Aug 27, 2019 City Council on 2019-08-27 12:00 PM (AMENDED)

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday August the 27th 2019. It is 1203 p.m. We do have a quorum so we'll call this meeting to order. Moving down to our work session reports, citizen comments on consent agenda items. I don't see any. Work session citizen request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda. Yes, Councilmember Briggs. Okay. Okay, C&D will be pulled for a separate vote. And also, Brian, if you can hear me, apparently Councilmember Briggs' microphone doesn't seem to be operational. So I just want to pass that along if somebody could maybe take a look at that. All right, so we're pulling items 3C and 3D for a separate vote. Okay. Oh, did I misspeak? Oh, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this work session. Yeah, you're right. It's a consent. It's a 1C and D. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Any other clarifications? Councilmember Meltzer? Yeah. Now that it's being pulled for a separate vote, maybe we can just discuss it at that time. But the question I had on consent agenda item D is whether that sort of thing can be handled just as well. Brian, I'm sorry, stay here just for a second. Go ahead. Yeah, whether that sort of thing can be handled as, I forget the term that we use, sort of council policies versus in ordinance. It seems like kind of harder to change and maybe a little heavy handed as a way to approach something that we're kind of trying. We can talk about that since we're pulling it. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to take a chair license here just for a moment and we'll come back to it. But I'm going to drop down to including items on the regular session if I can do that because I have an announcement that I'd like to make. Brian, come on up. I wasn't going to save this till the end. This is, see Brian, is this your last televised meeting? Okay, so this is Brian's last meeting. He's received a great opportunity. What did you say? Yeah, there you go. So just wanted to give you a shout out and wish you the best of success. And you're going where now? And I believe this is a great opportunity for you if I understand what you're doing. Did you want to just take a couple seconds to share or do you want to? Yeah, go please do. Councilmember Armitage? So can you still fix our microphones when they're not working? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. Sure. Congratulations. I just wanted to give everybody an opportunity to congratulate you and recognize you for just the work that you've done here and the years of support to all of us. And you've done a great job and I suspect that you're going to do a wonderful job for the city of Dallas and I think it's a really great opportunity for you. I just want to say congratulate. Thank you, sir. You can fix your microphone. Sorry about that. Okay, so we're going to talk Councilmember Meltzer. We're going to sort of address your concerns or comments. Go ahead. We are posted for a work session on that, which is relates to your item. Okay, so you can discuss it during the work session. Yeah. All right. Great. Any other clarifications of agenda items? All right. We'll move on to work session reports. Work session 3A. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction on the process for responding to City Council requests. Good afternoon Mayor and Council. I'm Rachel Wood, Chief of Staff. So today's presentation is really a continuation of the discussion we had at your group meet on August 7th. I can't believe it's already been 10 days since that's passed. It seems like it was just yesterday. But Councilmember Meltzer, we will be discussing the process and how to kind of formalize that part of today's presentation. So during the retreat, you discussed three primary types of City Council requests. Service requests, which are those more operational requests, reporting a hot hold, traffic signal that's out. Request for clarification, which is clarification primarily on City Council agenda or board commissioning committee agenda items. And then the third category is policy related research. That includes requests for informal staff reports, legal status reports, work sessions, and then also adding ordinances or resolutions to the City Council agenda. So as we discuss with the retreat, assuming you all decide to move forward with this process today, all requests for policy related research as well as clarification and service related requests will be skipped. I hate to interrupt you. We've got to take a quick break because I don't think the podium mic is working, nor do I think this one is working. So we're going to sort of restart here. We'll just take a five minute break or however long it takes to get it fixed. Find time to leave for Dallas. Okay, welcome back. We've already sort of reconvened, but now we're being video recorded. We had just a slight delay due to technical difficulty. We'll go ahead and just start the work session reports over again because the podium mic was not working at the time. So I'll call work session 3A, which is receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction in the process for responding to City Council requests for information, potential changes, City Council meeting procedures as discussed during the August 17th, 2019 City Council retreat. Okay, good afternoon again, Rachel Wood, Chief of Staff. As I mentioned previously, this is a continuation of the discussion we had at the August 17th City Council retreat. During the City Council retreat, we discussed three primary types of requests that staff received from you. Service requests, which those are more operational requests, things like potholes or traffic signals being out, clarification requests. And those are really seeking additional information on agenda items, primarily City Council agenda items, but we do receive requests associated with boards, commissions and committee agendas as well. And then policy related research, and that includes ISRs, informal staff reports, legal status reports, as well as work sessions or council initiated ordinances and resolutions. So at the retreat, we agreed that all requests for information would be submitted via email, and staff is developing a template for that. But what we agreed to is including the request type, request purpose, the time sensitivity of the request, as well as the preferred format. If you want it to be an ISR or legal status report or if an email will do, just letting us know how you want that information conveyed back to you. And then all requests that we receive, we will continue to track as we have been doing, just to ensure that we're responding in a timely manner to the request that we receive. So request process for those service requests, as well as requests for clarification. At the retreat, we heard a general consensus that what we're doing now is working. We'll continue to respond to those as quickly as possible, particularly for those items for upcoming City Council agendas. We try to turn those around extremely quickly. In addition to keeping our current process, staff is also looking at what we can do to enhance the Engage Denton application, both to enhance its utility as well as improve staff's response on that. And then we're undergoing a larger effort to research a resolution center or a 311 call center model that will help hopefully alleviate the need for as many of the operational service requests that we receive via email now. The primary component of the retreat discussion focused around policy-related requests. So as we discussed at the retreat, the city manager's office or the city attorney's office, depending on the nature of the request, once a policy-related request comes in, we'll estimate the amount of time required to respond to those requests. And then requests estimated to take more than two hours to respond to will then be reviewed at an upcoming standing work session to seek council consensus on if that item is a good use of staff time. So the standing weekly work sessions, the requests estimated, as I mentioned, to take more than two hours will be reviewed. Prior to that standing work session item, the requestor will be asked to provide a written description explaining their request. And then during the standing work session item itself, the requestor will have one minute to essentially describe why they think this is a valid request, and then each of the seven of you will have up to one minute to provide feedback on if you think this is a good use of staff time in responding to the request. So that's really the crux of the conversation that we had at the retreat is, if we think it's going to take more than two hours, we'll bring it back to a standing work session, the requestor will have one minute to further describe their request, and then each of you will have a minute to indicate your level of support for that item as a use of staff time to do additional research. >> Do you want to wait? >> Yeah, yeah, let's let her get through the presentation. >> Okay. So at the retreat, in addition to the process I just described, we also did discuss a few additional considerations where we need a little feedback from you today in terms of how exactly to proceed with that. One item that was discussed during the retreat is, in addition to the process just described, allowing each elected official up to two additional policy related requests per quarter for additional research where consensus has not been identified by full counsel. Another consideration is what to do with topics returning for consideration. So if consensus is not met, is that request going to be considered again at a future work session, or will it not be brought back forward to counsel for consideration, and we just need some feedback from you on how to proceed. We mentioned the city attorney and the city manager. We did not mention the internal