Aug 06, 2019 City Council on 2019-08-06 12:00 PM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Tuesday August the 6th, 2019. It is 12.02 pm. We're going to move through our work session items and reports. We have full attendance, so we do have a quorum. I'll call this meeting to order. First item on the agenda is citizen comments on consent agenda items. I didn't see any blue cards, so I don't believe we have any consent agenda item, comments on consent agenda items. Request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda. There was one about items I and J being pulled. Is that still correct? Okay, I and J will be pulled just for some cleanup on that. Okay, anybody else? Councilmember Briggs? I have a question about process of one because I know that D and E are also work session items. I mean a closed session item and a work session item. So if they stay on consent but any changes are made in either, how does that, do they need to be pulled for those or? We can certainly do that. We had put the closed session caption as a placeholder in case any of you had questions regarding the agreement that's related to the litigation. So if you all need to do that and want to change something, then we can certainly do that. Otherwise, we didn't have a briefing or anything intended. It was just if you had any legal questions whatsoever. Okay, so that's just as a placeholder in case anybody. Yes ma'am. All right, and as far as the work session item on the parking? What about the work session item? So there's a work session item on Greg Street for the parking and then there's a consent agenda item that just kind of says that that's going to be the way it is. So if we had any changes in the work session, do we need to or can we do that later? Well, I mean yeah, if we change it, I guess the council could then decide do you want to leave it on consent with the changes or do you want to pull it off as an item for individual consideration? At that point. Okay, yeah. All right, thank you. Any other clarifications? Councilmember Davis? Just a quick comment on H. Well done to the libraries. That's a big deal, making that expansion. That makes a lot of materials available to a lot of people who can't get to them otherwise and I'll be thoroughly vetting the service for my family. Anybody else? All right, we'll move to our work session reports. Work session 3A. Receive report, hold discussion, and give staff direction regarding the city's proposed agreement with the Denton Parks Foundation. Mayor, City Council, Gary Pack, and Director of Parks and Recreation. Last Thursday we had our budget presentation. As part of that presentation, we had planned a few slides for the president of the Park Foundation, Tim Smith, to come up and say a few words, give some feedback in regards to what's been going on the past year and some updates, and then open discussion in regards to the plan for next year. If you remember about this time last year, Council approved an agreement with the Park Foundation where there are basically three one-year contracts with options each year. Wanted to provide an opportunity for any discussion and feedback in regards to the agreement with City Council and kind of what's going on with the Park Foundation, and then move forward with an updated agreement for this coming year. So there's a hard copy of their draft annual plan at your desk, and I'd like to introduce Tim Smith to come on up. We're working with the Park Foundation on a number of projects, most recently and focused on the dog park, and we were under construction there. They're kicking off some fundraising opportunities where people can donate a picnic table or a bench or a water fountain, that type of thing. Right now we're also working on some programs related to dogs as well as Splish Splash Doggy Bash at Civic Center Pool when the pool closes. So we have a number of activities that we're getting lined up, and Tim will tell you a little bit about those in a second. Members of the Council, good to see you all. We'll go through a brief overview. This is a request that was made per our agreement that we had a year ago, as Gary mentioned. Just wanted to give you an update on what we've been going through the last 12 months underneath the memory of an understanding that we signed last year about this time. I want to give you an update of what we've done and what we're going to be doing next year. So just a quick overview. We're going to go through the analysis for the ED fee for service that we gave for 2017-2018. That was provided last year, and then Council, of course, as you guys know, voted unanimously to support the MOU with a few stipulations in exchange for the $76,500 for the fee for service. This was the way that Mr. Leal asked us to classify that whenever we signed the MOU. The foundation would be presented in the budget line item for the Parks and Rec Department. And so in regards to that, the MOU would be effective for one year with one-year options. So this is the first one-year option that we're going to be representing, and that would be for fiscal year 2019-2020, and then another one-year option for 2020 and 2021. Hopefully after that second option, so the third year, we could possibly have a discussion of a much more permanent agreement, but giving the city time to make sure that the relationship with the foundation is something they want to pursue and continue to hold. And as a part of the MOU, having an annual fundraising plan in front of you, being given every single year so you can have an idea of what we're going to be raising, what we're going to be working towards. And so the one that you have in front of you is a draft, of course, but we don't think that we're going to see any changes whatsoever as my executive director, Brooke, more likes to nod. So awesome. So just a quick, in this slide, we try to keep this presentation as short as possible because you guys do have plenty of other important business to get to. Last year when we had our conversation, part of the discussion from, if you guys remember, the audit report from BKD was that whenever return on investment presentations were given to city council in the past, they did not take into account the cash flow that would occur from the organization just existing without an executive director. And so the return on investment was slightly skewed. And so we made sure to make an adjustment for that in last year's presentation for the MOU that was given. We've kept that same calculation for a weighted return on investment. And this is our results from this past year. We raised the exact numbers down in front of this slide. It's right about $109,000 that was raised and given to the city last year from Parks Foundation operations. With the $76,500 being given as a fee for service, $109,000 being returned back to the city, a rough return on investment about 42%. Now, that $109,000 was not the mark that we are shooting for. About two months, six weeks or so after the MOU went into force on October 1st, our executive director, Molly Tampke, had been off in a position with communities and schools that she just could not refuse. And so she left. We were left as an organization for a couple of months looking for another executive director to fill her shoes. In May of last year, really earlier than that, but May 1st, Brooke Moore, our executive director now, stepped in and has been doing a great job for us ever since. And so there was some time where we as a board, we really didn't have a fully paid position. We didn't have somebody who was out there truly able to do the fundraising. We were all trying to run our own jobs and businesses. And since Brooke's been in the position now, we've actually been able to do the fundraising that we had hoped to do. And so it wasn't the goal we wanted. Definitely wasn't a negative return on investment, but it was something that now with Brooke in line and some of the great things you'll see in the annual fundraising plan, we have a really exciting bright future ahead of us. So we're excited for that. Whenever you're looking at the foundation activities, I've already gone over here. We hired Brooke Moore, May of 2019. We did update our mission, our vision statement. And I want to read it to you because I think it's a very important mission statement for you to understand. The mission of the Denton Parks Foundation is to engage the Denton community to enhance the mission of the Denton Parks Department to unite, grow, and play. As many of you guys know, the Denton Parks Department mission is to unite, grow, and play. And we wanted to make sure our mission statement by revitalizing that showed that we are here to be a support to depart. That's what our job is. That's what we want to do. We want to be an ancillary benefit to citizens to be able to point direction within the city towards what areas need to be improved upon. And then how can we not make taxpayers pay for all the improvements in the park and also allow for taxpayers and citizens to be involved in the improvement of their parks, be able to come out and do community builds, be involved in amazing events that let them engage in the park and actually create that community and really live up to that mission of uniting and then growing and then playing. We did have a board retreat. We talked and figured out a lot of these, this mission, this vision. And then currently what we are fundraising for now, as you guys can see, the North Lakes Dog Park. We have a couple of great events we're going to go towards helping raise money for that. And then the scholarships. And as we move forward into the future, we have some organizational goals and objectives. We're working with DPARD to finish out establishing. Really, we're kind of on hold as we wait for the parks master plan to get done to figure out what direction we need to help the parks department of growing going forward. So we are requesting the fee for service for the 19 fiscal year 19 in 2020, the $76,500 that was in the first MOU, as well as the annual plan to be presented in September to the park board and city council again. So the annual plan you have in front of you being presented again a month from now, there was five months of no paid position. And so I think that's kind of the elephant in the room that there was a 76,500 given from the city to us as an organization. There was five months of no paid position in 2019 or 2018, 2019. And so what we as a foundation would like to do, because we feel like this is probably in the best interest of still serving deeper in whatever way we can. We know that by looking at didn't ISD, there are about 20,000 students who would qualify for a partial scholarship within the city of Denton parameters. We want to take the unpaid position money that we have about $35,000 or so, and begin a scholarship endowment in this endowment based off of my experience as a financial planner. Of course, I would have no role whatsoever in managing these endowment funds. But in my role as a financial planner, we see an endowment fund with $35,000 in it with the amount of money we need to provide a scholarship. This would provide about 16 scholarships a year with that with that $35,000 going into their into an endowment fund. So we think that annually in perpetuity, we could provide about 16 scholarships a year to low socioeconomic students within didn't ISD. So with that I will stand for any questions. So first of all, I want to thank you and the parks foundation for all all that you do, especially to help low income families. Because of course, while we would ideally have everything in parks be free, it's not Yeah, it's and that's not the case and fees that might seem virtually free to some of us can be prohibitive to to others. So I know it makes a big difference. And and I want to support you I love the idea of using the that unpaid director expense for an endowment. And my question for you is, how do you, you know, either in the past or in the future, you know, plan to get input from or kind of have your ears to the ground on where the barriers are to families who are using park services who are who find themselves prevented by certain costs? Is there a way for people to to to contact you? Do you just kind of go anecdotal? And there's no right or wrong answer. I'm genuinely curious. I'll speak to the way we do it now the scholarships we give currently right now. And Brooke, correct me. It's about 50. How many scholarships 52 scholarships in 2019. And so the those come right now through actually the parks department is an application process. They come through there. They show if I believe I'm correct, they show that they were on free and reduced lunch through the school system. And then that's the way they get to us and then we give them money to be able to do it. And actually, the way it works is we raise the money, give it to the to the city and the city facilitates that so. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. And you know, I would love to know, you know, to just kind of receive updates, not only on all the great stuff y'all are doing, but when you hear that there are certain barriers that we might not be aware of, we tend to hear as council people. And I'm sure we could probably find a way as a foundation to be a little more proactive and finding other people in the community who may not know to go to the city and ask for a scholarship. So sure, it's something that Brooke and I will look into. Thank you. Thanks for what you do. Councilmember Routzer. I guess this question might be for assistant city manager. What is the status of the, you know, this money that would have gone for the paid position in the five months? Is it something that we were that we were obligated to that check didn't get written? Or you know, what just is that? I believe Gary may have that answer, but I think that's already been has it already been paid Gary? It has not. We wanted to go through this discussion first before we did that to receive any direction from city council. But I mean, is it sitting in a budget somewhere? It's in the parks and recreation budget. And for that, for this purpose? Yes, sir. For the executive director. Yeah. Anything else? All right, so we'll a couple questions here for direction. We'll take the last one first on the funds that were not paid in 2018 19. Oh, you need to you got it. Oh, go ahead. Okay. Oh, well, I guess I should say is that is that the extent of the presentation? Am I getting ahead of myself? Is that the extent of the presentation? The the funds that were not expended the 35,000 plus change? What the direction of the council haven't heard any really objections to the proposal made by the parks foundation to put it in a fund for scholarships based upon the interest or income that's generated from those funds? Is that direction that we want to give to? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem. Sorry, it just I was I have been since Friday kind of exploring different ideas. And I'd love to hear your thoughts. And it just hit me. So forgive me for not giving you advance notice. But what are your thoughts on somehow triggering a internship out of I mean, I like the investment. I like the retroactive part of it. But I another look at that is I think the community would do well and your your supervisor or your your executives could maybe benefit from us. annually finding someone in the community that would would support them in internship role. Sure. I don't know that again, hadn't kicked all the tires. But I'm sorry, are you are you saying that the the sort of the money that's formed from the endowment using that for internship pay versus using it for scholarships? Are you saying more like using the 35,000 as a way of paying for interns? Because I would say that that that money would eventually run out then if we use it for an interns, whereas the scholarships be something we could do in perpetuity. The I don't know what you said former ladder. But yes, it's that that result that residual from that endowment to an internship, maybe a you know, two, three months, I don't know how that's been certainly can be certainly a discussion. I think that Brooke would always love more help. I think that way we see it from the foundation is that I think the city council and the citizens will be better served if we were able to work to serve more of these students, these 20,000 students, you know, we we've done 52 scholarships this year. There's 20,000 who are eligible, we've got a long ways to go. 16 doesn't definitely doesn't solve the problem, but definitely gets a step further. The internship would be an amazing thing for us to consider. And I would say in regards to this, because councilman Meltzer, you said this, but you asked the question. But the fee for service as we know it from Mr. Liao is that once the money has been transferred over to the foundation is the foundation's discretion to use it for how we wish to how the mo you was written because the city can't say this money is only for the executive director, it has to be a fee for service you as the as the organization use it how you will. And so while we could definitely use it for an internship, we'd much rather see it be something that would be benefiting directly to citizens in the community, rather than that. But I'm sure Brooke and I can definitely find a way to find an intern. Okay. And then, Gary, if you could speak to that. So how many applications do we get? How many do how many are go on for field round numbers not succinct? I don't think we have any that are unfulfilled. The one thing that we we're going to do this year is start marketing it more. We hadn't marketed in the past, it was just kind of word of mouth. So we want we're we're going to be more aggressive in getting that out to the community. Okay. So yeah, so that's, go ahead. That's a thought, I think. To your point earlier, I trust you your leadership, but that was just a thought that hit me on it to share with you. Thank you. So before I recognize, I just want to make sure I get some clarity on what was just explained. So the presentation was that this additional money would go for the residual would go for scholarships. But what I'm hearing is that I mean, if you all make the choice to do that, that's great. But as far as the mo you go, is that money comes to if you all found another need, you could use that money for some other needs. So and I don't have an issue with that per se, I just want to make sure that we understand that there's some conditions we can place on that money. But what I'm understanding now that they're they're very limited, unless it's part of the direction is that I'm trying to get some clarification. So as we move forward in the questions, we were know where we are currently under the agreement. The money that we gave for the partial last year and for this fiscal year, the 76,500 we there was a provision in there that as Mr. Smith presented that it that money is to be utilized for the purposes that is set forth in Article one of the agreement, which is all the duties and responsibilities, what they do as far as handling cash and the fundraising efforts and programs and everything. So that's already allowed in the agreement. So I think what Mr. Smith is asking his counsel, are you okay with that for for us using that money that in that regard, rather than paying a an intern that amount of money? So okay, all right. I'm gonna go Councilmember Briggs and then Councilmember Davis. I have a question about the scholarships in general. So are is that full scholarships or partial scholarships? Some are full, some are partial. All partial, all partial. For different programs, I should say. And that for the endowment, none of those are full? They'd be partial. All partial. Yeah. Okay. And okay, thank you. Councilmember Davis. So I want to express support for the endowment idea. Because the most attractive thing to me about it is that it does what a foundation is good at doing and a city is not good at doing. Holding on to money in an endowed fund and then using that return for for future use. That's what people expect out of a foundation. It's built right there into the name. And not just simply a flow through for fundraising dollars, but also establishing a continual presence into perpetuity. And I'll add that some of these programs, there's not just a recreation component to it. There's a child care component. During the summer, there's a lot of families that make use of deep hard services and programs as their only affordable child care option. So making more of these scholarships available. And the other attractive thing about an, excuse me, an endowment fund is that incentivizes community members to give specifically to that endowment. So that if there's someone, a family or anyone in the community that's invested in that idea, they have a place now where they don't just have to cut a check once a year to depart for scholarships, they can actually see better return on their on their gift through the endowment. And their gift there can be a lasting legacy of the program instead of just a one time, you know, heartfelt gift. Council Member Ryan. Yeah, I agree with Council Member Davis. Do you currently have any other endowments? We do not. Okay, so this is a good starting point, to give something that can grow and expand and become a long lasting part of our community. Yes, Council Member Meltzer. I'm supportive since you're asking, but I think it's kind of y'all's business really. And that we've earmarked this funds, you know, this money to achieve public purposes, you know, through the Parks Foundation that are directed by you. So, you know, just in that spirit, I think it's up to you. I think a big question from the last 18 months or so that anybody was still on the council at that time was a question of transparency within the relationship between us and the city. And so I think, yes, you're 100% right, Council Member Meltzer, but the being able to say that we can tell you exactly what we're going to do with the money, even though it's not necessarily something you can restrict upon, is our nod to try and be as transparent as possible. Any other questions? Sounds like the direction is, as you proposed, with the 35 plus odd change going to endowment. And then is there any comments about, is this going to be part of a budget discussion or this is this is it? This was the discussion. Okay, so any questions about the the current budget allotment for the Parks Foundation? Yes, Council Member Davis. So we just heard a presentation that last year the return on investment was 42%. Did I get that right? Yes, sir. If my math is right, if they fundraise the amount of money they anticipate under this annual plan or return investments, 207%. I fully expect that this group can get that done and the community can support them in that. And so I'm in favor of renewing our our MOU with them for this year. Any other questions or comments? All right, oh, Council Member Meltzer. A technical question that, do you know, do you happen to know, or maybe city attorney knows, are city staff prohibited, so city, are city staff who qualify economically prohibited from applying for one of these scholarships? Because I, and the reason I'm asking is, you know, because I know that that that there are some city staff who have a hard time being able to afford sending their kids to the summer camps. And it's Council Member Davis, so there's the child care aspect. Okay, I think in general, no. But however, I don't know if the these scholarships have a residency requirement. A lot of our employees do not live in the city, so I'm not sure if that if that may preclude them using it. I would defer to the Parks Department on that. Can I ask a question, clarification? Are you talking about for these scholarships, Council Member Marmotter, are you talking about scholarships in general? No, no, you know, for the Parks Foundation scholarships. Any input on that or? For DISD students. Okay, all right, good. Answer that. Council Member Briggs. So DISD students is not just City of Denton, correct? Or is it do we focus on the City of Denton? That I'll need to get clarification on that. But it's I think it's the City of Denton. City of Denton DISD students. Okay, just for clarity. Thank you. I think we've had that come up before. Okay, any other questions, comments? Seems like the directions moving forward with the approval of them this year's MOU and then the $35,000 whatever that $875,000. Okay, all right, fantastic. Thank you. Thank you, Tim. Moving on to Agenda Item 3B, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the prohibition of parking on the north side of Gregg Street between Fulton Street and Denton Street. Let me see if I have the presentation here. Oh, this is wrong. I'm sorry, technical difficulty. That's all right. It's not opening. I apologize. That's good. I guess if we can't get the presentations up, we'll just not have to worry about how many slides there are. Just kidding. He's already nervous enough. He shouldn't be. Oh, you got to go the actual agenda. It's much more quicker and easier that way. Yeah, it's all good. All right, let me see. All right. You're talking about the very top. It doesn't. That's all right. You can just scroll down. It's not a big deal. All right. Yeah, apologize. It's pretty cool. Deputy City Engineer. I apologize for the technical difficulties. I'll be talking about the Gregg Street parking this afternoon. Good afternoon, members of council and Mr. Mayor. Thank you for the opportunity. Start with a background here. The Gregg Street issue was brought forward in one of the community meetings that we had with the community in this particular area. This is the historic area of the town. I'm sorry. Thank you. Sorry about that. Oh, that's easy, man. That's all it takes. That's great. No worries. All right. This is much more easier. So, Gregg Street, a little bit of background. We had a community meeting back in May, early May, and one of the most important or the topic of discussion, the important one at the whole meeting was the high parking demand in this area. And I'll talk in a little bit why the parking demand is high, but just wanted to start with, due to that parking and on-street parking in this particular area and along Gregg Street, there are serious concerns about access, serious concerns about getting in and out of the neighborhood. The intersections are blocked, and also there is a concern about emergency vehicles getting through intersections and through the narrow passages. There's a gap between the parked vehicles on Gregg Street. A lot of complaints about blocked driveways, residential driveways along Gregg Street where people park on the driveways. They don't get a chance to get out sometimes because of the vehicle overhang or because it completely blocked at instances. So, that's the first and the most important concern that we heard in that particular community meeting is this particular street and this segment was a primary focus of discussion just based on its location. Pretend real quick, how wide is that street compared to, I mean is it, do you know from curb to curb? Yes. Okay. It's coming. And did we tow anybody? Did anybody that was blocking a driveway? We have not towed anyone. That probably would slow it down a little bit anyway. So, a little bit of background and context. We, this street, particular street is a two-way street just north of Oak which is one way and this this becomes a point where where you're getting to campus from outside of town and you hit Oak, you're getting towards close to the campus and that's once you're about five minute walk it's about 0.3 miles. You can make a right and quickly circle around in this neighborhood and find parking. That's why this street is the prime target. People are parked really close to intersections all the way to this intersection at Fulton is sometimes blocked and backed up. It's also really close to the Fry Street retail commercial area so it's walking distance, about four minute walk and that's why this was the prime focus of our discussion during the public meeting that we had. So existing conditions, there's two segments. One segment is 26 feet wide from Fulton to Mounts Avenue. This is Mounts Avenue just back of Calhoun Middle and then it's 28 feet between Mounts and Denton Street. So heavy, as I mentioned, heavy on street parking use and according to the current fire code a minimum of 26 feet width is allowed for a street to allow on-street parking on one side. Similarly, if you want to allow parking on both sides it's 32 feet. The thinking behind this is there is approximately six feet for parking a vehicle and then 20 feet clear distance for emergency vehicles to move around, pass by and then also deploy. If there is a deployment, getting their arms around and getting the fire truck completely fully activated, they do need about 20 between 12 and 15, 16 feet. So 20 feet clear space is required. So what are the proposed options? How do we get to fix it? There are three options, two options to fix it and one do nothing. One of the options is since we're right on the edge where it says 26 feet is parking could be possible on one side, we could restrict parking on one side. The other option is restrict parking completely on both sides. There will be, there are certain cons or negative impacts. This area really requires parking. A lot of students depend on this area for parking as well as residents. So if we restrict parking on both sides it'll be really difficult for residents to have guests over for hosting any events or anything. So that's something that is not recommended as part of our recommendation from staff. So that was second option and third option do nothing. So those are the three options. What's recommended? I'm going to go in detail for recommendation on the parking restrictions. So parking restriction, which side do we pick? So we had a comparison. If we pick the north side for restricting parking what do we have? We have 12 driveways, two cross streets, which is Amarillo Avenue and then Mounds Avenue come in. They have intersections that require side distance clearances on either side and then there are several driveways. There are 12 on this north side if you see the north side and then approximately 34 parking spaces would be lost on the north side if we restrict parking. On the south side you have 10 driveways but you do have driveways in this particular area where this block does not have any driveway on the north side. There's one cross street that comes in. I'm sorry there's only this street that comes in that's north and Fulton and then there are approximately 34 parking spaces lost. So based on the existing conditions staff recommends that there is more safety benefits and increased benefits if we clear these intersections on the north side and make the space available for people to turn around. So that's our recommendation. It's lower impact on the on-street parking, improved emergency access. In talking to the fire department one of the main concerns that they've always had is maneuvering through the intersection. So if we really want to make that happen restricting parking on the north side would be more beneficial and then overall safety in this area. Did the neighbors or the homeowners in that area have to approve this? Are they okay with the restriction on one side since it was all brought up from the community to begin with? Correct. So we did send out letters back in I want to say June or July when we took it to traffic safety committee. We informed all the neighbors that this was going to happen and I believe there was no opposition. None of the neighbors really came in or sent any cards or information saying that we're really opposed. We did talk to a lot of neighbors in that neighborhood meeting saying we live on Gregg Street. We want this done and we're all for whatever the recommendations come forward to fix the issue. So they would be happy with one side just anything. They needed some relief and so is there issues with the driveways getting blocked? There are currently issues and we are working on how to be best addressed. We have some concept and ideas. Currently our ordinance allows parking restriction five feet within the driveway but it doesn't go beyond that. So on our end we're trying to make sure that we make it obvious with different type of pavement treatment. It could be pavement markings. It could be red curbs. There are different alters that we're currently looking at and as part of our week we're going to have a second meeting with the community and within that second meeting we'll propose all these different alternatives that we have and then come up with the consensus of what can we move forward with. I'm okay with the recommendation as long as we do address the other side with the parking issues that they're currently facing. Yes there is there is a plan. Thank you. Councilmember Melser. I appreciate that you know this is all being done in a kind of spirit of responsiveness and I agree with Councilmember Briggs comments but it does kind of raise another question that I'm sure predate you which is if the fire code requires you to be 32 feet to have parking on both sides how do we end up with parking on both sides and are there other streets that don't meet fire code or is that a new requirement 32 feet? No. So why did this even happen? So a quick answer to that there are a lot more streets in this area that were designed as residential street. It's more of change in land use and landscape in this particular area. Things have evolved to the point that these are residential but they're mostly student residential and they're so close to the campus because the campus has grown that it the streets existed before the uses came in place. So that's why it's a it's a problem that we need to address holistically and I think development services will come at a later date addressing some of the parking. What are the measures that we can do? What are the different type of parking plans we can do? We can do permit parking. We can do parking restriction during daytime and stuff like that. So that is being tackled through that old gateway area. There are specific recommendations from that plan to move forward. So that will be holistically addressed within that campus and outside the campus in the buffer area where they'll come up with a holistic plan and implement that. Sure. You know I think what you're speaking to is the more important issue you know like actually dealing with what the community needs and so on but you know there is just an issue of it's got to be marked and signed right now in ways that don't conform to the code. Right that's it there's one thing is what's the sort of customary behavior but you know it's I don't know I don't know if you think it's a it matters or not but I don't know if you take my point like do we have signs up there saying this is legal when in fact our code says this is not legal? So we we are working with the fire department to identify what their access routes are and where is the best place to start implementing some of those legal and illegal things but yes it will be part of the big picture plan that we're talking about as far as restricted parking. Council member Armitage then council member Ryan. So a couple things so first of all you know I really support this I've been out to that neighborhood I've seen and I know that you know the community is supportive of resolving this issue I want to you know just to make sure that that the community is okay or that you know there's some sort of consensus on you know north side versus south side I want to do whatever is safest but maybe there's you know there's something that we haven't thought of that that they might think of that could you know influence that decision you know for instance I mean nobody parks here because they're you know etc etc I don't anticipate anything but that could be taken care of just with a couple phone calls spreading the word you know getting the word out waiting a couple days seeing if you hear anything and I appreciate looking into that you're going to look into a number of different solutions for the parking the issue on this the side where there will continue to be parking and I would ask that in in the interim you know once this is decided that those markings on the street be changed in other words the shortest term easiest fix because I've I've seen and I've had a resident show me how close to the driveway on both sides those lines are and it's just a painted line I don't I'm trying to remember I don't even think that there are any don't park after this line sign but it's really it's incredible how people let and I'm the same way if I see lines I know that that's where I can park so you take those lines away or rather move those lines over and then I think I think that there will be a big difference immediately maybe it'll turn out you know some more complicated solution is better but it could be that that cheap short-term solution works and then could leave it at that so I can I would strongly encourage that council member Ryan thank you mayor I greatly support this I'm glad it came forward I think I've mentioned to you once before that somehow or another when we were doing the water and wastewater on Fulton and we had oak street shut down our detour plan went down greg street which was parking on both sides is effectively a one-way street both ways and cars literally were backing up because they were coming in from the west side and you had a long stream of cars coming in from the east and so this is definitely necessary it's still going to be difficult because you're left with about 18 feet to try and have traffic driving but it's it's definitely a big help all right mayor 14 thank you pre temp could you help me analyze a timed restriction versus an all-out prohibition on one side so I'm exploring it in my mind I'm thinking if we target school hours I think that accomplishes both it keeps the street free during the daytime but in the evenings if if there are visitors they're able to park there no problem so if you weigh both of those options which which do you still land on preferring just the prohibition on the one side absolutely one of the things with with that particular street being so close to UNT there are a lot of properties that are rentals where students live that bring their cars and they don't have parking space for that one particular property so a lot of times students try and find after hours parking as well that's close to this neighborhood so if if we just restrict time and there are some evening classes as well so if we just restrict time then it still leaves the bigger problem in place rather than addressing and even one card couple cars in the wrong spot can continue with the same problem being continued if I may sure so mr city manager brings about a question I'd like to try to explore with UNT can we get a usage just a percentage of that parking garage they have I think it's it's it's maybe three four blocks I just want to understand that usage because I think we need to incentivize people to utilize that more so than try to accommodate them in neighborhoods I think if I think as kind of as a I envision us being better about encouraging students to park on campus so I'd be curious to see what that usage is just real quickly I was also present in that meeting I think I agree with your analysis of the community sentiment that kind of left it to the city to figure out which side they just needed more room to maneuver on that street and then from a safety perspective you've mentioned several reasons why the north side's the best I want to kind of throw in there also if you can flip back to slide six so if you look there the the driveways on the south side service oak street homes and those are folks who typically have room to turn around and go back nose out when they leave their driveway so if they're still parking on that side they'll have greater visibility to be able to navigate parking on their side of the street versus the folks on Greg street who are having to kind of back out of their driveways into traffic and would have less visibility if there's still cars on that side so I think you've done a great analysis and I think you've addressed the the community concern and I support it thank you so your staff recommendation is to restrict parking on the north side of Greg street correct I would also encourage and if we just need to start looking at areas where this is more problematic than not we don't have this problem all around the city but and I guess I can ask the chief or send out a staff report but I know that if somebody's blocking your driveway you can call the police department I think you can have them towed off if they're sitting too close to an intersection I think you can either ticket them or you can have them towed off so whatever we need to do to provide sufficient notice that because I mean you can't be blocking people's driveway absolutely and one of the discussions that came out in that meeting was close coordination with enforcement yeah it's okay thank you yes I know recently there was some attention paid to other near UNT situations like this where there was renegade you know curb painting I think we called it graffiti but but I think the intention was to come back and kind of do it properly from the city point of view or are we still moving forward with that which should you know possibly be you know in concert with this action yes we're still moving forward with that as I mentioned we have a follow-up meeting on August 15th and as part of that we will present that plan that hey you're in the options either let me I'm sorry I'm concerned that's outside