we we didn't
 plan for as well so that okay so okay now when you say additional 2.2 million increase what what is
 that contracts for what are our ppa contracts and different market okay so what you're saying is
 what you're saying is we we've entered into contracts just literally a year or two ago or
 however long ago is that are coming online for probably wind that we're going to
 see a 2.2 million dollar increase because is that the same as because we're having to pay
 we're having to sell those off in a market that's lower than what we're paying for is that what that
 is okay so so the wind contracts between this year and next year are 4.4 million dollars of
 cost this is sort of what georgetown got into they were they were having to sell off all their
 their power a lot of their power it costs considerably less than what they contracted to
 build to to buy for okay uh but you're saying but forget 21 through 24 because that's all
 so now if you'll go to the status quo that the other one uh the the that that one yeah
 so really when i look at the status quo we're not taking 91 we're not taking 44 million dollars out
 of an account and and funding you know we're saying we got 44 million dollars we're going
 to just use it to supplement this this esa i mean you're saying if we charged right enough to make
 up this 16 million dollar deficit or whatever that deficit is in this one year yeah how much is it
 22 22 million and then 24 next year yeah deficit in this year and next year that's what that would
 have to be right which um so when you go to the because that's what i was getting confused i
 thought you're saying we're using the fund the fund balance to pay 44 million dollars
 it's not in there it's more of an it's more of a it's a projected it's like we're saying well
 we'll cover this shortfall by either charging everybody 25 more today or
 if you just even didn't have the status quo and you just said it's the phased approach as well
 how do we achieve this kind of how do we cover this shortfall we cover it with either a 1.5
 increase this year with the projected three and a half or or we don't charge anything this year
 which is really no different than than how we do it and i mean i'm glad that we had this but i was
 confused thinking we're going to write a check for 44 million dollars somewhere but it's more
 of an accounting thing we're going to collect it all but it's going to then cover all that that
 shortfall okay but my point being the majority of that 22 million dollars are things that
 have to do with our renewable contracts that we've all said we want to move towards you know
 uh 100 renewable and i do have a question about that we're decommissioning the coal plant which is
 i think something that the community has wanted for a trip i mean for a long time
 the deck 10 million dollar internal kind of accounting i mean that's just that's just
 something that got caught on review which you know we can address that at some other time but
 so it's not as if our costs our oandm has gone up tremendously it's not as if our purchase power
 has gone up except for those selling off into the market at a reduced price
 for a majority of those of those numbers um on the decommissioning how much do you have on the
 the decommissioning costs uh or are they in here yeah we have um 2.8 million this year
 and is this a future slide it is oh we'll address that then i don't want to get so far out or i just
 needed to understand i was really confused about the when i saw the 91.48 million dollars in the
 projected fund balance i thought okay but that's with if you charge everybody that 26 percent right
 if we let ec go all the way up right okay all right got you all right so i i mean as far as
 well i'm gonna hear the presentation before i make a statement on the direction on that
 it's like we we saw this briefly recent uh just a moment ago just showing how how that looks on a
 on a monthly bill of the phase versus no increase approach and then again um you can see there as
 we just talked about that decrease from the tcrf rate and then how our rates have stayed stable
 and then but we would this is showing that phase approach where we do that slight increase in 2020
 and then another slight increase in 2021 through 2022 and then at this point we would actually have
 a base rate decrease in 2022 and allow the ec rate to to calculate as it would so we are showing a
 base rate decrease starting in 2022 on to mitigate the ec continuing to go up yeah is there a rule
 that says we can only consider changes to rates once a year and at this interval so we could
 conceivably look at it again in six months and we don't see the weights of the rise and i that is
 part of the intent of the eca is to have continual reviews of that and if you see that you need to
 decrease your increase to do it more quickly so we wanted to show that this slide with our our
 comparison something that we show in all of our budget presentations with with dme to show where
 that no increase approach and the phased approach would would place us kind of right in the middle
 of those comparison municipalities so i want to and this if you'll go back to that last slide
 and i don't know the answer to this question but i think i know on a couple of them
 because these are municipal utilities and so i would be real curious as to each one of these
 what is their uh renewable goal or what is there a renewable rate on the ground i know garland
 has some i know um maybe brian i don't know i don't know if they have a goal or how much solar
 and when they're utilizing but what i did notice is i looked down at the very bottom one
 and so it's just i think for what we're trying to accomplish amongst municipal utility i know city of
 austin has a pretty aggressive renewable energy goal but i don't think they've achieved what
 what we're shooting for what we might even have um so i i'm i'm pleased with yeah we're not the
 lowest but i don't know what all's in that lowest rate i mean i don't know if it's what they're using
 i don't so i i mean we'd always like things to be lower but i appreciate this slide i guess is what
 i'm saying yeah yeah no yes yes councilmember armature can can you so i'm and by the way i'm
 i'm leaning towards um the the no increase um uh and uh have and kind of checking back in um
 regularly um can can you speak directly about the relation between the the the projected
 deck revenue and i realize it's just projected uh which appears to be you know we're going down from
 um the 36,000 29,000 25 21 the other way to projected in 23 24 at 2023 2024 13 uh about
 14 roughly or 13 and a half um is is there you know would would you say that there's an inversely
 proportional relationship between how we anticipate the rates going up and the deck revenue going
 down or or is that just you know what's what's the what's the relationship there what slide are you
 looking at when you're i'm looking at well this is one that right here it doesn't happen oh no here
 it is it's 22 so i guess i'm a little bit ahead yeah is it okay if if we get to that because i
 think he's got some other things that that might help draw some conclusions or give you some
 information on that yeah so we'll get through a few of these slides and we'll get get to the
 deck have a deeper discussion on the deck um but did want to show you here's here's a performance
 again this is that phased approach it would be slightly different not too much different on the
 no increase approach really that big difference would just be next year as in 21 the rates would
 would um come to the same point but you can see so to your question earlier councilman mouncer you
 can see here's how we calculate that reserve minimum 60-day working requirement with a five
 million emergency reserve and two million for 60 so just kind of that's part of our policies
 to have that as our reserve requirement i'm going to touch on a few of these other pieces as we go
 through some of the slides um but you can see our person you can see that purchase power and we'll
 touch on this on the next slide our purchase power doesn't it excludes deck revenue where when we
 look at the purchase power and this in our in our in our performance this is a conversation we had
 with council last year the desire was to not include deck revenue here in the expenses but
 included as revenue so you see the true cost going out in reality as the market's moving those
 those could come as credits as we're uh going in and out but we we kind of just internally move
 those up up to revenue so that it doesn't decrease purchase power if they were included here you would
 see that number be a lot lower than it was back in actual 2018 now these are a lot of numbers can
 take any questions or we can also go over this next week as well okay no i'm kidding i'm kidding
 well i think if you'll go back that slide i think that's what councilmember armature was looking at
 i mean she might have been looking at a different slide but you showed the deck revenue they're
 decreasing over time so uh i think and she has some questions about that when we get to 22
 yes yeah and so we have a full deck performer which we'll talk about the revenues and i guess
 to ask your question on how it impacts the rates because the deck is included the deck expenses
 are including the eca that's where it does have that impact on the rates we can talk about that
 a little bit more so wanted to touch on that purchase power that we just saw um to we added
 this just for um so we can make sure it ties so that we limit some of the confusion because
 as we talk about purchase power there's many different factors with our deck revenue our
 purchase power as you just saw is 86.81 if we were to say if we were to include the deck revenue
 in that purchase power of what we're actually spending it's 61.73 million dollars that we spend
 in purchase power and here's how you can see the breakout of of that purchase power with our
 tmpa piece here of the 4.3 million dollars and we have that broken out 2.8 million is those our
 first year of the decommissioning costs so over five years it's going to end up being 22 million
 dollars and those numbers fluctuate we got we have that schedule from tmpa it's not just 2.8
 every year obviously some years that in a couple years goes up to 8 million dollars and comes down
 based on their forecast and then the additional amount there from tmpa and we've also broken out
 the market versus the renewable cost and then our net purchase power is we have that revenue
 coming in from the deck but we also pay for the fuel at the deck out of purchase power as well so
 this negative this negative 12.46 which we'll see a little bit later in a different context is that
 revenue versus the fuel to actually operate the den energy center real quick question on the tmpa
 2.8 million for decommissioning costs or the total that you mentioned
 because i know part of what we've talked about at the board is of course the mine tmpa's mine
 is is about 10 000 acres and so at some point they're probably going to be looking at marketing
 that so that's that's not net of anything that's total that's if the plant sells or if the the
 mine in other words any uh distributions that come back to the member cities based upon some
 sale of an asset is not included in any of these numbers is that correct correct okay all right
 and then this just kind of going back to that the eca point that we touched on earlier just to show
 those eca expenses in a pie chart here so you can see how it how it how it breaks out with our deck
 expenses including um including the debt service the fuel and then the energy cost that's included
 in the eca that that can that confuses me um the eca expenses of 80 million energy cost adjustment
 is this only the deck's contribution to the eca expenses or these are the the total expenses that
 the eca pays for so it should this amount right here the 78.97 okay go back to that pie chart
 so i think i'm miss i'm misunderstanding the pie chart
 that looks like there's a little variation on okay so the deck expenses and the deck fuel
 are 57 of that is that or uh 30 oh no i'm sorry okay so the big is 44 got you i was just looking
 at the wrong legend okay got you all right so about 30 40 yes councilmember does that have to
 do with price per like megawatt price well like so so like when you go back to the renewable it's
 it's 32 um so is that is that in right yeah the price per megawatt is the difference between the
 two okay yeah between the market and the renewable yeah and then i'll go through these slides uh
 relatively quickly but you can just again just kind of hammering home the conversation we've
 been having on those base rate revenues the increase there those demand projections that we
 that we talked through earlier in the assumptions and then you can see the eca rate um how it's
 impacted by the phased approach increasing um with a jump there in 2020 and then another
 jump in 2021 and in 2022 and then our deck revenue which we'll just in the next slide talk talk more
 about but you can see our deck revenue is a conservative approach it'll continue to change
 as we get more information but we are projecting the revenue to to kind of decrease from our current
 estimate in the future years other revenues include the t-cost revenues which we'll touch
 on in just a bit as well here's a breakout of our expenditures you can see the administrative
 cost versus our other categories of expenditures
 for our cip as i mentioned earlier we are planning to debt finance all of our cip in this next fiscal
 year i think you will see a jump in um in our cip i think this especially on the distribution side
 this was again part of that the reason that it's taken a couple months to come come to council with
 the budget was taking a look back not only our purchase power but also at our cip to ensure that
 we truly budgeted everything that we needed to on the cip side for the next fiscal year and that
 resulted in us increasing the distribution portion of our cip which we definitely have staff that can
 talk through any specifics on that on the increase in distribution but also increase in our transmission
 which i'll show here on the next slide that obviously that obviously is going to
 be corresponding to those in those t-cost revenues which come back and offset those costs
 so if i'm looking at this um so the talking about the last slide that 23 can have compared to 22
 looking at 23 24 the the revenue um for that year is almost equal you know by the time you
 get there is almost equal to the expenses um you know they're they're almost equal i mean at what
 point do you say uh and of course we still have we always we always have to pay off the debt but
 at what point you know what is it the fall is it anticipated the following year it's going to be
 we're going to have to shut it down because it's going to be more expensive to
 to operate if we keep going at that rate are you talking about the deck it's yeah yeah sorry
 if i can just get through a couple more so we can talk about the deck
 in specifics so i'll just have a couple more and then we'll be able to dive right in
 we did want to point out on the t-cost revenue associated with that transmission assets that we
 have in the cip right now we for the next two years we're still anticipating our large t-cost
 percentage the return on investment we get for our t-cost and so you can see how that impacts as we
 say we're going to issue this amount of debt over 2020 and 2021 and the amount of net revenue that
 we get from that from our t-cost revenue from having those transmission assets out out and used
 we do anticipate because we're going to have to do another we're going to have to go through
 another study of our t-cost that that rate will come down it's very high right now so beginning
 in 2022 we're anticipating that rate on t-cost drops from 28 percent down to 13.5 percent and
 you can see the impact on that in the future years oh yeah just making germ tracking so the
 the increase in debt the uh in ci and capital improvement that you expect to be all debt financed
 is that all related to transmission and therefore all expected to generate a return even though it's
 a decreasing return sure so the if you look on in 18 1920 18.8 million of the the debt is transmission
 related 19 then the 19 million is distribution and the other is that yeah okay um and is the debt
 that's not revenue supported are you looking at increasing our total indebtedness or just i mean
 i see the annual amount of indebtedness you're adding is greater but i assume some is coming off
 too some is coming off i'm i'm sure it is increasing the total indebtedness over the
 years but we can def on uh next thursday i can bring a schedule to show how it how it's impacted
 or you know ultimately i guess that would be reflected in debt service correct yeah we can see
 the debt which right and uh okay and we've you've you've probably already shown us on a slide uh how