auditor. The internal auditor does have an annual work plan that he brings back to you from time to time to have amended, and that's how he's made amendments in the past whenever he's received requests from you. He could be subject to this process as well, or he could continue with his current process of amending his work plan. We also discussed limiting the scope of concluding items to really being more those general announcements and expressions of thanks rather than being a forum for requesting information from staff. And then for work sessions we discussed allowing the presenter to complete their presentation prior to fielding questions, allowing each elected official up to one minute to state their question, and then limiting the discussion regarding the question that was raised to five to seven minutes for counsel. So we've added to the agenda today and it's been pulled for further discussion, an ordinance to adopt and kind of formally establish this process, starting, assuming you all adopt the process, starting on September 10th we'll begin weekly work sessions, where we'll review the list of remaining work sessions from our previous process. We asked you all to consider removing any items that you did not think need to remain on the list and we did have 35 of the remaining 68 topics removed from the list so we'll go through the remaining 33 on September 10th, as well as any new policy related requests that have come in. And then we've added a work session item on September 17th to potentially review and update the rules of procedure for any of those items including revising the concluding items process and or work sessions process to formally codify that in your rules of procedure and that's a presentation we'll be working on directly with the city attorney's office. That concludes the primary components of today's presentation. >> Councilmember Meltzer? >> Yeah, I have a few responses. Thank you for pulling this all together. On the list of kinds of things that can be requested, work session, staff report and so on, I also suggested that we would include item for individual consideration. For example, resolution on kindness. You wouldn't necessarily be looking for research on it, but that's an item that could then come into the list for the yay-nay direction. To the question of reintroduction of a topic, my suggestion is after action is taken, it's no longer on an active list, but if a council member wants to reintroduce it and use their slot to re-raise it, and they've got something different to say in their one minute because things change, I think you would just do that. On concluding items, I'm perfectly happy with the time limit and it forces us to prioritize and be concise, but I'm not personally supportive of content constraints. I think you say whatever you need to say. Oh yeah, and then just to the general question of ordinance, I suppose I have a question for the city attorney. Is there a difference between how rules of procedure are codified? Do we have rules of procedure codified in any way other than by ordinance, or is that always by ordinance? It just strikes me as sort of a heavy duty thing. With respect to rules of procedure, since then they apply to the public as well, those have always been codified, it's 2-29, and so that is in the black city code. It is by ordinance. And so on this one, this is a discussion for the council, the ordinance is one mechanism to adopt this, it's easier to find if a public can go and look at our ordinance as they find this, or you can do it as a resolution. It's the pleasure of this council. I mean, it just struck me as a little formal for something that I suspect will change as we try it out. That's my reaction, thanks. Okay, all right. Council Member Armitage and then Council Member Briggs. Sure, well several questions, so first to begin, since we're just talking to Mr. City Attorney, is that the case also with procedure for closed sessions? If there's a change in closed session procedure, do we make a public ordinance or resolution about it? One of the things that I'm not, I think the work session is actually in your current rules of procedure, which is codified, so if we were to make a change to that, it would have to follow through a codification. Only an ordinance can basically amend another ordinance. So thank you, and that goes to my second question, which was, and I think you've answered it, but I just want to check. Invalidate nullify all other existing ordinances that conflict with that or aspects of ordinances that conflict with that. It's the last or one of the last items in the ordinance. So I was wondering, yeah, what conflict is there? That is a provision that we put in, it's a limited repealer clause, and we put that in a lot of these ordinances. Sometimes, just like in your ethics ordinance, there may be some other provision out there that may be in conflict with this, which we don't know. I mean, we could go in search of the big black code to find that. And so this actually would, if there is an inconsistent or a provision that's in conflict with what's in here, the provisions of this ordinance would control. Okay, so while that makes sense, I wouldn't feel comfortable voting on this until I know what there is that may or may not conflict with this. There might be something that none of us intended. I'm with Councilmember Meltzer, it feels to me very binding, not irreversible, just harder to change if we test drive a new policy procedure by making it an ordinance, I would feel more comfortable working with it much as we did for our previous stab at this. So we've reached this point because what we tried before, at least in my estimation, we hit a wall with that. We improved it, we hit a wall with it, we decided to try this. So that is my request to you. If there's no legal reason why we absolutely have to do an ordinance, I would prefer for it not to be. Also, I was wondering why the city attorney is included in, and this is not necessarily a question for you, Mr. City Attorney, but just in general, I guess to Rachel, why is the city attorney included in this? I would have thought that the city attorney would be more like the auditor in that he's somebody, or she, or they, whoever, is somebody who works under council instead of under the city manager. I mean, this seems like more of a managerial policy. >> I can answer that question. I mean, I know at the retreat, I announced to the council at that time, individually and also through the facilitator that we wanted to be in the same program. Because we do get requests from council from time to time on legal research is going to take quite a bit of time to do. I mean, there's one item that we did that involved having to research water law and even consulting with outside council and incurring a bill for that. To be able to give you the legal research and the information that just doing that process took our internal city staff time was in excess of ten hours, and that was reported. So we do get this as well, and while we try to concentrate to make sure that your agenda items and all the information that flows and that goes through our office for your agendas is a primary priority. Those kinds of requests can weigh us down as well, so that's why, that's just an example, but I wanted to be included in that because we do get those requests. And also research that deals with policy issues that council hasn't weighed in on. So those are the reasons why I wanted to be also included in this process. >> Okay, thank you for explaining that. Couple more things, I would like to see meetings, requests for meeting added to the list unless I'm misreading the list of reasons for a request. I've made up, as you know, my own little imperfect form that I've been using ever since the retreat. And so a request for a meeting for information, and I'll be having a lot more requests for meetings. I've already submitted one, because at least that's a way that if I'm not sure if my request can fall within two hours, I know that a meeting can be timed, so that would be helpful. >> Yeah, and then finally about input as to what to do with requests for a work session that there's not consensus on. I feel like if we decide that those get removed, then one can simply add it again, request it again, or change it a little bit, could go through the same process. I understand if you're told no, because it would be two hours, it's going to be the same reason. But so as far as I'm concerned, I mean, if it just remains not taking up space, time, costing anything to just be there at the bottom of the list, even if we never get to it. I don't see the harm in that, but to me, it does not seem like a solution to remove it. >> Councilmember Briggs? >> Thank you. >> That's loud. >> So I appreciate the staff ideas for this. And having sat through the Saturday and going through and working with council, I understand what the issue is, but except for the work session process, which I think is much better than the survey, I am absolutely not in favor of these changes. One, I would like to know, because our charter, 2.1 and our city charter, it allows council to make an inquire to staff. And that's actually our only option under the council city manager form of government to get information. So I would like to know if the staff report or request is considered an inquiry. That's one issue I'd like to bring up. And for me, making it an ordinance, it adds an extra layer of government and laws onto ourselves, which can prevent us from being the best representatives we can be. I feel like as council, we can just initiate a little bit of self restraint and self control on the items that we want and the time that we need to speak. I'm just not in favor of adding in whole nother law that can control information and the ideas that council can receive, so thanks. >> Yes, council member Davis. >> So I want to start with the, I guess, the main thrust of the presentation and then get to on your request for additional considerations and some other procedures that we can talk about. I am in favor of the changes. I think we hashed out some of the reasons why at the retreat, so I don't want to go back over those. But I agree with council member Briggs that the council has a right and a duty to inquire. I think it's important to remember though that the council as a whole has that right and that duty. Individual council members are a separate thing from, we have certain prerogatives as individual council members representing our constituents. But there are other prerogatives that I think belong to the council as a whole, which is I think why I like this process better. If it's a, we don't always know when we ask a question. Is this a two hour question or a ten hour question? So we pose the question to staff, and I'd like an ISR on what seems to me to be a very simple thing. 