of posting for that particular area so yeah any other questions any objections to staff recommendation okay thank you thank you thank you pre-term all right we'll move on to agenda item c receive report hold discussion on staffing levels department resources and recruitment and training efforts in the Denton police department all right good afternoon mayor and council thank you for having us today I want to take the opportunity because we spent a lot of time trying to engage with the community building our trust and legitimacy with them I want to take the opportunity to do that with you all and start giving you a brief overview of the Denton police department on a quarterly basis so this first one is simply going to be a high level overview of the department as a whole and then subsequent presentations will delve into investigations and other areas within the department so I want to start out showing what our newly adopted mission vision and values are and as you can see we've taken a great amount of time to really take everything that we believe the city of Denton and the Denton police department believes in and encompass all those in our mission vision and values and our values is probably the most important up here simply put having professionalism respect integrity dedication and excellence I've mentioned this once before that we can always perform up to expectations but I want us to exceed past that as our organization lays out right now myself at the top followed by assistant chief Bobby Smith and then everything has broken out into bureaus one with operations with deputy chief Willem Brock and one with support operations with deputy chief Padgett administration of finance under mission Nika Mayo so as of July 31st we are currently staffed with a total of 226.73 positions those 73 encompassing the crossing guards that we use during the school year we have an authorized strength of 185 but we have right now eight vacancies with sworn officers that we're attempting to fill as well as three civilian positions and one of the challenges that I mentioned once before with keeping up with our attrition rate with sworn is we're having to wait for a hard vacancy to occur then recruit put them through the process send them to an academy field training and then about 12 to 18 months later they're on the street operating by themselves as a police officer the hiring of civilians is a lot quicker we can hire them get backgrounds done and get them working in a very short time period typically 30 to 60 days so as of July 31st we have responded to a over 13,911 calls for service over 64,000 total calls for service that's everything from customer service to non-emergency calls bad weather everything and so with an average of over 9,000 with that being said as you can see having 100 square miles to cover on our best day we filled 16 patrol officers which really equates to about one officer per every six square miles that's not taking into account for anyone that's sick on vacation long-term military leave or family medical leave as well and so far up to date we have taken in over 2,500 directed patrols around the city which takes up a considerable amount of time as patrol officers free up they're going out to really look at the quality of life issues impacting our community chief what does that term directed patrols mean again so if someone were to call in and say i'm having a problem with speeders on my street we'll put in a directed patrol so whenever we have an officer free they'll go over there and run radar for burglaries we go and do high visibility patrols things of that nature thank you yes sir so we have four patrol shifts and they're divided north and south and it's comprised of four lieutenants two day shift lieutenants two night shift patrol lieutenants eight sergeants and 64 patrol officers so right now our day shift starts at 6 a.m to 6 p.m with a hybrid shift of about six officers coming in from 8a to 8p our night shift for some overlap we start at 6 p.m to 6a and again a hybrid from 4p to 4a that provides us a decent amount of overlap coverage so officers that are transitioning off can get their work done and go home hopefully on time which is not always the case do you have a question council member well and you may have mentioned this earlier i was um so is this sufficient i mean what we're talking about with the numbers i had the 200 um even 226 total for our the city our size is that is that sufficient so i'll get to that towards the end but in the 16 major cities in the dfw metroplex we're about the third up from the bottom as far as number of officers per thousand what we're doing right now we're bringing a matrix group out of california they're a well-known a well-respected group that comes in and does a staffing study for our department but we're going to do a top down from patrol investigations and support because it does no good for us just to simply focus on one facet of the department we want to make sure that we are moving forward holistically in total so quick answer no i don't think so but i want some raw data to back that up thanks so in our traffic enforcement unit we have six motorcycle officers that work every day they deal with a lot of the daytime director patrols such as speeding school zone violations things like that and we have one daytime crash investigator for any serious injury or fatality collision they'll go out and work that we have four night shift officers that are working dwis we're moving to free up a sergeant position so we can have the four of them reporting to one sergeant in essence creating a dwi unit we have two commercial vehicle enforcement officers and we have one sergeant that oversees all of them so with that second sergeant position will be able to free up the daytime sergeant not to have to worry about the dwi unit downtown which is one of our more important areas of town we have four officers who work during the day and six at night we obviously look to expand that i'm lucky for us we have a tremendous working relationship with untpd they come out and work their fry street area with us jointly every thursday friday saturday night any night that we need them they're out there with us so we're really lucky in that regard the addition of nctc will bring a little more visibility down in the square area but it won't do all the things that i really want to push us to get to the next five years so our investigations division we have one lieutenant we have four sergeants one over family services one over general investigations one over major investigations and one over narcotics and under those sergeants we have 29 detectives that are spread out amongst those units again with this matrix study we'll be able to look at what their caseload clearance rates and the number of uh cases that they clear out without an arrest every year will really help us focus on what the right number is for our investigations division yes councilmember so on the one that said theft was that like identity theft uh the theft is for like misdemeanor theft so investigator hoban is actually in major majors right now so his work is captured in there okay thanks so our recruiting and training piece right now up until the end of this year we're conducting two police academies per year we're lucky in the sense that we have our own police academy here we only have traditionally ran two a year one in the spring one in the fall next year we're moving out a comprehensive plan to have three of those beginning middle and end of the year and taylor are recruiting around both of those three classes so in essence when one recruit class starts we'll start immediately recruiting for the next one coming up we're hoping to really close the gap between when a vacancy occurs and when we can have new police officers actually on the street working and right now we only have two recruiters slash background investigators one sergeant and one detective and they spend an inordinate amount of time trying to recruit the best that we can get out there um support services they're over our fleet our body camera in car camera stuff our detention services and our auto pound we're freeing up that sergeant position out of detention services by hiring a civilian detention manager police officers do a great job at police work i want to make sure that we're doing the best by the city as a whole by bringing in a civilian jail manager that has grown up in the jail system councilmember barbara has a question yeah uh so i have a question about um if somebody's in the jail and i know that you can only that at the city jail people can only be there for a very limited amount of time right uh and what is that amount of time again so we try to hold people no longer than 72 hours but they have to see a magistrate before we can do anything with them got it yeah so and i know that because i had once in the past came to visit somebody who was in the jail and that's when i found out that uh you know that that there is no visitation there obviously it's for for a short time um uh and uh and that it's the same kind of phone call if you want to make a phone call that you would for someone in in prison is there is is there any way around that or is it too much of a safety hazard if somebody wants to go you know visit somebody in the jail or to just be able to again to be there in person be able to talk to them without going through you know all all the business that you go through to visit someone in prison right now we don't have nearly the capabilities or the structure to have in-person jail visits one because they're there so short of amount of time typically they see a magistrate inside the first 24 hours and they either bond out or they're transferred for those occasions they stay longer than a day we simply don't have a facilities a secure facility to allow someone to come in and do an in-person visit thanks yes ma'am so one push that we did in the last five months is we brought on a civilian accreditation and compliance specialist in addition to the one sworn so we have a two-person unit one sworn one civilian and we did the same thing in media relations i think bringing in an outside civilian point of view to police work is very important it gives you a completely new dynamic and perspective one that police officers sometimes miss so we have really enjoyed having both of them join us our internal affairs piece we have one lieutenant and one investigator that they're responsible for the intake distribution and the investigation of administrative complaints against police officers with the city of denton they only serve as fact finders so all they do is collect the evidence of sorts and then they present that to the chain of command then the chain of command along with myself we will sit and deliberate and then make a judgment on whether the infraction occurred or it did not and for it comes from a monitor so under what kind of conditions would it go to the i forget the name of the the group appointed by the city manager they commission the citizens small citizens commission right now we do not send any complaints to any civilian board i don't think okay they can go that they review them after the fact they have the civil service commission right the civil service commission that's it yeah that would only go if someone is given 15 days or more off and they want to take it to the civil service commission that's their right under chapter 143 if i terminate someone they have the ability to also take that to the civil service commission if they like to arbitrate it okay so and and that's at the discretion of the individual officer got it are are there are there other cities that have kind of more citizens involvement early on in the the process there are some and some of your larger cities around texas they do have a citizens review panel or a different name whatever they name it in the city that you're referencing where they are allowed to be privy to some of the investigation but in no case that i'm aware of do citizens in the state of texas any of these commissions have judgment authority over the police officer okay it's just kind of in an advisory capacity correct yeah i would love to see uh just kind of in the um you know for the same reasons why you mentioned that it's good to have a citizen view uh viewpoint uh from an advisory capacity to see things from from a different perspective i i would love to see to what extent uh we could have citizen advice on on on the process and some sort of you know a staff report comparing what other cities do and what's possible okay i do understand that in most of those circumstances they go through the meet confer process when they're implementing something like that we'll definitely take a look at it so any criminal allegations against a police officer will call them to texas rangers to investigate and then as i talked about earlier we're bringing the matrix group to complete a staffing study over the entire department from patrol to investigations and support we are also bringing in the texas association of property and evidence to come and do a complete inventory and disposal of property and evidence that we no longer need and then one of the goals that i have for 2020 is assigning two officers full time to work with homeless outreach across the city full time throughout the week and then as i mentioned in the beginning we're going to have quarterly presentations just to provide you counsel with information a brief overview of every area within the police department and if there's anything that we don't cover towards the end of our quarterly please let us know we'll make sure that we identify and do that so with that i'll open up to any questions if you have any further questions for the chief all right thank you thank you you bet we'll go to our next item then we'll take a break after it agenda item 3d is received report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the 2019 bond program good afternoon mayor and members of council this item is intended to just be mostly a follow-up to last week's item where we talk through the bond program we have a number of slides that reference some of the follow-up items that were brought up during the meeting and after the meeting and we can definitely go into as much detail on any of the projects as you would like start off with the same slide that we saw last last week setting the stage for how we got to this point with the bond program the establishment of the committee the committee's recommendations and then obviously we have implemented the feedback that council gave us last week into the totals we did want to continue to emphasize that the bond program was one of those priorities that was set out by the council at your uh retreat the council retreat last august august 2018 uh amongst these other priorities that were identified by this by council that was really the starting point for us to consider the 2019 bond program so here's our updated uh project summary based on the feedback from last from last week uh you can see the firing range included in the public safety facilities proposition the streets propositions and then obviously with propositions three and four we have the split out now where public art is a standalone proposition which gives it that uh additional capacity if approved to be used uh throughout the city we i have uh we have an update on some of some language for prep for the open space proposition which we'll get to in a little bit from our bond council i have a slide referencing that so here are those follow-up items we wanted to make sure we touched on with council and then obviously we could go into more detail if necessary after that we wanted to we wanted to step back and look at our bond program completion from the 2012 2005 2012 and 2014 bond programs on the next slide go through some of the hickory creek and ryan road considerations and then talk through that proposed those proposed bond language changes so this was this was a slide that we shared with the the bond advisory committee at their first meeting as we kicked off the process with them and the intent of this slide is really to show the shift in management and the focus on getting a lot of these projects out the door really since january of 2017 so what we show here is on the left you can see the 2005 2012 and 2014 bond programs and as as it goes down the row you can see the amount of money that the amount of bonds funds that had been spent at each given point in january 2017 where we had 41 percent of our 2012 bond program spent and that and only nine percent of our 2014 bond program spent and then the next year in february 2018 how that's had that declined or increased the amount spent a decline in the unamount the unspent dollars from those bond programs up to where we are with our most recent numbers where we have 94 percent of our 2012 bond program spent and 55 percent of our 2014 bond program spent and we've now spent the dollars allotted to the 2005 program so i i think it was important for us to share this with the committee at the very at the initial meeting to gain that trust with the with the committee members and ultimately with the public that we have are really focused on getting these projects out the door so that when we enter into a new program that would again be the focus is to get those projects out the door as quick as possible mayor pro tem. Mr. city manager i appreciate this graph but i i think in the in the presentations we've seen it says the new bond program will go out six years in in principle so i think it's important to extend or at least demonstrate where we think that will fall at some level right because obviously we're basing that on some level of experience and to i think that should be captured in some sort of graphic to then support that it's it's not it is based on something and so i think it's it's it's fair to say here's a graphic that says all things being equal in a perfect world here's where we fall don't hold us to it i mean i think there's got to be some mesh between i'm not promising this is the order it's going to go and we have done a due diligence to understand it's possible to get it done in that time frame so i don't know what that answer is i just would like i think it's hard to say trust me staff's done the analysis when i think it's easier to say all things being equal here's what we hope happens and if life happens between there this is how we got off no different than if you know a rain delay something like that happens it would then delay a project yeah we spent quite a bit of time putting together a financing plan over the next six years so you'll you would start seeing dollars coming into the the city in december well in 2020 and 2021 and then basically as we're running out of road funds uh start plugging in uh those road projects as the funding's available so i think we can match up the the work plan over the next six six or seven years to the financing plan pretty easily yeah that would that would be good i mean and it could be just as simplistic as this i just you know maybe summing parentheses these projects time that way just kind of gives a visual but at the same time understanding you know that that's subject to change absolutely so i think maybe next week at uh when we bring forward the uh the bond ordinance we can ls david to kind of show the council how we would uh plan on spending those dollars year by year issuing the dollars and and what that really means in terms of the work effort efforts because they should be matching up thank you so if there are no no more questions that i'll i'll hand the presentation over to todd estes and he'll go through some of those transportation discussions that were brought up at last week's meeting good afternoon mayor council todd estes city engineer uh if i falter at all pre-tame is also here to pick up the pieces where i go astray so i've been told not to let myself out without an escort from the engineering department so uh so there were several questions that came up last week regarding the transportation projects we did our best to pull some slides together to help try to address those concerns and questions and some of those definitely relate around ryan road and the extent of what that project is and maybe how that relates into hickory creek road and why the projects are in the position that they currently are at least the way we're proposing them so one of the chief struggles we have if we look at how do we get across this floodplain so if i just get you oriented on this map 377 is this line here that falls down this way there's a railroad that runs through here ryan road you see that yellow line there and then hickory creek road so 35 w's way off to the side and then you've got of course got a little bit of teasley lane showing up here on the corner just to get you a little oriented into where we are so 1830 is this line right here country club road through this phase and then country club takes off down this way so the light blue that you see here that lighter blue that's the floodplain these areas in red that touch it that's the 500 year flood so the floodplain is the 100 year flood and then this darker blue is what we call the floodway the biggest problem with the floodway is that's the one area where we really can't put structures and obstructions in it without an impact that's where the highest velocities the highest energy of water that flows through from stormwater runoff events that's where everything goes so that's absolutely where things like large trees that fall they get swept downstream any vehicles or other obstructions that might get caught up in it they get caught in that area because that's where the water flows the fastest and has the most energy to pick those things up and move them downstream so if i start putting things like bridge structures or houses or other things in that part of the channel then it increases the likelihood that those things get hung up against those obstructions and can either damage that structure or causes a bigger dam so in the cases where that happens it may end up flooding even more just because now it doesn't have the same area to flow through so when we're talking about these roadways one of the things that was definitely a chief concern for us on the engineering side was how do i get across that flood way the fastest and one of the struggles with the ryan crossing over to vintage would be that's the widest flood way to get across so it's roughly a half a mile that we'd have to try to span versus down at hickory creek road where you'd have about a quarter of a mile it's a little over a quarter of a mile so almost double the cost to get that same bridge across that we're talking about to the south then this white line you see here one of the alternatives that one of the residents kind of in this brush creek area had brought up was what if we took hickory creek road and skirted the floodplain and then went across you still have to get across the floodway at some point so you're going to incur the bridge cost but you've also got to elevate this roadway out of the floodplain or you end up with a road that looks just like hickory creek today where it's in the floodplain that adds more to the cost so as we start looking through these different alternative analysis it inflates the cost of the overall project so floodway was definitely a concern floodplain was a concern as well as project costs and then the traffic and mobility issues that were part of the overall analysis so if we look at what the impacts would be just to a project budget right if you were to take ryan over to vintage road span this floodway plus we'd have an elevated rail crossing having two legs of an intersection at a railroad is not the safest course of action you'd have to put safety measures in on both legs and trying to clear out vehicles when a light turns red on two opposing directions is not an easy thing to do so it would add to the confusion complexity so we would take one road over the other now whether that was 1830 going over or ryan we'd have to work that out with the state at a minimum we figure expanding ryan road to four lanes because that's what you'd need once you connect vintage expanding ryan to four lanes divided and then connecting it with a bridge you're looking at about a 74 million dollar cost to do that project then if we were to look at the skirting the floodplain option we're looking at almost 125 million because it's a much longer distance to cover and we've got to elevate all that out of the floodplain and then come across the floodway so for all those reasons that's why we we plus some of the traffic concerns and that we do absolutely relieve a lot of the traffic concerns that we have in the northern part of this south dentin area through the hickory creek road proposition and then other players coming in to help us with the overall cost of that connection that's why we went down the pathway of proposing hickory creek road as the option to pursue and not the the vintage connection so if we just go back a little bit on that cost if we were to widen four lanes of ryan road in our original proposition we had looked at that until we had our complete area study done that was estimated to be about a 44 million dollar cost and that was due to all the widening the infrastructure right away takes plus doing that road and the way the bond package was put together financially we were anticipating that project's going to be a little bit further back in the overall bond program so there's a lot more construction inflation built into that number and if you ratchet back to what was proposed from the bond committee we had gone through the analysis on the traffic side looked at all the other alternatives and from our recommendation we had come back to hickory creek is the best long-term option it also put the impetus back on ryan road not needing to be any more than about three lanes wide and then we could phase that construction over time so the lower of the two possible options at that point with a three lane road was that four million dollar option with the state kicking in some money on both ends as they widen the intersections and i think that's where david takes off so any questions on that ryan versus hickory uh can you go back to your first the first map that one there yep uh right above the v is where fire station seven currently is and right next to that is where we're going to build the new substation yes correct correct have we done an analysis on the time to get to uh ryan road ryan elementary let's just say coming from that with if we don't do that bridge versus if we did do a bridge there yes i think chief hedges can answer that question better than i can because i know right now ryan elementary is is outside of the six minute response time you got a spot morning there it's not nearest now now this is a map we just received from our consultant that we're actually working on a city-wide study on response times and i'm sorry it was a lot clearer whenever we first entered this so it's very difficult to see um how we calculate this is actually a four minute response time and then we calculate a minute for the dispatch and then a minute for turnout so i think that's where you get the six minutes so that is correct so we look at two different numbers the four minute and then eight minutes four minutes obviously ideal per nfa standards as well and like i said i apologize for this but station six obviously is the district that covers ryan elementary and it you're not even able to see it early we're going to work on this it is right there in the four minute response time seven is not it's way outside obviously there's no connecting road to to access that um when we look at the red dots i just want to kind of highlight this is actually two years of data that we submitted to our consultant this is actually mercy incidents this is the locations they had happened over the 24 month period so you see the density and i really that's what i won't kind of focus on also i've drove drew a line is not very visible the black line right here that is ryan road and then hickory creek down here you see we have a higher density of call volume in the residential area down here so to answer your question station six is within the four minute station seven is not as way outside that as far as our response run orders if you had instant ryan elementary right now station six will be first due and then we just go through every station and put them in order if that station's out of service we go to the next one the next one actually would be currently station eight even though it just has a medic now obviously in the future we'll have an engine and it just keeps going up actually through the northern section of the city with the fact no one seven does not have a direct access over so in short i mean just kind of fire stations if i had no way i'd prefer both roads connected it creates better mobility and that's the number one way we can deliver better customer services response times and that is the streets that's the condition of the streets mobility traffic patterns traffic stacking everything takes into account that response time so i know that's kind of a long way around to answer your question but seven is outside the four minute response time just do the location but if that bridge was there it would be within that i would have to go back and work with the consultant we could do gis it wouldn't be right there on the edge of four minute correct okay because i've it's difficult to tell with this this map yeah this is a lot blurrier than what it was when we loaded it but i know that the the southern forest ridge thistle hill area is if you're close to the entrance you're good if you're not you're you're pushing it from one of the maps that i've seen correct and i mean i think when we look at an evaluation of fire station locations you have to look at obviously the call volume and as it as i started reviewing this map over the past couple of days i started looking and we have not got the four recommendations back from the consultant like i said we'll bring that forward in a future work session item but i think your highest call volume is actually going to be in the southern part of this district right on the city limits and to the southern portion of station six district so they look forward that very well could be a potential for a future fire station location site as well to address that growth in the southern area okay and i'll just leave it at that because i think this is probably more of a conversation for when mobility plan comes forward yep okay is this for the fire chief okay i do just have a comment for uh council member davis i know when the fire chief said that you know he'd prefer both roads i looked at mr estes and i saw this blank stare on his face like what are you talking about just kidding i'm just giving you a hard time talk council member davis so i want to talk for just a second too while you're on this slide about brush creek and in my conversations with folks who live down there you mentioned one person in particular who lives in that area and had some suggestions for us had person has some credentials to be able to offer such suggestions but one of the things that i think they're most concerned about i think they're maybe less concerned about ultimately making the connection between hickory creek and brush creek i think they're most concerned about the impact of that connection and i think they probably appreciate the convenience being able to make that jog themselves but then the added traffic through the neighborhood that right now does have a rural character to it and then also some of the information that was committed presented to the bond committee included plans for a six lane arterial through there maybe my terminology is off but six lanes starts feeling arterial to me so what are our options there knowing that to issue bonds we don't have to have the the schematics drawn already but what are our options there on brush creek road and do we really have the necessity for such a high capacity road through that area can we not accomplish some of our same goals with something more like what we're talking about with ryan road there are a lot of driveways on brush creek two lanes with a turn lane in the middle to begin with um have a lower impact project to begin with there and then if needs increase in the future looking at it in the future the answer to all of that is yes you can phase those things our traffic study for this area does show that four lanes is what's really required all the way through 2040 that's what we would propose to put in with the option to come in and put the other two lanes in when it's needed now the trade-off always will be that the longer you delay putting in travel lanes that you do know you're going to need within that first 30 year time frame when you actually build the infrastructure the costs just continue to go up nothing is as cheap today as it was 10 years ago so if if what you're already seeing and this is our recommendation what you're already seeing is you the demand is projected to be there by the 2040 time frame and i think it actually gets there a little faster than that based on numbers we're seeing today then the question becomes how far do you want to go with that construction our recommendation would be four lanes divided all the way to 35w now the six lane portion that we're talking about is just building the six lane bridges over hickory creek itself is the bridges absolutely will not get any cheaper to build and if you build a four lane bridge you're going to have to either design it especially today to where you can cantilever out extra two lanes and that's an expensive proposition just today to have that provision or you're taking one bridge down to replace it with another so the costs get to be exponentially higher as you start projecting that out so we what we're proposing is is that you build the six lane bridges today but the four lane roadway all the way to 35w now that four lane roadway can come in a variety of configurations so one of the challenges that ryan has that hickory creek does not have currently is you have a lot of neighborhood streets that come in at different portions and they're very disjointed when you start putting too many intersections in a segment like that and you anticipate having people walking or riding bicycles other vehicles moving through the area you're introducing areas where you can have a lot more points of conflict so more points where you could be distracted i heard recently somebody was talking about driving down turning on a university drive from bonnie bray and almost hitting a pedestrian because they didn't see them going through the crossing and that's just a big intersection not when you've got several intersections on both sides of the road staggered all along the entire road and that's exactly what we have at ryan hickory creek actually gives us the opportunity to put those intersections in where they belong all along that corridor so that you can have that safe passage of all modes of transportation minimize those points where drivers so they're so confused in what they're looking at what do i prioritize first if i have a bunch of cars coming to try to turn left in a gap versus a pedestrian versus a cyclist so we absolutely would have a better chance with that with hickory creek long term than you will with ryan road and connecting over to vintage so we don't have to build a very wide four lane segment in hickory creek today along brush creek road so one of the avenues that we could go down with hickory creek and we would through some segments of the roadway is what you see on vintage today which is a very wide median and then you have two lanes of you have a lane on both sides where i could add a lane on the inside i can have a very wide median to do that it's much easier on construction your long-term impacts for the neighbors and the traffic in general is much easier because i'm working on the inside instead of working towards the outside next to homes and other things so one of the things that we could do though through this segment along brush creek is build the inside lanes so it's narrower today and then in the future whenever we do need those other lanes we could build it out so so let me um because this is i think as council member ryan pointed out a lot of this is going to be addressed i think in a mobility plan and plus going across here and getting to i-35 requires a tremendous amount of other funding that is not even identified not even really i mean it might have been discussed in one sentence in one meeting but so while these details are i think are important i think that conversation really is more appropriate for a different time in the sense of the bond program yeah it's at hickory creek is 34 million or yeah it's hickory creek 34 million dollars correct and if you get the other ones obviously we're going to have extensive conversation about what do we do with that additional funding based upon alignments and based upon those questions from citizens and so forth so i don't want to spend a whole lot of time on things that are going to be way down the road that we have no i no way to even try to begin to plan for at this point nor do we have the funding for it uh based upon at least our what my current knowledge is so yes go ahead i agree with you mr mayor that this isn't the time to to figure out the schematic and alignment of every road in the program however i think the success of this bond measure will depend upon how the public perceives where these projects are headed so i think i think we have gone into sufficient detail today with uh kind of our future plans however i think when uh when we roll this bond initiative out um my recommendation to staff would be that we have some community meetings specifically in this area pertaining to these two roads and talking about the mobility plan talking about that bonds aren't where you figure out exactly where the road goes that that's how you identify the funding for projects we know about today and mobility is its own has its own plan to it and then engaging those folks into the mobility plan process also because uh while we see where those things intersect the public does not necessarily so for the success of the bond initiative i would recommend a lot of communication um in this part of the city and i'm happy to facilitate some of that yeah and i think that's i think that's the um the downside of presenting at least hickory creek i know bonnie bray you have to present it that way because if we don't get the funding from the other regional uh funding sources that project does not happen correct it's very different than hickory creek we're doing this primarily for hickory creek also to solve the tremendous public safety issue hazard that we've had there between uh what is that uh 1830 and what's the street river pass so that's what i don't want to get conflated is hickory creek road really can stand on its own absolutely i mean if it's i mean we're yeah we might get this but if we get other regional funding there's going to be a lot of discussion about that so i agree that educate educating the public as to what this bond initiative really is intended to be and what it's not intended to be is very critical council member bricks yeah i just want to echo those sentiments as well um and so when we talk about 2040 in brush creek in the expansion are are we thinking about hunter ranch being over on the other side is that is that the growth you're you're talking about when you're talking about it's a part of it but it's not the part that we're actually focused on with this segment okay it's it's the infill that is coming in this southern dentin area all the way over to 35w okay thank you councilman roger i have a question you might not be able to answer but it's it's relevant to this and we have someone here who can answer are there any uh possible open space purchases you know we have that that open space uh part of the bond package that are along any of these roads where there's where there's uh talk about you know in the future kind of making it uh six lanes to um take to keep up with the growth just just out of curiosity we we're evaluating a couple of open space tracks that are along this alignment um but i'd have to go back and take a look at what's available between the the river and i-35 to to answer your question what i will kind of add on to todd's explanation is we're already starting between 377 and 35 to see plats coming in error proposals so really the discussion it's it's it's timely and the question from staff on this particular project we could wait for the mobility plan but at some point we're going to have to pretty quickly make a determination which which direction we're going because he needs todd needs to know whether to reserve the right way or not so that's what's really driving this but we are looking for open space opportunities in this area as well and there's at least one or two that i see here that we're talking to folks yeah wonderful that's wonderful and i could tell by your answer you could you could see see where i'm going with that that when we have open space uh then that's area that is not going to be developed and uh and that's good for for safety and it could also another thing for people to consider when you think of the cost of purchasing space uh that it it could amount to less than you know expanding to six lanes in that particular area i know it doesn't quite work that way you don't see you know roads don't happen in in in segments it's continuous uh but anyway but yeah i would encourage uh staff and council to kind of to think along