 how debt service fits into the total picture and right yeah i was on the slide back there yeah okay
 i'll i'll wait i'll wait for the next time we talk about it okay i'll be back next thursday so we can
 talk more uh position summary we are recommending to an increase of two fte's and these fte's would
 be at the at the deck at the den energy center really largely related to an increase in overtime
 that we've had out there we have staff that are working at the deck significant amounts of overtime
 to the point where these two fte's are really needed to come in to offset some of that overtime
 is that because it's running more than what we thought or is that because we just run the staff
 to begin with uh no there the uh the deck is running very close to what we projected it to
 for the first summer and then up through uh the end of june july has been pretty dismal
 in terms of dispatch because the prices have just been very low the two fte's are we did have a an
 overtime issue because we were going through startup and as the folks from the manufacturer
 would come in and troubleshoot a problem we wanted our people with them to learn as they went to that
 process so we were we're doing a lot of overtime on the maintenance side we also uh only staffed the
 deck five days a week and we were running on the weekends and so we had to bring people in on the
 weekends to run the deck and the the other reason for the two fte's is we were awarded a ancillary
 service contract or we we anticipate being awarded an ancillary service contract with urcut that will
 net us between about half a million dollars a year positive net income uh as called black start and
 it's a an ancillary service that we get paid for to stand by it's a characteristic that these units
 can provide to the grid it's grid stability and that requires you to have 24 hour coverage
 and again we we wouldn't make the decision to add the two people were it not for the fact that it's
 a very positive uh net income impact for so we're adding we'll have uh seven by 24 coverage once we
 add the the extra two people and our overtime will go to virtually nothing and the 500 000 is net of
 the cost of these two fte's yes and some other costs yes thank you thank you for everyone's
 patience uh as we this is the deck pro forma showing um showing our revenues that we're
 projecting over the next few years and i'll hand this over to terry in just a second to talk through
 some specifics on these because i know um there there are some questions but just kind of big
 picture to set the stage you can see those deck revenues we are showing them decreasing in the
 out years um based on some some of those conservative estimates and i think that definitely are some of
 those numbers that will change in the out years you can see the deck debt service payment as we
 talked about previously changing in the estimate for this year compared to what we had budgeted
 and really how that has a big impact on our net income in this um for this fiscal year and then
 you can see the net income in the out years as we're really fully realizing that debt service
 in each of those years of the forecast
 councilmember obama did you have any i'm trying to i'm following yeah again i and i understand
 you know when it comes to gas prices i mean the farther out you get the harder it is to predict
 but i can't help but as i see in this prediction a pattern i mean at what point
 i'm imagining farther down the timeline at what point do you get where um it's more expensive to
 run it i i think even yes councilmember armature i think uh the point you're making is one that
 most people come to that conclusion when they look at these these numbers however i think it's
 important to understand that anytime that we can operate the deck to produce a dollar of margin
 so if we take our variable cost of operating the deck which is the fuel cost and the variable
 operating cost for consumable chemicals and things like that if we can generate one dollar of positive
 income from that not counting the the debt that dollar then goes to pay that debt so while the
 net income numbers may be negative you have to remember that the net income includes the 18
 million dollars a year of debt payments so if we were not running the deck and let's just say
 we were making 10 million dollars of we netted 10 million dollars above our variable cost
 that would be 10 million dollars that would go towards paying the 18 million dollars of debt
 which means the net net the net income in that case would it be negative eight million dollars
 still better to run the deck even though the net income number looks like it's negative
 you're offsetting that you're making it less negative does that make sense to you yeah i
 i do understand that that argument um um what uh so what and i can show you
 specifically how much it based on our five-year forecast how much it was saved in this five year
 for rate payers yeah which is you know we're trying to we we are trying to run a business
 to minimize the negative net income from from that asset and keep rates as low as possible
 oh yeah and i i completely understand but just kind of as far as to go back to what you were
 saying about most people look at this you know and they asked this question i think most people
 would ask well when when do you you know do you anticipate of course maybe you don't you know
 wouldn't feel comfortable saying at this point but when you know how long do we imagine now the deck
 uh the deck running because being useful you know do we just keep it until all the debt has been
 paid off uh i think the you know the answer to that question is is based upon what the market
 how the market performs so you know we have an asset that we can dispatch into the market
 and remember you know as we think about the value we have to understand how the market works
 you know we we sell energy at a point and we buy energy at a different point and as long as the
 point that we're selling that energy from the deck is a positive number above our variable cost
 that's offsetting the cost of that debt and then that that's you know when we operate the deck and
 we try to figure out how many hours it's going to operate how much margin it's going to make for the
 year we're looking at those forward curves so uh in the five-year period although we are showing
 negative net income uh it is still offsetting much of that 18 million dollars of fixed cost debt that
 we have to pay so um i think where uh and we may need to just have a primer on this
 because the confusion comes in when you talk about variable costs and fixed costs because i mean i
 i'm with councilmember armature and that's that's sort of a rare rare thing sometimes we're sort of
 on different ends of the of the issues but when you look out here on this deck pro forma and you
 look at the deck net income of 17 million dollars that that's the net income 17 million in the whole
 negative and then you look at the debt service of 17 million so let's say you just shut the thing
 down all right you're still going to be paying 17 million dollars in debt service um so in the
 out years now if if there's some other calculation where well um this is because we're selling this
 we're buying this energy or this is the energy produced from us so a lot of the confusion comes
 in how ercot works with the selling of the you know the deck is selling out energy and we're
 buying energy and then it gets netted out at some other place in the ercot sphere so to speak um but
 if you just look at the pro forma i mean right she's sort of got a i mean that's a very she's
 she's right i mean you look at it if you had one more year out there that thing may be 18 million
 dollars in the hole and your debt service is only 17 so somewhere somebody's shipping in an extra
 million bucks so um above and beyond so that's something that it's a good it's a good point
 yes mayor and i agree it is confusing so i wanted to show you based on the the numbers in the budget
 for this five-year period this is what the performance is that we anticipate remember we
 said that the numbers for the deck are conservative because we do not have a year's worth of data and
 let me explain this chart and why it looks the way it does so the red lines represent the cost of fuel
 and the variable o and m costs so those are negative every year it costs us that we run the
 deck we got to pay for gas we got to pay variable o and m costs the black bars are what we receive
 from urcot the green bars are the net we call that gross margin but it's it's the net of the
 cost versus revenues excluding the debt right this does not include the debt okay that's what you
 are referring to as the variable cost correct right so over the five-year period that we're
 looking at here you can see that what we term the gross margin is 62 million dollars
 the debt without without that running it would cost ratepayers 87 million dollars
 so we we are saving ratepayers money by running it even though the net income
 is negative and and we can spend more time on this just to make to get it clarified but
 that's the way that the math works council member melzer yeah just you know staying with the really
 financial part of it what's the expected lifespan of the deck and versus the lifespan of the debt
 the debt is how many years is it that 20-year debt the life of the assets 35 okay so so
 theoretically at some point you go from these you know 15 i'm sorry 20 years of negatives to
 free and clear 15 years to try to make it up you've accumulated a whole lot of net negative
 positions and then maybe you make it up maybe you don't i don't know i don't know if you've
 re-looked at the whole pro forma to see if you like if you if you think it still kind of breaks even
 or well i know i have not uh council member i have not years at a time i don't have a i don't have
 a crystal ball that goes out 35 years somebody did hard enough to protect projects five or six
 years of energy prices let alone 35 so so that's a one scenario is you know that you you know might
 apply is at some point you start having positive numbers and you know maybe maybe we break even
 maybe we end up ahead i don't know uh and then the other question is uh you know uh is there any way
 that you would ever is there any other way that you would ever be able to avoid the debt service
 like and this could be a total fantasy question we're not even a year into operating it i recognize
 that but is is it you know if you're losing money on operating a car eventually you know you could
 sell it is there such a thing as selling the deck sure is i mean i don't know who would buy it if
 it's a money loser for that amount of time but i i just i just say for this purpose of this this
 discussion we're studying every option right now we have been for several months and um i think
 terry's put the the deck into about as good of explanation as we can put in we know that the
 numbers that were shown back in 15 16 are way different than this we get that we can't change
 it we didn't put them together but i i think that you know right now he's got an asset he's he's got
 to maximize to try to stem the losses on it and who knows at some point if the gas price has changed
 maybe the story looks different but we're going to continue looking at those options continuing
 continue monitoring the pro forma and we may very well be back to you with different options down
 the road yes i would just add that you know um one of the things that we're we're working on
 aggressively is what's called a hedge a hedge plan and that's an attempt to try to stabilize
 the revenues that we get from the deck as well as stabilize the cost of purchasing energy to serve
 our load and there are a number of options that are an outgrowth of stabilizing those costs and
 revenues things that we can explore as you've alluded to that we are evaluating and we'd be
 glad to talk to you about those options in closed session those are very commercially sensitive and
 competitive issues that we would not want to broadcast to the market understood oh sorry i'm
 just going to say you know the interest of preserving 10 minutes for us to have our closed sessions
 i'll give direction on the rate increase thing uh that uh i'm for not doing anything now but
 revisiting like every quarter i'm willing to pull the trigger but i want to see the whites of their
 eyes first yeah and that's a good so um how many more slides do you have we're complete unless you
 have questions so uh in if your question is dependent upon what kind of direction you give
 on the rate increase let's go ahead but uh and consider it but if if not if we could maybe get
 some direction on the rate increase portion those options uh so i'm going to leave it up to your
 discretion of what where that fits in if i can just ask my question then get the answer off
 offline um because it it ties together one y'all already said this is a five-year pro forma we're
 being very conservative with these numbers trying to give us the best possible picture
 i think part of what's driving the conversation that hasn't really been fully explained
 is deck expenditures third line from the bottom uh pretty flat but then deck revenue um drops
 off precipitously every year and we've talked about that a little bit but for the folks following
 along at home i don't think it's entirely clear why that part of the balance sheet is dropping
 off and we can an email is fine and then uh i'd like to ask the question in the way that i'm going
 to get asked it tomorrow and maybe even already have an email about it if that's the situation
 why aren't we just running the deck more and if there's a simple answer to that that's the way
 the question is going to be phrased to me is if our purchase power uh costs are going up why aren't
 we just running the desk the deck more and i even an email with a simple answer for that would be
 fine okay but i think that real quick the reason we're not running we run the deck only when
 dispatched by our cotton that's it that's the answer so when it's economical for us to run and
 they need us we run that's it and then in terms of the finance question i know he can answer real
 quick yeah this is the forward curve right now this is what the futures market is for electricity
 and natural gas this is what drives the dispatch hours at the deck hours of operation and the
 revenues and as you can see those lines are going down they're they're peaky because the only time
 that the deck is known to be what we call in the money where the the amount of money that we get
 paid for the energy versus the variable cost of operation is greater than the variable cost of
 operations in the summers there are other times of the year that the market will tell us to run
 ERCOT and the price signals but we have a downward sloping curve on forwards driven by the very large
 build out of renewable energy resources in the ERCOT market 67 percent more wind is expected to be
 online in the next three years and over 7 000 megawatts of solar is coming online in the
 next three years that's driven by production tax credits and investment tax credits which
 artificially reduce the cost of production they can actually sell power at a negative price
 because of the production tax credit so at times that we've seen this just recently we see prices
 at night that are negative so we are getting paid to take power that's the way the market works
 and that's driven by these production tax credits and that's what's driving this curve down
 precipitously and I don't know that you know when the deck was envisioned whether that was the view
 that the consultants had or that the folks at DME had but it is the reality of what we face today
 and so we're we're trying to make you aware of the facts as we see them today and trying to identify
 the problem because we can't solve a problem until we completely understand what it is
 okay and I think you you the question you had for offline was what now if you could because I'm not
 sure they they've answered oh they did answer that okay all right thank you okay so direction on the
 the options for the eca and status quotes out so option one let's say is the 1.5 increase this
 coming year with an increase and option two is no increase council member I would like to hold off
 on the increase for now and then get updated later because as you said the market is changing and
 I just I feel more comfortable having more information before making that decision
 council member Ryan I'd like to see it come back to us in another quarter or something like that
 because I've heard several times we don't have a full year's worth of data on the deck yet so
 it's not time to make that decision until we get that so you're saying no increase approach
 no increase right now but if it still warrants it you know in October November time frame
 you know bring that information back to us no increase now council member Meltzer
 okay yep council member Davis I'm fine with no increase now but I really I wouldn't want to go
 any further out than a quarter I just want to manage expectations that people don't think that