40 hours later, we get the answer. And there's not a way for the staff, a good way for the staff to come back and say, well you know council member, we really need to be spending city resources on something else unless the entire council is interested in this 40 hour answer. So I think the process we've lined out balances those two things. If we have a quick question that has a two hour answer, we have a way to get that. If it's something that needs a week's worth of manpower, well then the council as a whole can request that, and I think that's what this process does. Can we flip to the slide on additional, yeah, additional requests. I'm not okay with adding kind of a, and I think council member Meltzer was trying to find a good creative solution when you proposed the kind of budgeting. We all get an extra, or we all get a couple extra requests that would go over the time limits as long as they don't pass some other threshold. But my problem with that goes back to what I was saying just a moment ago that that allows an individual council member without consensus from the rest of the council to expend staff time. And as a council, we have that prerogative. As individual members, we do not have that prerogative. On the reconsiderations, I agree with council member Armenter on this one. If you have an issue that is important to you and you want to keep putting it into the mill, even if you know there's not consensus on council, you want to keep asking your fellow council members to consider what you think is an important issue. I think that is an individual council member's prerogative. If that's your issue, and you want to keep putting it up there, I don't think there should be a limit on an individual council member's ability to request a work session. It just falls back on the rest of the council to decide if we want to take that up or not. On the auditor question, I like the auditor's current process. I think this council should be as hands off from the eternal auditor as possible. I don't think that I'm sitting here racking my brain trying to think of legitimate back and forths we should be having with the internal auditor other than that annual plan. I can't imagine a scenario where it'd be appropriate for us to add. There's a potential you can provide too much direction to your internal auditor and get involved in a process in a way you don't want to. Concluding items, I spent some time researching this and looking at TOMA and looking at the way that we do this posting, I think some of us use concluding items. And we take that response to request for information or that factual policy part of TOMA that lets us do concluding items and we expand that. If my question to the city manager is, I'd like to know more about X, that's a request. If my question to the city manager is, well, you know, I've noticed a real problem here in our city. I think we really need to take up issue X, and I go on for a moment and then I ask my question. At that point, we're outside the posting, we're outside of TOMA, and that's not the intent of concluding items. I am very much in favor of concluding items are exactly what we line out and that we have this whole other process for requesting information, whole other process for asking for future agenda items. If you read the posting and if you read TOMA, what it says about future agenda items does not mean we have a conversation about it or that we deliver a speech about it. It means we request a future agenda item, and I think we found a much better way of doing that that doesn't maybe run afoul of our posting in TOMA. And then on the work session time limits, kind of open to discussion on those. I think they would really help us move along in the work sessions, especially allowing a presentation to finish, allowing us to ask our questions, but in a limited way, and then kind of keeping discussion moving on. So that's my direction. >> Thank you, Mayor. A couple of items. One is that a thought in the retreat, we also discussed that to get to a work session, we go through an ISR first. So that's kind of that first step of the process. I didn't see that in this. Maybe I just missed it, but that would be my request. As far as topics returning for consideration, I believe if it's gone down by a vote, it should be just like a motion to reconsider, not necessarily a motion to reconsider, but somebody on the side that voted against bringing it forward should be the council person. It needs to be one of those four, five, six people that would be the one that would make that motion to bring it back, as opposed to one of those who already voted on the non-prevailing side. And I agree that pulling requests on the concluding items makes more sense because a lot of times it's late. We kind of jumbled in our words, and we end up not getting a clear description. I think that written description that was talked about is a better way that staff can get clarity on what we're really asking for. And there can be that back and forth dialogue via that email to figure out really where it needs to go. I mean, any one of us can do some of our own research, send it off to staff and say, this is what I've found. Now can you get this done in less than two hours? That's kind of our way of helping you all out. That's my thoughts on it. >> Is there a time you got in? >> Yes, just briefly, because I think staff's done a great job of capturing what we spent the better part of a day on Saturday discussing. And I want to respect that time and effort. But my idea for reconsideration was six months, which is what we would ask of someone that comes before us in a planning capacity. They're not allowed to turn right back around the next week and re-petition. So I think out of respect for that, just kind of our look at it in our time, and what we ask our citizens to do, I think we should be the same. But I do think Councilman Ryan has a great suggestion, because that then is indicative of there is movement that gives it an opportunity to be successful, or something has transitioned. And that does not stop an individual council member from kind of having that re-heard. So I think either of those, but for that, that I absolutely would be against something that would allow it to just be a repetitive process, because I just don't think we allow that as a body, and so we should hold ourselves to the same level. And then the other things, I'm fine with it, I think they've done a great job capturing what we discussed. Again, better part of the day on Saturday. >> I'm going to let you in and then I'm going to respond. I haven't responded yet. Go ahead. >> I'm fine waiting if you want. >> No, go ahead. >> Okay, so several things, response to things that have been mentioned so far. As for the requiring ISR, Councilmember Ryan mentioned, I know that for myself, there's some things that I have requested, a number of things I've requested a work ISR on, that I didn't want a work session on, or I wasn't certain. And then the ISR came back and I saw, okay, that answers my question. Could such and such, is such and such possible? The answer is no. Okay, well then why bother having a work session on doing the impossible? So I think it's important to have the option of requesting both or just one or none, having a meeting instead. The goal being, as I understand it, to reduce staff time, given a limited number of staff, and increasing number of requests. As for concluding items, and this is something that I had not mentioned last time. I believe that the two minutes per elected official is a good idea. But I don't like limiting the scope of what we're allowed to talk about. I think it's a really effective tool. And unless, I would say unless there's precedent for requests for additional information or requests for a work session as being in violation of TOMA, then I don't see the point of reducing it to that. Again, it's just two minutes. You can do it two minutes song and dance if you want, as long as you're within the rules of decorum that we've established, I don't see why we should limit the scope of that. Finally, as for Council Member Hutzpah's point about why not make us wait another six months like we do when someone submits a request through planning. That's an interesting point. I would say that to that, the key difference is that we represent the public, unlike developers. We either represent a district or three of us at large. And so I think that that's why it's important that we each, each of us as elected officials in our own way, be able to make requests for information. That makes good use of staff time, but that we not be limited in the content of those and form and timing of those requests other than required by state law, federal law. >> Okay, just a couple of clarifying questions first. On the two hour response or greater than two hours, if something is greater than two hours, is there some kind of very brief and concise kind of summary of the question presented, what the research is, and maybe some kind