these lines because these properties are being uh you know any any anything that that can be developed will be developed unless um unless we do something about that so with with the and i would also encourage um the mobility committee uh and traffic engineering to consider the 20 the 2030 plan also planning and development as the as you know as we're having these discussions i'm fine with you know reserving rights of way for future for future possibility the one thing that i that i don't like it's more of a conceptual thing than anything else is you know i don't like uh that if if we if we start imagining these plats as all filled up all developed then what it starts out as a very smart uh plan can you know conservative plan can end up feeling predetermined uh so i would just just caution against that in our in our thinking as we move forward all right i think the next part is david so i'm gonna hand it back over to david how much do you have left do you think because if we're not if you got quite a bit we'll go ahead take a break now you have five minutes 10 minutes you think this is the only slide i have to present and then i would just open it up for questions okay good thanks uh so this is a potential ballot language that you'll see on the election ordinance next week you saw we had this ballot language or an example of ballot language on the presentation last week as well so i'll point out some of the changes from last week um in proposition b we've now limited we said public safety facilities for police department or as previously it was public safety facilities now since it's only police involved in this proposition we were able to narrow that scope down to the police department proposition c obviously we had some discussion on the previously the this proposition simply said for park system improvements we've now narrowed that scope to say acquisition of land for park system improvements uh that was after after the discussion from council i have some consultation with our bond council that was his recommended language that he thought would be the best for us to limit it as much as possible but still give enough room to do uh what we need to do and then we've added proposition d there for public art to be its own proposition so just wanted to get that before you and see if if that answers some of your questions from last week or if you had any additional questions council member ryan thank you mayor uh question on proposition c because we're saying land for park system improvements whereas it's coming out of bond committee is open space and i know they kind of go hand in hand but i also recall a few years ago where we were doing a trade-off of some properties a little bit of parkland for over there by north lakes in exchange for property on the other side of the park and we actually had to send that to elected to the voters because you can't you can't dispose of any parkland what happens if you have parkland that you let's say we purchase something that later we needed for one of these roadways we're talking about uh how does that does that then have to go back out to the voters to be able to transfer from park to roadways or other city facilities a scenario where we use and i like we can follow up with more precisely but i mean we bought a piece of property and then we find out you know what we really need a fire station in that area so it's so is your concern the specific language of park system improvements is that because it limits it to the parks and therefore if we run into the potential scenario that you're describing correct okay that we might be land banking property that most likely will become park system property but we might also be land banking something that might be for a fire station or or some other city facility or four street well i think though and this is just my understanding so if somebody correct me if i'm wrong but when they were talking about open spaces that was really land that was not going to be used for either some type of real property improvement or something like that that it would eventually either originally or somewhere down the road be included in either trails something associated with the park system so my understanding was this was not just land purchases for any use in the city it sounded like to me it was more specifically tailored to park or open space use however open space is defined definitely from the conversation with the committee it was entirely open space was used interchangeably with land acquisition for parks that was the definition that the committee was going on but yes if we if we purchase purchase the land with these bond dollars for parks we would then be limited on on doing the kind of transfer for streets well go ahead so we could let's say there was a large piece of property that we needed right away space we could we could purchase it with some of this that would go to the parks and then use some right away money to kind of multiple sources to purchase that land so that it wouldn't end up in that problem yes similar how we use tree fund we use it for the tree portion of a park or okay all right thank you mayor pro tem just i think this conversation touches on my concern about this proposition that i think it is i mean the language is better tailored i'm just opposed to it you know as being there and so i think we're going to have just in this body being intimately involved is having these conversations i can only imagine as it goes to the public the confusion and and i'll also point out exactly what the city manager said there's activity in this area now so this body should be taking money now and being active in whichever direction we want to go based on our analysis versus this path which is going to put us two three years out round numbers and by then that area is developed we have an idea of where we're going hunter coal ranch by then uh so we're really behind and so i again i'm against this because it's going to be too late by the time this is active to take a real active role and what we're hoping for it to do and i think it's confusing did you have questions yeah and then we'll go to armature councilmember davis briggs and then melzer yeah so a couple of things so first i was finding councilmember hudspeth's concern i don't see it as an either or about spend now on open space versus wait to see if the bond package passes and then spend then we still you know now can can make those those purchases so again it's it's not an either or just as for capital projects you know we can we can fix roads now this is just helping out with that i want to just express my my concern about the title acquisition of land for park system improvements and to ask why not simply acquisition of land for parks and i'll explain why i like the latter better why don't you go ahead and explain that so that i mean he's going to give you an answer and then you're going to tell him why you don't think that's it needs to be something different well it could be that the answer is some very good legal answer and then you know i'll be and then i would be wasting my breath so that's why i want to make sure yes all right uh unfortunately our bond council is not here at this meeting but that language is the typical language that you see at bond propositions related to parks so we can definitely follow up on if we limited that to just say parks and what what our options are there about i don't know that okay okay good good because so i'm i'm pleased to to hear that because um i think that you know your average citizen hasn't read many many bond you know propositions so they're not going to say why doesn't say systems improvements um i think that you know acquisition of land for parks people know what parks are but system improvements my concern would be that that people might think in fact it even leads me to wonder to want to kind of read read the fine print and to see wait could this um be then you know funneled to say help out with the tennis complex or some other you know unfunded um or you know not not yet uh uh completed parks project or even bond proposition that uh has something to do with parks that's not open space so that would be my concern system improvements it sounds like just colloquially speaking improvement sounds like you're adding to something that's already in the works so i i would encourage that uh and then i wanted to ask do you have a do you have a proposal for what that should be oh yes as i said acquisition of land for parks we will follow up with the bond council before next week's meeting to get you that answer excellent thank you and then i just i wanted to ask i know that when we met and discussed this on thursday the public arts committee was meeting at the same same time uh and i know that they were deciding on uh what at least as i understand it you know what their preference would have been uh as to whether to bundle these two together or to have them separately and so it's it's unfortunate that uh these two meetings were happening at roughly roughly the same time but i do want to know what their opinion was and their uh and their reasoning for it uh i'll just from a high level i was obviously wasn't at the meeting as i was in here but uh there was no direction or action taken during the meeting but it does i think the discussion was from what i've heard it was a consensus amongst amongst the group that they would have preferred public art be a part of the parks proposition but if you have any detailed questions we have uh jessica rogers here she can answer those okay yeah thank you and that's that's what i had heard too but i hadn't yet had a chance to go watch the video so i would have preferred that too but thank you uh council member davis so kind of sticking with this the theme proposition c the way that i look at it and someone who's a professional this area tell me if i'm wrong the cheapest way to get land for parks is dedication from large developers the most expensive way to get land for parks is to try to eke that money out of your annual budget at the expense of something else whether it's street reconstruction whether it's uh salaries whatever so for me land acquisition capital projects that's precisely the thing you borrow money to do they're a fixed asset they are an asset with ongoing value that's exactly where you invest your your debt dollars and then pay that off over time so i'm okay with the the idea of using bond money frankly a small percentage of our overall bond package and for park acquisition and then also really when you look at the availability of land and the price per acre we've talked about that on council and in different bodies five million dollars gets us 62 acres is what gary was telling us at prices that we are kind of general generalizing across the city whether we spend it for expansion of existing parks or new parks five million actually is not all that much to be spending on whether it's land baking or parkland acquisition so i'm fully in support of proposition c my only concern on language if we could also ask our bond attorney about this is the word acquisition i just want to make sure it's broad enough to encompass all the different ways we take possession of land for instance one of the the things that gary presented to the bond committee was the town to lake trail and if that would include easements does acquisition include money spent on easements or if it was long-term leases does that include because that acquisition does that only mean you know fee sample acquisition or can it mean other things other ways that we can get a hold of land to use for parks as far as separating c from d and the new proposition d it was also my understanding that the bond committee connected the two public public art and parks on you know consciously they did it on purpose but i'm not sure that they had a full discussion about how limiting that is i think i think they had goals in putting those two things together but i don't know that their conversation went as far as ours did last week about all the different ways we can incorporate public art in different parts of the city outside of just the park system if you want a piece of art on a corner in the square you can't use the park system art money for it because it has to be in a park if you want a piece of public art on a in front of city hall you can't do it because it has to be for the park system if it's connected so i just want members of the public to know members of the bond community to know we're having kind of a different discussion than they did about separating those things out and giving the city better access to public art by separating those two things out let's take a five minute break yep welcome back to this meeting of the dent city council on tuesday august 6 2019 it is 1 54 pm we are moving on we're continuing our discussion on agenda item 3d which is received report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the 2019 bond program i believe you're either fixing to respond david or and council member briggs i believe was up for her comments or questions i will just one response to the acquisition piece we'll definitely follow up with bond council and get more information but one one piece with with any dollars we spend we do have to have an asset back that's why easements are typically you can't spend dollars on easements you have to get an asset back we'll follow up with a more comprehensive explanation from my council council member breaks so i just wanted to follow up with what council member davis said education is going to be really important with the streets and all of these different propositions as well on um what the intention is and when i look at the park system improvements i get what council member armature is saying that it could be kind of confusing like does that mean like the playground is going to get you know redone um so i think having um but the acquisition of land in there kind of settles that debate if you if you read it all as one it kind of helps with that um and so i also want to to add as far as the the public art i do want people to understand that we separated it so that we could use it and um have public art in more of the city and not just tied to parks we weren't separating it so that it would fail we really you know what i'm saying so um that those are just my comments and then i wanted to go back to something council member hudspeth said um as far as the um funding for open space and and i'm in agreement of that and i do know that we have funds already set aside to um for that purpose and my question is that um are those funds to be included with these or are those funds available for us to start the process with on on some open space currently there these funds would be in addition to and then there's a additional um exercise we're going through right now which is studying the 915 16 the parkland dedication and acquisition development impact fees which you'll also be dealing with in the next month or so actually in the next few weeks and between the three of those tools it should allow you to for the next five to ten years at least acquire some additional properties probably not going to get us to get us to where the bond committee was hoping we would get in terms of number of acres per thousand or whatever but it will allow us the flexibility to go out and acquire additional property to add to our system but currently there are funds available and processes that we could do if we wanted to start now instead of wait for these funds to be we've got about two million dollars we've set aside out of tree fund to go out and give gary the ability to negotiate with so leaving this in it would just help us in the future we are covered for now okay thank you council member melzer yeah regarding proposition c which i support and suspect is uh not not big enough once we finish the analysis i had also the question about the language before i heard council member armentor is very succinct good idea to just acquisition of land for parks i'll just toss out the thought i had which was acquisition of land for park system expansion but i also think improvement sounds like it could mean we want to build a thunder dome adjacent to a barn or something like that rather than acquire land and then uh last i want to ask about the process we're going to have a public hearing tonight and uh people are going to have things to say and maybe some good ideas or we'll get the sense that there's pressure for one thing or another what's our opportunity to respond to anything we hear tonight you know before a final vote how would we respond you mean in terms of addressing the resident that might have a question or a suggestion well yeah if we wanted to make any changes based on what we hear tonight how would we do that we have a we have another um attempt next week we've got another opportunity next week when you're considering the ballot language and you could make a change before that ordinance is adopted uh is that correct darren yes work session item before the before the week we could put a work session uh placeholder there just in case you you would like anyone likes to discuss anything else there and then we'll be dealing with the ordinance again that night i'm happy to do that i mean i you know i don't participate but just i don't know we're gonna hear okay we'll plan on we'll plan on adding a work session next week just in case there's anything that needs to be tied up similar to what we just did with the uh the roadway discussions okay all right anything else on this okay thank you very much appreciate it thank you all right our next item is work session item three e receive a porthole discussion of staff direction regarding research on tiny home villages for individual experiencing homelessness and the proposed dentin basic services center addressed during presentation good afternoon mayor city council sarah eagler director of public affairs i hear this afternoon to present some research on tiny house villages for homelessness before i begin i want to give some background of how this item came before you today so back a year ago in august of 2018 a resident group presented a project proposal to city council to have a sanctioned encampment project to serve individuals experiencing homelessness and this group is called the dentin basic services center they at that time they proposed to have it on city property located at 1125 north redell street which is right by the city's service center a few weeks after that presentation to council a council work session was held to determine if council had further interest in exploring that project proposal at that time the direction from council was for staff to focus our efforts on forming a shelter planning work group so that we could assess the current shelter environment in denton county and that group could collaborate make recommendations of how to improve the shelter environment here so that group was formed it met over in the fall of 2018 held a series of meetings it analyzed data and administered a survey and ultimately it created a report that was presented to city council in december of 2018 and in that report was a primary recommendation to explore expanding shelter nights and hours following that presentation to council council asked that staff explore budget options of how we could achieve that goal and so that resulted in the shelter proposal that you've heard recently in may of this year from mk oc to expand from three nights to seven nights per week and move towards an enhanced shelter model that presentation also included other options that council is considering in the budget to strengthen our housing crisis response system as well in addition to shelter in june of this year the denton basic services center group again spoke to council and indicated this time that their project proposal has changed to be tiny houses instead of tents following that presentation by the group staff was asked to perform some research on tiny house villages around the country and looked at some of the cities that the group had referenced as well and so before i get into a summary of the research that we performed i do just want to take a few minutes to go over kind of the perspective of our housing crisis system and i know we just recently went through this so i'll make it speedy so we have four key system components the first is diversion and that is to help prevent individuals and families that are at risk of becoming homeless remain housed this is the most cost effective option we have outreach which is to connect with those families and individuals that are living unsheltered and connect them to supportive services and shelter or immediately to housing if available and if that's the appropriate solution the third component is emergency shelter and that's to provide a safe and stable environment for those families that are experiencing homelessness until they can become housed and so ultimately the the fourth element here is housing and housing is the solution and there's different housing interventions available based upon each individual's need it's important as we've talked about before that as we look at our housing crisis response system from kind of a systematic approach that we balance that investment into the different areas so that we continue to help individuals into housing and so i do want to take just another couple minutes on the two components that are kind of relevant to today's discussion the first being emergency shelter so emergency shelter is an effective and efficient part of our systemic response it does provide that safe and stable environment for individuals that are experiencing homelessness and when the shelter planning work group looked at this and evaluated our current shelter environment they identified a couple of key gaps one of the gaps was that in terms of shelter nights that thursday friday saturday and sunday those individuals that were regularly regularly staying with mkoc did not have a place to say those other remaining nights of the week the shelter work group also identified that we needed to look at ways in which we could encourage shelter use by individuals and then also improve our housing outcomes so that led to the the work group or it led to the mkoc proposal that was before you in may in addition that work group also put together some minimum standards for adequate emergency shelter and there's four listed here on the screen they had set that it must be considered habitable that shelter should be considered a short-term solution services and case management should be housing focused and that shelter access should be low barrier and this is consistent with best practices around the nation as well as hud's minimal habitable standards for emergency shelter in order to protect individuals from the elements and not pose any threat to their health and safety there's a number of factors here that you can see that hud looks at and evaluates when they're determining the built environment for an emergency shelter and then the last point here just to point out in terms of our emergency shelter is actually from the united states interagency council on homelessness and that is shelter should provide immediate safety and create quick pass to permanent housing it should not be a long-term solution it should be short-term in nature and then quickly as possible connect individuals to housing solutions and so ultimately housing is the solution and there are different housing solutions broken up into three categories we've talked about these before but in terms of diversion so that's that immediate support for somebody that is at risk or just immediately facing homelessness within the first seven days that second category is rapid rehousing this is usually short-term rental assistance someone that may need three months of rental support or help to become housed again and remain housed and then that last category is our permanent support of housing and this is someone that will require long-term assistance to remain housed and will need that wraparound support of services and these are for individuals that are facing chronic homelessness where they have experienced homelessness for an extended period of time or reoccurring they've become homeless again and so we do have a coordinated entry system in the county we are able to tell at any moment what our housing needs are in these three categories based upon our coordinated entry and housing priority list quick question on that sarah on uh obviously on number three you've got the word permanent in there permanent supportive for those who you know need that but one and two the goal of one and two is to either help them maintain permanent housing correct or as in the case for number two rapid rehousing is to get them some transitional but then to move them into more permanent so the the goals of all these housing interventions whatever level you are is some type of permanent housing correct okay okay so i'll go into the research and tiny house villages that staff performs so overall the phrase tiny house villages can be used to describe many different concepts we did research on 10 different villages around the nation and we included all of that information in your backup i think there's about 30 pages of more details pictures and so forth and you can kind of see they range in terms of their purpose their built structure the funding how they came up with funding the land that they're on the supportive services that are provided there's many different models that are out there so the goal today is just to present to council some of those different models that exist around the nation and so this is my best shot at trying to summarize at least the the 10 that we looked at and i'm going to focus on uh four of them with a little bit more detail but as you can see here um the first column is the name of the village the juristic the second column is the jurisdiction in which it's located and then we tried to separate it into two main categories so these first six here listed are more in a permanent category meaning they are providing a permanent housing solution that is their intended and stated purpose is to get individuals that are faced or experiencing homelessness housed the last four here are kind of in a second category in that they're more temporary and transitional in nature their stated purpose is to provide that bridge almost as another form of shelter until an individual can become housed and then you can kind of see here this is the land just kind of differentiating if these villages are on public land or on private land just a quick description of their zoning the size of the individual units the number of units that are in the village the unit types and then this first light shaded gray these three columns here indicate if the individual units have electricity some form of bathroom or kitchen and then the last four columns here in the darker shaded gray are the shared facilities so a lot of these villages have individual dwelling units and then shared facilities as well i just wanted to be able to to differentiate and kind of show you a summary of the different villages so under the category of electricity does that mean that the individual units have electricity to them that is correct okay does that mean let's see does it show on there if the ones that have electricity so they must i'm going to make this assumption tell me if i'm wrong there's some type of heating or cooling that is associated with each individual unit or no so for the the two that do not show us having electricity um there's no electricity available there's propane heaters sometimes they may use in those villages in different forms to try to have heat especially in the northwest okay councilmembers so i know that you know community first they have a combination of tiny homes and rvs which and i love you know the idea of thinking of rvs is uh permanent housing i know here in denton um you know we have an ordinance that says you know you can't you can't live in a vehicle um but are there any of the other permanent housing solutions here that have a combination of homes and rvs um the the it's only community first located outside of austin that has that combination that we researched yeah and then um i should actually say compassion village um in sacramento california is also built to the rv code they are on their dwelling units are on wheels they have to be temporary in nature and so that's how they are temporary that they can be moved easily because they do have to switch locations and so what what's neat about this is you know when i had seen that you know community first was listed as permanent housing i thought well i think of them as you know transitional and i you know looked at me up and in their description it says uh permanent uh but i i know why i thought that because it has the look of a of what what is typically transitional housing right it's uh part of what's so unique about community first uh is that um you can live there in an rv as your permanent dwelling and and there's not a you know that for those people who just need to to stay there instead of off off the street that can be their permanent home um so anyway it was when and i think i'll save this part of the question for when the basics someone from basic services center comes up um but um it's uh uh it it's my understanding that uh you know based on what i last heard from them that this would be a place kind of like community first where people could stay temporarily as transitional housing but where people could also stay permanently anyway that may not be the case um but and i'll leave that to them to answer instead of you but i just wanted to mention that there's this that these two categories that we we think we know what permanent housing looks like versus what transitional housing looks like community first is a great example of a model that really um uh you know doesn't quite fit what people think of when they think of permanent housing and yet it is for some their permanent housing for others it's it's transitional okay i'm gonna go more into community first actually so i'll bring this slide up at at the end again if council has any questions on the other villages um so the first one i'd like to spend some time on is the community first village which is located um outside of the austin city limits it's technically in travis county texas um and this was a village was started in 2014 by a non-profit called mobile loaves and fishes uh that non-profit was founded in 1998 and it operates in texas as well as three other states and the concept for this village actually started by the non-profit purchasing one rv housing one individual and then in the following years they actually purchased 100 rvs and were able to to house 100 individuals and they were kicking around the concept of how could we create a permanent rv village and i think they according to their website they actually called it an rv park on steroids how could we create this permanent housing community in support of community so they did look at land inside the city of austin over several years and were not able to achieve their goals so they went with with land that was already owned by mobile loaves and fishes that was in travis county so they are not subject to the zoning regulations of austin they do have to follow certain state regulations though in terms of density and water quality the entire village is privately funded so that is both the capital which was 14 million for the first phase of 240 units and then as well as their annual operating budget to support the village is privately funded and that's about five million dollars per year to keep that that village operational so that phase one of the project it did include in your backup the kind of the map of the village but you can see it has 120 micro homes 20 canvas sided homes and these units have electricity but no water and then they also have 100 rvs which the rvs do have electricity and then full kitchen and bathrooms and those are usually for individuals that may have a more disability or something that may require those amenities to be right inside of their dwelling unit they've had success with this model and actually just kicked off a capital campaign to privately raise enough money to begin phase two so what they're looking to do is a 24 acre expansion and add 300 more units and they're budgeting about 25 thousand dollars per micro home and then 35 thousand dollars per rv is their estimated cost for a total cost estimate of 20 million and then in addition to having these individual units they do have shared spaces in community amenities they have a worship center gardens a medical facility trails outdoor movie theater and more so it really is almost a planned community plan development community where they have a lot of these amenities on site they also provide a wider range of supportive services from case management health care respite care substance abuse treatment employment opportunities farmers markets they have a bus route that operates from their village to the city of austin as well and it is a permanent supportive housing solution so since it opened i think they had quoted actually from since 2016 they've seen an 87 retention rate which means residents are coming there to live there permanently i have to answer any questions on this model or as i'll move on to the next so the 25 000 home estimate they have is that is that for a home that is less than 200 square feet that is correct for this type of model but they have different various models but yes and that's to get that probably includes the site development in the unit as well okay and all the all the fees and the electricity yeah so so so they're in it this is an unincorporated area correct yeah and can can you speak to what kind of cooperation they have with city of austin in terms of you know services uh you know police fire electricity i know that the city of austin is is proud of them uh but what in terms of kind of formal services i don't think i can speak to that but to my knowledge there is no formal relationship um and and i know that the um organization and mobile loaves and fishes is very proud that they've been completely privately funded and that they don't have to necessarily have regulations and and comply with federal or state grant regulations as well which is sometimes a difficulty yeah but so like if there's a fire you know it'd be the county the sheriff or whoever is servicing that unincorporated area so the the next village is also a permanent supportive housing village in its quijote village in olympia washington and so this has a little bit of a different history and background um this village concept actually started with a tent city in 2007 as part of the occupy movement um so this group had helped to organize and coordinate a tent city and it moved um over six years and it had seven different local churches that hosted the camp per the ordinance through olympia they had to regularly move their tent city they couldn't remain in any one location for more than three to six months and they also had to have 24 hour a day monitoring by church members in order to comply with that ordinance so what this group did is they started to look at what could be a permanent housing solution instead of having to continuously move the camp and comply with those regulations and also provide a better environment for those individuals experiencing homelessness so they formed a non-profit called panza and what they did is they found community frameworks which is a non-profit affordable housing developer that community frameworks actually helped them to do a feasibility study development plan fundraising designing construction and then ultimately helps with property management as well so it is that partnership approach it is on land leased by the county so it is on public land that is for a dollar per year lease and oh just over two acres of land it did require a zoning code amendment by the city of olympia and then it also required the organization to obtain a conditional use permit in order to have the village be located on this piece of property the funding for this village is a mixture of public and private funding the capital was about three million dollars at a rate about eighty eight thousand dollars per unit and that's a mix of state grants cdbg funding county funding and then community donations and then the annual operating is also a mix of public and private funding from the lease that they get the the income they get from their tenants as well as the county provides some of that funding and the description of the current quijote village you can kind of see here other individual units sent around a shared space and then a shared community center so there's 30 dwellings at 144 square feet per dwelling they do have full electricity and half bass and then in addition to having that they also provide phone internet basic furnishings in each of those units and then in the shared community center here they have kitchen dining area living room showers laundry offices and a meeting space the village is currently full and has a waiting list in order to get its conditional use permit it had to comply with all applicable city engineering building and fire codes and then it also met the requirements of the international residential code the units are considered sleeping units rather than accessory dwelling units but it's still met the the building code and then they do provide some supportive services through three staff members that are at the village full-time so happy to answer any questions on this model okay so now i'll transition into focusing on two villages that are more transitional and temporary in nature so one of the well-known villages is dignity village in portland oregon it has been open since 2000 and it was formed by a group of residents as well that had been working with a group of individuals from a tent city to then find land to become more of a transitional temporary village it is located on city owned land it shares a lot with the municipal leaf composting facility and they're able to do this as oregon state law has a provision that allows any land that is designated as a campground to provide transitional housing under certain circumstances so a campground can offer transitional housing in oregon if persons who lack permanent shelter and they cannot be placed in other low-income housing and then the state law also stipulates that it must be temporary in nature but it doesn't necessarily define this temporary mean the units themselves have to be able to be moved is that temporary in nature or is it just the number or for the length of stay per individuals how long they can be in the village and their annual operating budget is twenty eight thousand dollars that is covered all privately by donations and resident fees and different revenues that they bring in from micro micro business opportunities it does consist of 43 basic dwellings and they're built of recycled or reclaimed materials and each of those dwellings is equipped with a bed and a propane heater there are no water to the units and very few of them have electricity and then for the entire village which is about 50 to 60 residents there are two shared sinks one shower and several portalettes so again it falls under the state of oregon building codes for the standard of a campground the city also provides a dedicated social worker for this village so that is in addition to above and beyond the 28,000 dollar budget they have they did have an incident recently in spring where one of those propane tanks exploded and it burned one person and destroyed a dwelling as well as i tried to look up to see if there was transitional housing outcomes available for this village to understand how they were performing wasn't able to locate that data i did find one article that referenced that almost a third of the residents have been there five years or longer council member uh just noting that you know the previous slide that operation had an annual operating uh expense of 250,000 for 30 units this is you know almost the 10th of that for 43 units any major insights as to why they're able to operate so much more leanly supportive services um in in this it's probably the main cost driver there in this model um they're helping to provide those wraparound services to their clients and here there is no no staff it's just this budget is covering some basic necessities for the village for the bodies things such as that correct i suppose that would align with the idea that it's intended to be transitional rather than permanent and supportive yes um however if it's it should be transitional you would want to maybe see some of the supportive services provided so that you can help an individual finding a housing solution as quickly as possible um so that may speak to some of the lack of data or outcomes available on actually transitioning individuals from the village to a permanent housing solution i wonder if we could get that data from the city social worker that uh is is dedicated to it yes if it exists didn't you say what what did you say a third have been there how long five years or longer and that's from an article so okay so it's just one reference point okay yeah that's my mom yeah that would uh i was actually going to ask about that too you know that would seem to say to me that maybe this is effectively permanent housing i don't know enough about this this particular village but if they're not if there's not a as far as you know if they're a time limit by which you have a a lease there that's over a certain period i think this is the village where per the contract with the city on the city land that the individuals are