 we've waved a magic wand and gotten rid of a possible increase that we're still looking at
 as much as a three percent increase in future years based just on the data we have today
 so by not doing anything with the rate today we're maybe borrowing a little bit of trouble so
 a quarter out is fine for me and yes council member so I have a question about the supplementals
 about the FTEs for um deck is that dependent on this increase or no because they need some relief
 out there so is that already that we've baked that into that into this okay thanks and I'll
 go along with the sentiment of no increase given some additional history historical data
 but you know quarter to six months we need to come back and take another look at it and I
 just want to say thank you to staff thank you all for number one just putting the numbers together
 as they are not sugarcoating it not trying to sell something that's and this isn't about anybody
 on staff it's not this is just what we have and we've got to figure out the best way to utilize it
 and that can change over time based upon the market and things such as that but I really just
 appreciate the straightforward look right now and what are our options and and the impacts of those
 options because I think it just shows a degree of integrity and just trying to present to us what
 what's our situation and allow us to make the best informed decision that we can so I really
 do appreciate your hard work in that in that regard any other questions for this budget item
 got your direction so appreciate it we've got about five minutes yes go ahead so we put a we
 put a closed session on in case anybody had any questions about our renewable contracts it seems
 like that may be a wiser discussion to do beginning of October and come back to you it's up to you if
 you want to go in and see that but the idea was to explain to you how the market works with the
 renewables it may make more sense if you're discussing it along with the pro form in October
 yeah we can certainly we're happy to spend a few minutes and kind of show you what's happening out
 there it may make more sense than we're talking about a rate increase or whether to not increase
 the rate in October so it's up to you so we got two closed session scheduled the one you just
 mentioned then we have another one considering a building a building yeah now we can I said we're
 going to tag it on at the end looking at the agenda we basically have for all intents and purposes we
 have a couple of eminent domain items for individual consideration but then the if I'm
 not mistaken all the public hearings are these city initiated rezonings is that correct that's
 correct so what do you think is the time frame it would take to cover the two closed sessions and
 then I'm going to give the council an opportunity to decide y'all want to know no more than 30
 minutes okay so we can either do that now and have somebody go out and share that hey we might be a
 little bit late coming out or we can uh tag that on to the end of the meeting what's what's your
 pleasure we'll also have a closed session at the budget workshop that could address that which one
 dme item okay next Thursday we'll have a close session okay so if it are you talking about 30
 minutes for both work session and closed sessions or just the yeah I think I think the overview of
 the property item is maybe 15 minutes just take you through some basic deal points and get your
 feedback and then I think the dme item is just simply showing you the renewable contracts and
 when he talked when terry and david are talking about how renewables work in the market just
 making sure you understand that so that one we can use we can have a closed session on in
 next Thursday on the first week and so that means we got 15 minutes yeah if we I just say let's just
 sort of grind it out here and we don't have any large public hearing items that I believe are
 creating that have a lot of public input that doesn't mean that people aren't going to be here
 but and if somebody wouldn't mind stepping out there and if there's people there just letting
 them know that we might be a little bit late not not very late well now we'll convene the closed
 session at 5 no 6 37 p.m. we will consider the following items we're only going to do one which
 would be consultation with attorneys under texas government code section 551.071 and then
 deliberations regarding real property under texas government code section 551.072
 welcome everybody to this meeting of the dent city council on july the 23rd
 2019 it is 6 56 p.m. and again we apologize for being a little bit late we just had
 one of our agenda items go over our first item on the agenda is pledge of allegiance so if you
 stand with me if you're able to pledge allegiance to the us and the texas flag
 nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all
 honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one and indivisible
 moving on to our next agenda item is the consent agenda and just
 for the public we are pulling a consent agenda item i believe it's i
 at this time for not to be considered and we did not have any agenda items pulled
 for individual consideration council member ryan i move approval of the consent agenda
 with the exception of item i council member briggs i'll second we have a motion and a second
 let's vote on the board please motion carries six to zero is it too loud is my mic too loud
 out there y'all okay okay it feels like i'm just screaming at you uh okay we will then go to
 agenda item three which is items for individual consideration consideration of the use of eminent
 domain to condemn real property interests agenda item three a we have two under this agenda
 agenda item three three a is considered adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton determining
 the public use need and necessity of for the acquisition of fee simple title to the surface
 estate including a waiver of surface use to the mineral estate of an approximately 1.22 acre
 property track situated in the harem cisco survey good evening mayor and council i'm diana cody
 deputy director of capital projects real estate division i have two items before you tonight the
 first being an item to authorize the acquisition of land needed for the police department renovation
 project here's a site map showing the subject property approval of this item will authorize
 the city manager and the city attorney or their designees to acquire the necessary property
 interests by agreement including making all offers required by law and in the event agreement cannot
 be reached on a purchase price or terms will allow the city attorney's office to initiate eminent
 domain proceedings to acquire the property the subject property shown is located on mckinney
 street between railroad avenue and frame street and with the favorable motion the survey and
 legal description will also be displayed overhead okay um when do i need to call it somebody's gonna
 who's gonna read the okay who's uh councilman briggs so just to clarify this is the beginning
 of the full process yes ma'am okay so who's going to make a motion and then read the
 the caption councilmember breeze okay i read this whole whole thing i move that the city of denton
 after having made the offers required by state law use the power of eminent domain if needed
 to acquire the fee simple parcel of land generally located in the hyrum cisco survey abstract number
 1184 city and county of denton texas and also known as 612 east mckinney street denton county texas
 and being more particularly described in exhibit a to the ordinance now under consideration
 and on the screens overhead now being displayed for the audience which is for a valid public
 use necessary to provide for the expansion improvement and security of police and public
 safety dispatch operations including creation expansion and improvement of controlled access
 and a secured monitored area for public safety and welfare as well as to provide public parking
 pedestrian and automotive circulation and gel connectivity to serve the public and the citizens
 of the city of denton texas okay and we've had the necessary display of the survey and the reading
 of the motion councilmember davis second the motion we have a motion and a second for agenda
 item 3a let's vote on the board please motion carries six to zero agenda item 3b consider
 adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton determining the public use need and necessity for
 the acquisition of a fee simple title to the surface estate including a waiver of surface use
 related to the mineral estate of an approximate 2.202 acres of real property for right of way
 for road right of way excuse me generally located along the south side of hickory creek road east
 and along barrel strap road farm to market road 2499 well this one doesn't want to open just yet
 there we go
 the second item that i have for your consideration is an item to authorize the acquisition of land
 needed for the hickory creek road east 2181 to 2499 widening and improvements project
 approval of this item will also authorize the city manager and or the city attorney or their
 designees to acquire the necessary property interests by agreement including making all
 offers required by law and in the event agreement cannot be reached on a purchase price or terms
 will allow the city attorney's office to initiate eminent domain
 proceedings to acquire the property the subject property shown is located on hickory creek road
 between nautical lane and fm 2499 and with a favorable motion the survey legal description
 will also be displayed overhead okay do that councilmember amater can you say a little
 something about what is the current use of this property i see the you know the this this is the
 name of the property owner yes yes so what is it being used for now right now the property is
 vacant with the exception of um i believe there's a gas well on the property and we and we only need
 the the periphery yes ma'am okay chair would entertain a motion and movement would be
 oh need to read the caption or the agenda posting councilmember ryan thank you mayor i
 move that the city of denton after having made the offers required by law use the power of eminent
 domain if needed to acquire a fee simple title to the surface estate with waiver of surface to use
 related to the mineral estate of approximately 2.02 acres of real property for road right away
 generally located along the south side of hickory creek road east and along the west side of barrel
 strap road fm 2499 being situated in the very merchant survey abstract number 800 all in the
 city of denton county of denton texas and being particularly described in exhibit a to the ordinance
 now under consideration and on the screen is overhead now being displayed for the audience
 all of which for a valid public use necessary to provide for street widening and improvements to
 hickory creek road east a project to serve the public and the citizens of the city of denton
 having read the caption and the survey being displayed on the screen
 on the overhead we've satisfied the requirements statutory requirements and councilmember davis i
 second the motion so we have a motion and a second for agenda item 3b let's vote on the board please
 motion carries six to zero thank you very much moving on to our public hearing portion of the
 agenda our first public hearing is 4a 4a has been postponed indefinitely to allow staff
 a more time to analyze the area and so forth so we will not be hearing agenda item 4a
 4b has also been postponed to indefinitely to allow staff more time to to look at the area and
 to consider the request we move on to agenda item 4c which we will be hearing today 4c is hold a
 public hearing and reconsider hold a public and reconsider the june 11 2019 approval of an ordinance
 of the city of denton texas changing the zoning district and use classification from downtown
 commercial to the highway corridor zoning district and use classification defined under the 2019
 denton development plan okay so i have a question just i just read the caption as it was as it was
 proposed reconsider that that's sort of a a term for me help me understand that this isn't a motion
 to reconsider or anything like this was postponed and we're reconsidering or what's helped me
 understand that that language sure sure mayor members council ramagata development services
 this item was brought to you previous council meeting where the council motion included an
 acreage that was inaccurate the acreage should have been 3.57 rather than 8.32 so to correct that
 inaccuracy we're asking that the council reconsider the ordinance with the correct acreage as part of
 the city initiated rezoning okay okay we're all good procedurally mr city attorney on this and
 this has been read uh noticed correct it's been re-noticed for tonight okay all right just i saw
 the word reconsider so want to make sure i understood what we're doing here okay i'm going
 to go ahead and open the public hearing we'll have staff uh hear staff's presentation and then
 we'll take public comment if any and then we'll vote sounds good yep okay um as um introduced this
 is a reconsideration of an ordinance that was last heard by city council this is area 24 as part of
 the city initiated zoning changes as you can see area 24 is generally in this area here highlighted
 in the dark black line the proposed zoning is to go to hc highway corridor existing uses include
 a velero water burger and a student i'm sorry studio 610 hotel recommendation from the planning
 zoning commission was six zero to approve this zoning change request and that is all i have as
 far as uh this particular area staff um is also recommending approval and we'll stand for any
 questions so the 3.57 is the correct acreage that is correct representation okay yes all right any
 questions for staff seeing none i have opened the public hearing uh anybody wishing to speak
 on this item please come down and state your name and address your time will begin
 anybody wishing to speak one more time all right we'll close the public hearing uh any discussion
 seeing none council member melzer i move approval of this item council member ryan a second
 we have a motion and a second for agenda item four c let's vote on the board please
 motion carries six zero uh now ladies and gentlemen what we've got is on the next
 from agenda item 4d to 4v as in victor our city initiated proposed rezoning so the process that
 we've employed for that in the past has been to have staff make their presentation i'll call all
 the items all the agenda items and have staff come make their presentation and it is a public
 hearing so we'll open the public hearing and anybody wishing to come down and speak on any
 one of those agenda items and i do have some cards so we'll call the people who have filled out cards
 and uh they'd come down and speak and then if you come down and speak if you just be sure and let
 us know which one of the agenda items that you're speaking on that would be very very helpful for us
 so uh we'll go ahead and move forward so i will call with an abbreviated version of the agenda
 items 4d through 4v i believe that's how we did it last time as we just called them all
 all right yes sir all right 4d hold a public hearing considered option of an ordinance of the
 city of denton changing zone is a district use class classification from regional residential rcr
 to rccd agenda item 4e hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of
 denton texas changing the zoning district and use classification from downtown residential one
 to downtown residential two agenda item 4f hold a public hearing and consider adoption of an ordinance
 of the city of denton changing the zoning district and use classification from downtown residential
 two to downtown commercial general agenda item 4g hold a public hearing consider adoption of an
 ordinance of the city of denton texas changing the zoning district and use classification from
 neighborhood residential two nr2 to the residential one r1 zoning district agenda item 4h hold a public
 hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas changing the zoning district
 and use classification from regional center regional center commercial neighborhood to
 regional center commercial downtown agenda item 4i hold a public hearing and consider adoption
 of an ordinance of the city of denton texas changing the zoning district and use classification
 from regional center commercial neighborhood to general office agenda item 4j hold a public
 hearing consider adoption of an ordinance changing the zoning district and use classification from
 nr2 to nrmu 12 and then rcr1 there'll be some explanation of that i'm sure agenda item 4k hold
 a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton changing the zoning district
 from neighborhood residential mixed use to rcr1 which is a regional center residential