of content that will give not only the requester some information, that's some basic sort of high elevation information, but also when it comes forward before the council, that we have some kind of briefing memo about sort of the nature of the question, what all that entails, and then, just so we will have an understanding instead of somebody starting to talk about something that I really don't know anything about. I don't remember talking about that in the work session as to how much information is, if it's deemed to be greater than two hours, what is returned to the requester, and then what is prepared for that work session item where the seven or so items are considered. >> We can, staff can certainly describe, we've asked that the requester put in writing clearly what they're asking from a staff perspective in terms of the research that's being done, that sort of thing. So we can easily outline response if something is more than two hours. We can easily outline that to council, suggesting here's the questions that need to be asked. Here's the estimated time to get that done. That's not a problem, and we can certainly accompany, send that accompanying memo. Councilmember Arbiter's probably on to something in terms of just sitting down verbally, clarifying a lot of these requests. That should shorten some time down on the front end, and it may make the staff reports less likely to exceed that time. But we can certainly put a clarifying memo as far as why it would go over the two hours, and what all the questions that need to be asked, it's not a problem. >> Okay, all right, let me go down through the list here. Auditor, I think the auditor, my hesitation to include the auditor in this is because it makes the auditor subject to this. And I don't think, personally, I don't think council members individually should be asking anything of the internal auditor. The internal auditor submits us an audit plan, and if something is asked of the internal auditor, I think if an individual asks the internal auditor for additional information or numbers or an audit or anything that's going to require really any kind of research, that all of those need to come back to city council. Simply because we've approved an audit plan, and he maps out very detailed how much time those audits take. So I think if somebody's asking something of the auditor, those should always come to the council. Because if it's not consistent with the audit plan, or if it's in addition to the audit plan, then those are my thoughts on it. But I would not be in favor of making the auditor subject to this, because I think it opens the door for some things to occur that I don't think is necessarily within the scope of what we're wanting an internal auditor to do. Let me finish up if that's okay. >> There was just a comment to the auditor. >> Do what? >> There was just a response to your auditor comment. >> Okay, yeah, so concluding items. Concluding items, they've never been intended to be an open mic for council members. Concluding items have always had some very specific regulations per the statute on what they can be. In fact, I remember when concluding items was changed, we had concluding items practice under one set of rules, and then something happened, and the legislature clarified it. And so we had to change, and we had to put in, I believe, the current posting that we see that's been there for I don't know how many years. So I don't really see it as an open mic for council members to talk about whatever they want for two minutes. No, I don't think anybody should do a song and dance or something that's totally unrelated to anything that's a request to the city or some kind of public or factual kind of information that the public would want to know. As far as reconsideration, my understanding was, I don't know if we talked about this much, but this work session that we're going to have that brings back these requests that can have a minute for presentation and a minute, I think, per council member for rebuttal. My understanding was we sort of talked about, we got to limit that. And I thought we were limiting it to one of those particular issues per council member per work session. Is that, that's sort of my- >> That's what the majority viewpoint was. There was another suggestion, though. I think Council Member Meltzer suggested that maybe we just try to go through them all in one time and reset the clock. So it's just a decision point for you. >> Okay, yeah, I don't know if I'd necessarily be in favor of that, but we can find somewhere in between. But because we still got 38 that are on the list so far, I believe. Let me look here. As far as it being an ordinance, I don't have an issue with an ordinance. And when I look through this, I've been on council for a long time. And I never recall us having any ordinances that describe with such specificity kind of the process for the meeting. So I'm not too concerned about it conflicting with something else. Because I don't recall in over the many years that there's been anything that's been that specific. So I don't necessarily have an issue with that. Let me look through here, because they're sort of, as far as reintroduction of the list, depending on what we decide on, the number of items that come on the list. That if a council member, if they get one per item or per work session, and they want to choose that space to be taken up with an item, I'm not going to have an issue with that. And to the comments about that the charter allows council to request information, I don't disagree with that. But I think also, there's nothing in this procedure, there's nothing in these these processes that are saying you cannot receive information. I mean, we're bringing this information. If it's over two hours, we're saying we can bring this information, some basic information, outline information to the council as a whole. And the council can decide if that's something that they want to pursue, given the time that's described by the requester. So I don't think that this is some kind of way to squash council members' ability to receive information. In fact, I think what it does is it makes the whole process a little bit more transparent to the entire body. I think is what really is one of the major outcomes here, is that it makes the process more transparent to the entire body. Let me look and we're going to just there's going to we're going to have we're going to limit because I don't think we're going to be able to convince others necessarily of different things. So we could spend three hours on this, but I don't want to spend three hours on this. We spent a whole day. We spent about six hours on this, this part of the retreat. So certainly want to hear the comments, but let's try to keep them very concise and not just trying to debate different different type of different type of comments. See. And I'll probably have something if I missed it. OK, so we've got two things we have to do, at least two. One is we have an ordinance before us that staff has has put together that we can move, we can take action on that. And then we also have other considerations that aren't necessarily part of this ordinance that count that staff is asking for direction. So let's sort of keep that in mind as we're talking, because at some point we're going to go down this list of other considerations to be able to try to find some direction for staff. OK, comments, Councilmember Armitage, Councilmember, this will be your this will be your third. So once you've talked, I'm going to let everybody else come back around. In fact, in fact, if I could, can I get everybody if there's somebody that wants to speak second to come around the horns and then we'll go ahead and take your Councilmember Briggs. Yeah, well, my comment was just that we've had the auditor discussion and we have with him and there's certain procedures that we've already established on ways to get information with him. So I don't know why it's included here. It shouldn't be what I think part of it is because I think that the auditor has received requests from individual council members that may be outside the purview of the audit plan and and. I'm not sure that the auditor knows exactly how to handle those, but if we've handled that to where all those requests will come to council now and then council can determine whether that request gets fulfilled. The whole point is is not so much the making of the request, but what do we do with it after that? So I think I remember your discussion about the auditor and the request. Yes, right. Well, we had it with him. Yes, and that for council members have to agree on the information before he will even consider it. Yes, so that process is in place. OK, all right. Yes, Councilmember Meltzer. A couple of points. I think it is an optimistic sign that both the auditor and the attorney want in on this. I don't think we know if it's going to work yet. So, you know, I would say let's try it with, you know, the subject matter that, you know, was originally discussed and see how it goes. And yeah, that might be good for another day on the topics returning for consideration. I think there might be some wisdom in take in taking up both of the comments of, you know, maybe there's a wait time before the original requester can just re T it up, but that there isn't a wait time if somebody who was a no a no guidance person is interested, because then you've got, you know, I think that was persuasive that then you've got a reason for believing you might have a different outcome. So it might be a different role if it's from the request, original requester or from someone who has a no vote. And yeah, I think I'll leave it at that. OK, Councilmember Davis briefly on the reconsideration item. I feel kind of strongly about this because I feel like if if a district or neighborhood sends their member council to the council and all they care about is, you