not supposed to stay longer than two years but enforcing that forcing that is probably difficult i see okay and i think if you switch back to the last picture i mean these are the only pictures you've got and this i mean you can see a pretty much appreciable difference in the developments and i think that also is an indication of the different operating costs i mean you certainly there's a lot more expenses with the other sure development because of just and utility costs as well yes um okay so moving on to the last village to highlight and this is in othello village in seattle washington so before i talk specifically to this village just kind of want to give some background in terms of the city of seattle so the city of seattle did pass an ordinance which allows for three transitional encampments in the city those transitional encampments cannot exist for longer than two years in any one location so they have to move them every two years the city did supersede that ordinance under a state of emergency and now they currently have eight transitional campgrounds or encampments sorry um but they're looking to come back into compliance with the ordinance that they had originally passed and i'll talk more about that on the next slide uh so the city in order to operate these transitional encampments the city does provide the funding to non-profit organizations to operate the encampments on a day-to-day basis um so in 2018 the city actually went through an effort to kind of restructure these agreements these funding agreements with the non-profit organizations and they really did that to focus um more on how effective the transitional encampments were being and getting individuals into permanent housing so as part of the funding agreement now with these non-profits they have to provide measures and outcomes and if they're not meeting certain outcomes their their pay actually may be reduced um in terms per the funding agreement with the city in addition they are required to do case management they're required to do hmis um there's a number of other things so that they're all working together in terms of the same system and so um kind of transitioning back to talk more about just an example of one is Othello village and this is through a contract with the low income housing institute there are an affordable non-profit housing developer in the city of seattle um this village is on private land so it is on land owned by the non-profit and in order to get the village started and going um there is a capital cost of about 500 000 to 800 000 and this is for each transitional encampment every time it needs to be moved so every two years they are the city of seattle is outlaying that capital to move the village and then to get it set up for the infrastructure and the utilities necessary as well as the dwellings themselves and then there is an annual operating cost as well that the city of seattle is funding so for Othello village the agreement is for 440 000 per year so i want to make sure i understand this so there's how many there were originally uh by ordinance three of these yes allowed and then there's how many now there is eight so are you telling me that if you multiply this number by eight this is what the city of seattle is paying correct so 3.2 million dollars in annual operating and uh every two years or however they're staggered out they're paying anywhere from a million to 1.5 million a year for relocation that's correct and i'll kind of talk more about in the next slide um how they're reevaluating their strategy moving forward um so Othello village has 30 tiny homes they are at 96 square feet um they do have electricity and they did the agreement also allowed for 10 tents they are transitioning again away from that they're actually going to replace those tents with the tiny homes uh as part of the village um they have shared kitchen and restroom facilities on-site showers and laundry a counseling office and then a welcome and security hut um so recently um low-income housing institute is the non-profit that holds the contract with the city of seattle they did subcontract with a grassroots organization called nicholsville in order for them to do the day-to-day management and operation of the village under a self-governance model that group for whatever reason had disagreements and the low-income housing institute actually terminated their contract with nicholsville that didn't go over well and there's been a lot of things in the news recently and nicholsville actually refused to leave low-income housing institute's property and they locked the gates of the village um so there has been some conflict um in in this village here recently and the city of seattle didn't want to comment on it besides um that that it's a civil dispute but they will enforce the terms of their contract with lehigh in terms of having case management on-site making sure individuals are going through the coordinated entry assessments and so forth um and so then moving more into the city of what we learned from the city of seattle and some of this is actually taken directly from the website as well um in march they announced that they were going to be looking at a fellow village and two others and they're only going to repermit them for an additional six months while they looked at a long-term strategy um they've cited that it's a challenge given all the property logistics costs and program needs of people experiencing homelessness to continue with these transitional encampments and that they are looking to transition more to providing 24/7 enhanced shelter um in terms of helping people off the streets and into safer living situations as well as helping them along to permanent housing quicker and more efficiently and um they've also seen that individuals are more encouraged to come into the shelter when they provide some of these enhanced shelter elements and then i just wanted to add to the city of seattle is taking the same approach as we are in terms of a county-wide or more regional approach they are looking to actually form a regional authority to manage homelessness uh in that area now to make sure that they're coordinated between all the non-profit service providers that exist in the city of seattle and then outside in the county as well yeah question well you know you're kind of getting into depth of the like all the challenges that this one had but is are you sort of are you suggesting in general they have all had these problems or you know the other one i mean there are many of these places right so yeah are they you know are some of them doing well and some of them not doing well i can't speak to each village all i can speak to is that the city of seattle is reevaluating their overall approach to how they help to provide safe and stable environments to those that are experiencing homelessness and how do they improve their housing outcomes that's their overall goal so they're they're reevaluating um at what quantity at what locations what role should these transitional encampments play and is there other alternatives and how our emergency shelters or enhanced shelters how are they performing so that they can make more informed funding decisions and understand their return on investment and so this is just an overview of the research again i'm happy to answer any questions you might have and just seeking direction if there's any further information requested councilmember roger let's see so first um so i would like to after uh we're done with questions for staff can someone from the basic services center answer questions from council yes okay yeah as long as i mean they're not scheduled to give a full-blown presentation but any questions within a certain you know parameter okay um so i feel like and so correct me if i'm wrong but you know i feel like there's a kind of a message here that um that permanent housing is uh is a better investment versus transitional housing is that is that correct or you wouldn't quite put it put it that way i'm not sure if i'd put it that way i might ask danny shaw to come up and kind of talk a little bit more about the purposes of transitional housing outside of just this research um but why why transitional housing may exist and then in terms of permanent housing and the need for permanent housing in our community oh yeah sure and and and by the way and just and i don't think anyone here would need explanation as to um the need for you know permanent housing and why and you know and why that's good uh i'm kind of wondering about you know are there um in other words if you've got really good transitional housing really good shelter what do you call it shelter plus or enhanced shelter um or you know really great transitional housing uh isn't that you know my understanding is that kind of all of these the that uh a really good transitional option and a really good shelter option that these all fit within the continuum of care of pushing of getting people off the street moving them to permanent housing is that would that be fair to say if i understand your question i'm sorry danny shaw community development um specifically where the successful models happen is where we have supportive services that are wrapping around with those intentions of moving people to permanent housing solutions so where transitional housing is successful or people usually have higher service needs and the goal for them is to move them into a permanent housing solution but that transitional housing is needed for a short term in order to stabilize something about that individual and that could be a mental health issue it could be a substance abuse issue it varies depending on what the transitional need is but typically it's we're looking at outcomes that are very specific to moving them from and through the continuum from transitional into permanent housing solution so that's where there's success and that's where we try to focus on yeah okay those outcomes and and that makes that makes perfect sense perfect sense to me um so it's not a matter of uh you know is there something inherently wrong with the with the transitional housing it's that no matter what what your model is uh you need you need this kind of wraparound care and and casework um just would say one thing it is getting harder to fund transitional housing for example HUD has pulled funding away from transitional because it wants to to fund permanent solutions so about three years ago they withdrew a lot of funding for for transitional housing programs across the united states and has made it a little more difficult to fund it um but so more permanent solutions are what they're looking at more money is being driven that direction and so what i'm what i'm wondering it's since community first it looks like as far as appearances get more of a kind of transitional you know you see rvs and um and uh the you know tiny homes um it looks transitional i mean could could some of these transitional uh facilities if they get um uh the funds for it and have the wraparound care be uh become permanent yeah in any case a transitional housing program could evolve into a permanent housing and in any case a permanent housing solution may be temporary for the individual who may stabilize and be able to move out where community first is successful as it's taking for example on our list those 122 people who are chronically homeless it's taking those folks who are the hardest to house who would not be able to find traditional housing like an apartment or something else where a landlord would rent to them because of their other issues and giving them a place to stay that is safe safe and stable and allowing them to stay there permanently if they're never able to to move past that and live independently yeah and and that's what i think you know it's so valuable i think about a place like this because you know not everybody um is is going to be able to stay in permanent housing for a number of uh or in a traditional i should say a traditional permanent housing model um so um so with community first you're you're getting people off the street permanently and once people it's neat to see in austin i know it's not in austin but it's near austin you know in austin it's it's really helped to change people's minds about you know what's an acceptable place to live and and and and and a place to stay permanently but so much so that even i had thought of it as a transitional transitional housing where people stay permanently which is you know that's a con that's a contradiction um so anyway thank you and and i'll be curious when the you know basic services center comes up to know if they you know plan on having a limited you know lease and telling people they have to leave after a certain period of time or if people would be able to stay there permanently too council member so i have a question for danny but i also have questions for the um the board of the the services center as well um it am i recalling correctly um for there's certain percentages that that we have had in place tied to funding regarding transitional housing or was that we don't have any grants currently that have percentages tied to there are goals that we have from what you'd either call emergence emerging or best practices that you'd want to try to hit with transitional which is to move about 70 of those folks to a more permanent housing solution so that's sort of a best practices goal that we're we're working towards but it's it's not anything that we're measuring at this point okay for some reason i was thinking the esg grant at some point when we had the application we had to do a um a percentage of right so in the emergency shelter outcomes for for that particular one the goal is to move 35 into permanent supportive housing and 40 into temporary or transitional so the overall goal is about 75 though into some sort of housing solution that's not emergency or on the street but so the 40 transitional that we had in there isn't tied to any funding no it's just a goal it just allows you that flexibility of saying so there are some groups that we may only get into transitional housing but as long as there's a housing solution you're still successfully meeting the outcomes of the emergency solutions grant and so out of that 70 of what are we meeting now um i don't have the data on that from the current grant we get that kind of sporadically now because we're not managing that grant for the individual agencies any longer but we've never actually achieved that goal in the past yeah okay there are a couple of places kind of along the the pipeline you could say or i could imagine something like this playing a role and i just don't have a clear understanding of your picture of the math of our kind of current vision and so i'm gonna let me just if you don't mind you know say what i think the place might be and maybe you could help me address it seems to me like there's two places where it could fit one is you've got you know people who are currently in the woods and you've got you know with who prefer having no sanitary services to going into existing emergency shelter and then you know you've and then you've only got 90 beds but there's something like the number varies but like 500 people roughly who are in county-wide or kind of actively yeah we're about 490 and some change okay 490 not 500 so county-wide yes thank you yeah so seems like you know there's some quantitative gap there where there might be some place for people to stay where they'd have sanitary services that where the we're up you know a group no privacy kind of bunk bed shelter just doesn't is never going to work for them so maybe you know maybe it fits in that slice or you know do we have some other idea of what what would fit there and the other place where i think it might fit is you've where you've got people who will hopefully things go the way we think be able to stay seven nights at mkc and have have case management to get them into permanent housing but our ability to chip away at the barriers it's increasing and you know you've been having progress but it's not like 400 units you know anytime quickly so that there might be some that might be some place where people to go out of mkc so i i guess i'm asking if if you see the math working differently you know where there isn't a need in either of those two places you know like how quickly would we be able to turn over that four to five hundred or four to six hundred population through the mkc case management window so you don't need something here and you don't need something there is that completely murky yeah yeah before so help me understand when you say where this fits or you're referring to something what exactly you're referring to something in the spectrum of what we're seeing here it's a tiny house village okay some kind of tiny house okay and this is county wide so we're having a discussion here and so i just just want to make sure that we understand that that we're talking about county numbers here at least right now and we're here discussing sort of city issues so i just want us to make just be clear that so because it does sound if we keep throwing a number around and it sounds like well we've only got 130 shelter beds in dentin and there's 400 people then we're way behind but we have to make sure that we're comparing all the apple staff totally that point and i and uh you know all the effort to create county-wide collaboration is so critical completely in agreement so if i understand the question yes there are gaps in our service delivery that we don't have funding or resources for that could look like a model like this as well as any number of other different ideas out in other communities that they're trying to fill those gaps with our goal has always been focused on making sure those those ideas and those options are permanent rather than transitional so everything that we want to invest in or we're recommending investment in has been to that end and so when we're looking at the numbers we're looking at if there are 122 people who are experiencing chronic homelessness that means permanent supportive housing where someone can live for the rest of their life and for those people who are on the rapid rehousing list that 230 some odd that's just a dollar amount that means rental assistance for a period of time and they'll stabilize on their own so there's gaps in both of those places you don't have enough permanent supportive housing to meet that need we don't have enough dollars to help people with rental assistance so there are gaps absolutely those 94 that are in diversion we think those folks can be stabilized because they already have access to a housing solution we just need to help them navigate that when they're in a moment of stress so i think there there are other opportunities this is one of them okay okay any other questions for staff at least at this point all right i'm going to just take a little bit of license here i'm going to change my chair out with one right there because i'm beginning to sink low and before you know it you're barely going to be able to see my head so let's take a five minute break and i'll change that out welcome back to this meeting of the dent city council uh on what's the date august the 6th 2019 it is 2 54 we are on agenda work session agenda item 3e i believe councilmember milzler has a question for staff and then we'll move on to other questions yeah if if we did want to accommodate something like this within city of denton uh is is there is there land that's appropriate i mean if the city wanted to make land available we have you know we've purposefully not gone down that path i know that that's been a question for a couple of you because we didn't really know what we were um trying to accommodate we've had different plans or different proposals such as a basic service center one for veterans i mean with some of them in various focus so if this is something that is interest to the to the council we could certainly take a look at it i my only concern is the minute you start putting possible sites out are you are we ready for the questions that are going to be coming from the neighbors and do we have a plan that communicate what what it's for what you know and and what the what the uses are going to be so i think it's important to kind of vet out is this a concept that you're interested in and if so under what scenarios or circumstances would you be interested in it then it's a little bit easier to go out and identify sites but the minute that conversation starts with no specific plan on our end i'm just not sure that's the most responsible way to handle that conversation so wanted to make sure that we got direction from all of you and is there a is there a vision here that you would like us to start working on that we could communicate yeah i think that question is really almost premature just because we haven't really discussed any type of process or whether it's i mean up up on this screen you have a wide variety of facilities a wide variety of facilities and only two of them are in the city which i'll be honest with you the two dignit village village and opportunity village i would struggle with going down that path to sort of replicate those particular facilities but the rest are private land ones in the county and i think it's important to note that the salvation army just had a land donation or they're working on something a letter of intent with a private person and then grace like rain also received a private land donation so i think that is a conversation possibly for another day but i think to try to figure that out it's putting almost the the cliche of putting the cart before the horse until we really if this is a if this is a way we want to move then that's going to be part of that discussion but yeah well just to switch from uh cart and horse to chicken and egg uh you know it's hard to say which comes first the reason i ask is just is it even is it even moot you know like is like do we like i'm not saying which but just like a yes or no question like is you know is is that even something conceivably that we would discuss down the road because it's possible you know in other words if if if if city land we're only in areas where it just would never be appropriate then then you wouldn't even have the discussion that's that's kind of the tenor of my question so it's a little bit yeah it's a little bit chicken and egg well i don't i wouldn't i wouldn't say that that that question would never be asked i mean if you move in this direction i think that's just a natural progress of okay at what level of city involvement is is desired and then if someone steps up and hears of a plan that's coming forward and they have some private land so uh i don't think it's a black or white question that can be answered today i think that that conversation probably would exist if we move down some path based upon one of these kind of conceptions so i i fully anticipate that to be a discussion i just i think right now it'd be we don't have any idea what we're looking for or what we're trying to plan for or even what the the direction of the council is so that's the only reason i say that's not to just miss your question it's it's just to say i think it's it's one that would be more efficiently talked about once we are a little bit further down the road yeah yeah okay any question more questions for staff and i think there were some questions for the uh denton basic services group okay uh who's going to be the spokesperson for the denton basic services group okay if you'll come up introduce yourself and we'll ask you some questions okay chain piper length i'm chairman of denton basic service center board okay uh council member barmiter and then go council member breaks yeah so uh i was wondering if you could just describe for us how the basic services center fits into our current needs and also how quickly you think you know once you have the land uh how quickly i'm sorry once you would have the land you know theoretically uh how quickly uh people could be housed there wherever there is and the reason i'm asking is because i see you know we have these wonderful plans you know the salvation army plan the grace like rain rain plan uh that uh are kind of several years down the line and i know and you know that right now we have people living on the street um so and fortunately we don't have to decide between do we want these uh you know long-term solutions that will take longer to build or do we want to get people off the street today we can we can and if i believe you do have to do both at the same time so anyway that's where my question is coming from but if you could just speak to how soon you could have people there and why why you think we need this um our goal is to get as many people off the street as quickly as possible and this is why we looked at this this this type of of housing the the goal for us and and one of the things i mean in the presentation you know they presented to you where those groups are now many of those have been 10 15 years in the making and they started out very simply um and we will start out very simply um we feel like there is a gap okay and being a community group we're not hemmed in by restrictions of grants okay so that um we can do a gap analysis okay and see what what is missing and what is missing is that place between the shelter or the woods and permanent housing and there are people who are not ready to go straight into permanent housing to take somebody off the street and immediately put them in permanent housing my understanding is okay um one of the the groups that handles the housing um their wraparound services have up until recently consisted of a caseworker seeing their people every three months um there is a new caseworker my understanding is that is at least seeing one guy that we know and wants to see him every month okay that to me is not supportive okay supportive is there when they need them and um analyzing what they need and helping them find that and and obtain that and getting them to the point where they can live permanently um one of the council members talked to me about oh well we put this guy in an apartment and he invited his friends in and it was a mess and all of this and i'm like yeah because you need to transition these people okay uh go ahead what yeah so so when you say some people you know aren't ready for permanent housing yet i know what you mean in the case of the example you gave of an apartment um but you don't mean that some people aren't ready for community a community first yet all right i mean that's permanent housing well i mean that's a form of permanent housing but but in the city here permanent housing for the most part means an apartment well but but what i mean would would you would basic services center be able to provide for those people who need it a permanent solution like what community first does that doesn't look like a traditional model i'm not trying to put put words in your mouth trying to figure out a lot of these um these villages evolved okay and um you know when like when some started out as as transitional villages they found that they needed permanent housing so they started another village okay or they started a section that was permanent um our our original intent is transitional housing now if we see and and we were talking you know again we talked to mhmr and to mayhill and they need some permanent housing group housing and you know if they're willing to help fund that and provide the wraparound services we may have a section that is permanent housing um you know it's it you know i mean just like they can't give you every single statistic of every single person you know we we have to be fluid enough to meet the needs of the people and because that's our concern our concern is these people and what they need and um you know but i i think that that we can help get many of these people into permanent housing or prepare them for permanent housing and and that is our main goal you know to be able to become self-sufficient and independent people okay so i really want to try to focus this discussion i don't know want this necessarily to be a presentation but she asked a couple of very pointed questions and i think one of them was how soon and uh you answered the one about the need for so when you're talking about how quickly are you able to move people into a facility of your vision what what what's the answer to that well i know you don't like it but our vision is to start with tents and to immediately get those people to start building their own house that with the same concept as habitat for humanity you have that investment in that that that shelter and so they're more likely to take care of it um i think we could get i think we i think six months is is reasonable to get at least 20 people house okay councilmember briggs you had a question or two oh mic okay so we we have heard that um successful projects offer supportive services um is that part of this services center to be offered to offer those yeah one of the reasons why we use community first as a model is because they have on-site um what they call missionaries okay and they're divided up into 20 houses and there's a a a person who lives there who is their case worker if you want to call it and um so they are there to to help them get their ids you know find the the services that they need help give the counseling you know and uh um so and that's totally our plan is to have on-site people living there who who could help facilitate these people so just a question of clarification on that if i may because i'm getting a little confused as to what the definition of supportive wraparound services is so i just want staff to make a note of this because i thought what i heard you say was that these people live there they sort of provide some logistical help to them but are these people licensed social workers are they licensed therapists that i mean and especially if you're saying the people that are going to live what you're describing live where you're describing uh you said at first it was a tent but are you saying these will be licensed professionals or they're just sort of peers that sort of provide um some mentoring or some help on some logistical matters well yes but they would all i mean they would be providing really what some of our services don't provide which is that person who is there to help them navigate those services you know very often people will get in the system and get lost or you know don't know what to do or you know which is which group to go to you know you know i mean for example i know a guy who needs to be in mhmr but every time he goes there for an appointment he walks off you know so that person from the village would go with him you know and make sure he stays there and he gets those services you know that's um and and in our thing you know it says the quote from alan graham of of community first is housing will never solve homelessness but community will and and it's having that community and those supportive people there to help them navigate those systems and get to those points where they can go into permanent housing and work successfully and be a successful for these programs councilmember briggs i'm sorry to interrupt you go ahead i just need that clarification okay yeah just um another question so in your mind how um we heard about um some of the um other places having a maximum time period two years what do you consider uh transitional what time period wise it depends on what the person needs okay you know if they're suffering from post-traumatic stress i mean that takes a minimum of six months to get over that a minimum you know um i would think i would think two years but again it may be for the individual it may just be three four months you know it just depends on what their need is um and again our concentration is on the people not a program and so we will do what those people need and so it'll be individual by the person depending on what with how long they need to be there right thank you councilmember davis so uh we had previous presentations from your group and we had uh packets and and uh budgets and plans that came with that and then we have a new at our places today kind of a new presentation and there's one specific section that is you know what we need from the city can you help me can you clarify for me what is the the proposal that's in front of us or what is it that you are asking for the city to do um for your group we would like to rent land just like chamber commerce does just like you know and um monsignor king we um would like help navigating the system as far as getting the sup you know whatever's required um if there are in kind ways you can help us we would love that whether discounts on trash or the water or electricity whatever and we originally asked for money um that would help us get this going faster but we're willing to negotiate that on that so okay i want to give any councilmember armature has spoken anybody have anything i'll swing back around to her if you i mean i'm not saying you got to right now i'm just wanting to give people a chance so uh you want to share some thoughts councilor sure yeah no i think um i think uh my notes uh so mine's just not not really questions just sharing my thoughts and where i am can we can we go ahead and maybe get the questions done first just yeah so she's not up there while we're sort of discussing it sure councilmember armature do you have some comments or questions yeah uh yeah so i was wondering since the general topic is um see how it's uh direction on tiny houses and and since the presentation that we heard from staff had to do with um with with shelter in general can i include um uh can i say something about our daily bread and daytime shelter as well would that be off topic i'm not sure if that fits within posting what has been posted is a discussion involving tiny houses tiny house villages for individuals experiencing homelessness one and two the proposed intent and basic services center which um miss piper lunt is here to answer those questions so your presentation is basically limited to those two topics okay okay i was just wondering because the the presentation included i didn't know okay so i'm gonna skip that um that part uh so you know my feeling is that because we have people living on the street uh we have people living in the woods and nobody likes seeing people live in the street that's i think one thing we all agree on whether people are uh have somebody saying there's a homeless person there i want them gone or if they're saying there's a homeless person there it breaks my heart everybody's agreeing on uh that person should not be living on the street they should have somewhere else to go that's actually a great i think point of consensus um as a community even though these two camps tend to be kind of pitted against each other um so uh i see you know what uh the kind of solution that you're offering as an essential part a piece in the puzzle and that is we have uh it it rules about encampments right now that say that as i understand it uh if your encampment does not have running water you know trash pick up all these things no okay she's shaking her head okay never mind so i won't go into that in too much detail lest i um and i know that you had sent me something i'll study that later um so it's i should say we don't have any official would it be safe to say we don't have any official kind of legal sanctioned encampment campground okay okay thank you uh so we don't have that um and we have uh people living on campgrounds that are you know technically illegal they're not kind of recognized and they're also unsanitary so this gives people a way when in those cases when and i know it's on a case-by-case basis but when it's decided that encampments are unsanitary at least this is a place where we could tell people well you could live there uh right now there's no place like that we even have a law that says you're not allowed to sleep in your car and you're not allowed to even have all your have too many possessed personal possessions in your car uh you know a car is uh a nice compact uh you know self-contained unit where your you are not living on the street when i say nice i don't mean it's ideal uh but i know that if i had a choice between living on the street or living in a car i would feel much safer in my car uh so you know when we're looking at the kind of choices that we're giving people i believe that we need at the very least a sanctioned campground so what i'm going to the suggestion i'm going to make is that since this is kind of the only group who's coming to us and saying that they are uh willing to uh and eager to manage something kind of like that uh that i would like us to to uh look into the possibility of available land that we could rent to them and you know with whatever conditions would would come to that uh and you know i would encourage you know starting starting small you know not biting off more than you could can chew but it sounds like that's kind of what y'all are going to do anyway so you know that's where i stand and and and again it's for me this is we're looking at this versus what we have what we have right now which is people living on the street and in the woods and on sanitary conditions conditions this actually really kicks it up a notch it gives you that those there's sanitary conditions and it gives it gives people a choice because now they have literally nowhere nowhere else to go are there any more questions for the speaker just so that okay and then once we finished with it i want to wrap up the questions here so that it's not standing up there here in our deliberation so that was that was my intention i had a couple more as i was going through this proposal yeah and so um it says on here um assistance financials for library liability insurance and do you know how much there's there's some things here but not a cost associated with that so it's about ten thousand dollars a year ten thousand a year okay and um also in-kind support for utilities water sewer electric and um that would bring in those things up to code and would that be for the individual i'm going to talk about tiny houses because that's what the we've kind of gotten away from that but this is what the the proposition and what we've been looking at the last couple times is referred to um so is that for the community center or for individual units um to start you know it would be a community bathroom a community kitchen so that's to start okay you know if we if we want to transition to full-blown tiny homes self-contained we we have found and the the consensus is that okay one of the concerns people have is that they're never going to leave okay well when they first come into a village like this this is heaven for them but we don't want them too comfortable you know because we want them to be able to move on and and to be able to to say okay i've done my time here i'm ready and but it also um it those people who would tend to stay in their if you want to call it room their place this forces them out into community to learn relationship skills to integrate you know to get involved because when you're on the street you withdraw i mean you you know and and that's part of our goal is to help them reintegrate back into society so yes the price would be initially or the help would be for the community kitchen and community bathroom thank you any other questions for the speaker that's my run i'm looking back at the proposal that you brought to us a couple of times in the past on the budget part of it um the numbers that you have on here how did you come up with those did you actually have someone who does construction help you with these numbers um because i'm looking at the sheds being 5 000 each and well is that the high end one or the the high end one is showing five thousand dollars each i don't know what kind of footprint they have square footage wise yeah those are ordered cedar sheds with porches i mean well you call them sheds you know because they don't have the the utilities but they're you know they're small dwellings okay and are they insulated at that price insulated and up to energy code for i don't know i don't think so okay no all right thank you that can be that's not a hard thing to do though okay any other questions council member davis i kind of do now because i think i've gotten more confused and and helped me i just want to have a clear picture of what we're talking about and what the proposal is um because i know just in the course of this conversation you've talked about tents first and then the residents building additional structures and then uh ordered sheds i'm just going to use the word shed because it's what we've said already but the the cedar structures that would be ordered um presumably from a manufacturer of some kind i'm just still not clear on exactly what the proposal is and what you're asking the city to get involved in okay the original proposal had two two versions okay but like as of today like what is the what's the ask what's the ask yeah what's the proposal was the ask what we would like is to be able to have land to initially bring people on to the land build platforms put the tents on there as a temporary solution to be able to get them there get them organized to begin to build the village okay that's the only purpose of the tents you know because otherwise we're going to be building this or they're going to be living on the street and coming on all the time to help build it you know and um so it is it is a way to bring a group of people together to then begin to build the village okay um what else and i mean is that okay councilmember melzer what experience do the