 agenda item 4l hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance changing the zoning
 district use classification from nr3 to suburban corridor agenda item 4m hold a public hearing
 consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas changing the zoning district and
 use classification from downtown general uh downtown commercial general to suburban corridor
 4n hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas changing
 the zoning district and use classification from neighborhood residential mixed use to the suburban
 corridor agenda item 4o hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city
 of denton texas changing the zoning district and use use classification from nrmu to suburban corridor
 agenda item 4p hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton
 changing the zoning from nr3 which is neighborhood residential 3 and neighborhood residential 6 to the
 suburban corridor agenda item 4q hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the
 city of denton texas changing the zoning district and use classification from neighborhood residential
 mixed use to the suburban corridor agenda item 4r hold a public hearing consider adoption of an
 ordinance of the city of denton changing the zoning district and use classification from nrmu to the
 suburban corridor agenda item 4s hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the
 city of denton texas changing the zoning district and use classification from employment center to
 the general office agenda item 4t hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the
 city of denton changing the zoning district and use classification from employment center industrial
 to the suburban corridor agenda item 4u hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance
 of the city of denton texas changing the zoning district and use classification from employment
 center industrial to the general office and then last agenda item 4v as in victor hold a public
 hearing consider adoption of the ordinance of the city of denton changing the zoning district
 and use classification from employment center industrial to the general office and i'm going
 to open the public hearing on all of those we'll hear staff presentation then we'll take public
 comment and we will vote on these individually correct yep i'm before we begin so i could say
 something mayor yes you sure can please note that public hearing item q uh zci19-0038a requires a
 super majority vote so when that motion is made keep that in mind okay let me note that
 okay
 all right all right well thank you mayor members of council um first area that we're going to
 discuss is going to start off with 4d and that is area nine uh this area here is generally located
 along san jacinto boulevard also along high 35d highway corridor uh existing uses within this area
 include the cow waste nursery uh pet boys auto parts bank of america general retail and other
 offices um as shown here what staff is recommending as part of the city initiated rezoning
 is to zone this property sc suburban corridor again as it is along san jacinto and high 35
 it serves not only um a transition buffer between the mr which is the golden triangle mall to the
 residents uh residential zoning districts to north it is also an appropriate zoning district just for
 the fact that um it is um limited as far as height in that it is 55 feet uh versus what it would
 transition to um to mr which is 100 feet the neighborhood did hold a meeting we we did attend
 a neighborhood meeting the piney creek neighborhood which is this neighborhood shown here in brown
 at that meeting there were approximately 20 people in attendance and of those 20 people generally
 they were all in approval of the proposed rezoning of sc as of this afternoon there were no
 public hearing notices received there is 25 and 26 25 is on the i-35 quarter closer between bernard
 and avenue c 26 is further north it is the area that encompasses the presbyterian hospital
 along uh within this area that is there are a number of uses from general retail to hospital
 services to medical and office clinics administrative uh offices and others ron real quick yes when when
 you've moved from area 9 to area 25 and 26 that means we've gone from agenda item d to e is that
 correct just so that is that right that is correct okay so each time we have a different area we're
 moving down the agenda correct um so if possible if you've got just whenever we change if we could
 just say which agenda item it is just so we can all can have some clarification on is that okay
 that's perfect i can do that thank you very much areas 25 is for e areas 26 is for f okay
 staff is recommending that these um areas 25 26 be zoned um as part of the city initiative zoning
 as mr mixed use regional mixed use regional is a future land use as far as the area it calls out
 for regional mixed use in the area along 26 and 25 the proximity to the razor range and the
 presbyterian hospital and again unt makes it suitable for a mr zoning district again it's
 primarily on i 35 mr does allow a height a maximum height of 100 feet which in staff's opinion is
 suitable for the area hospital services medical clinic restaurants and drive-through facilities
 are all permitted by right in the mr a property owner has submitted a request that this that his
 property in particular be zone mr and his property is within area 25 and again staff received one
 response in favor of area 25 councilmember briggs i believe has a request to speak yeah i just have
 a question on process um so because i'm getting a little confused with ever with everything i know
 that individuals are here to speak are they going to just speak after all of these presentations
 are made and then we'll have to go back and figure out which one they're talking about or
 and then and then we'll vote i'm just trying to understand how the process is going to go and
 maybe also to help help them understand what's going on that's how i think it was done the first
 time around that doesn't mean we're necessarily held to that but are you proposing anything
 in particular well the first time i don't think there were many individuals here to speak on items
 and so i just wanted to make sure that i knew exactly what item they were speaking on when
 they come up and if it was going to be different than sure okay so i do have blue cards that do
 show the agenda items that they're wishing to speak on so what we can do on the blue cards
 is um to just go ahead and stop at that agenda item and just let them speak the only concern i
 have is not concerned but observation is that if and you don't have to fill out a blue card let me
 make sure i make that very clear you don't have to fill out a blue card to speak at the public
 at the public hearing so what we may do if if you feel more comfortable with that is we'll just
 after each agenda item we'll just ask if there's somebody wishing to speak we'll come down and
 and let them speak and we'll just move forward because we still are doing it abbreviated in a
 sense so i don't think that's going to be that's not going to be difficult so if we could stop right
 here because we've gone through agenda items 4d 4e and 4f i don't have any blue cards signed up
 for those but if there's someone here that wants to speak to those particular items 4d 4e
 or 4f please come down and you can state your name and address and your time will begin
 council member armatore you had a question yeah just a procedural question and so um and so
 deliberation we can ask questions of the speakers and discuss the issue as after
 members of the public speak on each issue sure i mean sure you're talking about asking staff
 clarification questions clarification staff and members of the public of course it's a public
 hearing okay yes absolutely um so anybody on d e or f of agenda item 4d 4e or 4f okay
 uh do i'm just going to leave the public hearing open on those i guess yeah okay all right so we're
 on to four oh council member armatuer do you have it or did you just not roll council member melton
 i don't know why it doesn't take you off uh let me just if you wouldn't object i think it'd just be
 easier to track if we did it kind of crank through the votes and all that as well as the items come
 up you know because first of all the votes might be different on some of the items we have some
 different inputs and you know what i'm saying in other words uh you're saying go ahead vote on 4d
 e and f yeah and then and then going forward you know like the normal way i don't i don't have any
 i mean i don't have any issue with that okay so uh then i will need to since we didn't have anybody
 wishing to speak on 4d e and f i will now close the public hearings on agenda items 4d e 4d 4e
 and 4f so we'll just go ahead and take some votes on those uh so uh chair would entertain a motion
 for 4d which is hold a public hearing rezone rcr1 to rccd council member melzer yeah i i move
 approval on do we have to do we have to do them individually yes so i move approval of item 4d
 all right uh council member briggs second let's have a vote on the board please
 okay 4d passes six zero uh we will now uh we've closed the public hearing for agenda item 4e
 council member melzer yeah and i'll move approval on item e as well
 okay we had a motion to approve do we have a second
 council member davis second the motion all right we have a motion to second on 4e let's
 vote on the board please agenda item 4f change the hold the public hearing consider adoption
 for the city of denton change the zoning district from downtown residential 2 to dcg
 council member melzer yeah and i'll move approval on f
 all right council member davis i'll second that all right we have motion to second let's vote on 4f
 okay
 motion carries six zero so in essence we're just going to do each one of these individually
 yeah that's fine yeah okay agenda item four uh 4g uh we've called that item already so
 if you'll proceed with your presentation sure area 27 which is item 4d is the ranch estate
 neighborhood it's located north of university 380 west of marshall comprises approximately 147.49
 acres contains 65 parcels the existing use primarily single-family dwellings most of the
 homes were built in the mid-60s through the 70s average lot size if we took all of the 65 parcels
 it's possibly 2.27 acres the majority of those 37 of those are between two to three acres or more
 staff is recommending that the proposed zoning or the zoning that is
 requested is r1 residential one we held or the neighborhood did hold a neighborhood meeting on
 may 30th of this year there were possibly 30 to 40 people attending that meeting and again generally
 they were in approval of the proposed r1 staff as of this afternoon has received four responses
 in favor and one in opposition that one in opposition is outlined here on this slide
 shown in red dashed property there is owned by one individual the planning zoning commission
 recommended approval 60 again for this property i'm sorry for this area to be zoned r1 okay all
 right we've already opened the public hearing so i do have some cards wishing to speak but anyone
 who didn't fill out a card on agenda item 4g is certainly welcome to come down to speak but
 our first card is jim perot if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin
 my name is jim perot i live at 3801 hampton and that's at the corner of marshall and hampton
 my family and i have lived there for 46 years um mr mayor and council we appreciate the time and
 effort that you put into this and and i know how hard you work at it but i also want to commend
 ron and the planning and zoning folks that really took a great amount of time visiting with us and
 listening to our concerns um there are probably 15 or 20 uh of ranch estates here tonight
 all except for the one uh is in favor of going to residential one we've uh had families that have
 lived out there for decades and their children are coming back to to live again it's one of the few
 places in denton that you can drive down the street and you guys you see kids riding horses
 coming down the down ranch estates and that's fun um we hope that you're able to uh uh allow us to
 go to the r1 which is a more restrictive it allows it requires um a smaller uh number of
 residences on a on a area and we appreciate your consideration and we're in favor of it thank you
 thank you mr bro next speaker will be ann smith
 state your name and address your town begin
 okay so my name is ann smith and i live at 2013 cindy lane and i've lived there 26 years um was
 that it name address okay so i ditto what jim said uh for the past two years our neighbors and
 that's really the key here our neighbors have been attending uh denton planning and zoning meetings
 the 2030 zoning meetings that you had at denia park and uh they're different places we as a
 neighborhood have educated ourselves on uh planning and zoning in denton we do appreciate the time that
 planning and zoning puts into all of the requests that they have in this city as you as we grow so
 we are very appreciative of that in may ron came to the pros house and it was a ron i think we had
 50 people there actually but it was a very very good meeting a lot of people got to ask questions
 and um then planning and zoning met they voted six to zero and we're behind it 100 we want to
 stay the way we are uh the way we've been for over 50 years thank you thank you this is a that's all
 the blue cards i have but this is a public hearing anybody else wishing to speak please come down
 state your name and address and your time will begin anybody wishing to speak on agenda item 4g
 yes yes come on down and tell us your name and address
 i'm one of the elder people here i'd like to just remind everybody what branches states
 what's all what's your name and address i'm sorry and i'm sandy mcdonald west from ranches states
 marshall road thank you and i am really pleased to be here tonight and especially to meet you
 because i i've been talking and looking about you and i have never met you before chris so thank
 you nice to meet you good to meet you uh i did want to remind you about ranches states i moved
 here in 1970 with five children and four horses into ranches states and uh at that time we were
 under bob nichols covenant that said nobody's garage door could open out on the street and every
 stable had to be wooden and no middle buildings okay and we also had our own uh water company at
 that time which was artesian wells which was very soft when you got into the shower and very nice
 and then we were annexed to the city and just prior to the annexation there were seven mobile
 homes that surrounded my home all of a sudden in the middle of the night and of course uh tom
 pouts was one of my neighbors and he along with our attorneys were able to remove those mobile homes
 because they weren't allowed under the city ordinance uh we did go on city water and city
 sewer which is great and uh before we knew it all of a sudden metal buildings were being built up in
 ranches states which is fine because you know we're all neighbors there and so at this time i'd like
 to say that ranches states has been surrounded by different things in different commercial ways
 and we kind of wonder if we're going to be able to exist and we would hope that you would support us
 in this residential endeavor because i've lived there for a long time and so have several of my
 neighbors and so are the young people that are moving in and i thank you very very much thank
 you i believe there's a couple of questions uh possibly for you ma'am council member armater we
 might have a couple questions oh you don't need well for me it's more of a comment you don't need
 i'm going to be 90 next year so just bear with me please sure wow um yeah no i just i just had a
 comment um and uh just to you know thank you um and people in the neighborhood for um representing
 your neighborhood uh it's i really like this um this zoning change it's important to me
 you know i've only lived in denton since 2002 but i've seen so much change since then i remember when
 razor ranch really was a ranch and it's so nice to have a place that is
 named after a ranch that's going to stay like that and not just be named after what it used to be
 so i you know i know that growth growth happens and um we've got our our 2030 plan which talks
 about as i understand it you know preserving our our rural areas uh and when we have growth trying
 to really really concentrate and to have more infill in the middle it's a uh a very sensible
 approach to growth for me and so as i as i worry about over development in our rural areas it gives
 me just a lot of pleasure to you know to vote to to preserve this this area as rural thank you
 see no more requests to speak so thank you very much i appreciate it just on the little side when
 is 288 going to go around we'll address that uh at some near future time all right this is a public
 hearing anybody else wishing to speak on agenda item 4g come down and state your name and address