know, stoplight and all that council member wants to do is work on that stoplight. If they want that work session item every single time they go for it to be a stoplight, that's their prerogative to do that. So I don't want to limit a council member. I think that's a terrible waste of their time and not a great reason to send somebody to council on one issue, but it's their prerogative as a council member. I also worry a little bit about the creative solutions. Yes, but I worry a little bit about the Toma incentives. If my incentive now is I've been working hard on this stoplight and I see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel with a number member council. My incentive now is to go start whipping votes and counting noses on both sides. And we can get ourselves in trouble pretty quickly doing that. I think if the if the council member exercises their prerogative to keep putting an issue out there as much as they want to, we can keep voting not to have an ISR work session on it. But I think that's their prerogative as a as a representative of their constituents. Mayor Potem. Yeah, I think I think it becomes a question of well, first, I want to clarify something because I think it gets miss kind of communicated. Everyone here at this table represents everyone in the city of Denton. I don't vote on a district one budget. I don't vote on, you know, we don't vote on individual budgets. We represent the city as a whole. We don't qualify addresses. If someone says, hey, I see a pothole. I don't say let me get your address so I can plug it in and make sure I can address that for you. Right. So I just want to understand and I want to make very clear to those listening, watching everyone represents everyone. If there's issues you have in the city, you're free to approach any or all of us what the restriction is on who can vote for whom. And I think it's important to point out to that very point. Each resident of Denton has four individual representatives for them, two at large, a mayor and a single member district. So if you convince as a residence, the four people that directly quote unquote represent you, then you will that that item will pass. And so but I would have to hear something different than the analogy you gave with the stop sign because that's going to function through the city manager. So I'm I'm trying to understand a policy issue that would need to be reheard repeatedly every week if that's their motivation. And again, I just take the same tack. If that's the approach, if it's because it becomes a policy issue other than because physical things could be addressed through the city manager, then I want to bring back the planning. Then let's then any developer that if we vote no and we spend hours on in discussing their item and we vote no as a body, they're able to come right back the next week and do it again. Go back through planning and zoning and work it right back because that's we're sending mixed messages to me. And if I'm going to tell someone that's bringing a project, no, you have to wait for a period of time even. And it's the same in our bonds. We can't if a bond fails, we can't then just see it right back up that issue right back up. So there's there's there's precedent for that process to be respectful of people's time. So I can't be OK with with someone not having without some triggers in place. Councilman Ryan and Councilmember Meltzer pointed out a couple of variances, and I could get on board with those. Councilman Ryan, the one that I'm not understanding how we would cover it, because we've got on that the big item, we got ours, ours, you've got ordinance and you've got work session. So we've kind of ironed out or we are ironing out how to handle ours and how we've been working a process on work sessions for some time. But if we get the ISR and we want to just take it straight to an ordinance, do we need a another process or would that just be part of that work session process? When we when that came forward, that's something we might need a little bit of clarity on as to where in that field that's going to fall. And I agree that the internal auditor has his own own process and that should continue on it as is. And as I think it was Councilmember Davis that stated this during the retreat, that we're all entitled to the data when we talk about information. But when it comes to work product, that's a budgetary item to some degree because we're spending staff time on there. And that's where it needs to be a majority of council that makes that decision when we're going to spend more than a couple of hours on something. >> Okay, Councilor Armitage, real briefly because you're starting the third round, if you could. Thank you. >> So two things, I'm going to have to vote no to the ordinance, partly because it is an ordinance. There are some things I like about it, as I've said, other things that I really don't like about it. But I want to mention that the public input that I've heard in response to the retreat, and I don't know if it came from people watching the video, I haven't seen the video or just from reading about it in the paper. But I heard a very negative reaction from so many people, I lost count. But I'm not going to pretend that everybody else heard the same. So maybe people think this is really great and I'm just not hearing it. But I do feel that if we vote to put this in place in an ordinance, it could come off the wrong way and rub some members of the public the wrong way. So I just want to mention that, secondly, since a couple people talked about the role of the city auditor, I just want to state for the record that when I advocated to have a city auditor, this was before I ended up on council, I thought it was really important we have an internal auditor. Because I wanted to, as a member of the public, be able to make audit requests. And we are, each of us, representatives of the public. And I think it's extremely important that we make audit requests. In fact, when I first got on council, I spent a lot of time in the auditor's office. And I was very respectful of his time. And he let me know, please ask me any question you're concerned about, this helps me do my job. He let me know that when we ask questions, it helps him do his job. So I will continue to ask him questions. And I think it's really important that we do so, because it's important that the public does so. >> Okay, anything else? Anybody else? So if we could go to the other considerations chart. Because we've got this, the ordinance is, I believe it's an action item pulled for individual consideration. >> Yes. >> So we'll all get to have our vote on that particular issue. But as far as the additional considerations, or other considerations, additional requests. I didn't really hear too much discussion about that part of other considerations, but as far as either for or against, I think Councilmember Davis had mentioned something about that. But what's the appetite on that, Councilmember Ryan? >> Thank you, Mayor. I'd kind of like to know the city manager's thought on that. Does that seem, to me it seems a little excessive, but I don't know. Because I don't know the amount of time that's currently being spent on ISRs. >> Are there additional requests? >> I don't think so, we can certainly make that work. I think the broader concern is, we look at things pretty simply. We've got day to day requests that need to be fulfilled. We've got the goals that you set for us and our main obligations to make sure you're prepared for council meetings and that you're getting a good quality product there. If the ISRs are somewhere in that ten hour range or below, it's a couple of times every quarter, we can live with that. Again, I'll repeat, I think that as Councilmember Armitage has said on a couple of occasions, if we just get the request clarified a little bit more, we can probably avoid a lot of these requests for quite a bit of research. And I think the other thing that this does is it clearly communicates what processes we're to follow. And I think it's simple that way. There's a lot of confusion on the council. I know that some of you like this, some of you don't like it. There's also a lot of confusion on the council as far as how do things get put on our agenda. There was displeasure with the last way that work sessions were being assessed. So I think this solves a lot of issues. We can certainly work within a couple of work session or ISR requests per quarter if that's where the council wants to go. >> So am I reading this right, that it's 20 hours per quarter because there's two or is it? >> It could be. >> Five hours. >> Okay. >> Yeah, that was a suggestion at the retreat. We wanted to be sure that got aired out in terms of just use of resources and where we're focusing time. >> Yeah, because to me, when I do the math on it, that's a quarter of an FTE per year if that much request came through. >> Right. >> Okay, Mayor Pro Tem. >> Yeah, no, I'm against it. I said that Saturday, so I'm just repeating that for a number of reasons. But I'll just tell you, for example, there's a scenario where I have a couple of issues that I've raised and I've gained traction the hard way. Just work sessions when they come before us and making points and that's gained traction as far as other interest from other council members. But it was absolutely a 6-1 at the beginning and picked up traction. I just think in and of itself, it says there's no consensus for it. And that to me says then there's work to be done. And it doesn't prevent that individual council member from going and getting that information. And from availing themselves that information, bouncing stuff off staff, it doesn't prevent anything. It just says that, so I just don't understand the value add. And I don't understand the prohibition if you do the work on your own or as the items. Because it's rare that anything comes before us once. There's going to be a