members of the board have in this area well let's see i've been working with homeless people for over 35 years um dr love is a a teacher of community health and has years and years of studies with this layla comings is a contractor and has run a contracting business for years our our new secretary our new treasurer is a uh is a financial high-end financial in a position um so she really knows how to handle the money and and all of that john who's in this is was co-owner of um dorothy's kitchen and ran day houses for several years he was a founding or one of the members of um seeds of change which some of those members were some of the beginning people who started by the senior king um you know we have uh our our board of directors has contractors on it it has lawyers on it it has um i'm trying to think who all's on there we we have a lot of experience we can pull this off i guarantee you so the only question i have is i need some help understanding something you've talked about tents originally that's very clear where i stand on that you've talked about sheds that's y'all's word that's not our word that's in the proposal 30 cedar sheds um that are not insulated not heated not cooled no wondering water no electricity we spent oh gosh how long did we spend an hour and a half or two hours a couple weeks ago talking about homelessness and inclement weather and shelters being opened or not city buildings being opened or not everybody's concerned about and rightly so when the temperature gets too hot or too cold in fact you even came and made a presentation to us in a citizens report talking about hypothermia i don't i don't understand how either one of these proposals changes any of those concerns i can address that i sure would like to hear it okay in the sense of that and i'm not ruling this out okay but we're talking about beginnings here okay and in the beginning we have ways to heat and cool these places okay without having to do a full bloom electric setup okay and um and we're talking about you know again these places started out very simply okay i'm giving you the simple version here as we earn money and stuff we'll be major improvements on this you know but we have ways we have ways of we have a uh a way to create an air conditioner that's solar we have a way to create heaters that are solar um there's there's a lot of real creative ways to to do this but the very fact that that these people are not walking around carrying their stuff everywhere with no place to go no place to get out of the brain you know no place to cover up without getting a ct you know i mean this is a big step this is a big improvement of where they are right now okay all right any more questions yes councilmember armature um rvs would you allow rvs um there there's two things that we would like to see now right off the bat i don't see it happening but we would like to see a parking area where people can come and park their rvs or even their cars if we're full you know um the other thing we would like to see is a temporary sleeping uh tent or shed you know some kind of shelter where those people who do not actually want to become part of the community okay but need a place to sleep can come and lay down for eight hours and then get up and leave and um and you know another question i'll ask if so uh for people who don't like uh tents and then personally as for me as far as i'm concerned um i would much rather have a uh a tiny home you know heated and cooled than a tent but i would also rather have a tent than a street being in the street i'd rather be in my car than a street you know everything is relative so but if no tents um if that's a condition it sounds to me like what you know what you're suggesting it sounds like that would be possible not to have tents there as long as you can have people in there as long as people could be in cars rvs and i was also wondering if you could speak to you now that um the that building restriction restrictions and materials have been lifted you know if you could speak to and i know that i'm alone at least i think i'm a minority one on council and thinking that this has a lot of potential um this by by which i mean this this new law um lifting uh these uh city specific building restrictions it i would think you know small portable buildings i mean what can can you speak to you how many how many of shelters that can be built depending on what kind of materials you can get i mean there are what are called conestoga homes there are you know i mean there's just you know mud dog i mean you know i mean or adobe you know i mean there's lots of kinds of structures that can be built for cheaply yes yes so you could do this without tents um i mean if a tent is a canvas whatever the definition of tent is a canvas structure you know something other than canvas well i don't know how you would gather the people to become a community enough to get them to build this because that's integral is them being involved in the building of it now you know you want them coming late we would fence the place off okay and you know if you want to come lay on the ground i guess i mean you know or just stay on the street and come every day and help build until you can move in i mean i suppose this just seems a little more humane way of doing it and thank you and by the way i'm fine like i said i'm fine with tents because we've already got people in tents but it would be but again i can see how if people don't want tents it sounds like there's a path at the very least having as you said and and i would suggest this to council i would like to even outside of this group if we could have some land that we already own where we can say people are allowed to legally park in this area and sleep in their cars that would be wonderful then people wouldn't have to worry about uh well not that people are necessarily worrying but then instead of um being at the at the walmart and living in their cars you know knowing that someone might come and ask you to move you know this is a place where you could be uh and and this is where um our you know law enforcement fire etc would know that that that people are living because people do live in their cars including people who work and can't afford to live uh other places we have people living in storage facilities uh which um is you know it's it's more comfortable than living on the street so you know there are a number of things that that can be done uh outside of this or in addition to and outside of this one group what they're suggesting but i strongly encourage we have a place where people can legally sleep in their cars okay any more questions from this one um i have another staff question okay well i i want to just there's any more questions for i mean if some urgent question comes up we can always have her back but any more questions thank you very much appreciate it okay council member melzer and then i'm going to go to mayor pro tem because i think he wanted to go yes yeah um how much are we spending each year on cleaning out unsanctioned camps i do not have that figure um in the last year we have done uh two areas of cleanup um and i think about 10,000 maybe total for the two areas and just rough estimate here um and that that is only those areas were only cleaned up because they had significant public health and safety hazards and they had risen to a number of factors that we have looked at in terms of should we clean up the area but before we do that we do a significant outreach to those individuals that are maybe living in that encampment to help connect them to available services so there's there's we do take it um very thoughtfully and how we address and monitor and evaluate and look at those sites because we do want to maintain those relationships with individuals that are experiencing homelessness thank you okay uh follow-up yes so how many um known encampments do we currently have after the i know the two have been closed down but do we know how many because i assume they've just we've just moved them to different areas um and we have a street outreach team and i assume they go to the encampments so how many currently do we know that we have it's hard to give a definite number on that um because they they do move from location to location i'd say at any one time there may be a handful uh maybe a few five to six encampments that our police department may be aware of um with anywhere from five to ten to ten individuals at most that live at those sites and they they do maintain regular contact with them however they may move they may change those things they're not just staying in one location only and then we have a number we have some individuals too that may just prefer to stay by themselves and not in a group of of residents either okay all right council may put in thank you uh appreciate staff's presentation uh so i i want to try to be succinct but hit as many points as i can i mean i think listening today my uh noteworthy is tradition we're talking about adults and i've and so there's a you're very limited and i'm basing this on firsthand experience from my casa kid that's 19 he is free to make decisions as an adult i you know and so i can give guidance and hope but ultimately that decision's here so we're talking about this community assuming most are above 18 you can't tell them as an adult what to do legally so there's some i think that's getting missed and what if someone opts out or so that that to me is concerning that there's uh kind of the sort of responses ignore that fact that the individual is not required to do anything if they're an adult um and so that's that it has not been the the opposite of that has been not been touched on how do you uh circumvent that legal fact um i think it's also important to note um i quick wikipedia search there's 16 cities and it lists 14 towns and then i but in preparation for this i did not have this document in advance so i could not prepare for that are you talking about in the county in the county yes okay and so uh i'll tell you that um staff's answers to my questions early on say uh denton as far as adults homeless adults the city of denton has 100 of the available shelters for adults in all of that in those cities and towns and so if we're talking about something that meets a need maybe it doesn't belong in the city that's a that supplies that already maybe it belongs in a city that's void of that so that to me is concerning why would you concentrate further asking people to come because i think it's important to note if if an individual is in louisville and is experiencing homelessness and that's their support system in louisville they have friends family whatever that is in that general area i think it's important that to know why should we then pull them away from that what support they have to say hey come to denton why don't we advocate for groups such as this to go where we don't have support where it does give an entry level for those cities that are not doing that now and so that that to me is noteworthy i look at the financial component and and i don't i think again staff provided this information earlier i think this year round numbers thirteen thousand dollars is what the county paid the city to deal with uh to help with ambulance services so that's money into the city uh from the county i've not seen anything that shows there's money going out of the city uh due to homelessness you know and so i think it's important to say um i i just don't i i i'm troubled by the number the math or the the financial aspect of it because i think that's leveraged but it's not it's not accurate the city doesn't house people more than a day in the jail so that's a county jail cost and a county medical cost and so i think it's important to kind of um just have a hard comment hard look at that just kind of the the financial component but i really do think these other and i like staffs approaching they continue to work on it but there's other cities in the county that are experiencing homelessness that don't have anywhere for people to go and this may be the perfect vehicle they need to get that process started and so i would i'd like to see that and then i'd also like to talk to ask legal to give me your analysis of the gifting practices for the city because i can't get a private developer in here to talk about zero energy homes but we've not had an rfp and we've not asked anyone else to come speak to us about this issue so i'm i'm confused why this body allows this one sole sir sole provider to speak to us the third time and not open it up and not allow me to have someone come do the same so i think i need to understand that better if we're going to go forward there needs to be some sort of rfp i would assume because that's how the that's how it works my understanding and then lastly i'll just say this body is not charged with building this proposal there's no if just using again my experience when i go to the county to argue my taxes i have to bring bids i have to bring pictures i have to bring details and and even still they don't consider it but but i'm saying in this document there's none of that right there's no bids and and it's not this this council's job to put in the numbers to ask the questions to analyze the details that's that's not that's not what we're tasked to do and that's where i hang up i'm i'm i just there's no pictures there's no square foot there's no it's it's all fluid and and that's okay but when you're asking me to make a decision about money that's not mine i i take that at a different level and that does not mean i'm not passionate about it that does not mean i don't want to help that just means as i'm tasked with making responsible decisions for taxpayer dollars i need to be able to answer if someone were to approach me and say why did you vote to have the city spend time and money to find a a piece of property for this project i need to say it's because and here's the pictures and here's the details and staff sees my emails all the time that's extremely consistent with with how i process decisions and and so that's my that's those are kind of the areas where i hang up chief amongst them being the lack of detail and the bids as far as cost real cost that are you know vendor selection etc etc the lack of the rfp thing and then also just there's round numbers 20 30 other cities 29 of which don't offer the the services that the city currently offers that would probably be a good fit okay all right who else council member davis so i don't want to echo too much of what mayor pro tem hudson just said but i do have my my own thoughts on the matter and i also want to speak up as the person who the last time we heard from the basic services center said i was interested in hearing more from from that group specifically this agenda item has two components to it one is tiny homes tiny homes tiny houses whatever you want to call them and the other is the basic services center itself that's how we're posted and i think that's the best way to consider our arguments here sir could you go back to slide eight for me so to begin with we already have the data we already have the information to know that we need to do something in the area of transitional housing we we have that factored in in some portion to our city budget for the upcoming year we are committed or beginning to become committed through the budgeting process to some level of the enhanced shelter at the monsignor king and that begins to eat into that 254 number that we see up there that need rapid rehousing places to put your stuff a place to be secure a place to have a bed you can come back to and so that begins to address that particular issue what we heard today in our presentation was as mayor pro tem hunts with said a fluid proposal at points it was for transitional housing and semi-permanent or permanent structures at points it was about tent structures and then at one point it was about you can come and park your car there and live in your car there and those those are all wildly different from discussions i've had with this group in in person about what they ultimately want to see in a place like this so for me if from the tiny houses perspective if the city is going to be involved with any tiny house development i think it has to be a group that participates in coordinated entry and participates in the provision of services and i think it has to be a project that fulfills a need that's up here on the screen that fulfills one of the the data points that we've already seen needs to be and a need that we've identified not a need that we feel through anecdotal experience not a need that we that we perceive because we've interacted with members of the community but a need that's backed up also by the data and and what our work group has already shown us i don't know that we need necessarily a full rfp if the city decides it's our job to build a tiny home community then i think we need an rfp then we go out for bed and say how does the city build a tiny home community if an organization is coming to us for support however i think they do need to meet those very basic criteria that you're going to be a part of the program we already have in place part of that program is almost a half million dollars for various homelessness initiatives in the upcoming budget so for me i think um i would be open to hearing from other groups also that are interested in tiny homes and i'd be very open to hearing from this group again in the future but um not for this budget year i think we're we're committed there i think we're we're moving in the right direction i think that when we talk about somebody having a need to just kind of come on the property and sleep for the night that's what monsignor king is for that's what we're spending that money at monsignor king for um and if we if we hear again from any group on filling this particular niche with tiny homes this particular need in the overall housing need with tiny homes i think we need to hear a much more concrete and concise plan i think we need a full business plan um i think some of the personnel this particular group has involved with the project i think they brought it along quite quite a long way since the first proposal last year but at the same time we're not we're not there it's it's not a it's not a fully formed idea at this point it's still a concept it's still got things like you know i heard the words adobe and you know waddle and daub and stuff like that today we're just not fully put together on this project so going forward i think i can support tiny homes as a concept um but this project is not fully cooked who else yeah i agree with those statements and i just have a lot of questions on this on the budgetary part of it because if you're again going back to what the mayor said we're talking about temperature you really need to have heating and air conditioning in the units and if you do that you've got to meet energy code which is going to drive up your cost and so i don't i don't have faith in any of these numbers right now um because as i look through on the other ones that were presented to us uh austin the operating cost is roughly eighteen hundred and forty dollars per month per unit you talk about austin or first community community first first yeah first community excuse me community first okay community first yeah their operating budget when you divide it by the number of units they offer and and uh divide that by 12 it's eighteen hundred and forty dollars per month per unit is what their operating budget is their cost per square foot and this is high because it doesn't include any community spaces but their cost per square foot is between four hundred and fifty eight dollars per square foot and three hundred and twenty dollars per square foot uh if you look at uh olympia you're looking at six hundred and eleven dollars per square foot to build it and a monthly cost of just shy of seven hundred dollars operating per unit when you're looking at seattle washington uh you're they had the best cost per square foot at 226 and their monthly operating cost per unit is 915 granted that's wraparound services and we as a community we as a county have come together and put together a group that the city's been working with that that's where we can assess the needs at a higher level zone down in on what really needs to happen if if this group wants to refine their fine-tuned the numbers again these numbers to me are way off having uh done a lot in the construction business they're just i'm just not on board with that but you know it's it's kind of a well we want this much now we will settle for this i haven't heard anything on what they've raised so far what they have available in funds to to fund their own part i think that you know i'm not saying there's nothing in the future that says we wouldn't go for it i'm just saying right now i don't see enough here for us to move forward with it thank you um you know we've acknowledged that if we look at the and when i say we i kind of mean the county really uh we as members of the county and staff who participate in county efforts when you look at the whole system we've acknowledged that there's gaps and if there's an openness to hearing you know other solutions too about how to fill the gaps we've focused on emergency shelter and you know it's come back with a very resulted in a very constructive proposal that you know seems like we're poised to act on uh you know and if we want to use that same kind of a process and actually you know try to mathematically come up with a model that fills the gaps i'm for it um and it sounds like others would might want to hear those too as this group you know also refines their proposal but that said that's kind of kicking the can down the road and you know those gaps are experienced in very concrete terms by by people and uh and i'll tell you frankly the part of this that that attracts me the most in a way doesn't have to do with housing it's the basic services part of dentin basic services center you know it's just a fact that this is you know the the way that we you know that these gaps exist today mean that where people you know wash up and and uh hang out and all it's it's sort of everything gets taken over you know if you don't have a place for people to be that's what your libraries are for that's what your parks are for everything you know because that's what your police lobby has been for you know unless you come up with some place for people to get their basic services met in a sanitary way you're going to spend money cleaning it out cleaning out unsanctioned places and you know the town is going to be somewhat taken over by that presence of people don't have another you know another solution for that you know today kind of need so i don't i don't have like a total answer in my head but the idea that that we might have a place for people to go to get a shower store stuff and go to the bathroom uh that isn't uh you know a restroom off the uh you know in a business on the square i think that has some very fundamental appeal to me yeah so i'm glad that you say that councilman monser that's that's how i feel as well as far as the um the the service center and in the gaps um i have several different notes here so i'm just going to kind of hit them um earlier mayor pritcham hudspeth mentioned that as adults we can't really make people do anything well the the shelters we have in place there's requirements for individuals to do things to get into those shelters um some of the reasons and some of the requirements are why they don't enter them um so i just want to say that in a lot of the presentation we saw which i appreciate thank you by the way but the first part of it was about emergency shelter i don't see this in comparison to emergency shelter um at at all um there's different days there's different hours right now i mean i know that we're going to fund um on senior king which i'm i'm in favor of but it still doesn't serve that need of individuals on the street during the day and not fulfilling any services or needs that they have um that's lacking and we don't have an answer for that um and so when i think about this project and i appreciate um the board coming with this because the reason we're listening to them is because they're coming to us with an idea which no one has done that um so far so i appreciate that and i've said it before i appreciate individuals in the community stepping up and wanting to help the community that is what makes it great and um and so that's that's part here and so for me as far as the funding um that we're doing in this budget there's the 65 000 um for the um individual to go out and do the street operation street outreach which i'm completely i'm not in favor for um so that that leaves a little bit of money there for me personally um the money for the barriers fund i'm in favor of but then again when we talk about um housing people permanently and then we look to that fund that's like five thousand dollars a person um so what i see a project like this doing when we talk about tiny homes and we talk about a village in an area of community we're not talking about five thousand dollar backing to get an individual into an apartment who you know all of this other money is going towards for for rent and things it's it's different it's a different aspect of it and then when we go back to the chart i think um councilmember davis said well i we need to fit into one of these boxes right here well i think they fit completely into number two um which is the largest percentage that needs help when i when i look back at it and i i understand where everyone is coming from on the proposal but for me what i understand is that it's hard to raise money it's hard to do anything if you don't have any sort of commitment from anyone and so i think the original ask was let's just see if we can get a spot and then we get a spot and then we can go from there so if we don't want tents and we don't well then we give them a spot and then they raise money and immediately start building homes like i think there's there's things that we can do if we're not satisfied with this current proposal but i don't want to shut it down because there's no one else coming with solutions right now just yeah just seconding uh what keely and paul said i i would also like to add um that i've been in i've been in touch with the the texas homeless network and i reached out to them because i had found out that uh that hud uh they take into account allegedly whether or not cities have laws that disproportionately target homeless people whether intentionally or not that serve to intentionally or not effectively criminalize homeless people and i just asked them um you know can you look at our ordinances and tell me which of our debt and city ordinances do this and uh you know they they took a couple days and came back to me with the laws that uh that i figured they would come up with there were i thought maybe there would be surprises um again emphasis on effectively right and and i i'd be happy to share that um email uh that that they sent and make that public i found it really valuable um for all of these you know there are solutions included the ones that when i mentioned about you can't sleep in your car have possession have your possessions in your car uh that um uh you can't uh uh sleep in a park uh prohibiting camping on public property um these you know also these solicitation laws uh which as far as i hear i don't hear that many complaints about those from the public so i don't want to focus on those but my point being you know there are solutions around this if we don't have consensus to you know give land to this group which i i consider really real uh unfortunate because it's it's so kind of modest you know what they're asking um at the very least we could uh get rid of some of these laws and give people an alternative a place to park a place to camp a place to live in your car if there are no other alternatives and there are other cities who've done this i'd be happy to share this this is a really legitimate group texas homeless network i know staffs you know familiar with them uh you know and this isn't denton is not all that unique in this by the way i'm not saying you know denton's the worst there are other cities that have laws like this too um but that doesn't mean that that we have to accept it all right uh i'm well if i'm gonna give one i gotta give them all i'm gonna give council member briggs a chance to speak and then mayor protem but let's keep them very brief if you want to speak on this next round please well i appreciate that i know you like to have the last word and i just wanted it's not the last word i just i mean i just want to have a comprehensive conversation but it everybody together you like to form and i get that and so i just wanted to um say that there's other opportunities here with a situation like this i know that we had had a veteran's tiny village come before us before i know is on private land but i also think that with you signing the end the veteran homelessness and i think we can think out of the box and maybe if this is something we want to do with a tiny house village and um that goal and integrate those two together this may be a group that can help us do that um as a first phase so and i know that we have 24 as of may 2019 veterans that are on our count that are homeless and so um i just wanted to throw that out there as an opportunity to not just you know box this one um into one category that there's there's opportunities to help many many people here mayor protem yeah so there's there's three things so and i want to go back to um i'll just in essence of time i won't pose it directly to the the individual but the council person but i'll just address my chief concern with what two of them said a matter of fact they said you represented that you could go somehow this basic services center would then address people showering or doing whatever they need to do in public facilities so to me i'm curious are you saying you want to mandate that that now if if the police or an individual reports you showering or doing whatever in public spaces you mandate that they go to the basic services center i don't think you want to do that that then ties then to my very first point adults have free rights we have public buildings and ergo a basic services center is not going to remove that equation nor do we want to get into the business of enforcing that and so i don't i don't understand your point other than to say if an adult wants to go to the basic center to utilize it for those things they can do so the city is not in a position to mandate that tie in directly into the adults have can make free choices and so i don't i don't know that that's confusing it makes sense to me and then two other points that go on unchallenged there's 30 cities slash towns in denton county denton offers 100 percent of the adult spaces shelters etc why wouldn't we want to diversify to better serve the county that goes unchallenged no one spoke to that and then lastly um you know what that ties those two i can tie together so that that's a just of it those those those two things go undisputed sure absolutely sure yeah giving everybody second round yeah okay all right first i'm uh i'm glad uh the mayor pro tem will join me in supporting this because i too don't require don't don't support requiring people to go so i'm glad to bring you along with that uh you know uh on that point and uh and actually i'm i met a member a council member from another city in in denton county at a charitable event brought this up said you know hey we need you to kind of help on this county-wide issue we have and this person said well you know our attorneys say we can't spend taxpayer money on things that aren't for our residents and i said don't worry we'll bring the residents to you so you know i'm i'm supportive of that if we're you know if there's because i know that we can also acquire land in other places if it's for public purpose here so you know i i don't require that it be in city of denton nor do i require nor does my view that people are required to go council member davis i'll be brief uh three things we've all acknowledged and there's consensus around the fact as others have said that there are gaps in our provisions now uh it's up for debate i suppose whether or not it's the city's job to close all of those gaps or whether uh private charities can step in and some uh close some of those but i think we all agree we've had good luck so far with our partnerships um and with our well-developed and mature partnerships the groups that know what they're doing the groups that can can demonstrate uh performance over the long term um and have a demonstrable um effect in this area we have formed a deeper partnership with the monsignor king center to fill some of these gaps i think we have a budget year to see how that goes and to see how that affects the rest of our metrics in this area um i i don't want to be foreclosed to the idea that we eventually some that some way or through some process make land available to the idea of a tiny home village however i am opposed the idea of let's get them a spot first and then fill in the gaps after what that becomes is a sanctioned encampment and i cannot get behind a sanctioned encampment um if you say here's your land y'all go do what you do it's essentially if we do something like the fee for service we talked about with the parks group earlier and within rough parameters you all use city land to do as you see fit that becomes a sanctioned encampment that becomes though well we want someone to have a place to stay for the night instead of sending them over to monsignor king we want them to be able to park their car for the night we want to be able to build temporary structures and tents and those kind of things and i cannot get behind a sanctioned encampment um and then finally on the we have kind of a misnomer going on with this particular group uh because their intention is to provide a basic services center but the proposal so far has not provided a basic services center it's been a tiny home village it's been a transitional housing it's been a transitional housing but you can also come stay here for for the night is what i heard earlier today but we have not yet seen a credible proposal for what council member melzer talked about earlier a place to spend the day when it's hot a place to put your stuff down and leave it there during the day with lockers or whatever a place to have a shower that's not baked into this proposal this is a this is a community village or something like that it's not a basic services center council member ryan i'll be brief uh i just want to address one of the comments made earlier about people not feeling comfortable they couldn't go to monsignor king because of the restrictions and the second item and it's even in bold on the report that they gave us is the opportunity for every participant to experience better quality of life in a drug alcohol and violence free community well that's one of the major reasons that people don't feel comfortable going to salvation army or or the uh or monsignor king is because of drug and alcohol use um i i have been a strong proponent all along that if we're going to increase funding anywhere it's it should be in mental health and i think that that's probably the one thing that doesn't get addressed enough when we talk about homelessness is if you can get their mental health better they become a better person they become a member of society council member marmotor another shot you get it no okay all right thank you uh okay well um you know first of all i'm so glad that we're having this conversation is for a very different reason than what everybody's thinking right now i'm glad we're having this conversation because five years ago this conversation was not even not on the horizon it wasn't in the same universe as what we're having the conversation now so as frustrated as i get sometimes to hear what seems to be a uh a lack of or a short memory on where we've come from i'm glad that what we're talking about now is filling in gaps whereas before we didn't even have roads so for that i'm very thankful and i met with this group privately about two or three weeks ago i met with this group and shared with them my thoughts about this um and to me i described it to them i said this is a vision but it's it's it's not necessarily what i would consider a plan to get before council to be able to make a decision so as far as land and i'm not even talking about land for this group i'm talking about land for anybody uh i'm with council member davis uh and maybe some others that i don't think i'm opposed to that but i want the groups that we are looking at that and who are asking that from us to have you know a pretty thorough plan to have a track record of community involvement and also to have you know some some history of this i think that obviously these people are very committed to their cause personally i can't get past tense i've heard tiny houses thrown around at this at this table for the last hour and a half and i still don't know exactly what people mean when they say tiny houses i've heard tiny houses referred to as sheds i've heard tiny houses referred to sort of as rvs i've had tiny houses that i've seen on here actually small homes that i would that i personally interpret as a tiny home and that is you have your basic needs met within that structure you have sleeping you have cooking you have air conditioning you have heating and things such as that so uh i'm i'm not opposed to a discussion from anybody well first of all let's say nobody needs permission from the city to develop a basic services center except to come with to us and talk about is it properly zoned what are the regulations nobody needs that i mean we look at one of the most successful ones on here and yes it started out very much smaller than what it is now but it still started out in the county in travis county because that so i just want to make it clear that this this body is not sort of the gatekeeper of homelessness services in this community now we can be a partner but we're not the sole decision maker on what services are provided to those people who have that need so i'm open just like i've been open over the last five years to see how we improve where where we came from and i will tell you to be able to say that we've got a hybrid shelter what do they call it a uh enhanced shelter uh there's an article in the austin american statement statesman just two days ago austin is going to this very model in their downtown shelter because they they've looked at the metrics and they realized that that's not really helping people the way that they were doing it they're they're trying to find a way to really try to provide those opportunities to get people off the streets to get them in a supportive environment to move on to you can call it transitional housing you can call it permanent housing so i appreciate anybody that cares enough to put a proposal before this body but i think this body also has a responsibility to look at that proposal and to to look at it and to see if it meets the criteria that we as the stewards of taxpayer dollars use in order to provide those dollars to all different kind of organizations it's not just people who provide homelessness it's people who provide rehabilitation to to senior citizens so uh i'm aware of the gaps and i think beginning to have the conversation to fill the gaps that we see is just a natural progression of where we started from so let's just make sure that we we've come a long way we put in a system that works up to this point and i don't think that this this body whether i'm here or anybody else is here that if someone comes before them and they have a record they have a plan they have the vision they have the the personnel and they have the track record i mean we went from leasing to monsignor king for a dollar to now we're funding them or we're looking at at least the recommended budget of close to half a million dollars to do exactly you know this conversation we were having six months ago eight months ago folks the gap is sort of those supportive housing services the gap was getting people into those places where the three days didn't work the gap was having something that was more permanent on a regular basis even if it's just nightly for now well guess what we we met that gap we're meeting that gap i don't perceive this situation being any different than that so if this group or any other group continues to work and massage their plan and massage their their support and i don't see this body being opposed to that it's just let's make sure that we do it in in the timing and in the order that best represents success as we've experienced it in the past so i'm ecstatic that we're having this conversation because it means we're making progress because it means instead of having the grand canyon as the gap you know we've got who can think of a little smaller canyon hickory creek hickory hickory creek so you know instead of building a bridge across a canyon we're trying to build a bridge across a floodway and for that i am thankful to this body to the previous bodies and to the people in this community and the organizations who are committed to that goal as was committed at our first mayor's task force on homelessness so i feel confident that as we continue to have the dialogue these things will continue to percolate up in this organization i think they've heard some really good feedback on what the city is looking for and i hope that they take that into consideration i'll be honest i cannot support tents i can't support sheds i mean it's just when i