 and your time will begin anybody else wishing to speak we'll close the public hearing on agenda item
 4g councilmember davis thank y'all so much for being here i know you've been working on this a
 long time glad to see you all out i move adoption of the ordinance councilmember armater i second
 before before we vote i certainly not only want to thank the residents for coming out tonight but i
 know that over many years the concerns that you have brought to the city have been very helpful
 some concerns have probably saved lives unfortunately they came about because of unfortunate
 accidents out on 380 so i appreciate your involvement and your participation in our
 community because i think that area in your neighborhood and that stretch of road quite
 frankly is safer from for everybody because of your involvement in the community so thank you
 all so much for that so we uh we have a motion in a second let's vote on the board please
 uh motion carries six zero
 i would say no emotional outburst but saying that to ann smith i don't think i
 i'm not going to do that okay we're going to move on to agenda item h and i'm just going to recall
 these items so just real quickly hold the public hearing consider adoption uh zoning change from
 rcc in to uh highway tour highway corridor mayor if um if i can um make a suggestion i'm going to
 cover uh h i j and k in my presentation um i know you already opened it up that's okay sure and then
 we'll just call people who want to speak on that because i don't have any cards for those but there
 may be some people who want to speak on those yes so we'll just take them so it'll be h i j and k
 correct okay and these are areas 28 29 we're skipping 30 because that was postponed 31 and 32
 this area generally is located along i-35 the i-35 corridor loop 288 and the highway 77 corridor
 existing uses range from rv centers to automotive fuel sales which are gas stations travel plazas
 self-storage office general retail undeveloped general agriculture and and others the area that
 we are looking at again areas 28 29 31 and 32 we are proposing hc highway corridor along area 28
 which is along i-35 as you see in this general vicinity 29 we are proposing a go general office
 zoning as well as 31 to north and 32 go is primarily office but has light industrial uses
 associated with that zoning district wholesale facilities warehouses self-storage are all
 permitted by right in the go and it's consistent with our future land use map and there are large
 tract large undeveloped land that the planning department feels would benefit from a go zoning
 district staff has received one response in favor and that is for area 28 that concludes my
 presentations for those four items all right and i've opened the public hearing for agenda items for
 h i j and k is there anybody here wishing to speak on agenda items h i j or k come down and
 state your name and address your time will begin anybody wishing to speak on those agenda items for
 h 4i 4j or 4k one more time all right seeing none then i will close the public hearings on agenda
 items 4h agenda items 4i agenda items 4j and agenda items 4k and we will take those up votes up one
 agenda item at a time council member ryan with approval of item 4h all right we have a motion
 council member davis second the motion we have a motion and second for 4h let's vote on the board
 please motion carries six zero agenda item 4i do we have a motion for 4i council member ryan
 with approval of item 4i we have a motion on 4i do we have a second council member davis
 i'll second the motion let's vote on agenda item 4i please
 motion carries six zero agenda item 4j
 chair would entertain action on 4j council member ryan move approval council member armitter second
 we have a motion and second for agenda item 4j let's vote please say that one more time
 oh okay there we go okay yes
 agenda item 4j passes six zero agenda item 4k chair would entertain a motion on agenda item 4k
 council member ryan move approval we have a motion do we have a second
 council member davis i'll second the motion we have a motion and a second for
 agenda item 4k let's vote on the board please
 motion carries six zero uh now ron just to give you a heads up the only other blue cards we have
 are 4p so i don't know are you taking these in a sort of a uh aggregated presentation and which
 ones are you doing so yes uh the next one would be um for l and m okay and then i'm going to jump
 into 4n 4o and 4r and then we'll get into 4p and 4q separately okay so you're going to do how many
 at this this presentation right now so the next one is going to be for l and for m okay all right
 let's move forward on that okay for l and 4m is areas 33 and 34 they are primarily located along
 the us 380 corridor university drive one property is on primrose road the others are located along
 boliver and locus the existing use within the primrose property is a nature's remedy and an
 insurance office those that are located on boliver elm and locus range from wall greens to personal
 services in the area office and a restaurant or restaurants staff is proposing that these
 areas 33 and 34 be zoned sc suburban corridor as you can see from the map here the majority
 of the area along this corridor is currently sc sc again suitable for areas within a suburban
 corridor it is consistent with our future land use map again more commercial and vehicle related
 uses are permitted in the sc particularly we looked at 12 13 primrose it is currently zoned
 in r3 and when it transitions in october it will be r3 and this image here shows the property
 as being a commercial use not obviously permitted within the r3 r3 is primarily residential so
 one of the reasons why we're doing this tonight is to correct this zoning and we are again proposing
 that this property specifically 12 13 primrose be zoned to sc staff has received one response in
 favor for area 33 and another response in favor for area 34 and that's not the end of my presentation
 staff for any questions okay so 33 is uh 4l and 34 is 4m is that right or m and m sorry is that
 correct l and m l and m okay council member briggs so on um the primrose the the land behind it
 looked vacant from the picture is that also going to be um sc no ma'am that is um it looks like from
 this map as the transition chart um is um going to transition to it will be an m and mixed use
 neighborhood okay that vacant piece of property and i think that uh the street that does not
 show here i believe this is hector okay yes and on the at 34 is it both of those areas with that
 are outlined in black that we're talking about that's correct okay and the one that is divided
 up smaller is is is there any residential in this area no they're already primarily um non-residential
 personal services office wall greens is one of those parcels um again along i-30 i'm sorry 380
 okay thank you yes council member davis i just i want to avoid any confusion on this item i will be
 abstaining from item l our home was within 500 feet of this subject property the way that we've
 done this i haven't had an opportunity to get your attention and and leave the room because i don't
 want to miss other votes but i will be recusing from item l all right okay all right so um have
 you uh you've concluded your presentation that is correct all right and we've gotten all the
 requests to speak so i would probably say we're going to take up l is the is the next vote so
 thank you and we'll get all the paperwork for that okay so this is a public hearing i'm going
 to just open it again just so i'll make sure i cover all the bases open the public hearing
 for agenda item 4l and 4m anybody else anybody wishing to speak on agenda items 4l or 4m
 anybody wishing to speak
 okay seeing no movement we will close the public hearing so we'll take up agenda item 4l
 chair would entertain uh council member ryan i move approval we have a motion uh council member
 melzer second we have a motion and a second for agenda item 4l let's vote on the board please
 uh
 motion carries five to zero
 if somebody could retrieve council member davis he there he's there all right council member uh
 excuse me council member agenda item 4m council member briggs i move to approve
 we have a motion do we have a second council member ryan no second we have a motion and a
 second uh let's vote on the board please for agenda item 4m motion carries five zero oh six
 zero excuse me yes thank you motion carries six zero for agenda item 4m all right and the next
 agenda items you'll be taking up we will take um taking up for n 4o and 4r all right so we're
 going to come back to p and q correct okay for n 4o and 4r are areas 35 36 and 39 those areas are
 shown on this map here along university drive as well as loop 288 the existing uses within these
 areas consist of commercial land undeveloped an auto fuel sales multi-family dwelling general retail
 equipment sales and rental adult and child care as well as professional offices as part of area 39
 staff is proposing a zone change to an sc suburban corridor zoning district as you can tell from
 again the map the subject areas are located within us 380 university drive it is consistent with the
 future line use map that being the suburban corridor zoning district the uses that you see
 here listed medical clinic through self-storage all permitted by right under the sc those uses
 again would be suitable for the areas again along us 380 and loop 288 just a side note any development
 that is multi-family would require a specific use permit as of this afternoon staff has not received
 any notice of a response to the notices that were sent out as part of these three areas
 that concludes your presentation that is all right we'll open the public hearing for agenda item 4n
 open the public hearing for agenda item 4o and open the public hearing for agenda item 4r anybody
 wishing to speak on 4n 4o or 4r anybody wishing to speak if not i will close the public hearing for
 agenda item 4n 4o and 4r we will take up those agenda items individually for a vote so agenda
 item 4n chair would entertain a motion council member ryan move approval council member davis
 second the motion we will now vote on agenda item 4n
 motion carries for uh motion carries for agenda item 4n carries six zero agenda item 4o
 chair would entertain a motion council member ryan move approval council member davis
 second the motion we have a motion and second for agenda item 4o let's vote on the board please
 okay
 motion carries six zero for agenda item 4o and for agenda item 4r
 chair would entertain a motion council member ryan move approval council member davis second
 the motion we have a motion to second for agenda item 4r let's vote on the board please
 agenda item 4r is approved six zero now ron which ones are you taking up now it would be 4p okay so
 we're going to take these individually because we've got several cards for 4p and then we have a
 super majority requirement of four okay we anticipate that yes okay fantastic so next area
 is our next item is 4p which is area 37 the area that we're referring to is located just south of
 loop 288 and east of locust shown here outlining yellow the area that was originally considered
 involved the whole area here i just wanted to make that clear what staff is recommending moving
 forward it would only consist of the parcel to the north and it does not include the asbury united
 methodist church the existing use on the property that is consisting of 46.43 acres is undeveloped
 general retail staff is considering this primarily for several reasons the area has three zoning
 districts within one parcel we're trying to find a suitable zoning for this area the property owner
 has requested that the area again the area that's in the art which is currently r6 which is currently
 r3 b zone to sc the area consists of also some electrical and flood plains areas within the
 subject parcel as you can see that the electrical easement extends north south along the eastern
 boundary as well as east west along the southern boundary of said parcel and there's also a flood
 plane that extends through the parcel again as mentioned the proposed city initiated zoning
 district would be to go to sc community mixed use is the future land use designation for the area
 and if i were to pan out a little bit you can see that sc is also to the north of the loop
 to the north west is the hills of denton and part of their planned development is that this area be
 developed with commercial and there is a pd to the west of locust and again this area here part of
 the pd is to be developed as commercial we did have a neighborhood meeting on june 25th at that
 meeting the church property owners did attend that meeting and one of the reasons why they are not
 included in this city initiative rezoning after hearing from them is that they are requesting
 that they not be part and we after further consideration are not requesting that they are
 the planning zoning commission with this condition that they not include the church property just the
 property to the north which is again 46.43 recommended 43 approval of sc that concludes my
 presentation i'll stand for any questions well that kind of answers my question um so the church
 asked to be removed from the from the change and that's why planning and zoning divided it up
 between north and south correct they they they chose to part of their recommendation was to only
 include the area that you see here minus the area that's obviously in yellow and they voted 43
 to go to sc recommended sorry recommended 43 to go sc and those that opposed wanted to keep it
 residential those that oppose that that you have in your packet did not want to see sc in the area
 okay thank you
 okay just for clarification sir when you council member briggs when you asked and those that opposed
 they just wanted to see residential in the area were you talking about the pnz members or were
 you talking about the response cards pnz members okay when you answered i think you were talking
 about response cards so i apologize yes so those that were the planning zoning commission
 that opposed did not want to see sc i'm not sure if they wanted residential but they did not want
 to see sc okay all right thank you for that no thank you yes councillor melzer on reflection
 if you've got blue cards oh i'll hear the public first and then oh okay all right sure um well so
 okay sure go ahead ron on the the church property was that split into one of the other items
 for here that are here tonight no no because i remember you talking with our legal staff about
 how to handle that right we we are we're not pursuing that as a separate item we're just
 going forward with the property to the north okay so their zoning would stay what r2 well
 nr2 with transitions to r2 okay so councillor melzer so when we hear from the public i'll close
 the public hearing so you're okay with your question after the public hearing is closed okay
 okay thank you all right i'm going to just go ahead and say it again open the public
 hearing on agenda item 4p we have several cards and then of course this is a public hearing and
 anybody can speak first card is uh mr dalton allen if you'll come down state your name and address
 your time will begin good evening my name is dalton allen i live at 150 hobson lane in denton
 and i'm speaking for this uh ordinance i'll back up a little bit and uh talk about what the owners
 have done they talked about the possibility of this development at long ago dme wanted a
 large uh well they wanted a an easement around and that easement is 110 foot wide to give
 lots of green area between this development and the homes there's not apartments that are going
 to be there as a transition piece it's clean clear grass and of course you have utility poles
 large ones but there won't be people looking down in your kitchen window
 that discussion was specifically for the future development of this this property and uh and the
 easement was granted i can say and ron mentioned that there is a floodplain here
 it makes it a whole lot easier to try to develop this piece when you're dealing
 with larger pieces of real estate versus individual homes streets and all that
 this sz zoning in this area actually uh gives there's commercial to the northwest
 whenever it's ever developed there's houses being built across the street right now
 about 80 acres worth another 40 something acres was built uh just across the 288 the whole area
 is beginning to move pretty quickly it won't be long before this parcel can put in some uh some
 less intrusive area uh businesses retail other things for uh the citizens that are around there
 thank you very much real quick question dalton is the easement on the east side of that property
 line that backs up to the residential that i'm seeing there is that where that easement is
 well it comes all the way down the east side and then you see where that line goes across
 the middle that's actually a little drainage area that's part of the floodplain but the easement