work session, there's going to be opportunities just in its organic nature of going forward. That you'll have opportunities to gain and pick up consensus. So I think it kind of, if an item comes before us that is outside of consensus, you'll have a couple of three swings to try to pick up what you need to have consensus. >> Okay, Council Member Briggs and then we'll go to Council Member Davis. >> Yeah, I'm good with that. I have explained and already how I feel about the whole thing. But if we're talking about additional requests, if this is the more options that we have to request information and require from staff, I think the better. It does also say that from council and members. So I do believe that this allows us as individual members to make requests and to have this up here is good. I think topics returning for consideration, I'm going to weigh on this, I haven't before. I think we should allow that to come back. It can go just the opposite way. So if you have people that are watching you every week say, why do you keep bringing this up? Can you please talk about something else? Then you can listen to them that way. So it's not just going to be individual council members item that's going to, I mean, I feel like the public will reach out and say you need to talk about something else if that's the case. Concluding items, I'm okay with the time limit. And I think we're good with the scope, the way that it is. And like I said, I'm good with the work session change. >> What was the last one, I'm sorry? >> The work session change, I'm happy that that's there. I'm good with it. I just want to, this council, as we're discussing, as we were talking about the budget, to consider maybe hiring an intern to help staff with research. I mean, we spend over $3 million already on executive staff and directors. But I feel like we can find money in there for an intern to help with inquiries and requests from council, if not part time. I just would like to throw that in there. Thank you. >> And I'll answer that, I disagree with that. It's not going to lessen the impact on the legal staff and management staff having to provide contacts to make sure that things are legal. And that we've got the appropriate amount of policy research done. It's just not enough experience there. Even Rachel, with all of her experience, is constantly tracking down the management team and the subject matter experts, so putting that work with another body isn't going to change the fact that it takes considerable amount of time on many of these items. We rarely get simple requests like that. >> Let's see, Councilmember Meltzer and then Councilmember Davis. >> On the additional requests, I'm supportive, I requested it. All seven of us are elected and have creative things to bring to the table. That may be found to be worthy of greater consideration with some resources brought to it. We don't have staffs, individually. And I think if you look at this and you always imagine yourself in the majority, you might feel differently about it than if you consider that things change. You may find yourself in the minority at some point and you're going to wish, or you're going to be glad that you at least have some ability to do some groundwork on some issues that are worth consideration. So I support this, and you heard from the city manager, this is within what's manageable. >> So I don't disagree with Councilmember Meltzer, but I think groundwork isn't coming on us. We don't have a staff. We are elected representatives, whether we view it as a full-time job or a part-time job. I don't think it's on the taxpayers to support our pet projects until we get a consensus on the council. And so if I have a pet project, I believe in it strongly, I'm going to keep pushing it. I'm going to keep putting it on the agenda item to try to get it set as a work session item. I'm going to research the hell out of it, and if the rest of the council doesn't want to take it up, well then I just got to keep working. I don't think it should be on the taxpayers. >> Okay, what I'm hearing is the additional request seems to have some traction from what I can tell by the comments. You're, so you're against this, yes. Okay, so let me make sure I might have to make that statement. Councilmember Ryan, you're okay with this? >> Yeah, again, if staff was okay with it, I'm okay with it, I just want to make sure we weren't. >> Councilmember Armitage, Councilmember Meltzer, yeah, yeah. And I'm okay with this because right now, if we looked at the hours before, you got 140 hours a quarter. And this is after it's been brought to the council, a couple of comments. I'm not sure what the salary of the executive staff has to do with what we're talking about. I mean, executive staff is paid to run the operations of the city. And I think what we're trying to do is find a way that we can manage effectively and efficiently their time, our time, and everybody else's time. And I want to comment on the majority minority comment. That sort of, I mean, I understand what you're saying, but unfortunately, I think that can also be divisive. I think that we're here representing, as has been said, all the constituents of Denton. And some of us have issues that are more important than others as far as a priority. But I would hate to begin to look at it in those terms. So I'm okay with this. So it sounds like we're okay with this. And let's make sure we have something understood here. If we want to change this at any time, even in the ordinance, if we're doing this for a month or two or a quarter, and it's not working, guess what? We can come back and change it. I mean, this isn't something that's set in stone that somehow it's going to take a supermajority to undo. This isn't some kind of process where it's too onerous to change course. We can do that fairly quickly. So I'm okay with that. Topics returning for consideration. I think I've heard, I know Mayor Pro Tem, you're not okay with it coming back, at least on a, I think it was either six months, or was that you, or was that Mayor? Yes, sir. So I'm either or, either six months or reconsideration type trigger or something along those lines. Okay. And as I stated, I'm okay if council member wants to bring the issue back up the next time. We'll have the same discussion. And if it gets to be abused, and that's up to the requester that's, you know, in this body, we'll be able to weigh in on that as well. So is there some, who is not in favor of it returning at the discretion of the requester without a specific timeframe? Who's not in favor of that? Okay. All right, Councilman, you understand my question? Yeah, my question, okay. Yeah, like I said, I think it needs to be more of a motion to reconsider style that it's somebody that was on the prevailing side. So you've actually got a change in the vote. Otherwise, if it continues on with that same vote, it's just adding to our meetings. Okay. I would just say, I don't feel that strongly about it. Either way, try it one way or another way and we'll see how it goes. Yeah, okay. Council member Davis, I forgot where you were on that. That's, they bring it up whenever they want. Whenever they like it. Yeah, because let's make sure we understand the timeframe we're talking about. It's a minute. It's a minute that the individual requester gets to make the pitch. And then if it's a repeat, then council probably won't take the full seven minutes to make the determination. So let's not lose sight of the factual application and implication of some of these. Internal Auditor, I think we've discussed that. They've got their own process that we talked about as a body. Concluding items, two minutes based upon the scope as currently, I think, expressed in our captions. I don't think this is any different from the captions that we have. Is that right or is this different? There isn't a time limitation in the- Well, that's the only thing. But as far as the subject matter, items to committee announcements, expression of thanks, and/or general announcements. I'm okay with that. I know we had some people that weren't okay with that. I think Councilmember Armitage, I don't believe you were okay with that. Sure, go ahead. Yeah, just wondering, then why does it say reduce the scope? If there's no substantive change, if the only change is two minutes. I think the reduce the scope may mean that I think that what's happened is our concluding items may have begun to creep outside the scope of the original posting. And so I think it's trying to say, bring it back to what the original posting is and the intent. But I could be wrong in that word, why we have reduce scope in there. I just need to ask a clarification question from Rachel. That concluded an item by reduce scope. Was your intent to delete on the first line, beginning with respond to inquiries from the city council or the public with specific factual information or recitation of policy, or accept the proposal to place the matter on the agenda for the for an upcoming meeting. That train of thought is different from what is listed there. That's the only thing that's the difference. Yes, with with us moving towards having all requests for information in writing via email, the thought was those would not be made during concluding items as well. Okay, all right. Yeah, that's the first the first sentence that basically has been has been omitted or deleted. Okay, so Councilmember Briggs. I'm okay with the time limit, but not with the the reduced scope, maybe, maybe the one about the future meetings, but any kind of factual information or some request, I don't I don't want to take out. Okay, we're just going to have to go around the horn. Councilmember Ryan. I'm comfortable either way, but I think with our new process of emailing when we're requesting information that it's not necessary to have that in there any longer. Okay, Councilmember Armitage. And I like it as is unless there's proof