looked at those two pictures whether it's going to look like that or not and plus everybody's moving from that model i mean everybody is moving away from that model so i personally think denton is at the forefront of a town our size to meet this need and i'm certainly going to echo the sentiments that this is a county-wide issue and i think it needs to be a county-wide solution and i really want to thank our partners which is united way monsignor king salvation army race like rain they go on and on and on uh keely what's the group uh that provides the meals on sunday refresh my memory on that bridging hope i mean that and i'm going to leave some names off but there are people all over this town that are helping people so i'm going to count on those conversations continuing so um i think we have some direction and that is we're not opposed to possible you know searching for uh opportunity but we would like to see a little bit more comprehensive plan come before the this body that gives us a little bit more detail and specificity for us to be able to to be able to make that decision um so i appreciate everybody's involvement thank you all so much for coming i appreciate your your comments at the podium um and let's take a i think we've been going for a while so let's take about a five or ten minute break well you know i actually we're going into closed session so uh where's my cheat sheet do i have one oh do yeah we do we the closed session i think these are both placeholders can i make a proposal before you go into uh yes close the item uh building your comments yes uh quickly since we seem to like you're breaking my rule of me having the last word i am i am indeed and i'm going to still get the last word i'm sure okay but i am building on your comment since we seem to like a county-wide approach and we liked the process that identified a gap put attention to it and came up with a concrete proposal my proposal is that we now change the definition of the work group they've done the emergency shelter focus i don't know what you all want to call it but name the next slice reconvene and and uh you know work toward coming back with uh filling the next gap can i make a suggestion could you make those comments and concluding items as well just so that because the posting was pretty nervous if you i would really appreciate that thank you all right so let's uh let's break for 10 minutes and oh closed session we've got two uh is there are there any anybody that needs to go into closed session as a placeholder we've got one uh consultation with city attorneys on status strategy potential resolution of litigation and then also deliberate and discuss competitive information regarding public power operational and financial matters anybody need to do that okay so if not then that means we're not going to go into closed session so we will adjourn our work session at 4 13 p.m on august the 6th 2019 and reconvene in council chambers at 6 30 p.m thank you welcome everybody to this meeting of the dent city council on august the 6th 2019 it's about 6 33 p.m we do have a quorum so i'll call this meeting to order our first item on the agenda if you'll stand if you're able to pledge allegiance to the u.s and texas flag to the justice of our i pledge allegiance to the Texas unseated flag and the flag of the United States of America. okay hello this is on okay our first proclamation is for the mayor summer youth jobs programs day so all of you who are participants and anybody else who would like to join you your parents just come on down because what we're going to do is get you to let you introduce yourself and tell us where you served and um one thing that was very significant that you learned or that you enjoyed yeah y'all come stand right down here yeah and who's going to tell us a little bit about the program who was heading that okay yep okay if you want to yeah tell us a little bit about now i'll get them to introduce all right so these are some of the participants from this year's mayor summer youth job program the program lasts from june it just wrapped up this past friday and so these are some of the students we have 23 positions across the city and they get valuable work experience and so they're able to really contribute to the city that they live in learn a little bit about their local government and for many of them it was their first job this year we were lucky enough to have a few of the students back this year that worked last year so they really just contributed and we enjoyed having them thank you all so much for participating and thank your parents for also supporting your participation so i want you to introduce yourself tell us where you worked and maybe something that either you learned or just an experience that you remember from your your time this summer hello i'm haddie poston from real estate i learned a lot about how our city's land is managed and through easements and how it's divided up into abstracts and surveys hi my name is kevin gima i worked with dme this summer and something i learned was that it takes a lot of people behind the scenes to keep everybody's lights on i'm madeline scott and i worked in sustainability and on my last day i went to a teacher training program thing and i learned a lot about energy and the renewable sources that we use in deadton hi i'm sophia richerson i worked in development services and one thing i learned was definitely just the process of how buildings are made and planned out and how everything is zoned around den hi my name is jasmine wilson and i worked in fire department and one thing that i learned was that not only do fire fighters go out and save people's lives but they also you know they come together as a family and they you know one minute they're having fun with each other they're playing around you get a call and they're serious really quick and they go do what they need to do hi i'm kathryn laroe i worked with the denton public library the emily fowler branch and um i learned about a lot about public um just service and being able to help people and finding great books that they'll enjoy i'm elise clements i worked for animal services and i worked there last year too and it's helped me figure out my career path for the future and just how to take care of animals hi i'm julia norton and i'm from purchasing i learned a lot about just like the way that things are brought into the community and how you buy them mostly contracts a lot of paperwork and but it's a lot of hard work and i'm glad i got to be a part of it hi i'm a traffic engineer for the city i had an intern it was a pleasure to work with her and i'm she's actually running a little late i think she has a second job there she is taja um yeah she's she has two jobs working at mcdonald's she was great and look forward to next year your name and who you work with um my name is taj I work with pam in the traffic engineering department and it was really fun getting to work there and like we did a lot of map stuff and it's a lot more exciting than i thought it would be like i didn't think it was i thought it was me an office job but she made it really fun and we did a lot of bunch of things it was really nice hi i'm charlie rosendahl with the development services department um we had the honor of having sophia work with us over the summer um she helped us out on a number of projects including researching other cities ordinances helping to design some new public notices and then helping us with some other research as well so it was a pleasure having her hi i'm kathy abrey i'm the aquatics program area manager and i had the pleasure of interviewing several of these folks to work for the city and we were fortunate enough in parks and recreation to place several of them at the water park at the recreation centers and some of our youth service programs so we were very pleased with them hi i'm galen nelson with animal services one of the supervisors over there and we had elise clements and we had alec who is not able to be here with us tonight one thing i learned this year with this program is that i cannot do without my summer youth kids we absolutely look forward to that every year this is like our fourth is this the fourth year for that program we participated in each one of the years elise is in her second year with us and i don't know if she's able to come back we might be able to you know i don't know i think she would if she could but love love love the program and thank you sir for offering that to all of the departments and we appreciate the the help thank you i'm diana cody in real estate and we had the pleasure of working with haddy this summer this is actually her second year working in the program and we were just honored to have her with us and she did a fantastic job helping us get organized in in many of the things that we were not organized in and she helped scan probably hundreds if not thousands of documents for us and so it's really been a pleasure we would love to have her back next year as well but she's going to be a senior so i don't think that's going to happen for us so but thank you haddy we really appreciate everything well thank you all so much for participating and i want to thank my colleagues every year you know this is a budget item so we have to budget for this and so thank you all so much for doing this i think it's a great service to the community and for the kids here in our school and thank you again parents for allowing them to participate and certainly i hope that as you move forward in whatever endeavors you you take on that you'll remember this time with fond memories and and that you've learned something you've made some good friends along the way so this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of denton whereas in the summer of 2019 the city of denton united way of denton county dent chamber of commerce and denton isd continued their partnership to support the mayor's summer youth jobs program and whereas working a summer job as a young adult is a rite of passage that provides valuable experiences to prepare young people for their future careers and whereas providing summer jobs to youth in the community is important in establishing professional and personal character for young people and developing the leaders of tomorrow and whereas 23 students were placed in jobs in the city of dentin organization and throughout the community and whereas these students committed eight weeks of their time to performing jobs learning about various career fields and developing professional skills that will serve them as they enter adulthood now therefore i chris watts mayor of the city of denton do hereby proclaim august the 17th 2019 as the mayor summer youth jobs program day in the city of denton and ask all residents to honor the 2019 participants of the mayor summer youth jobs program for all their accomplishments and admirable representation of denton thank you all so much for participating thank you thank you thank you so much thank you thank you thank you and i guess we have a proclamation a copy thank you a proclamation for each one of you that somebody distribute that to them okay y'all got it okay good thank you thank you all very much okay the next proclamation is for national health center week so come on down and anybody that wants to join them for national health center week how are you how are you all if you would introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about this national health center my name is joreen brew and i'm the chief executive officer for health services of north texas and i'm really pleased to be here before the city council and the community to talk about and the access of care that we provide for patients in our community hi i'm terry johnson i'm the director of community outreach and marketing at health services of north texas and it is truly my pleasure to connect people in our community to care at health services of north texas and i just want to let you know that we we can't do this by ourselves we are so thankful for our city and all of our stakeholders that partner with us and bringing quality health care to this community and we're thankful for our city and for the partnership thank you all for what you've done and i think you're almost into your new center could you just say a little bit about if that's okay unless this is okay all right okay so we're inviting you to come on out can you hear me am i on thursday we'll be offering a sneak peek of our newest health center which is on loop 288 in the serve denton building and the sign just went up today and i hope you'll take a minute go on facebook or go to our website and you can learn more about the event so it's thursday night from 4 30 to 6 and we'd love for you to come out take a sneak peek take a tour we'll have some refreshments out there for you so please join us thank you for what you all do and thanks to the other community health clinics in town that they provide such needed services for our community proclamation by the mayor of the city denton whereas health services of north texas is your local community health center providing prime primary medical care for the entire family from newborns to seniors prenatal care behavior health and infectious disease specialty care to the entire community including those in our community that need it the most and might and might lack financial resources and whereas for more than 50 years america's community health centers have provided high quality cost-effective and accessible primary and preventative care to all individuals regardless of insurance status or ability to pay health services of north texas invested 3.5 million dollars worth of unreimbursed medical care to the communities we served in 2018 3.5 million dollars health services of north texas provided quality medical care to i need to make sure and put that comma in there 12 274 patients in 2018 12 274 patients in 2018 meeting the needs of those in our community who might not otherwise have access to medical care and whereas health centers have worked tirelessly to grow the nation's the nation's excuse me primary care infrastructure to meet the pressing needs of americans who still lack access to primary care services a number that exceeds 62 million nationwide health centers serve as the health care home for over 22 million americans through more than 9 000 delivery sites across the nation one in every 15 people living in the united states depends on their services and whereas national health center week offers the opportunity to recognize america's health centers their data dedicated staff board members and all those responsible for the continued success and growth of the program since its creation more than 50 years ago during this national health center week we recognize the significant significant contributions of america's health centers and their vital role as local engines for healthier communities and a healthier america now therefore i chris watts mayor of the city of denton texas do hereby proclaim the week of august the 4th through the 10th 2019 as national health center week here in the city of denton thank you all so much we'll go on to agenda item three which is presentation from members of the public if we could have the review of procedures for addressing the city council the denton city council has adopted rules of procedure including a code of conduct that applies to citizens as well as council members these rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizen reports citizens will have four minutes to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes to give an open mic report there will be an electronic bell when time has expired if the remarks are not concluded by that time the citizen will be asked to stop speaking if the citizen does not cease and a second request is made the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chamber citizens are asked not to approach the dais if a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council please let the city secretary know in advance for scheduled citizen reports the council may initiate discussion or questions following each citizen report for non-scheduled open mic citizen reports the council may listen to citizens speak however because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance the texas open meetings act limits any deliberation or decision by the council to a proposal to place the item on a future agenda a statement of factual policy or a recitation of existing policy citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member please refrain from making abusive personal impertinent profane or slanderous remarks anyone who violates this council rule of procedure may be immediately removed from the council chamber thank you in advance copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary okay we'll move on to our scheduled citizen reports and our additional citizen reports our first scheduled citizen report is brandy price regarding the citizens climate lobby's bipartisan climate change fee and dividend plan to stop carbon pollution thank you mayor and council for letting me speak tonight i want to show you a quick video first off my name is brandy price i live at 627 bernard street in denton and brian can you please cue the video the climate is changing extreme weather is disrupting livelihoods and food supplies around the world this is observed this is documented this is the scientific community's consensus the climate is changing carbon emissions are driving that change emissions come from burning fossil fuels so if we want to slow or even reverse the change we must lower our fossil fuel use by charging a fee on fossil fuels and returning that revenue to households as a dividend we can do just that starting a chain of positive effects fossil fuels become less desirable cleaner sources of energy become more competitive the dividend creates millions of jobs carbon emissions go down reduced air pollution saves tens of thousands of lives and climate change is brought under control we can make this happen but enacting a carbon fee and dividend isn't in our hands it's in theirs how do we sway them what can we do we can use our voices to express political will and demand action we must help our elected leaders work together it's on us to tell them what we want as a group because when voices call out together their impact multiplies government can respond to the will of the people provided we tell the government what we want and what we want is a livable world this is what citizens climate lobby works for to empower citizens to connect with and influence their members of congress to spread the idea that each one of us can address climate change bring your voice to citizens climatelobby.org scared toward federal anymore they are actually talking to state representatives and city councils like the austin city council and the dallas city council so they actually passed a resolution i know it's a resolution it's not that much but it is a start and i can actually bring you viable sustainable things and actually actionable items to vote on that should affect each and every one of you if you like clean air to breathe you want your kids to actually be able to live here and actually be able to not live here with the asthma and i can bring that to you but i'm starting off small i am asking i am here tonight even though i have to study like crazy for an exam i decided to be here because this is important to me i'm 44 years old i'm a native texan i'm not a transplant i know what it's like to have asthma now i've never had it in my life because we have too many cars here we have not enough we have not enough metro or anything to help public transportation and now i have asthma allergy i don't have and now i have asthma related to allergies i've never had that in my life and that is not just allergies that is from my doctor and we need to help fix this and do something i'm a member of the bipartisan denton county citizens climate lobby chapter i've been a volunteer for five years we are bipartisan that's the only way we're going to get anything done is to treat each other like a human knock the politics out talk to you on a human level and i'm here to ask you to adopt a resolution and or proclamation whatever you see fit to help fight climate change and be supportive of ccl's carbon fiat dividend plan this plan is actually pushed all the way up to the u.s house of representatives with the energy innovation and carbon dividend act it is house bill hr 7173 it was introduced this year in january it's actually got there because of citizens not politicians but residents who are actually living here who care who go out to talk to city councils state representatives and federal people they are basically using their voice and they're using it in a nice way to actually deal with people instead of combating everyone i'm asking you if you could to support the energy innovation and carbon dividend act that has been introduced and this actually stems from ccl's carbon and dividend plan we had one of you actually signed in support of that as a council member in the last year the ccl carbon fee and dividend plan will drive down america's carbon pollution and bring climate change under control while unleashing american technology innovation and ingenuity in humanity can you tell i'm tired from studying there you go you know what that means the bill imposes a fee on the carbon content fuels all the way down to the source including crude oil natural gas and any other product derived from the fuels that will be used to emit greenhouse gases it gets it at the source a $15 fee is is basically imposed on the producers or importers of the fuels and it is equal to the greenhouse gas that company or content of the fuel is multiplied by the carbon rate so it's equal to what they're producing some people don't like cigarettes if you remember when cigarettes they call it a tax well now they attack cigarettes because they don't want a bunch of people to keep getting sick and hey there you go this is not a tax it's a fee and dividend plan if the dividend works you'll get 16 dollars per four members a member of four and i'm asking for you to actually do something good and it's my time up yes i'm sorry but we got a question too oh sure shoot i guess a question council member armature yes comment any question first of all i want to say i love the part in there that the government responds to the will of the people that is awesome uh it's i can't can't hear that enough that's the way it should be we should never forget that um so you mentioned that this law is you know this bill is relatively new but i feel like i've been hearing about carbon tax for years how far back does this go and how far back does the bipartisan support for this measure go i know it's been under you know various names and but people have been talking about carbon tax i want to say at least 10 years maybe maybe 12 to 15 actually started with the gentleman who is from california who started meeting with people in his library and he was talking to people and he started with the city council started the city council then brought it up to state and then brought it up to federal and he knew the only way you're going to get this done is bipartisan and this bill was actually uh the senate version of this was actually introduced last year and then there is an actual carbon tax bill that is being floated by uh two republicans i think in the house and so there are there's actually this and there's actually carbon tax bills but they're trying to do the same thing and they're trying to limit carbon and tax the people and not tax them but one is a fine one is a tax to find them at the source and be responsible for their pollution council member breaks yes ma'am so you went through it really fast but i was trying to figure out um is there a mathematical equation yes um okay and i can get that to you how they how they came up with the 15 fee i was actually reading the language from the bill and i will i can email that to all of you that actually shows the lovely how they came up to the 15 fee that's the first fee that will start say this passes and they'll they'll first off find someone 15 dollars the next year they'll find them 10 the key is to get them to reduce their carbon emissions so basically by finding them and then returning the the dividend back to the public but they do lessen as they as they progress but i can actually email you the mathematical equation i just don't know it off the top of my head but i know everything else from accounting this week from studying and so just the equation also says how much comes back to the people yes and it should be if this passes the way it's written a family of four should be able to get 16 dollars a month it varies but um you do it's actually they had the same people who introduced the same gentleman who did the the bill when bush was president to actually the stimulus the uh stimulus uh economy stimulus package that went through the uh refund bills that everyone got in the country to help stimulate and bind the economy that gentleman is actually on board with this he just needs someone to actually approve it and then they have it ready to go to be sent out and distributed to everyone in america councilmember melzer yes sir yeah thanks for coming in in addition to your position on the federal legislation uh can you if not tonight can you come back to us with suggestions for local policies that might make for a cleaner more sustainable dentin i can come back anytime you want me to anytime you need me to actually give you sustainable things that actually will help air quality and dentin and help people to actually be able to live here and enjoy their lives healthy and be healthy and sustainable yes sir i can i'm an eager customer i look forward to hearing your suggestions thanks thank you very much i appreciate it thank you very much our next uh speaker is craig clifton regarding the aquifer under the sro being built by park seven at normal brine normal brine and scripture street name and address and your time will begin okay the address is seven uh is 407 normal street my name is craig clifton all right in mr bank's opt for a report that was given to you on friday it's very important to know what was left off that report because it's very dangerous what was left off the reason aquifer report exists at all is because a person that sold their property to park seven was talking to him hey how's it going and park seven said not very good we found underground springs here on our property right at brine inscription and normal and we're going underground springs so that's how we found out about the aquifer and all of you know by now if we'd known about this aquifer then five years ago it would have been brought up when park seven was going to drill those core samples you can't do that there's an aquifer underneath there and this year in january you can't build five stories underground there's an aquifer there they haven't addressed the issue and mr bank's report to you about there being springs there when we found this aquifer we had to find it to make sure this just wasn't a rumor that there had to be a source and i brought it down to scott mcdonald and i said this was in may and i said look this is dangerous because then pushing these literally thousands of gallons of water around as they build underneath there will go against these oldest gas lines in dentin these little bitty residential gas lines they'll be pushing against that and then kaboom he goes yeah yeah that sounds bad i said well okay let's see about it and nothing happened for more than a month so he was sitting on it or whatever he was doing so he goes who do you need to talk to next he said mr bank's so i'll call mr bank's he calls me back the next day uh mr clifton i'm here with scott mcdonald oh really okay well tell us about it springs the aquifer now you've seen the map you can see how it's underneath all the properties there he goes what map oh okay well diane leget picked it up you know there and she stumped around with it i mean scott should have gotten it it's in your files here at the city he says well that sounds dangerous so i'm going to make a report so he made his report last friday you're all very familiar with it doesn't mention springs at all it's so dangerous it's unreal so there's going to have to be by you the city council an independent environmental study of these springs that results are sent straight to you not mcdonald didn't do anything about it didn't even pull up the map or banks who didn't mention to you about these springs or of course park seven and once you get this information you'll be able to figure out what's really going on over there the other thing is you've seen all these houses blow up in dallas lately well atmos says that's because of shifting ground okay they're not responsible what is shifting ground what started it weather okay well don't you imagine them excavating there just 15 feet away from these gas lines that go to my apartments and go over to killer's tacos and their ovens excavating underneath that ground is going to maybe shift the ground a little bit more than weather would do this is a dangerous situation and kaboom could possibly be the answer there's we need another independent environmental study of the excavation of that property look maybe y'all can't stop them because they found this loophole to build up fine just don't let them build down where it's against the law to deal with existing underground aquifer water that's already been breached that's how we found out about it isn't like if it's going to be breached and it makes sense because in august of each year on our property in the middle of the street our sump pump always fills up where there hadn't been any rain for months so that is already moving around there save us please council member breaks um so i have a question because in the report it talks about the aquifer but it doesn't talk about the springs are springs higher up yeah yeah yeah the aquifer's lower down it's already been breached the water goes up from the aquifer and that's what they've already run into and that's what they were talking about to this guy who sold them their property so we looked into it and the wells there are wells that go to north texas that go to acme brick are all on that same water table and they've already pierced that water table in the springs and that's polluting it as it is now they uh i mean these this water has been coming down in my sump pump now i know at least for the five or six years council member breaks did your question get answered uh yes okay all right thank you council member armater yeah just so when you say wells you mean you mean potable water wells that are used for drinking water exactly exactly and that's why you're not supposed to be able to jack around with them see what i'm saying which they've already run into down there i mean we would never known about it we lived there 60 years and we had no idea there was an aquifer underneath there to park seven started jacking around with it and so like uh you know there's many other people that would be very interested in knowing that this is what's going on and so i sir i think i think your question she you answered her question um your time has expired but you certainly are available for questions council member mal sir would it be uh appropriate to hear from dr banks uh you know since we've heard uh an account of what he did or didn't say and so went to get yeah i guess so i i yeah that's fine okay anybody have any questions more questions for the speaker thank you very much sir appreciate dr banks if you'll come down and um i guess council member melzer has a question for you um yeah just basically you know the suggestion has been made that there is an aquifer under that property and that it's been breached uh can you offer any perspective on that um there are aquifers all under this area at depth they are separated in this particular case the uh well that's on the property the wells that have been mentioned have have accessed an area called the paluxy sand which is about 702 feet below depth if you look at the entire area of the downtown we have a tendency to have shallow groundwater it's not considered viable as an aquifer it is simply water that is there for instance when we bought the property across the street for the county building we found water at depth at about 13 feet it's very common in this area to see that uh the uh the pluxy being at depth is also separated by a uh formation uh called the washtal formation which is hydrologically disconnected from the uh water that exists above it so it's below the washtal that's you can have groundwater that is not part of what is considered to be a viable aquifer so i can dig a well out here at 13 feet of depth and water will appear in that well uh but it's going to have a very high mineral content and have a tendency to not yield very much water uh simply because it's it's um surface water that has had a tendency to infiltrate into the ground and we have confining layers that are at fairly shallow depth around here can i just ask a little yeah just sure yeah yeah i mean we had a full we had a full uh geological engineering report and our backup from the engineer who did the borings is that correct that is correct okay sure go ahead some of it is so the public can hear too you know but uh some of this what i'm sorry so that the public can hear that okay you bet that's that back up isn't that backup is available on the well would you say it's an alarming thing to hear right well here it's alarming if it's if all the facts are true as stated that precisely why i've asked for some counterpoint go ahead yeah so in your estimation is there's a geological report is there a need for an environmental report as well um i'm not sure exactly what you're asking uh i think there's you mentioned there's a geological study that was done but was there an environmental study done or is and if not is there one needed in your estimation um there was a geological study that was done that was basically for the purposes of soil testing design of the building etc um to my knowledge there was not an environmental study if i'm understanding exactly what you're asking so so that's what i'm asking you just in your opinion is there is there a need for that based on your estimation no no i'm just saying i i think that's a that's a policy question i mean if there was a need for an environmental study i don't even know what you mean when you say environmental study what are you talking about i mean there's all kinds of environmental studies are you are you asking should there be a study if there's water there and if so how's it i mean i've got to tell you i've built buildings not too far from there you drill a 13 or 14 foot pier for for uh your slab and you're going to hit some ground water and they adjust their engineering accordingly but that doesn't mean that somehow the grant the the water supply for wells or for the city of denton is being somehow compromised you know i don't claim any expertise in this area just uh so i'm looking for staff expertise in responding to the things that have been said to say is there anything new here of concern to you it's basically what i'm saying well i understand that but i think it's also can put staff in a very tenuous position to be standing before this body so you can answer the question i'm just saying i want you to answer it honestly if you think and i don't even know what you mean by an environmental study so if you could that's that was my rephrasing is there anything here you know new to you that's of concern sure so can you can you rephrase the question is there any is is is there any new information since you know i'm i'm sure your your assessment of the situations already sort of baked into the process has already happened so is there any new information based on what you heard tonight that is of concern to you that would that you think merits next steps you know or any deeper investigation no or not no okay the information that was that mr clifton shared with you is the same information that he shared with me council member armature yeah um how many other underground parking garages have we had in denton i'm not sure i know that we've had i mean there are buildings around with um uh substructures i i don't know how many it was it was my impression that that this is the first uh one and it's is it is it still going to be five stories uh beneath the ground or no no how many how many stories two two two stories 20 to 24 feet so substructures you're talking about like a basement a single yeah so and i think that's you know another another source of source of concern um there was one parking garage uh the wells fargo bank had an underground parking garage that's true yeah okay and how many stories was that it's two or three that i recall two or three and what happened to that they redeveloped it thank you council member briggs so i i would just like to um to follow up and in another report um so it says here on the impacts to gas lines because those were mentioned and the word kaboom was used a couple of times um and it says here in our staff that we notified atmas and we um requested information if we could just get a follow-up on sure on that part of this um report sure on those gas lines impacted yes absolutely thank you thank you very much appreciate it thank you dr banks thank you all right we have our goal we have no more scheduled speakers we'll go to our citizens reports our first speaker is is eva is it greco if you'll come down state your name number your time will begin and and just as a reminder to my colleagues this is an open mic so we won't be able to ask any questions or have any dialogue just because of the nature of this agenda item so it's not like we're not paying attention or we don't want to talk to you we're prohibited by texas law to do so you bet okay thank you thank you eva greco 802 west oak street um good evening mayor and council i have as of yesterday i have been in dentin for three years from originally from new jersey um there has been numerous a lot of road work going on in dentin i ride the buses in dentin every day particularly number seven bus um every time there's been road work done the buses are rerouted and it's temporary they have to go through the side streets to get around the road work um unfortunately with the number seven bus it goes straight up oak west oak to presbyterian makes a right onto the service road cuts up through the parking lot a little because you have a lot of passengers who go to the medical facilities there um gets back on the service road continues to university and then makes a left goes under 35 behind waffle house in the hotels um to come back around gets back on to actually 35 coming back and gets off at west oak it is we cannot understand why the bus is not rerouted for the side streets okay because the detour is bonnie brain and scripture so coming off university you have to turn onto panhandle and then same thing for going back but that's not being done um i work on university okay seven bus stops are being bypassed in the razor ranch area okay i have to get off behind the waffle house because the bus cannot stop on the service road for passengers i get off behind the waffle house and it's very dangerous i have to go under the underpass to get back on to university to get to my job okay anybody going to any businesses in that area have to do the same thing it's very very dangerous yes there's a traffic light but the cars coming off the ramp that are making the right um they don't have the traffic light you know it's very dangerous um we've asked you know why is why isn't it rerouted onto the side streets and the response we've gotten is from numerous dcta employees that there is a council member who lives in that area and does not want the bus going down his street i understand that but if something could be done we need to you know if especially in this condition the weather's here you know um the heat index was up to 110 today i had to walk in that and i am 63 years old okay it's rough and then i'm on my feet for eight hours at work all day um so if this can you know amongst a lot of the other passengers you know and a lot of them have medical conditions um and it is a it's a serious issue for us so i'd like mayor and council to look into this thank you very much for your time ladies and gentlemen thank you very much thank you our last open mic speaker is leslie is it gutierrez oh mayor pro tem uh mr city manager request can't regarding that can we get some kind of clarification on how those messages the dcta are routed to this body we'll take care of that yeah thanks yeah you bet i'm sorry state your name and address your town will begin my name is leslie gutierrez and i live at 902 vine street i'm a member of a community organization called the ice out coalition uh and we have a press release we wanted to read into the record in the wake of recent events at harvest house and near rubber gloves rehearsal studio studio we the ice out coalition of the university of north texas and other community partners come together to denounce these hate crimes in recent years our communities have seen an uptick in white supremacist behavior and actions and our communities have lived in fear long enough starting in the spring and summer of 2017 flyers appeared at the university of north texas texas women's university and the city of denton encouraging all citizens of the united states of america to report illegal aliens as a civic duty it is no coincidence that the tragic events in charlottesville began on a college campus that same year and coincided