 goes across that as well okay and originally there was a 10 foot easement there we've added
 110 foot to it so there's really 120 foot of easement in that location on the east side
 okay all right thank you all right the next speaker is vince is it hazler yes sir if you'll
 come down state your name and address your time will begin my name is vince hazler i'm at 4946
 north locus street and i'm speaking on behalf of the property owners of this tract which is 4p
 and the the owners are in favor of the recommendation that it be changed to suburban
 corridor we think this would be in the best interest of future use for the property we
 do feel it provides an opportunity for businesses to come in and serve serve the community as the
 north side of denton grows and we don't we don't see it be in the bible to put residential there
 with all the other considerations and interferences so we appreciate the opportunity to speak and we
 appreciate your consideration okay thank you um the next speakers will be philip i can't um it's
 121 something like phil i can't yeah i'm sorry i couldn't no no that's okay if you could just
 yeah state your name and address your time again thank you apologize for that no quite
 understand my writing is not very legible uh my name is philip paolino i live at 121 middle lane
 that's uh just on the other side of hercules for what we're talking about and i'm speaking in
 opposition of the zoning change and i think i'm starting with i think as we've heard from the
 last two speakers the assumption that if this change is made that it will begin the process
 which will almost certainly in a few years lead to development of the area and i think that before
 we get to that point there are a couple concerns uh that i think as a resident in an adjacent
 neighborhood has about this development first mentioned about the floodplain okay and so uh
 the floodplain extends through the southern part of he's going to put the map up yeah if you get
 that slide up appreciate okay so as you can see the floodplain extends through the southern part
 of the area that we're considering and continues on into the eastern edge of my neighborhood
 actually the floodplain defined by the map actually looks like it covers the alleyway behind the homes
 on shadow trail so i think one concern is that you know with development there's going to be
 pavement in that northern area and so during a significant rainstorm you'd see much greater
 flow toward the floodplain under the bridge on hercules and into the continuation of floodplain
 that runs along the edge in the neighborhood and so i think one thing that the city needs to make
 sure it considers and can make a commitment to is that you know that the result of any development
 is not going to produce any expansion to the floodplain is not going to lead to any increase
 of the risk of flooding in either my neighborhood or the neighborhood to the east of that floodplain
 and so i think you know i hope that in considering this the city is prepared to make a commitment to
 these neighborhoods that there will be no increased risk of flooding the second aspect is that it's
 again you can see much of the entrance to the development would come from locust street and
 you know while the staff analysis described locust street as a primary arterial road i think
 it might better be described as a two-lane farm road with no shoulder no sidewalks
 and concern is that currently traffic on locust i think is fine this part you know with the
 development of ever's way on the west side of locust would be another 150 so let's say about 250
 cars and it'll still probably be fine it's maybe a little more congestion but if we start talking
 about development depending on how it's developed and the retail that moves in there there's going
 to be significant increase in traffic on locust so as sort of comparison i looked at the property
 manager's website for the stone hill center which about 37 acre development with 950 parking spaces
 so this is 46 acres you know so let's say 750 to 1000 parking spots just to throw out a number
 okay so that's going to be a significant increase in traffic on locust and i think it would be wise
 for the city to consider postponing development until locust is actually expanded to a four-lane
 road along the lines of what we see on north elm going out to 288 what we see on sherman drive
 going out to 288 okay finally there was some discussion at the planning and zoning that
 there's not much up there in terms of retail and this would fulfill a need and again that's
 something i think that it would be wise and prudent to hold off on because you know at sherman there
 is sherman crossing which is developing retail and we'll know in about a year or two whether
 there is that need and so rather than rushing ahead let's just kind of postpone and wait and see
 whether there really is a need and that these other issues can be addressed thank you very much
 thank you very much i appreciate that okay another card is jacklyn banfield if you'll
 come down state your name and address your time will begin
 my name is jacklyn banfield i live at 305 meadow lane i am recently moved to denton
 i'm a retired librarian been here two years i am single the houses on hercules
 their garages back up to hercules and i am concerned about some of the things that possibly could
 become retail in that area because once you put it in that zoning it can become a lot of things
 that we may not be interested in having so i'm concerned about that all of the neighbors on
 meadow lane their garage is back up to hercules i also had a question about if there was any
 discussion so far if there would be any entrance or exit off of hercules this may be too early to
 know that but i didn't know if maybe they'd already decided that if this happened we would
 be exiting and entering off of locust i was just curious we'll have staff address that when
 we can when he comes back up yeah any questions for the speaker thank you very much all right
 we've got some white cards which are indicative that they do not wish to speak so i'm going to
 read those into the record and if i've made a mistake please uh just get my attention we'll
 correct it melvin hazler of 4500 north locust street is in support marty mccutchen 1217 green
 briar is in support shirley hazler is in support at 1200 cowling road and sanger
 jb hazler jr 1200 cowling roads and sanger is in support those are all the cards that i have but
 this is a public hearing so anybody wishing to speak on this agenda item which is 4p please come
 down state your name and address and your time will begin anybody else wishing to speak
 okay we will now close the public hearing on agenda item 4p council member melser
 oh i'm sorry city attorney has something just uh being cautious because these are self-initiated
 zone uh rezonings by that the city is actually performing so there's two different statutory
 provisions i'm looking at when it comes to opposition one is people who live within 200 feet
 and then those who live within the area to be um rezoned and so i just wanted to ask ron there
 were a couple of speakers who opposed this rezoning do any of those constitute 20 percent
 if either outside the property or okay they do not and just a simple majority is needed to pass
 the item yeah council member melser okay kind of initial reaction is it is a logical place for
 neighborhood scale retail i was initially going to ask about whether there was a transition
 to the residential area just to the east and uh mistral and i've addressed that pretty well
 but i would like to hear anything you'd have to add ron uh related to drainage and entrances off
 of locust sure um yeah that that was something that was obviously mentioned by the previous
 speakers drainage something that will be uh part of the development review process we know that
 there is floodplain in the area um my understanding from just talking briefly to the property owners
 uh when they looked at this before a detention pond will be required along the southern uh portion
 of the property generally in this location here and as you all know as part of any development
 if there is any additional increase in drainage flow that would have to be mitigated um on site
 and not impact any adjacent property so that would be something that the development review
 process would handle uh in regards to locusts and traffic increases yeah and i'm sorry i mean
 entrance is an exit uh as was asked by the member of the public okay which goes off of hercules but
 look off you can address in general sure um as as far as traffic and then access and ingress and
 egress um again part of the development review process we know that the fire department will
 require multiple access to this site um my assumption this is just assumption that there
 will be if there is a possibility to put in an access on hercules to provide that um additional
 access to the site in case of an emergency and that's just my assumption but again that will be
 fully vetted through the development review process councilman breaks could you um go over
 the things if it were to get rezoned to sc what kind of things could just go in there um without
 any kind of um other public hearing to address some concerns that we heard earlier
 so go ahead so here here is a list i just selected not this does not cover the entire
 list of uses um so you can see where actually the p means it's permitted anything with a p plus
 requires a u specific standard uh per the 2019 um development code so looking at this i went down
 the list uh hospital services uh medical office would be permitted with u specific standards
 um restaurants would be permitted restaurants would drive through as well office
 building materials and supply stores with specific use permit general retail hotel um
 food processing um and there's there's the definition of that uh exactly what that is
 there's specific standards related to that self storage and warehouses with a specific use permit
 okay some of those i i could see going there and some of them i have a pretty big concern
 about going in with um neighborhoods surrounding so closely so um and i guess my next question
 would be so if if this didn't already go through if the land sold or if it was going to be developed
 it would be the follow the regular process and then would they know more specifically what that
 use would be if it came if say the applicant or the property owner brought this forward
 i don't know if they would know that obviously one of the things that we would look at as you
 as well as the council will look at is the highest and best use under each zoning district and again
 i just shared with you some of those uh uses um some of them make sense and some of them may not
 but um you have to identify a zoning district to start that process right because i don't disagree
 that you know commercial would be good for some for some of these things that if it would benefit
 the neighborhood you know per se but um having a food processing and there are maybe a bar that
 you know is going to cause um a lot of traffic and so there's some things in there i would not feel
 comfortable with and so just an overall complete zoning is where i'm i'm having an issue right and
 and i don't know if this goes back to councilman um melter's question related to a transition and
 one thing that we obviously this is one parcel so we would have to identify one zoning district we
 didn't want to split parcels to provide another zoning district we felt comfortable with an sc
 when i say we staff because of the floodplain along the southern portion and then the easement
 the 120 plus easement along the eastern boundary would create that buffer again that was a
 consideration that we had when we decided to move forward with an sc council member davis
 can you go back to the slide you were just on and either zoom in there or maybe like our exhibit six
 if you could zoom in either one just if you could if it's possible make it a little bit larger
 if if not that's fine tell me where i need to go well i'm not sure now that it's in the
 powerpoint window i'm not sure it's really if you just scroll up a little bit
 so i'm looking at i'm thinking through some of the objections i've heard so far tonight
 and i'm thinking through the electric easement which i think we heard or was in the staff analysis
 100 100 feet and uh and there's no road to access on the eastern edge and then we've got the the
 electric the the transmission lines continue on that purple that easement continues alongside
 the church property there that's not subject to what we're talking about tonight correct so
 between that and the detention pond that's likely to be required there's not going to be any
 entrance or exit to hercules lane there's not going to be any retail backing up to hercules lane
 and then if you scroll back up a little bit i'm looking at that corner and thinking about of
 course locust is not completely under our control and the frontage road and the on ramp there i'm
 thinking about where entrances and exits will be allowed by text dot um i mean what's staff's
 analysis of the of the impact of we heard about entrance and exits are these neighbors going to
 even notice the entrance and exits i mean are all are all the likely egress and ingress points
 going to be closer to that further from the neighborhood and closer to that hard corner
 at locust and loop 288 i don't have an answer to that unfortunately that again it would be
 done through the development process all we're looking for tonight is the zoning and what uses
 would be permitted by right sup or not permitted has the neighborhood other than housing which
 doesn't seem economically viable on this parcel has the neighborhood expressed um they offered
 any other ideas for what they would like to see in that area they just don't want it to be certain
 kinds of commercial i think they if if i were to summarize it would be to keep it residential
 that's just a general summarization thank you can you can you speak to the mix of residences
 in the residential area is it um uh you know predominantly single family mixed single
 multi-family town homes from what i can gather most of this is single family single family there
 are multi-family to the west on the other side of locusts but you have single family to the south
 to the east and to the north as well to a certain degree and and so and suburban corridor
 um it would allow for residences but only am i right only multi-family and that's with a
 specific use correct yeah uh whereas um okay thanks and um and another question and i'm looking
 here uh and it's it's hard for me even though i i know i know this area i haven't actually like
 walked from one of these homes to see um is this you know thinking of our 10 minute park plan can
 you get to a park from 10 minutes i would think yes but i'm not sure i i haven't mapped it out
 i can't say for sure but i know that there's um a park to the west um just don't know how far
 the other park to the east is located yeah but i don't have an exact time or distance okay thanks
 councilman ryan thank you ma'am rod correct me if i'm wrong but i think wasn't this originally a pd
 and in 2002 when we did the zoning change that's when they split it up into these others that that's
 actually a lot of the split zonings that we see in the city large ones such as this uh originated
 as a plan development and by such uh the zoning in 2002 divided the parcel into these uh number of
 split zonings or zonings that have multiple okay and so that's the purpose for is that we're trying
 to cling up so that we're not having one parcel with three different zoning on it makes it very
 difficult and of course looking at the future land use and and we also listen to the the property
 owners and the public that we heard through the development of the public i'm sorry the
 development code update okay thank you councilman riggs um the the pd that's across you said that is
 for um commercial is it does it specify what what can and cannot go there in that pd yes uh the the
 area as as you all know pd is identified it's almost like a site plan or detail plan and it
 does identify the areas along locus as commercial use i can't speak to what uses but uh for sure
 commercial okay
 okay anybody else wishing to speak because i just got a couple comments
 yeah i came back okay yes go ahead yeah uh would you mind going back to the table you provided of
 permitted uses and if if uh you could just kind of remind us what the p plus means whether there's
 any additional step or that i think you said there's just sort of specific restrictions
 correct use specific standards um similar to limitations that are built in to that use
 for example um i'll just use an example general no general rachel doesn't have a medical clinic
 maybe the use specific standards is having the entrance um at a different location that's not
 facing um a residential district such as that medical office the size of that would be um subject