that similar concluding items and other cities have been challenged under TOMA. I think it is adheres to TOMA as posted and works for us. I think we should keep it. Okay, Councilmember Meltzer. Especially with the time limit, which is, I think, helpful. It's a way Councilmembers can show specifically that something that's been said in that meeting has registered on them and that a member of the public has been heard and that there's an intention for action to follow. And I think that's an important just element of human communication. So I'm not in favor of changing the scope. Mayor Pro Tem. Yes, I'm for the change. I'm for the change. Well, I didn't learn on the Fry Street issue back in 2007 when I was the last one to speak. You never should be the last one to speak when everybody's 3-3. So I'm okay with... I'm going to make a caveat on this so we might not be able to codify it. I'm okay with if somebody's making a simple request. However, that request is going to be moot unless it follows the process that we've established. If you make a request and you don't follow it up with a written email with the template that we've provided, I'm going to say that the city manager can basically ignore it because it's not following the process. And I think that's the opposition is it's almost redundant. And so that's what I'm trying to remove from it is its redundancy. But this is not a time to make a request and then go on sort of an ad hominem kind of essay about that. So I really, for me, a request is a request and can take 10 seconds. It's restricting what this is supposed to be about and what the posting is supposed to indicate that it's about. So I don't have a problem leaving it in. I will say, though, like I said before, if it continues to be something that isn't workable, that we can come back and change it. And that's real easy to do. So I would rather err on the side of let's give it a shot and see what happens. But I will say with the caveat that if it's not followed up with a written email with maybe greater specificity, because I think that's the problem in these sort of public pronouncements is there's not a whole lot of specificity or clarity from the requester on what they're really asking for, that it's really just as Councilmember Meltzer, you said, well, it's just indicating to the public that you listened in the meeting. Now, whether you follow up on it or not, that's going to be up. That's going to be incumbent upon the individual council member to do that. So I don't have an issue with trying it out. Mayor Pro Tem. Just to conclude, I do think I can't, at a respect for the concluding items, I would do it then, but I can't or I'm not going to. But I do want to thank the city manager for he and his staff. I think he's done a great job. And I don't think that's I just don't I just think he's done a great job. And I think it's evidenced by the fact that Tony wears eight different hats. He's training up David at the same time. He's running DME. I mean, he's it is it is the resources we're provided are well done. And that's indicated in the tax rate coming down. That's indicated in the zero base budgeting. I mean, it just I can't say enough great things and just want to give that support. So I guess I need to make sure that I understand where each council member is with my sort of caveat to leaving this in. So what I said was I'm okay with leaving it in as long as it's followed up with a written email and request as we prescribed if the ordinance passes in the ordinance. And if it's not, then it's moot. And this council is going to be instructing the city manager in this meeting today. That's being duly recorded. But if that's the case, that the city manager does not necessarily does not have to respond to that request unless it follows the protocol if it's adopted in the session coming up. So everybody okay with that caveat, given the circumstances? Okay. All right. All right. I believe that's an affirmative. If there's any objection to that, please note it. And I think Council Mayor Pro Tem, you you just want it out altogether, is that right? Yes. Okay. All right. Just want to make sure that we're clear. All right. And then on work sessions, Council Member Briggs, I think you weighed in on that. There's some suggestions here for the process during work sessions to continue to maintain the flow of the presentation and the question and answer period and the discussion period. Comments or direction from that. Council Member Meltzer. I'm certainly willing to try it. I think there probably are times when just something on a slide isn't clear. You know, if you can kind of really just if we can obey the intent, you know, but, you know, kind of permit some realism. Okay. Any other questions or comments? Council Member Davis. I don't necessarily disagree with Council Member Meltzer. I worry just a little bit about once you start fuzzing the line and once you start saying, well, you know, but it's okay to ask this one quick question. Well, there are seven more quick questions. I really like let's wait for the presentation to be done. Let's write down our questions. Let's make them good, clear, and concise. I think that keeps the work sessions moving and gives everybody a good chance to digest the information in their own way and then move forward with purpose and intent. Keeping it moving, I think, is the way to go. Council Member Robichard. I like flexibility. Okay. Council Member Ryan. Generally, I'm okay with this. I know we have a lot of work sessions that are a very long slide presentation, so if the presenter can, when we get those, kind of break those up and we have our questions intermediate as opposed to having to go back to slide two once we get to slide 32. And I agree. I think we can find some break points in the presentation. I do, I like the flexible part. Council Member Davis, I totally understand what you're saying about, you know, question creep. I know sometimes if I'm looking up there, I don't even know what a word means or an acronym means or something like that, so I don't have an issue as the chair recognizing for those kind of quick questions of clarification. Not substantive questions, but of clarification of what does this mean? What does this word mean? And I think we'll just have to play that by ear. I don't mind doing that, but I certainly in agreement that it can begin to kind of have a life of its own if we're not careful. And we're all, we've committed to be here and to do the best that we can for this city, so I really trust that each individual council member will continue to see the intent of these rules and really work hard to conduct ourselves with the intent. And there's going to be some exceptions. And we'll just have to govern ourselves if it comes to that. So I think you've gotten direction on these, I believe, and these are not in the ordinance. Okay, so if we could just maybe get an email summarizing these and some of the caveats we've added and things such as that just so that we'll all have them as an understanding. All right, fantastic. Thank you very much. Before we move on, let's just take a little quick five-minute break since we've been going at it about an hour. Welcome, everybody, back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, August the 27th, 2019, about 1.35 p.m. We're moving on to our second work session report, which is Work Session Report 3B. Receive a report and hold a discussion from representatives of Atmos Energy Corporation regarding the company's infrastructure, construction, safety, and communication activities within the City of Denton. Good afternoon, Mayor, Members of the Council, Mario Canazares, Deputy City Manager. Before I introduce Jogmanganaya, I just wanted to make a few introductory comments and then turn the podium over to him and his team. The last two-plus years, the City, from a capital projects engineering perspective, have been working very closely with representatives of Atmos, especially on the operations side. As you know, we've been extremely busy with trying to complete the street rehab program along with all the other capital projects that have been on the slate for the last number of years. If it wasn't for working with these individuals and the company in regards to removing gas lines, especially from a scheduling perspective, we would not be as far along as we've been. Again, just to give some shout-out to them because they've been at the table with staff to try to keep up with schedules and make sure that they're cleared out so that when they're leaving we're right behind them so that we can go ahead and get the work that we need to get done. So I'm very, very pleased with that. When it comes to any customer service issues, whether we've had certainly gas punctures, gas line punctures, whether it's our own crews, third-party crews, those things happen. My point of contact is John and he researches the issue, gets with his operations staff, gets to me back in time and I forward an eye if it comes from a council member or from a citizen or group of folks because of issues that may have to when we have to potentially evacuate a situation for safety perspectives. People are afraid, people want to know, and John's been very, very helpful in getting that information to us. And then also to pass information on to the community when it comes to doing initiatives that they're doing from a proactive perspective. And they're going to cover some of that. I don't want to take any more of their thunder, but they have been very proactive here recently on identifying leaks and getting that information out to us. We can get out to the community and they can get into those streets and make those repairs where needed. So with that, unless you all have any questions of me before I turn it over to Mr. Magania, and if not, I'll turn it over to John and let him cover some of his comments and also introduce his staff. First off, I'd like