with that city's vote to remove a confederate statue the recent actions by white supremacists in denton and let's not mince words their actions were white supremacists in nature also coincide with events in denton demanding justice for the lgbtq ia plus and disabled communities and a memorial project for victims of lynchings the actions committed this past weekend are not instances of free speech but instances of violence that are historically rooted and perpetuated through systemic injustice we are coming together to demand accountability and swift and action from the denton police department and our local elected officials we are also calling on our community partners to stand with us against this violence we are putting forth the following calls to action one we urge city and campus police to fulfill their duties of serving and protecting our communities from racism xenophobia anti-semitism homophobia and transphobia two we call on the denton police department to conduct a full investigation into organized white supremacist activity within our city limits and report the findings of the investigation to the public three we call on the denton city council to pass a formal resolution denouncing white supremacy four we call on allies to combat white supremacy by leading with the communities who are direct targets of white supremacist hate this includes for example training and participating in community-led rapid response efforts opening bond discussions on public safety to provide education to local police officers engaging in our communities working and attending community meetings led by coalition partners like the NAACP LULAC outreach denton local disability orgs and others allies must educate themselves on what these organizations do on the daily and support their efforts in protecting our communities respectively signed movimento cosecha denton stonewall democrats of denton county outreach denton disability inclusion set society and whether thank you for your time i did ask the city attorney if i can ask one clarifying question i didn't get the acronym that you stated originally your organization's name what is that so we're the ice out coalition ice out so uh immigration customs enforcement okay okay all right thank you i appreciate that thank you very much we'll email this press release to all of you by the way thank you okay that concludes our citizens reports we'll move on now to the consent agenda i believe we are pulling consent agenda items i and j is that correct all right so any motion would reflect the pulling of consent agendas i and j mayor pro tem i move approval of the i move approval of the consent agenda but for letters i items i and j council member melzer by second we have a motion and second for the consent agenda let's please vote on the board please motion carries seven zero items for individual consideration five a consider adoption of an ordinance by the city of dent texas home home rule municipal corporation authorizing authorizing the city manager or is designee to execute an interlocal agreement with the university of north texas to define the duties and obligations involved with the coordination public safety related efforts and provide an effective date and we've noticed that council member melzer and council member ometer have recused themselves it's okay to get started yep yes sir i'm sorry okay i'm bobby smithy i'm the assistant chief of police for denton pd and i'm here to talk about the cooperate interlocal cooperation agreement between the denton police department or the city of denton and the university of north texas so last year university of north texas police department chief of police ed reynolds who's in in the audience here today approached the denton police department and asked to have a memorandum of understanding or an agreement going forward and so we his agency forwarded us an agreement we looked at it and we want to explain uh want to explain what it's about here the uh it's in chief reynolds talks about it's in line with kalia and i clea accreditation standards which is the some governing uh commissions that look at standards for policing i clea is the actual campus law enforcement and so also something that passed recently with some legislation in reference to sexual assault and harassment and an mou in the in the actual language of the statute the mou uh would satisfy the requirement under the statute for them so that's uh important some additional purposes on this it would formalize a relationship that's been going on for a long time the i've been here almost 25 years and we've always had a relationship with the university of north texas police department we work with them day in and day out this would solidify clear expectations roles and responsibilities essentially what happens is right now it's just essentially it's a more of a handshake agreement about what we do and how we operate and i think this would uh would strengthen an already strong relationship that we have in my opinion probably have the strongest relationship we've ever had and uh and i think relationships are so important to the public safety and so this would this would go along those ways to formalize that relationship and uh this particular agreement actually i don't it'll identify the benefits for each organization we did put a key provision in there this was something that's popped up recently and so i'll explain that just a minute but the key provision in the agreement is that untpd will when practical assist the dentin police department in the enforcement of traffic and parking statutes on city streets surrounding the unt campus and that's come up recently we've had different community meetings where we've talked to people about parking in their neighborhood and this is going to be around the oak street area hickory street area in areas just to the to the north of that there's a lot of there's a lot of traffic there there's a lot of need for and not only enforcement but just education in the area about how to park and not blocking people's driveways and and not blocking intersections and parking too close to stops and things like that so untpd has agreed to be a big part of that plan to work that area with us this is actually going to be in in the agreement but they verbally we've discussed this through meetings there's a commitment on their part to assist us along those lines so just a little bit background about this there's really never been a formal comprehensive public safety agreement there's been a few things over the years there's an mou from back in 2002 just a general mutual aid which is a something that you see between a lot of agencies again i mentioned that strong working relationship with unpd for many years and it just it's there's really so many examples of it on a daily basis it's hard to even uh to to actually annotate we call them and they come and vice versa something about the university of north texas police department and if you didn't know that these are sworn officers that have complete jurisdiction in any county in which their university has property so they have they have the same authority as a municipal police officer they can enforce any law maybe not certain ordinances but when it comes to state law they can enforce anything just like i can and we get routine assistance from them anytime there's an incident they monitor our radios they jump right on top of it they back us up on stuff they they stop crime and they do traffic enforcement and parking enforcement they can use a radar gun and set up on any street around the campus they can set up any street they want to but policy keeps them usually keeps them closer to their campus again on some a little bit more background on this there is an ordinance from 2006 where the city granted the university of north texas police department parking regulation authority on certain streets that are adjacent to the campus that's where you see the permitted signs where the people have to to pay or you have to pay to park near the campus the university of north texas pd used to actually control the parking enforcement arm of of unt but no longer does that right around 2015 that was switched over to the transportation department so the untpd no longer has that so what ends up with that particular enforcement is there a campus parking enforcement does the enforcement although the police officers have authority to also do it they just don't do it because the parking enforcement folks do it and then in 2017 there was a there was a change in the ordinance to allow some two some two-hour parking on some of the streets this 2006 ordinance in 2017 amendment they don't include the oak and hickory area east of welch or the areas that are up to the north we're getting a lot of complaints from citizens so and i mentioned just some jurisdictional information untpd is is in general is responsible for their own property of course and we have we're responsible for everything else that's not exactly how it works even though we're responsible or they're responsible for their own property they extend outwards and again i mentioned that they have a full jurisdiction they they tend to stick to their primary operational area unless there's something more exigent or something that needs their attention they maintain a strong presence in the area around our campus which is common sense but one of some of the things that they do a lot of is they they take a lot of dwis off the street as they patrol around their campus they work crashes crash reports that we would normally have to work if they didn't if if they roll up on a crash they don't have to actually work it they can call us and say come over here and work it they just work it themselves they take it and a lot of little minor disturbances things of that nature they handle without actually even calling us this is what they currently have they got 45 sworn police officers 30 of those are assigned to patrol and there's usually seven per shift that's the the number that are assigned to the shift that doesn't mean how many work every day here are some of the contributions to the city of denton that untpd has made and just in that year time frame that you see there 560 assist agencies now it's not not every single one of them is going to be the city of denton but uh you know anecdotally from what i get from them is that the vast majorities of those are going to be the city of denton it makes sense they made 145 dwi arrests in that year time frame 97 public intoxication arrests and then you can see some other stats there with their warrants and 41 crash reports a crash report might take an officer a couple hours couple two or three hours to do depending on the on the complexity of it so there's some man hours there that they that they contribute and then some traffic control on public roads here's just some these are these things that uh we we got a hold of some just some examples of the of things that they've helped us on you can see there was a drive-by shooting back in september of last year they helped us on that a gunshot victim in november they were the first on scene we had a robbery over near the beer barn and untpd they were right there right next to it they got onto it and if it wasn't for them we wouldn't capture the suspects right then we might have to do some more investigation and then uh just there's a lot of these type of examples so part of this is communications the dent 9-1-1 our dispatch center that we house in our police department has always been the public safety answering point the primary public safety answering point untpd is the secondary psap and the way that works is all 9-1-1 calls come to the city of dent untpd has 9-1-1 but no calls originate there so what happens is our dispatch takes the call they transfer it over to untpd 9-1-1 they run a 24/7 365 dispatch center they take all transfers they usually staff their dispatch center with two at all times each communication center's ours and theirs monitor our primary radio channels so that we're constantly in touch with what's happening and it's also as a side university of north texas police officers monitor the dent and pd primary channel because there's so much going on with dent and pd they want to stay on top of everything that's happening so they listen to that typically johnny on the spot when something goes down i've seen it over and over again and we actually assign the radio channels the city of denton but they keep up with the cost of radio equipment issuance replacement and repair and all fire ems calls go through our dent and public safety communications and then a dent fire department handles all of these calls so forever i mean i've in the 25 years i've been here they've always brought their class c misdemeanors to our jail so anything that's class b or above they take it to the county jail they don't even come to our jail for an initial bookend but their class c misdemeanor arrests things like public intoxication maybe some other things that are that warrant arrest like drug paraphernalia or a warrant they'll bring us to the city jail we will book them in but they'll be responsible if there's a transfer that's necessary we'll call them over there take them wherever they need to take them it's a seamless operation i don't know of any issues when it comes to our jail they had 175 bookings in the in the calendar year 2018 which is only you know one every couple of days or so so it's not really that big of a burden on our jail i went ahead through the cost of what it cost you know what a jailed person costs on average which is 108 dollars per day so untpd is requesting the following they want reasonable use of our firearms range in our training center we've already granted them the reasonable use of our firearms range they they train on average about 12 days a year on our range they do their firearms qualifications they do some of their in-service of course we we can extend our training center which is we have some things there that are that are pretty good for police training things like our simulation house where you can do actually scenario-based training we have a use of force simulator that they would be welcome to use and of course by by strengthening their training regiment we're just strengthening public safety within the city of denton and of course they got a competent train staff to do their their own range training we don't have to go out there and babysit them they do their own training and handle their business court services so that again this goes back decades the city of denton serves as the quarter record for these municipal cases that go through so anytime the university of north texas pd writes a ticket that goes through our municipal court our city judge handles it our city clerk handles the administrative affairs when it comes to that we even provide the electronic ticket writers to the university of north texas pd we did that a few years ago and so we bought them we gave them to them they use them and and then of course we replace them as necessary so these are the citation numbers that were issued by university of north texas just in the last three calendar years you can see it includes the actual number of charges not the actual just number of citations but the number of charges and parking charges and you can see it's trending down a little bit but i asked about it and i was told that staffing shortages are the factor in those reduction in citation numbers those citations uh netted a 300 almost 310 000 to our general fund net and on average we're looking at 263 000 net over the last three fiscal years and all of these fine amounts go to the city of denton general fund so just to review the mutual benefits on the city of denton benefits by having unt pd sworn officers protecting denton citizens and visitors so these folks are working around that campus but our folks are driving through that area right along eagle whether it's oak or hickory bonnie bray carol boulevard and there's unt pd officers over there all the time and they're protecting our citizens in those areas there's some traditional crime hot spots in the areas around the university of north texas that includes the owsley addition which university of north texas pd is constantly in the areas around bernard and eagle that's a traditional crime hot spot that's right next to their campus so we we benefit by having sworn police officers in marked units patrolling those areas um and of course the backups that go on and the immediate assistance when there's not untp the units are available so for example and i've done this before when i was working as a shift sergeant i didn't have a single unit that was available to take a call in the city and i had our dispatch center call unt and say we don't have anybody available can you go to this domestic disturbance and without without blinking an eye they send their officers over there and they work it and then we parking enforcement and also traffic enforcement on our city streets near the campus so the way i see it an investment in unt pd is an investment in the safety of this community unt benefits unt pd benefits by having some resources that they might need like our tactical unit which if they had a some sort of swat situation they'd call us backup officers reasonable access to our range and training facility a book in process at our jail and of course we administrated their city court stuff communications and then again it helps them meet their best practices when it comes to those accreditation commissions and again the texas education code is going to require them to have an mou on file at least as an as one of the three options that they have and so this will satisfy them and they won't have to worry about the other two routes so the vision is that uh unt pd and dent pd working together as one to make this city as safe as possible are any questions council member brings has a question then i have a question i actually have three questions okay three i've been holding them as we go um and so i understand the mou as far as you know traffic enforcement dw i am pulling in for backup but if you go back to the first one of the first slides where it says why um if you could go back to the first slide oops yeah and just help me understand here because it says regarding sexual assault and harassment and as a female that stands out to me um so what happens if a um someone it may not be a gome any anyone is sexually assaulted on campus um with this agreement or you know it's a it's a resident in the dorm um do they call the unt police what what responsibility is it of the denton police or the unt police and how how does one go about reporting that if there's this mou in place well i think i could answer that but would it be all right if i defer to chief ed reynolds to answer that please as long as we get a good answer yeah hello uh that's an excellent question and primarily if uh assault like sexual assault is reported on campus we investigate it and then if someone comes in to our lobby and they report one that occurred off campus then we would contact the denton police department there are some exceptions to that depending on uh it's on a case by case basis depending on all the dynamics of the case and uh but generally that's how it would work so that may i may i follow up okay so there there's certain things about the case or report that that you do um bring in the denton police department so there may be some where you just you you you do it on your campus and it stays on your campus so for instance if we had a case that required more investigative support than we had that i would certainly contact probably chief dixon and ask for assistance with the case but as as your department with all the accreditation that you have you have you can arrest an individual and um and send them to the the jail or put them on the court i mean you can do everything in that instance that our our denton police department could do yes we have an investigative division uh that acts very much similar to what the dent police department does okay okay thank you no sure go ahead yeah they're probably not for you if this is your line specific line of area so um the other two questions basically fall around liability um one when i heard you mention our current firing range because it is so dangerous and shells have ended up in the parking lot we're considering a new um a new one um so what what happens if it's not a denton pd officer but it's a unt officer and there's an accident um does it is it handled the same way and and the same thing goes with if there is um if if you're out and you do an arrest or something goes horribly wrong does that fall up on the city if we're in an mou i'm just kind of wondering about how these okay city attorney wants to address that i think a lot of it's going to depend on the facts at hand as to your liability uh usually what typically happens is that we uh via agreement one of the standard conditions is each party is is responsible to ensure all their all their employees and agents with respect to any damages that may occur and so that uh that's usually the rule of thumb and you'll see that in many of the agreements i i will need to verify that to see if that provision is in here especially with the use of the firearms range but i'll double check on that but but it's typically on a on a case-by-case basis and what the facts actually bear out can we make sure and double check that before this is voted on because i believe that would be um pretty important i just wanted to make sure that by entering this we're not automatically assuming responsibility for for any situation okay okay thank you that's all my questions it's in paragraph seven this disagreement was loaded up today earlier today so it's there now okay all right thank you were those were those are your questions okay uh i just had a couple maybe really one you mentioned the 9-1-1 uh capabilities that the university of north texas or pd has does it like if somehow something happened to the dentin 9-1-1 who's the backup for that i don't have an answer for that question myself i'd have to follow up with you maybe talk to melissa craft but the what i do understand about that is that that that typically none of those 9-1-1 calls ever go to them now i'm not going to sit there and say that it can never go in the event that we were overloaded or something like right i i'm going to have to follow up no that'd be great if you could follow that'd be great just a question of you know who's our backup and then is it by a contract that they're they're simply they're not a primary call uh dispatch center but only a secondary transfer under any and all circumstances again i can follow up with the melissa craft on that because you're going to get into the some of these communication agreements is a place between organizations i mean because we now we're involved with dentin county and right you know denco and all that okay all right great thank you uh council member briggs i apologize i did find one more question on my list okay and i guess it's for you and t um because of the the the shortage or the the reduction in citations and i you mentioned that there was a staff shortage have have you hired more people since or do you plan to hire more to address that shortage uh we have hired more to address that shortage we're we're down a couple officers now but we're almost full staff okay all right thank you you know i just want to say that first of all i appreciate the work of untpd uh and it sounds like that it helps and assists our community in that there's a large segment of our community which is around the campus and those kinds of things that have i'm going to say and if i'm wrong then somebody correct me sort of additional man power to sort of augment and supplement uh our our own police officer so thank you so much for that and you also provide traffic for games and things such as that so uh i really do appreciate your support in the community and what you do thank you so much you bet any other questions all right seeing none council member ryan move approval mayor pro tem second all right we have a motion and a second for agenda item what is this 5a let's vote on the board please okay something didn't work there let's let's try that one more time yeah council member uh melser and council member armature are the ones that had to recuse themselves so let's let's try to re-vote on that something didn't look right so who do we need to hit something okay motion carries five to zero if someone could ask council member armature and council member melser back in thank you so okay we'll move on to agenda item 5b consider nominations appointments city boards and commissions etc i need to i'm going to want to pull for individual vote uh mr david zoltner who's being nominated for the ethics board or the other individual names that need to be pulled for individual consideration seeing none okay council member armature oh so what does that mean to pull pull the name we need to discuss it separately well to vote on it separately right now we're looking at voting on a group of people so if there was a separate vote on an individual then that's the way you have to do it okay yep thank you okay so we're considering 5b sort of block nomination and then we'll consider the individual nomination council member armature uh would this be the time to add i have somebody else to add who's who's not on that list like an additional nomination sure is that what but they would still need to be vetted is that correct yes sir we would need to confirm whether or not they've been vetted so i would probably say you can give it now but i don't think it will be included on this vote okay yeah yeah okay so i so that's uh carl finch for public arts committee and his his application is not yet and rosa knows that okay all right council member ryan i'm a move approval of the uh the nominations in our listed in our backup with the exception of uh david zoltner for board of ethics council member davis second the motion all right we have a motion and a second let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero we will now take up the individual nomination of mr zoltner for a board member of the board of ethics chair would entertain a motion on that mayor pro tem so i'm going to make the motion and then uh i guess we'll follow up with conversation if there's a second but i'm going to move to um what is mr city attorney so is it deny the request deny the appointment deny the appointment okay so we have a motion uh to deny the appointment uh council member davis i'll second that motion we have a motion and a second uh council member husbeth you're showing as a request to speak is that just erroneous no i i have i have oh i'm sorry go ahead i'm sorry yes so this i just want to stress this is um this process is about as passed through as it gets but this particular item um is very very difficult to me and so i want to have a clear record of why um i'm i move to to deny uh so i just want to make a couple of sites and i've talked to dr zoltner uh in advance uh before and deliberated more but the just of it is this there's a denton record chronicle article article on 3 18 19 which says petition drive to repeal and replace denton's new ethics ordinance and that was that was headed and is active by uh dr zoltner so currently uh we would put him there the request is to put him over a board that he's actively working to remove and so to me uh there's a conflict there uh and and so then speaking to the conflict i'll have three or four quotes sorry but i i need to have a clear record uh on so this article is 3 20 19 uh it says high these are all attributed to to dr zoltner highest ethical standards expect expected in the city out of city officials to avoid the appearance of impropriety at all times which goes to my earlier statement that he's uh has a current um ask that would replace what he would be in charge of defending secondly that says existing language in the code too vague to be meaningful or enforced so he'd be tasked with enforcing something that in his words is unable to be enforced and then two more our current code is basically useless so that's his quote in the in that article that would then again he'd be sitting in front of people evaluating on something that he says is useless and then uh lastly a house on a broken foundation can't be rebuilt so that goes to if we were to rework the language he he says that's not even sufficient and so on based on those things i think he um i think well i'll let him work out the petition and and and that drive and everything and and afterwards um i would reconsider but currently as things are structured based on his words uh and his feelings i respect those and and i respect him but i respectfully will uh vote against his appointment councilmember armature okay so so let me get this straight i'm trying to figure out what i just heard uh so uh david sultner uh who was part of actually i would say in the beginning he was you know one fifth of it other times half of they campaigned to get us an ethics ordinance he's part of the history of having an ethics ordinance in city of denton he pushed for us to just have one i appointed him because of that because of all the work he had done to get us to this point this ethics ordinance that he thinks is insufficient he helped us to get this he was pleased that we have something and he wants to help make it better and so what um some people see as a conflict i see as this is his qualification he is somebody who has a high standard and he wants to make it better and he's not uh he's he's not mincing words so you might disagree with him but to call that a conflict you know and i want to i'm thinking back to uh the the video um that the person who who showed us about the carbon tax it said that the government is accountable to the to the people you know this democracy and uh this is what democracy is all about if you care about your government if you care about ethics you speak out about it if you think something's not right you speak out about it this is somebody who in my view is helping us now you might not agree he's helping us you might disagree with him but your act but to act as if he's uh so sorry i shouldn't say that to act i should say i'm getting the impression you know that he's like an enemy of the state the the city uh for his his uh uh wanting to make the ethics ordinance better so again you know people don't have to disagree with him but to to think that this disqualifies him um anyway uh i'm anyway if you think i'm letting it all out i'm actually biting uh my tongue to say some certain words because i just i just really am disappointed i can't think this is extremely anti-democratic uh and i'm i'm ashamed you have every right to vote how you want um but i i think it's shameful okay uh well i wasn't going to share anything but uh but since we've had these comments i'm just going to go ahead and share my thoughts because i i've known dr zoltner for a long time and this is the first time and i will be i will be supporting the motion to deny and this will be the first time in my 11 years on council as a council member or as mayor that that i voted against a nomination and for me it's it's much more simpler than that i totally agree with you council member armature that uh dr zoltner was one of the main drivers and one of the main advocates for the the ethics ordinance he was always he was a voice that encouraged us to do that in fact he was on the charter review committee and i respected his his uh participation in that and it comes down to two very two or three very simple things for me and one is that unfortunately with him being such an advocate for this process i was totally shocked and totally surprised when he took a leave of absence which that's okay you can do that he took a leave of absence from the board in protest for what he felt was something that was that was going wrong totally get that but in that time frame dr zoltner had submitted an open records request for some information from the city and the city attorney as is the process on many things submitted a letter to the attorney general's office asking for an opinion and somewhere in that process before may 4th or 5th before mr zoltner rejoined the board he sent an email asking for that information based upon his status as a board member of the board of ethics but he took a leave of absence and in that leave of absence he also stated that he was not going to participate as either in any of the duties or responsibilities or benefits of that i don't know if you said benefits i'm paraphrasing this so i was really concerned about that i didn't understand that quite frankly he and i have had a conversation about that and then lastly there was a we got a response from a response a copy of a response from a letter that he sent to the attorney general's office on city of denton letterhead as vice chair of the board of ethics and that concerns me as well so i don't deny mr zoltner's contribution to the our current city ethics code and his participation that's why quite frankly i was very surprised at some of those actions because i i do believe him to be someone who who acts with the utmost integrity and respect for the process and so it's just it's just difficult for me to to vote in favor of that given those two or three examples that i believe and and so we're all entitled to our opinion on this no one's right or wrong but those are those are my reasons and it's nothing personal it's just a really strong conviction that i have about that process and and how we got there and just some ways abandoning that process that he worked so hard to get and then in some ways trying to use that same process to circumvent our normal processes so those those are my thoughts council member armature oh yeah so i just wanted to you know to respond to that i'm number one he took a leave of absence uh because he objected to the fact that uh that somebody who was on that ethics board who was the chair of the ethics board was uh running for council and had not removed himself now that uh the recommendation that candidates not be allowed to serve on a on the ethics committee is one of the recommendations that has come before us by the the ethics committee itself uh it's up to us you know whether to agree or disagree i i i agree with it i think it's reasonable other ethics ordinances do that it's actually pretty standard it's unusual we have a very unusual ethics ordinance it's unusual in that sense so he uh he you know he had he had every right to do that to take a leave of absence as to the question of uh you know his considering himself a member of the board while he's on a leave of absence um i mean if you're on if you're if you're on a leave of absence the implication is that you're going to come back um otherwise you would quit now should he have been able to do that well if we think he shouldn't have been able to do that you know then we can make a policy in fact we even had a policy discussion about that that wasn't my reasoning that wasn't the rationale that wasn't the rationale okay mine has nothing to do with him coming back on the board okay okay well and so and then then you know finally to get to the point of public information request i understand that you had a uh an issue with him claiming to be a member of this government body while he was making a public information request i think he had a very good now i'm not an attorney but i think there's a good case to be made if you're on a committee whether you're on leave of absence or not um that uh and certainly reason to think that you're still a member of that government body uh so to me that seems whether you disagree or not it's not out outlandish to me it's not as if he wasn't on that committee at all or he had quit or you know uh had a dishonorable discharge from the ethics committee or something like that um as for you know using letterhead uh you know if he considered himself on the committee why not use letterhead i mean these are the reasons given and again you can vote how you want but i i don't i i i really think that this it sets a bad precedent and and i'll finally say in closing you know when uh the ethics ordinance was being debated that is whether or not to even have one or not there was a lot of concern that it would be weaponized um and it would discourage people from running for council uh i don't think that anybody for or against on any side would have thought uh maybe they would have i certainly didn't have a scenario like this where you would have people serving on the ethics committee uh who have studied ethics ordinances and no he's the person i am this is why i nominated him is when it comes to politics you know zoltner and i we're like opposite ends of the political spectrum you know i i don't i don't care about that um i serve city wide and he's my go-to person for ethics ordinances he he gets it and i've learned a lot from him and we're sending i believe we're sending the message that hey you know don't rock the boat even if you're rocking the boat to make things better uh don't do a public information request uh you know just ask for information if you don't get it then fine so anyway i think this sets really bad precedent and i'm ashamed okay mayor pro tem thank you just want to reiterate my my kind of my what i stand and where i stand speaks for itself regardless of the the mischaracterizations of what i said and and uh so i just want to make it have a clear record that i've stipulated uh where i fall i've stipulated that i spoke with him i deliberated uh and so i think that those conversations and that uh kind of deliberation it should stand for itself uh not gonna go back and fix all the mischaracterizations i would just um i'll clear that up with him directly but did want to have distance from those statements uh here to have that into the record so thank you yeah and i too want to make a clarification uh my objection was not anyone filing an open records request as a member of the public which he did my objection was then after not receiving the information that he wanted based upon our normal processes within the the legal department there was an attempt to gain that information using the authority that he believed he had as a member of the board of ethics during the time he voluntarily took a leave of absence and advocated his role as a board member albeit temporarily so i just want to make sure it has nothing to do with the filing of an open records request at all and it has nothing to do with him coming back on the board on may the fourth or fifth at all as well all right we have a motion to deny the nomination of david zoltner to the board of ethics so a vote of yes on that is is to affirm the motion to deny let's vote on the board please motion carries four to three we'll move uh let's take a break we've been going for about an hour and a half is this public this might take a while yeah let's let's uh let's go ahead take a five minute break welcome back to this meeting of the dense city council we're on our i believe our last agenda item outside of concluding items agenda item 6a hold a public hearing concerning the proposed 221 million dollars 519 thousand dollar bond election to be held on november the 5th 2019 and associated project recommendations i will now open the public hearing just so i don't forget to do that later on good evening mayor and members of council david yanes director of finance uh this item is obviously for a public hearing for the proposed 2019 bond election i will go through a few brief slides at a very high level of the projects as we've talked through the projects numerous times over the past counts a few council members council meetings and with the bond advisory committee but we have staff here for any questions on individual projects so the development of the 2019 bond program really began with the 2018 council retreat and then we came to council in april for multiple meetings as we began to consider what projects might be included in an in a bond election in 2019 and then on at the end of april the city council formed the citizens on advisory committee which had their first meeting on may 30th and then met eight times on weekly following that that first meeting on august 1st the recommendations from the committee were presented to city council and then we had a few more changes at direction of council and now we have our proposed program that's before you today trying to tie this back to that 2018 council retreat here are the all of those those priorities that were that were identified at the retreat and you can see the new bond program was one of those and that was really the starting point for this process to where we are today so as i mentioned i'll very quickly hit each one of these projects at a high level and then we definitely have staff here to answer any questions on the detail for these projects our first proposition would be for public safety facilities entirely devoted to police facilities the first being a police renovation of our current police station which is in need of of renovation city council took a tour of that facility early early this calendar year and saw the needs really just at the as the building as it currently stands but also knowing the growth that we'll have in the police department the recommended bond funding for that project is 36 million dollars we also have the police substation our first substation that would that we would build in the city for 21 million dollars which would not only help with our increased staffing with the police department but also help those response times throughout the city and finally we have 4.9 million dollars devoted to a firing range an indoor firing