 to those use specific standards so things like that to help mitigate uh further uh the uses
 you know i'm more concerned about things that seem like they might be a little more intensive
 you know in terms of the scope of what's on that list what's in the i know you may not know all
 this at your fingertips but what's in the plus in the p plus of food processing
 and i know i have a binder like that somewhere too but you could probably
 flip right to it give me a few seconds pick it up
 um
 so uh food processing um it is
 any food processing that's less than 2500 square feet within the sc only on-premise
 sales shall be allowed distribution warehousing and wholesaling activities are prohibited
 uh food processing it's like a bakery or something yes uh all so that's that's 2500 or less
 okay that's all right and uh and if you don't mind uh just to pick out one one more uh automotive
 repair shop what's in the plus of the p plus if you don't mind my pressing head there thanks
 okay
 so much easier having you looking up
 so the um for automotive repair shop storage of vehicles on the premise shall not exceed 30
 days storage of equipment auto parts and supplies used in servicing vehicles shall be maintained
 entirely within an enclosed structure open storage of inoperable cars discarded tires and vehicles
 i'm sorry auto parts or similar materials shall be prohibited sales of vehicles shall be prohibited
 so keeping all inside a building not a bunch of cars around okay thank you very much
 i a couple comments this is nothing against the people who spoke i'm i'm concerned when we have
 city initiated rezoning's that have basically come turned into a regular kind of rezoning request i
 mean typically those have been for correcting things i know that the owners had wanted this to
 be rezoned um i'm i'm hesitant based upon some of the questions that i've heard here i mean it's
 these questions are similar to if we just had a regular rezoning case uh with the uses because
 typically when people come to ask for rezoning they have they're not required to but there's
 a list of uses that come with that because those are all questions that we have um so i'm conflicted
 on what to do i think we need to change it but it's the process by which we've chosen to do that
 with the city initiated rezoning because i don't want there to be an idea that if you want to get
 your property rezoned without having to go through the normal channels of submissions and those kinds
 of things that this is sort of the way to do it if you can get staff to sign on that's not a criticism
 of anybody here but this is what we talked about in the process so as i've listened to the questions
 and i've listened to the deliberation this isn't just trying to clean something up this is
 obviously and it should be because it's posted as that a full-blown zoning request and they all are
 but we have an understanding of what it is so um i i don't think there would be much advantage to
 sending it back um and have them go through this process but i'll be just me personally i don't want
 to have these kind of city initiated rezoning conversations where there seems like that there's
 a lot of questions or or you know things that typically would come up because i think it just
 it feels like it puts me in a position of trying to decide this when maybe it's not taken as
 seriously is not the right word i think you understand the spirit of what i'm trying to say
 it's not a criticism of anybody it's more let's make sure we get the process right so um i'm going
 to i'm i'm going to i'm going to be honest the only reason i'm going to i'm going to support this
 is because there's enough built into the property that provides some physical limitations i mean you
 nobody can build up to the property line in the back on the east side you're not going to have
 apartments looking over into people's backyards you got 110 foot easement uh with power lines there
 and people are going to build away from those anyway you've got the southern part that has a
 lot of restrictions you got a floodplain there's really not much space there in the southern part
 so most of it's isolated to that north what is that western kind of north corner uh which uh and
 then there's there's platting and and all those kind of things but i i just um it just gives me
 pause right so it just gives me pause but uh those are my thoughts mayor if i may just respond real
 quickly um i think part of this process was to get the public input right that's what we're
 we're here tonight is no no i understand that and and we did receive a lot of other um requests
 and those that we've again staff did not feel met the intent of a city initiated zoning we told them
 to submit an application okay and those that we did we like you said this was something that um
 we felt comfortable with as part of a city initiative i understand that yeah no that's
 not a criticism it's just i mean as we started into the discussion i mean on its face looking
 at the presentation i i i don't disagree with you but then as i've heard the questions i'm like well
 it um it just it's it's been interesting council member briggs yeah so i'm i'm glad you said that
 because i feel the same way and with us being district two and the homeowners in district two
 um several of them have are are against this because for me it does seem more like a rezoning
 process than just a change over from um the city initiated like what what it should be and you know
 what we kind of messed up here and i i agree this would be commercial like but just approving it
 outright uh for me right now without having any idea um what's going to go there is is where i
 get i pause um just because it's so it's different from our normal process um so
 having that lower property there stay is it gives me a little bit of comfort um and i i understand
 you know where the the landowners are are coming from by by knowing this isn't necessarily going
 to be residential i i get that but um i'm just going to have to to to not vote on that
 council member uh davis so i um similar to what's been said already i looked at this agenda item
 and originally thought you know why are we taking up a four three p and z vote with neighborhood
 opposition as a city re city initiated rezoning the thing that gave me some comfort with it though
 and this is not to um to devalue anything any of the neighbors have said tonight but um we're
 talking about something that's general agriculture that backs up against something that's already
 going to be sc under the new zoning map and and then taking that church property that was kind of
 the the thing that did it for me taking the church property out if we all know it's going to be some
 sort of commercial development and we know that we have a single parcel that's divided into three
 different kinds of zoning to me that does fit the bill of a city initiated rezoning to to clean up
 the map and make it make sense as opposed to requiring someone in the future at some date
 uncertain to go through at their own expense a zoning process to me this fits the bill of a city
 initiated rezoning that's why i support it and council member armature and then we'll uh close
 up discussion so um so i think uh so i am um i i too uh have pause about how this um
 the way that this this feels more like a um a uh you know applicant initiated initiated zoning
 request or it has that that feel to it um i do understand you know like council member briggs
 said that um you know some commercial could go there but i am i i share the neighbors can
 neighborhoods concern um about the potential of what could go there um and it's a very residential
 area um so i have i have a motion here i've actually in council member davis you might
 want to remove your second because my my motion is going to is is to vote no my motion is against
 this um uh but i understand that you know at some point commercial might have have to uh go here
 it's just a matter of what kind and what kind of mixed use what will this be to serve the neighborhood
 okay uh that can i show no more speakers um council member armature so i i move uh no on this
 so you're making a motion to deny to deny all right is there a second council member briggs
 yeah i'll i'll go ahead and second but i'm i'm reading the
 the um opposition and somebody has said that they were told that they would not build on the
 property can can somebody explain that or is that just a well i mean is that in the backup is that
 just on one of the backup cards yeah okay all right uh what's the do you have the name on the
 backup card powell okay yeah well i mean i don't know how we substantiate that um yeah
 so i've got a motion to deny by council member armature council member briggs you second that
 motion to deny unfortunately i'm gonna i'm gonna have to okay all right uh so we have a motion to
 deny agenda item four which one is this p okay uh so let's vote let's see so a yes vote is to
 deny it all right yeah and if it fails which it likely will will you vote again or does that
 automatically pass it no no you have to there has to be an affirmative vote yes somebody has
 to make a motion to second and an affirmative vote okay so that can happen yes after yeah okay
 thank you okay we have a motion in a second for denial do we need to put that back up there
 madam city secretary okay all right
 the motion to deny fails uh two to four so we still have the item on the table council member davis
 i move approval of the item of the ordinance council member ryan i'll second this is a
 motion a second for approval of agenda item 4p let's vote on the board please
 motion carries four to two let's take a break we've been at this for a couple hours so
 i'm sorry i usually take a break before then take about a five or ten minute break
 welcome back everybody to this meeting of the dent city council on july 23rd 2019 it is 8 35
 p.m we're moving through our public hearing agenda items uh four uh we're moving on to
 agenda item 4q but i want to have a this i want to have a discussion about well um do you have
 a really quick presentation my concern is this is a super majority requirement because of a 7-0 denial
 from p and z so i'm really going to it's almost i'm not even sure about the presentation i'm going
 to struggle with a community you know a city initiated rezoning with a 7-0 denial at p and z um
 so go ahead and go through your presentation and we'll just we'll deal with it procedurally as we
 move forward sounds good um we should be to item s here pretty quick so um so this item is um item
 4q uh areas area 38 that um is for this area again generally located along loop 28
 and kings row 9.67 acres primarily undeveloped with uh generally agriculture in the area
 the staff is recommending sc to be consistent with the surrounding areas you can see sc's to the south
 along loop 288 we know what's what comprises in as far as uses under the sc p and z did recommend
 denial of this case a super majority is required the property owner of the subject property it's
 one owner he's in opposition of the sc would rather keep the mn which it will transition to
 in october that concludes my presentation who's the owner randall smith okay yes
 so did he speak at p and z he did he was at p and z i did speak to him this afternoon unfortunately
 due to a prior engagement he's not able to attend but obviously the reason that he is not in favor
 is he just wants to keep it mn as it will transition to okay uh and was um i missed my
 forgot my question uh was that the primary reason that they voted to deny was because the actual
 owner of the property doesn't want it to be rezoned that i would say that was the okay one
 of the primary reasons yes okay all right uh okay um well i'm just going to go ahead and open the
 public hearing just because that's the process and anybody here wishing to speak on the public
 hearing for agenda item four q anybody wishing to speak don't see anyone we'll close the public
 hearing uh council member melzer i move denial council member briggs um can you can you just go
 through the um a few differences between the the mn and the sc and why you guys wanted to
 to do that what was the initial reasoning um mn um is mainly mixed use neighborhood neighborhood
 serving uses while the sc is more commercial vehicle use related uses so you can see the
 intensity and the density is is different in in that respect again we were looking at the corridor
 loop 288 we're looking at the surrounding area this has sc to the south we felt that that was
 an extension to that zoning to the south we know that this is going to be a future area that will
 be developed and we felt again sc would be the suitable zoning for this area and can you tell
 me again what it was before the original um change um i believe it's nrmu uh for this area
 so neighborhood mixed use okay so on this on mn is multifamily allowed by right correct yes what
 about sc uh would require a specific use permit that's probably part of the big reason i mean just
 that uh he being the property owner also said that these parcels were smaller than your typical sc
 development type so that was i felt to mention that that's another reason okay so we have a
 motion to deny by council member melzer council member armature second all right so let me make
 sure uh so this denial if it passes we've got that whole issue if there's it has to be substantial
 change to come back within a year is that correct but the property owner is the one that wants this
 real quick question uh when it came to pnc um was was staff aware that the property owner
 was in opposition to it in that afternoon yes okay but not after after it got posted before
 it got posted there was it was after posting yes okay all right um okay all right all right
 we have a motion and a second to deny agenda item four q let's vote on oh council member riggs
 yeah i still have another question oh i'm sorry i didn't i didn't know that i'm sorry go ahead
 in what it was before the nrmu um multifamily would that be by right or would it also need
 an sup like um sc i believe it would require a specific use permit okay and so by um denying
 this staff initiated zoning to sc if it stays and converts to mn multifamily can go there by right
 without notice correct correct okay and okay all right okay we have a motion and a second
 to deny on agenda item four q let's vote on the board please motion to deny carries five to one
 moving on to agenda item four s is that the one you got coming up yes sir all right uh hold a
 public hearing considered option and ordinance of the city of denton changing zoning district
 youth classification from employment center aci to general office um error i'm sorry item four s is
 area 40 generally located between loop 288 and mayhill road with russell newman bisecting through
 the middle also market and blake street within the area the uses as you can see listed here
 range from undeveloped commercial land through minor automotive repair shops warehouse and
 wholesale facilities self-storage general retail and also child daycare included staff is proposing
 that the area being area 40 be zoned go general office uh it is primarily along the loop 288 and
 mayhill frontage road as mayhill continue or is widened there's opportunity for this area to
 develop uh and again per the future lane use map of business innovation it consists of large tracks
 lesser intensity than your li but it does also contain industrial uses that is permitted under
 go staff received two responses in opposition uh those responses uh those two individuals represent
 the majority of the site um those property owners as shown here own all of the area within the dashed
 red area again um per my conversations with the property owner they would prefer the li zoning
 district that concludes my presentation stand for any questions okay i see no request to speak for
 staff presentation this is a public hearing i'll open the public hearing got a couple cards uh
 brandon martino if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin
 brandon martino 525 south loop 288 in texas um mayor and council members appreciate the time to
 be able to speak to you um the track is actually larger the i guess the north side actually we have
 more land there than what's in that drawing um but this land area 40 comes actually started in the
 family back in the 70s and we moved our manufacturing uh business there which was apparel
 which was a huge uh manufacturer facility there we continue to invest in it and in the last 10 years
 and in five years we continue to put more money into it and own more of it so currently uh we own
 67 percent of area 40 um we have huge tilt wall buildings there um the browns which will also
 speak on 10 percent so collectively we own uh 77 percent of area 40 um we currently have 270,000
 square feet of buildings um the browns have 80,000 square feet of buildings um we 75 percent of the
 parcels are already developed um 42 percent of actual land area is already developed what i'm
 asking for is requesting the denial of uh go because li is consistent with what's there and
 is very important to be able to re-tenant these buildings we're going to problems that doesn't
 happen li allows for building materials and supply stores which currently we have a flooring store
 that we own um that would not be allowed there in the new zoning outdoor storage also so um there
 are a couple issues when it goes from eci to li but that can with council's approval that can be
 dealt with on a staff level um so what i'm asking is if council will deny the go and then it will
 revert to the li and be consistent with what is there and everything that's been invested there
 okay all right thank you uh next speaker is matthew brown come down state your name and
 address your time will begin uh matt brown uh 5220 tartan circle uh to reiterate what
 brandon said we own uh really the stuff the southern part where market street is uh kind of the bottom
 of the t uh we have nine buildings there about 80 000 square feet they're all 20 foot tall they
 all have free phase power so switching we would love for you to deny going to geo just from the
 fact is we can't retrofit to go back to geo all the things and all the tenants we have there
 basically have to go away once they um when their lease is renewed we just we can't it just won't
 work okay and so uh just we really ask that you deny so thank you go with li thank you appreciate
 thank you oh council member davis i had a question for you sure and uh brain was too quick for me i
 couldn't couldn't ask him the question the uh one of the things that you meant i'm going down the
 list of things that uh are only available under li and the one that you mentioned was the building
 supply and uh to my knowledge the the lighting store that is there has been there for some time
 it's been different kind different things maybe under different names but there's been a lighting
 or a flooring or something in that space for a very long time is that correct thanks yes
 so do you all kind of have the same concern that yes you have current tenants that may not be
 allowed by right and then in addition to that the re-tenanting problem you know if somebody leaves
 you have to get a tenant of the same type and you have a trouble and so we own rhinoceros buildings
 as well over off i-35 and our future is to move over to the southern southern part of that there's
 a 12,000 square foot building for expansion well under this geo we can't move there because it's
 not a lot of building materials at all and so it would just it wouldn't work under that
 go ahead do you have a question okay all right uh council member armature yeah i have a question
 for staff is it a question that can wait until after the public hearing is closed yes okay thank
 you council member briggs do you have question for staff okay all right uh so we're still in
 the public hearing anybody else wishing to speak on this agenda item this is a public hearing
 you want to come down and speak okay all right well i figure if you're with them we know what
 you'd say uh all right this is a public hearing anybody else wishing to speak all right we will
 close the public hearing council member armature and then council member uh briggs well councilman
 brings your request to speak one off okay yeah so so my question is um i was wondering if you could
 speak to the uh proximity to to homes and also to the um uh suburban corridor and how that kind of
 factored into the um uh consideration not to make it light and industrial or maybe that was never
 even considered so as far as uh residential in the area um we don't have a lot i believe across the
 street over here um um you'll see more residential um multifamily primarily along this side of loop
 288 on the east side of mayhill there are some residential but uh we're initially in the county
 and we're somewhere we're annexed in and some are still in the etj so very limited as far as
 residential uses with regards to sc again we look one of our factors that we looked at is our future
 land use but we also know that go is closer to li than sc so we obviously looked at go as uh the
 suitable zoning district for this particular area so so you see so go is a middle ground between
 the sc and li if you were to look at the the the uses in the dimension standards yes okay thank you
 council member briggs um can you so within the go um retail is um allowed correct correct and
 so would any of the the businesses they mentioned um having concern going in the go um not being
 allowed would they be considered retail or what is the what is the the use that they're concerned
 about i believe one of the uses this is just one i think there are several but one building
 materials and supply store and i pulled this up um and i'm going to read for the for the record
 a business involved in the sale storage and distribution of structure supplies and services
 including lumber brick tile cement insulation floor covering lighting plumbing supplies electrical
 supplies cabin tree and roofing materials accessory uses may include repair and delivery services
 and outside sales of plants and gardening supplies so okay so those are the things that um would not
 be allowed in the new proposed in the go correct zoning which they are planning to move there
 okay thank you council member melzer yeah i just a comment i don't think the purpose of city initiated
 let me put it another way i think the purpose of city initiated zoning is to help guide future
 growth uh in accordance with the future land use map i don't think it's to chase out existing uses
 that's my comment it's and also i received a comment from a city attorney that because
 the two property owners equate more than 20 percent of opposition therefore this requires
 a super majority am i correct on that no it's correct so it's not just of the people within
 the 200 feet it's also if the property owners themselves uh constitute more than 20 of the
 opposition yes in the case where it's a city initiated zoning which this is okay all right
 okay council oh yes just real quick if i may um if it's leaning towards uh denial we would respectfully
 request that the area be not considered so meaning that if we're going to lean towards a denial we
 would just respectfully postpone this indefinitely so that we won't go forward with the other areas
 that are not owned by the said property owners does that make sense okay i'm not understanding
 what you're i mean so you're saying that if it's leaning towards denial which i mean we'll know
 that here shortly but you're saying to postpone it because somehow if we deny it affects something else
 if we if we deny the city initiated rezoning and it stays li instead of a denial you're wanting
 us to postpone it and the reason is i think you know let me think about that i think then
 really the reason i said that is i wanted to make sure that we
 didn't affect the other property owners um by the denial and that's that was my main concern and i
 may be misspeaking in that regard which other properties owners are you referring to those that
 are not uh owned by the said property owners that spoke in opposition the remaining property
 owners because i oh because they don't own the whole thing correct and i did speak to one property
 owner and they were in favor but again i just i was thinking out loud and trying to make sure
 okay sure those property owners sure uh council member melzer yes so from understanding you
 correctly your recommendation if not approval would be to postpone indefinitely and what would the
 impact be in postponing indefinitely how would that affect future use we would i mean i wish we'd
 go back and if there was um further research we can bring it back but i mean that's that's if
 there's a big if again again i was just speaking to see if we can protect those other property
 owners but again that that is the main purpose for that's what i want to understand how how would
 our actions today under those different possible outcomes affect the other owners affect the other
 owner's options am i not asking no no i think i think what you're saying is that if there's
 a denial here then if the other property owners depending on the outlay of the parcels wanted to
 come back in and ask for another rezoning of go that would that preclude them because something
 substantially similar potentially and yes i want to avoid that okay all right uh just i don't think
 it would preclude them from coming them themselves asking for the application i think it would
 preclude us from coming back and trying to rezone it again okay so we're going to wrap up this
 discussion so i've got two people wishing to speak let's make it you know fairly expeditious
 so that we can move through here because go ahead council member riggs i had a motion because i was
 going to motion to deny but i understand what you're saying now because there's other parcels
 there that aren't against this correct and so if we it's a whole area so if we deny the whole area
 then those would be the ones who aren't against it would be affected so is there
 and i don't i don't i'm just trying to figure out well i think the city attorney just said that
 okay the whole comment was to try to make sure that we didn't do anything inadvertent or have
 an unintended consequence with the property owners who don't share the same opinion as the
 ones who are here tonight the main reason being that we do have that policy if you're denied a
 zoning you can't come back within a year unless there's a substantial change for that same zoning
 i think what we heard from our city attorney that's really not applicable in this situation
 because if the property owners themselves brought it back it's not it would we would have to bring
 it back under similar zoning and we would be precluded meaning the city for a year but if the
 property owners wanted to bring it back for a zoning of something other than li they could do
 that and it would be as if it's i'm going to use a legal term de novo we're reviewing it as if it
 were if it were brand new we're not having to take any consideration any prior kind of deliberations
 okay all right council member armater so can we is it possible to and maybe this is what you're
 going to move but can we move to postpone with that before even taking a vote
 you got to have a motion to postpone which does supersede there's no motion on the table so you
 have a motion i'm going to tell you i'm not going to i'm not going to vote for a motion to postpone
 i'm just going to tell you that right up front because i don't think it's needed but if somebody
 wants to make a motion to postpone you're certainly willing to do it and you've got to get a second
 then we'll vote on it anybody wanting to make a motion but well i see council member ryan's got
 a motion you have to have an underlying motion yeah my motion is to deny because as i look at
 this if you were trying to take any of those other small parts sorry i forgot my mic my motion is to
 deny uh because as i look at this you take any of those other ones and we're getting real close to
 spot zoning if we try to do geo in especially along loop 288 if you try to do just those
 onesie twosies over there that's yeah they could go to sc over there but not to
 not to geo because you're just spot zoning so i motion to deny council member briggs um i will
 i'll second that let's vote on the board please for a motion for denial on agenda item 4s
 motion to deny carries six to zero moving on are you going to be able to take items t
 u and v all together on the presentation yes sir okay good thank you
 so next items are t u and v which are areas 41 through 43 these areas are along loop 288
 and mayhill and mckinney as you see here identified in the yellow um areas along again loop 288 and
 mckinney and mayhill the uses consist of a number of uses which includes warehouse and wholesale
 facilities self-service storage general retail medical office and others staff is proposing
 a geo for area 42 and 43 area 42 is located in this general vicinity where shady oaks drive
 bisects the property 43 is along mayhill just north of spencer road and then 41 is proposed to
 go to sc to continue the sc zoning within the area that's along the north and south of mckinney and
 west of mayhill road staff has received a response in neutral of area 41 and that concludes my
 presentation on this item these items that's for both t u and v correct okay good all right thank
 you sir this is a public hearing i'll open the public hearing for agenda items 4t 4u and 4v
 this is a public hearing anybody wishing to speak please come down state your name and address and
 your time will begin this just seems like a curb you enthusiasm kind of episode i'm not sure why
 anybody else wishing to speak please come down state your name and address and your time will
 begin we will now close the public hearing we will take separate votes any questions for staff prior
 to moving forward on the votes thank you very much council member ryan move approval of item
 40 council member briggs second let's vote on the board please for agenda item 40
 motion carries 60 agenda item for you
 council member ryan move approval of item for you
 council member armature second we have a motion and a second for agenda item for you let's vote
 on the board please motion carries 60 agenda item for vias and victor chair would entertain a motion
 okay council member ryan move approval of item 4v
 council member davis second the motion we have a motion and a second for agenda item 4v let's
 vote on the board please motion carries 60 that concludes uh our public hearing portion of the
 agenda item we'll move on to concluding items agenda items five council member melzer yeah just
 a small one we talked earlier about the broadband issue in a particular neighborhood and we were
 told that policy discussion on how to promote universal broadband access you know might happen
 when the municipal broadband item comes up i just want to make sure that that's posted so that it
 would be the the staff reports i've read on municipal broadband are about a sort of specific
 proposal uh about you know the municipality operating a broadband service so i just want
 to make sure that when we talk about that we can hit the uh item more broadly okay thank you
 council member davis i have two things i first want to thank everybody who came out to my
 conversation over controversy event on saturday this last saturday it was a really good dialogue
 and i'm going to continue those and i'd like to invite anybody that has an issue they'd like to
 talk over in that format to submit those to me and we'll keep that rolling i also unfortunately
 have a birthday this week those seem to happen every year no matter what i do but if you find
 me on facebook this year i'm having a fundraiser as facebook offers on your birthday for our daily
 bread the goal is one thousand dollars all right thank you council member ryan thank you mayor
 get uh two items uh one sometime back uh we'd had a informal staff report on a on horse drawn
 carriages and it came back to mind today when we're hearing about uh ranch estates and people
 riding their horses down the streets there that it would be good if we could bring an ordinance
 forward on both of those items on horse horseback riding within the city and horse frown carriages
 uh i'd kind of get an update on where we set on that then the other item is i'd like to get an
 informal staff report there's a three dollar fee that's charged on your utility when you call to
 to set up service that is kind of a background check i guess type thing well it appears as though
 they are also going back on people who had accounts for a long period of time uh because
 as an example i called to have my trash can replaced because it's got a crack in the bottom
 and i was told i couldn't ask for it that my wife was the only one authorized on the account but
 yet the account is in the name of john and carol ryan so i just want to get some investigation or
 some further input on that as to why we're charging three dollar fee for background check
 for somebody that's had an account for a long period of time okay council member armeter so i
 i i second the request for um uh discussion and update about the horse back riding and horse drawn
 carriages um and i just wanted to uh offer my condolences um to the the family of of the
 bicyclist that was struck the other day thank you council member briggs i i too want to echo
 um those condolences and um also want to add a happy birthday to jesse tomorrow in there
 yeah and and i'm sure that we'll be getting some more information on
 uh unfortunate tragic accident and so obviously all of our thoughts are with the families and
 understanding because this happened almost a year or so ago at a different location just a little
 bit down so uh we'll be i'm sure getting more information on that i see no more concluding
 items we will now stand adjourned at nine oh four

        
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