range to replace our current outdoor range in total though proposition number one is 61.9 million dollars the second proposition is devoted to street improvements the first couple of projects listed here are some major arterial roadways in the city that these projects would expand and and widen bonnie bray phases five six and seven for 27 million dollars in recommended bond funding total project cost for that project is over 111 million dollars and really as we've talked with council numerous times that's a result of leveraging those dollars with other entities as we look at those major roadways similar story with hickory creek as we're able to leverage the 30 34 million dollars in in bond funding for a total project at cost of 160 million dollars to widen that road and address many safety concerns that that road is presented the third project within the street improvements is our street rehab program for 70 million dollars and this is devoted specifically to our local streets throughout the city the approach that would be that we would take with the street rehab program would be to focus on a few neighborhoods to gain efficiencies but also target all of our low oci streets oci being the quality of streets within our city all those streets with 20 and a low oci would be addressed in this program the third project is a dedication for to 12 million dollars for sidewalks these are sidewalks that are all related to and within a quarter mile of schools throughout the city and we would leverage other funding to to address all of those sidewalks that don't currently exist within a quarter mile of schools the next project is a street lighting project for seven million dollars and this is specifically devoted to university drive from 35 to old north and we would get lighting on that street finally ryan road is included on this in this bond proposal for four million for four million dollars to widen to three three lanes there so in total our streets proposition is 154 million dollars the third proposition is specifically devoted to land acquisition for our park system and we have five million dollars devoted to that in this proposal and finally we have public art which base of which we have derived the total of 619 thousand dollars from one percent of our vertical construction which is our public safety facilities dollars and the proposal as it stands now is to have that as a separate proposition that would be voted on separately but then would give flexibility in how we can use those public art dollars throughout the city so in total that gets us to our 221.5 million dollar uh bond proposal that we would that city council will be considering next tuesday the 13th for um the bond election ordinance and with that we have obviously staff heard answer any questions and we can open up for public comment any questions for staff i think we've gone over this about three times and this is the third time all right so this is a public hearing i will open the i've already opened the public hearing i do have a blue card but you don't have a blue card to speak tonight because it is a public hearing but we'll call the blue card first uh is it perry dyer if you'll come down and state your name and address your time will begin uh good evening my name is perry dyer 4800 snowshell court argyle texas 76226 hills of argyle i've been out here for about a year coming up in september and uh love my area love it out here moved from corinth and i really enjoy the country's small feel it reminds me of my hometown out in california moved out here a few years ago i've moved many many times lived all around the country what i do like is we're a very unique community out there and in the dentin area we have high density we have low density we have very sparse areas which attracts a lot of attention and people want to move out to these areas we have to control that as the city council is moving forward i live right next to well a half a mile from brush creek road the proposal is possibly up to six lanes there that's creating a whole new freeway going a half a mile from my house unfortunately that's going to make me move because the noise the property values everything associated with that construction and that new freeway because the people who live there come there on that road anyway we don't need six lanes because it's a small community in that whole area so what we're going to do is now create a new pathway from people to move from the east side to the west side or vice versa from 35 creating a whole bunch of traffic moving people into our area increasing possible crime rates decreasing possible home values for our us in our area noise pollution that whole aspect is going to just not make it something i want to live in it's going to save maybe a minute minute and a half if i was to get off on hickory creek make a left and go down country club and go up 377 it saves virtually no time country club was just revamped made to a nice road it reads down to a stop sign a stop light on one side a stop sign on the other side a good flow for people to get in and out as we move forward with this i hope that you guys are going to consider the fact that we don't want to necessarily take a small amount of convenience and create this freeway because it would literally be a freeway if it's that much now it does need some improvements a few lanes or if we were to do two lanes with a turn lane in the middle something like that really a turn lane is not even really needed in that area because it's so little traffic but if we were to increase it maybe that'd be something we would need to consider but that whole area just does not need that throughfare and it's going to change things so dramatically for the residents out there and you're going to take houses away there's people whose lives maybe they've been there their whole life that house is going to go away there's going to a small number of houses and i think some people are going to talk about that are going to have to be taken away from those people plus part of the the golf course there we have such an opportunity to preserve open spaces green spaces we don't need to have all that concrete and all that other areas that are everywhere else around us in this small area and i hope you guys consider as you move forward in our future plans in order to try to preserve some of those green spaces some of that nice area some of the things that people love about the area and want to draw other people to the area as part of our ongoing plan for the future so thank you question from council member armature yeah so first of all i wanted to thank you for um for speaking out and uh i don't know how closely you've been following this if you know this but there are uh dentin residents who have the same concern i share the same concern um and we were earlier in the work session we were kind of taught we were talking about your plans for and for for the um especially with the hickory and ryan and brush creek they're all a little different in different ways but they all have kind of different stages to the project and are kind of addressing on the one hand an immediate problem and then there's talk about um you know down the down the road both in terms of the road and also in terms of time you know widening to six lanes and and and for me um i myself uh you know get nervous when we're talking about uh six lanes and what is now a country road and i understand the idea and this is how it's you know kind of explained well planning for future development and construction costs um they're expensive now they're just going to be that much more expensive in the in the future you know kind of my my concern is i have expressed it has been that uh well you know we can there are things we can do to slow down the growth instead of seeing it as inevitable and seeing these current rural areas as uh you know blank spaces that will inevitably be filled with development just because they can right now um so uh that's to say i agree with your concern and um uh and i'm glad that you spoke about this um i will say that and you know our traffic engineers would be better equipped to speak for it than i would um you know there are uh you know certain parts of and i'm more familiar with the details i feel more confident speak right now anyway speaking about the hickory creek which is not even uh you know you're you're you're focusing this well i'm very familiar with the hickory creek yeah yeah so dilemma associated with that yeah so um but you know for instance so the cost of the um the bond the what is it the 37 um 30 34 million will is actually just to cover um and not these six lanes that you're hearing about in the future but just this immediate and so uh that's it's a concern of mine that as we get the word out about what the future plans are that we might be making people nervous so i hope that when we spread when we talk to people about the bond package that we make it clear uh what it is no no no well i'm speaking um to um i'm to council but also uh i think members of the public are interested no i'm not saying i'm just saying council member riggs i think has a question for the speaker so there's going to be plenty of opportunity to have a discussion express your policy statement it's just yeah we're in a public hearing but i'd like to hear from the residents okay thank you anyway so i know i'm making you stand up there you know just to say no i hear you i hear you it's a concern of mine um and i appreciate that i think there's a fix to it part of it is we need to as the public say that because the there's no there's no plan for tomorrow the plan is for many years from now and if we don't start expressing it now will we pass the point where we get to express these feelings and the plan has already we've already had the traffic study and all these other things where as the public it's hard for us to stay informed with that and to know if the if i had known that this was coming there's a very good chance i might not have considered buying in that zone because of that concern so yeah and thank you and uh thank you i really truly appreciate your your speaking that anyway council member breaks i'm good i was just going to say thank you for coming in um and sharing your concern and we've we've heard that concern from from others and i would just implore that if there are other um if there are more people in your community that share the same concern to reach out to us absolutely we have a facebook group there's also on next door people are talking about this and unfortunately most of us have general lives that that impact the fact that we're able to get here so i know that quite a few people on both of those forums have expressed you know thank you for coming and speaking on my part and i think there's many other people but it it's going forward and we want to think about these things and unfortunately not enough people have time to get involved with these things and we have to leave our decisions up to you guys and we hope that we're putting it in good hands and we live in such a unique community in argyle and then denton also that we want to try to preserve that i mean i drive around the whole city on a regular basis and there's places that you recognize that the city has done what it has to preserve both high density low density commercial i mean you have a you have to do all that but with that you you make a vision for what we have and in my area you can't expand there's no more houses that can come into my area so it's not like there could be future expansion on brush creek all that is is transportation to and from the other sides where there might be more construction so council member davis question for the speaker yeah so uh thank you again for being here thank you for your comments on my facebook post on the hills of argyle uh facebook group and the the dialogue that's going on there um i spoke today with one of your neighbors who's interested in hosting a community meeting do you think you and your neighbors would be interested in at some point in the future having a neighborhood meeting on this topic absolutely um and can you help us communicate back to the neighborhood uh kind of what you've heard tonight that the bond proposal is kind of top level you have funding for for streets uh that individual projects are subject to change so there's not heard the word inevitable a couple of times tonight right um those plans are not finalized and that we're still discussing um and that there's a phased approach that can be undertaken that there's let your neighbors know there's not a six lane highway coming down their backyard tomorrow right and i've heard you talk about that and i appreciate that and going forward and i know what your stance is on this and i really appreciate that it's like i've said before it's making sure that we're planning and thinking ahead in this aspect and putting the thought the little bean in your guys's brain to say well let's look at this a little bit further and consider if there's possible other options you know i understand convenience and transportation and stuff like that for aspects but uh my hometown of 3,500 people out in california one of the things we had was keep it rural because that was what brought people to the area what wanted people to live there and that's some of the similar facts i feel with argyle and dentin so uh mayor pro tem thank you and i was just gonna i'm just gonna share with you um that i think you'll be encouraged that the system does work and i'll encourage you to go back and look at uh the work session today and council member davis because of that interaction and shared that during the work session your exact sentiments he kind of teed us up and kind of shared hey i've talked to them we need to go back and have a neighborhood meeting uh and those sort of things so absolutely great group here and and if you were to watch that work session you'll see that kind of in progress and it also would be a good link to share to kind of get more in-depth information than we discussed here but but that this very conversation was had during the work session absolutely because council member davis was able to bring back your what he gathered uh doing the due diligence and and our our little group is getting you know advocated vocal we're talking with on each other you know and it's not like we don't want to see improvements or need to see some of these things we just want to make sure that it's appropriate for the area we're looking at yeah appreciate you coming uh those sentiments were shared today in the work session that and it's unfortunate that sometimes the way this is um is viewed or has has been presented in a way that sort of has been unintentional is we've got the big hickory creek project of 160 million dollars that is i mean there has been some discussion about that in general since we had the death at the s curve on hickory creek right but that 34 million dollars is the only thing that's been approved there's the only street project has been approved and that's to correct that public safety issue to get a more aligned segment of hickory creek that's safer up to 1830 and there are tremendous amounts of discussions that are going to have to occur long before absolutely so i i appreciate you coming down and sharing that because i would share the same sentiments as yours and i appreciate that i sure that we we we've discussed that and also we know that it's this one segment but that there are some concerns out there so i'm going to recognize council member ryan first because you've already spoken uh council member ryan yes i just wanted to let you know that we're also in the process of updating our mobility plan this year and that's going to that's where the discussion of where the actual routes of these roads will go or closer to the actual routes and and again as has been expressed many times up here from the day is that that 34 million is to correct the bridge over the road that we've had numerous deaths over the years on right how would the public find out about this mobility plan and be able to have some you know just understanding what's going on with that um is that on our improving dentin yeah we will we will publicize that pretty heavily and uh if you will um leave a corridor with us uh we will be sure to or your contact information with the gentleman in the back there that um we will make sure that you get a copy of that and and i have no problem uh actually hosting one of the mobility plan meetings out in the neighborhood okay great fantastic any other question council member yes yeah i wanted to ask are you familiar with the dentin 2030 plan well i was at the uh i think it was two weeks ago the blonde commission meeting and they had talked about it some in that meeting um and so there was there was a lot of information that line it was a long night and they were talking about the the outer loop and the inner loop and some other plans and stuff like that so not terribly familiar but it's it's been yeah well i would yeah i would i would go check it out you know it's unfortunately it's a very long document right it's 400 something pages so maybe someday they'll come up with the cliff notes on it but i like the idea behind it i can't claim any credit for i wasn't on council then i wasn't one of the citizens that put it together but you know it's philosophy of zoning for dentin is very much like what you're talking about about preserving our rural peripheries and having the more high density more in inside of of town sure so it that's something to be um you know as somebody who's active and uh it's it's a lot of reading but it's it's a little tool to have the problem with it is there's nothing that says we have to stick to it and if we don't stick to it we're all going to jail but it is a statement of value so it's something to quote and that's why here's the public is to try to help you know understand that and make sure that we're where us as public are helping guide you guys and yeah little seeds in your head that says okay this is what's important to us yeah appreciate it thank you very much thank you very much for coming down you bet uh this is a public hearing i have no more cards anybody wishing to speak please come down state your name and address your time will begin anybody wishing to speak please state your name and address your time will begin yeah if we could clear uh yes he's wanting the time posted so if we will need to clear that slide off for the presentation i guess and once you name an address hit that you should see it pop up there on the bottom 623 newton we'll wait till it starts here you go okay um i i would request that the council make some statement about the feelings of the city of denton and the statue on the square and not be silent anymore about that say something i want to say something about the homeless there are five reasons why i've heard that people are homeless and i've just decided that i need to do something in the area i think i can do to help the homeless situation and i want to share it with you i have a property at that my house is right on the other side of the creek where the homeless are staying right by the county jail and i've talked to them about what i'm requiring them to i would like for them to do if they're going to stay there and they've decided they will do it the main thing is keep it clean secondly quit howling and fussing at each other and doing that stuff and bugging the police so they've created a group among themselves to do those two things what i'm asking you to do is provide a dumpster for them to put the trash in i don't know how we're going to do it i hate have to pay for that thing myself but it really would help if we just had a dumpster there they will take the debris and put it in it and it's already pretty much clean it doesn't miss your husband uh and we'll we'll tell your time and i'm sure what you're talking about is somehow related to the bond proposal this agenda item oh i'm sorry i should have said i should have said it based on something i'm not going to what no go ahead go ahead safety it's about public safety yes and i'm not going to support a bond issue if you don't help with these items okay all right there you go how about thank you sir i appreciate that anyway so get a dumpster out there figure tell me what to do i'm not going to pay for that thing by myself i'll help but that would really eliminate the problem that we're having one of them anyway they clean up the area they've decided to do it they're going to help clean it up and they're going to stop fussing and fighting and talking to the police i told them if they do then they've got to go because it's my property and i'm allowing them to stay now lastly councilman armator i can't mention your name somebody and this david zotner came in somebody years we've been fighting we've been fighting for years for this thing and just because you don't agree with what you're fighting for it doesn't mean that you can't be a part of the decision-making process that's what they did to me with that confederate monument uh i sat on that darn committee and they just ignored me but i stayed there and i told them what i believe right at the very beginning is this tied to yes because we want to stay on topic because any questions to you are going to have to be on topic so i just want to make sure so yes it's you cannot expect us to support a bond issue when you won't even support the people who are trying to make the city better we've got to do that and i've told you for years i don't like it when someone nominates someone to come to be on something and some of you decide you don't want them to be there for whatever reason that that that they're whatever they do now if it's illegal i got it but if you're just stating your point of view i don't think that that should take place so lastly i don't think we have enough firemen so i won't support a bond issue if you don't do something about the firemen being hired i think you're moving in the right direction but somebody had better tell those firemen when i wave at them probably be a good idea for them to raid way back and they quit turning their little heads uh yes so uh first thank you for for speaking about these things um i would like uh to to uh follow through and see what i can do to ask to get a uh dumpster for your property i'm really grateful uh to you for that i have wished many times that i had uh more land that i than i do that i that i could that i could do that too and thank you thank you for all the things you speak about all right any other questions thank you sir appreciate it thank you very much uh this is a public hearing anybody wish wishing to speak please come down state your name and address your time will begin anybody wishing to speak about the bond i would like my name is jennifer lane at 1526 willowwood street and um if it's possible i mean the uh the situation of hickory creek was so distressing with the with the death and the drowning and uh our roads do need to be repaired and they do need to be maintained and we you know people don't have been so unhappy with the roads for so long there's going to be development but if there's a possible way to squeeze five million out of all of this and put it into land acquisition for the parks there was discussion of 10 million dollars when this land is gone you can't get it back for that price assuming that you won't pay you know twice what it's worth like we like we did for the land that the deck is on or whatever you know just pay what it what it's worth but get a lot of land and um and protect it um i have mixed feelings about where public ours should be whether it should be within a larger bond or on its own separate item separate it makes it a little bit easy for people to think well that's something we can get rid of but hopefully they won't because the amount looks you know so so little compared to everything else and it really is i would say i'd like to see um i'd like to see more happening to really bring you know up to up to speed what um you know the sense so so that gone forever is the sense that uh denton is trying to avoid uh equality in southeast denton when it comes to the bond share and that try to slip certain kinds of road work into other sorts of funds and not in not really include southeast and fully in the bond and in the public art actually i'd like to see a good portion of the land acquisition and the public art and the rest be in southeast denton and um i'd like to see um i'd like to see you guys um you know i really am proud of willy because he will withhold his support for something that he would otherwise support if you feel so there's a moral failure that's gone on up there and i would agree with him because i think that um you all should be quite careful about retaliating against people who are on your boards and commissions even if you don't want to re-up them they're currently on there and i would be careful about that and not do it thank you thank you public hearing anybody wishing to speak please come down state your name and address your time will begin anybody else wishing to speak last call we'll close the public hearing discussion action council members so any questions for staff if not uh chair would entertain any action what would we this is uh public hearing is there action on this no action okay no action council member ryan oh i was just gonna say no action yeah all right so uh no further questions then this agenda item has been closed out so our last remaining agenda item is concluding items oh is that right oh oh okay yeah agenda item 6b are we moving this to a certain time it says it's been postponed indefinitely so i'm not sure why it's even still on here but if it's going to a different date then yes mayor it's uh ron mcghee with development services do i need to call this item yes okay agenda item 6b hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance at the city of denton approving a city-wide rezoning to coincide with zoning regulations yes mayor um ron mcghee development services uh staff's requesting that this item be postponed to date certain which is september 17th all right uh chair would entertain a motion as requested by staff council member ryan i move that this item be postponed until september 17th council member briggs i'll second thank you uh let's have a motion oh this is a public hearing do i need to open the public hearing and have any comment yes it's already open we continued it from april to tonight the motion would have to take into account continuing that public hearing okay so uh so do i call for any comment or no if if you wish yeah any comment on this matter that we're having a continued public hearing on just want to make sure we follow the process okay so the motion then council member ryan yeah i think i need to change it to a i move to continue this public hearing until september 17th yes i'll second all right we have a motion and a second to continue this public hearing to the date certain of september 17th let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero final agenda item is concluding items oh council member riggs i saw yours light up so just two um uh the one lady that spoke earlier about the bus number seven and i know that mayor you're on the um the dcta board so you may feel have some sway or pull but i'm just curious um why it was rerouted that way and i do believe i'm not sure um i mean if the if it has to do that if there's something temporary that we can do for walkers to make it a little bit more safer if they have to cross that underpass it seems pretty dangerous um so and and just the other one we had another speaker ask us with a list of things to do and one of the things that stuck out to me um was something was a resolution to denounce white supremacy i set up here um about a year ago and made a commitment um to do all that i can and so i want to honor that by um proposing um that's the least that we could do okay all right council mayor melzer yeah um in work session today we uh didn't we didn't reach uh consensus to move forward on a particular proposal related to homelessness but i think there was consensus that there are still uh there are still gaps in a in not just the city but in the county wide approach to the issue and that uh and the gaps are different than they were a year ago because i don't know if people are aware of this but we're we're on the brink of voting on a proposed budget you know soon to come before all of us that will include an appropriation to expand my senior king to seven days with case workers to help folks overcome their barriers and move to permanent housing and that came about because of a county-wide task force uh on emergency shelter that you know they came out of this body they deliberated and came up with a thoughtful uh proposal you know and hopefully that'll be constructive results so my ask is to go the next step and i would like to suggest now that the same team essentially be reassembled or you know if it needs to be adjusted somewhat fine but take the same approach with a similar group uh and this time to work on a recommendation with the assumption that the monsignor king seven-day plan happens assuming that that essentially would will be in place and meet expectations and i'd like that group to make proposals to us on what the next concrete step might be that we should take in the next six to 12 months uh whether that's a further step in buttressing our emergency shelter system or assist or a step that takes us concretely towards supportive housing and when i say we an hour i'm including not just city of denton but all the stakeholders in the denton county homelessness coalition all right council member armature uh yes i've got um two umbrella topic items i'll try not to take too long to go through them um the first is actually about veterans and i'm wearing and people can see they're wearing a that texas veteran hall of the hall of fame hat they were this weekend uh two uh really important local events for veterans and a number of people on on council were there one we have the uh opening their ribbon cutting of the new veterans clinic on carol and that provides really essential services pretty much doubling our services that we have for veterans i know if you know better local veterans who've had to go to dallas to receive those same same services so this is really crucial and there also was in aubrey at the uh schoolhouse converted schoolhouse a um kind of welcoming and introduction to the veterans hall of fame and they have a mobile veterans hall of fame that that'll be moving around it's it's really cool it's not your last opportunity to see that by any means um so a few things i wanted to say towards that end um number one um the uh space on carol where the clinic is they have only two uh ada accessible spots and i think too anyway it's hard to completely tell because there were people parked there but it seemed as as if there were two and uh that's you know because of of who they serve uh i think they should have more obviously it's not up to me how many they should have but my ask is that uh somebody from the city um talk to them to find out uh would they like more spots and if i uh we have somebody who could just paint that if that could be an in-kind donation or at least to help with that uh so i would like to see that also i don't believe that they are on it i'm sorry what is that i'm just clarifying is that is that on their property or was there a parking lot close to it that you were asking oh yes so it's on carol it's yeah and it's their property i say their property i'm not sure if they're renting the building or you know who owns it but uh there's another office right next door um at the very least just to ask you know those kinds of questions to see if they'd be interested i talked to some bit you know uh people there and they said yeah that's a good point i mean they they just moved in so anyway i know that it makes a big difference um uh anyway so so there's that um also as i understand it they're not on a dcta bus route uh uh and i don't know how much that maneuvering that would take but you know we've got representation now on on dcta and a lot of uh vets uh take the take the bus and so it's you know it's carol's not the most walkable street so if we could look into that also across from the arbury schoolhouse where they now have the um that has been uh uh converted by vets and it's now a meeting place that's where um when the gas plant was going to be in at two different locations um that was one of the locations the city had looked into you know buying that land for that purpose um uh you know that's not on on the cards anymore because the gas plant is all over at the other side of town but that's a space since we were looking at buying it anyway that would be great space to preserve for green space so i'd like that to be considered as one of the uh spaces um it would also it would help those veterans uh because they they really like the rural uh historic schoolhouse area if you've been out there it's really beautiful there it would help to preserve it preserve our rural periphery meet with fit with the 2030 plan etc then finally there's the last veterans thing um they're looking for a place to house their veterans hall of fame right now they've got the mobile uh facility allegedly i don't know the details but allegedly frisco is is very interested in it um they say that they would prefer to be in denton uh and so i would like uh some conversation to be had with them about what um you know what spaces do we have where they they could imagine uh housing it um you know we've got i mean there's all this talk about city city hall west but i know that that's unfunded right now it's so but i would like some conversation to be had also because it's for veterans there could be you know federal funding uh for that and state funding also i would like cvb uh to be in on that discussion because a veteran hall of fame would be good for um putting putting heads on beds and uh in tourism and that's something that the vets were telling me about that so anyway i i would like to see that you know and finally another thing that that they had said was uh vets and that's one of the things that i really like about talking to uh vets is because um uh they they understand that um homelessness is something that could happen to anybody uh they are tend to see homeless people as people and so you know when they were talking about this they you know they were saying that possibly you know it could be a space where you know people could come and just uh just hang out and be during the day without getting bothered by anybody even if they're not a vet so i'm not making i'm not speaking for them i'm saying this was part of the conversation um so now uh moving on to the second part um what council member briggs mentioned about the formal resolution combating white supremacy that was on on my list of things too and yes uh we we definitely uh we definitely need this um i i hope that that's a no-brainer for everybody uh you know the connection that i'll make between that and veterans not that i have to but you know there we had there was a war where council member armatron i really appreciate your your recitations here but we've got two or three other council members who are wanting to have concluded so if you could be concise in your ask or i'm actually yes so i'm going through a number of things concisely i know it doesn't sound that way if you could if you could please so yeah so sorry so there was wrap it up thank you very much yeah um so anyway so there was a war called world war two and um the u.s. fought nazis in there and nazis killed a lot of my people i'm jewish and so there were some nazis or nazi sympathizers called patriot front that y'all may have seen and they had a lynch mob going through our town and i think it's imperative that that we come out and speak against that and that we come out with a statement and i've had this on i don't know for how long months and months on our list of works on our work session list that we have a statement to the to the county asking them to please move the confederate monument because it attracts people like that they look at it and they see their values reflected in it i know it means different things to different people but it is dangerous it is dangerous to have it there it's owned by the county we have every right to have a say on it and i think now more than ever uh it's imperative that we do if people disagree then then i think we need to at least have a discussion where you can explain out in the public why it's okay uh you know to have a um a confederate monument in our downtown by the way one of the uh veterans that i met at one of these events he looked familiar but i didn't know from where um and uh he mentioned to me he said you know we met before at one of the uh public hearings of the county that the county had for the confederate monument he came and uh he's you know a older uh white guy uh gets up there and he says i'm a veteran and and he launches into this this big speech and and i feel everybody thought he's going to come out for the confederate monument he said he said i'm as a veteran i am against this confederate monument and he said you know we we fought the nazis in world war two i don't like what this stands for anyway so there really is a direct connection between these two things i'm not saying all veterans are you know feel the same about that um but uh then finally um the or actually there's two more issues um the lynching memorial beam uh there has been some really good coverage in the dent and record chronicle about it they would like to have it on the square uh i i would like the city council to have a discussion about that can we you know they're looking for sponsors people just to say yes we support it too i would like us to come out and say we support it too they're not asking for any money of anybody just support we've got a history of lynching in this in this nation and in denton a very specific one in denton that is tied to the time of the confederate monument it's not a coincidence i want to see this public training which i'm encouraged that our police department is doing but i'd like the public and council to be able to learn a little bit more about what kinds of training and that it be done with local organizations um and then finally you know one more time uh i i want to get this um welcoming cities initiative uh back on the agenda i had kind of pulled it at one point out of frustration because it wasn't getting interest it's a initiative to show our own immigrant communities and other immigrant communities that were a welcoming place for immigrants we can't only have these discussions about uh you know racism and and and welcoming immigrants when something like this happens we need to all the time show that we're a welcoming city so yes i did speak a lot uh but these are really important things mayor pro tem thank you mayor uh mr city manager i'll visit with you on a couple of things afterwards in interest of time but so for one thing though i would ask for staff's help uh and i can facilitate where i can uh la australia uh mini market the owner there uh is uh hosting a vigil for the uh victims of the violence there in el paso that's saturday the 10th from seven to nine and i want to try to coordinate that information so that the city can put out a where is that where's that application so that's the the gas station corner corner of mckinney so yeah 602 east mckinney street and so there's a mural on the back painted attributed to her son i'm assuming it'll be there but uh in that so but you know on that property okay so that's saturday the 10th uh seven to nine and then if if we can maybe put something to get out of the city just to give people an opportunity or to help disseminate that information i'd appreciate it that's the 10th okay council member davis i saw your name on the board did you did you want to still have a good item just want to let folks know a couple different times uh today during the work session and then this evening we mentioned the parking on oak and hickory uh there will actually be a community meeting at the unt greek life center on that item uh and that kind of oak hickory parking and transportation situation there uh that'll be the 15th of august at 6 p.m just letting folks know if they're watching along for that issue that's where that's taking place um folks who are already in attendance at a previous meeting should have already gotten an email about it but if you're new to the issue that's when we'll be meeting august 15th 6 p.m unt greek life center i have one uh and i think this will have to be a council discussion so we'll put on the agenda when we can uh as a city that's that values sustainability um one of the things at the last u.s mayors uh u.s conference of mayors uh observing sort of different way to handle things especially food items in private businesses but i don't want to extend it to private business i want to say at least for city council you know if we can look into how many of our vendors use styrofoam for their plates and see if there's a way that we can find some alternatives for that that would be much easier on our landfill and also it's my understanding that styrofoam literally does not degrade and if i'm incorrect in that i'll stand corrected by probably before the end of the night by somebody but i would just like to have some options and i it may be too much of a burden but i'd like to have a discussion about that uh on council just to sort of get an idea of what we can do and and those kind of things so that's all i have seeing none we will stand adjourned at 8 57 p.m thank you