to thank you all for inviting us out to share information with you all and hopefully answer any questions you all may have. The intent, I don't have a lot of information to share with you. What I'd really like to do is really focus on the questions you all have for us. But I do have some high-level information I want to touch on. And then we'll open it up to questions and hopefully we can answer them all. Starting off, we have roughly 21,000, a little over 21,000 customers here in Denton. Over 19,000 of them are residential. We have about a little over 2,000 commercial. And then we have 36 customers, what we call transport customers, that we just transport gas for them and that's it. It just passes through our system. As you see there, we have roughly 393 miles of pipe in the city. This pie chart down here, a little hard to see, but you can see down there the percentage of the makeup of the system. And to give you a better idea of mileage, bare steel, we have roughly about 30 miles, about 88 miles of coated steel, and about 275 miles of poly pipe, which is the yellow or the black plastic with the yellow stripe you see. Next way down, the 24 million. That number right there is what we have invested in this system over the last six to seven years. What I really want you to focus on and understand is the number above that, the 8.8 million. That's the amount of money that was spent in Denton last year. And I'm going to echo what Mario was saying. The partnership with the city and the coordination with them has really allowed us to ramp up our spend and our investment in the system up here and upgrading the system as we work with them. Right now, after I guess about two years ago, we had a meeting and they gave us a prioritization list that's really been helpful for us so we could kind of prioritize the projects that were a priority for Denton, let us get in there, look at our infrastructure. If it needs to be replaced or lowered or adjusted, we were able to do it. But with that, we had to commit. We went out and found seven contractors. So currently we have seven contract crews that do nothing but city of Denton work out of our Denton office. And for those of y'all that aren't familiar, our Denton office covers everything in Denton County north of Lake Louisville, so it's a pretty good sized territory. But those seven crews are dedicated to street overlay projects and CIP projects. And those do not include the textile jobs. So let me see. One other thing I'd like to show you. I know there's been a lot of questions about our projects. And I have if I figure out how to use this. I want to show y'all a website, a tool we have that I know there's a lot of requests that come in. And this is kind of a call it self-help, if you would. It's a website that allows you to go in and see anything Atmos Energy is doing in the community. If you come up here to our company and then scroll over to operations, down to Texas. And if you need me to slow down, please let me know. And then once you get to this, there's an interactive map down here. And you can zoom in and see the status of any project we have going on in the community. If there's a project number for it, it shows up here. So the only thing this may not show is if they... Where'd I go? There's a flyer, man. If they decide to add some footage to a project, you know, if they're replacing 400 feet in a go, we need to replace 500. We found some pipe that we want to replace. That update might not be in here. But the project timeline, like I know the other day y'all asked about, I believe it was Misty Wood. I got a request the other day about that project. And what I can do is I can show you how this works. This right here is Misty Wood. When you click on this, it tells you the status. It tells you it's in progress. It tells you the estimated completion date. And it tells you if you... If I'm smart enough to figure this out. It tells you the details of the project. It tells you approximately how much pipe is being replaced. It tells you the size of pipe. And it tells you what's being removed. So all this, this is readily available to not only y'all, but the residents as well. So this tool's been around. This is relatively new. It's probably been around fully operational for probably about a year up in this area. And let me see. What else would I like to cover? Well, with that being said, I'm going to turn it over to Lance Ayler. He is with our Damage Prevention Damage Recovery Group. He's going to talk about some of the opportunities he has in his group and some tools that are available as well for the community and y'all. Good afternoon, Mayor. Good afternoon, Council. My name's Lance Ayler. I'm the Manager of Compliance for Atmos Energy. It's a matter of safety for us. It's safety for you. It's safety for your employees. It's safety for our employees. And it's safety for the public. It's all about safety for us. 90% of incidents related to natural gas are caused by third-party damage. 30% of those are caused because they didn't call in for locates. So what we promote is call 811. It's a free service. Just dial 811. Anytime you're digging, whether it's a bush, a plant, a building, it doesn't matter. Call 811. It protects DME facilities, protects our facilities, protects the public. Wrote down a couple of things I heard today during those work sessions. Transparency. How can we be transparent? There's a real good website that I'll show. Where did y'all save this? There we go. This is the Texas Railroad Commission website. And this is for all oil and gas across the state of Texas. Not just Atmos. This is statewide. And it's a really good website. If you ever want to know the details of any incident involving natural gas or oil anywhere in the state of Texas, all you really need to know is the date of the incident. And I'll kind of go through it because it is a state website and it takes a little bit of users to get used to it. Run a query real quick. And I had one in particular that I'll go through and kind of give some explanation. Really all you need is the date of the incident. On this one, we're going to go 3/20 of '19. It gives you how to put the dates in. If you'll just put it in whichever way you want, hit Tab. It'll self-populate for it. The reason I'm using 3/20 is this is an incident of ours that closed down Fort Worth Drive. We had all Fort Worth Drive shut down in March. And then you have to put it in again. However you put it in, just hit Tab. It'll fill it out. Go down to the bottom and hit Submit. What this is going to do is give you every incident in the state of Texas that we are required by law to report to the Texas Railroad Commission. You can alphabetize it. You can do it by date or city. I'll go by incident city. And it throws it in alphabetical order. These are all the damages or the incidents that happened in the state. This one with AR Daniel, in this -- okay, this is our report. This is the report -- here we go. This is the report that Atmos Energy filed. And this is the report that AR Daniel filed for the same incident. We are required to file a report and the excavator who caused the incident. We're both required to file a report. All you need to do is open it up because all we're trying to do is get this incident number. Once we get the incident number, then we can go pull up what the Railroad Commission has done with this incident. To do that, go back to the query. Public incident query. Click on that, put in the number. And then hit Submit. What this is showing is that the Texas Railroad Commission has received the report from Atmos Energy and they have received the report from the excavator. It hasn't been completed. The Railroad Commission is usually two to three to four months behind an actual incident before they make a final ruling. You can open both of these up. Eventually, you keep watching this and you'll see what the Railroad Commission determined. The Railroad Commission will call us. They will request damage photos. They will request line locate photos, which we provide to them because they are our regulating authority. And they'll make an ultimate decision if there's going to be a fine or not. In this case, the Railroad Commission has not yet made a ruling on this incident. It's back in March, so it's still under review. It's all about safety to Atmos Energy. We do not want our employees in a hole with blowing gas. We do not want the public around blowing gas. We squeeze things off timely. We get the situation safe. Does anybody have any questions? Yes, questions for you or just questions for the entire presentation? I'd say the whole time. Yeah, and then we'll go ahead and go into questions. Just wanted to get through the presentation. Sure. Yeah. That's all I have. Let me add one thing I didn't, I failed to mention earlier. We added some new technology. We used to have, y'all probably seen them, trucks that drive around with the little sniffers on the front that do... If you could maybe, we've had some problems with the microphone. So if you could... Over here? Yeah, just, you don't have to bend down and, you know. But just sort of behind it, that'd be great. They haven't given me any indication they can't hear you, but I just wanted to make sure. We've introduced relatively recently some new technology that we use for gas detection, leak detection. The old vehicle that used to do it was parts per million. This new vehicle that drives around looks like a Google Earth car kind of. It does parts per billion, and it's looking for methane detection. So that vehicle's able, when it drives, and it's driven the community of Denton. When it drives around, it picks up any methane, and it drives the same route six times. So each time it drives it, it kind of pinpoints it down further and further. And that allows our guys, they get that report, and then they go out and investigate until they can find where that source is coming from. So y'all may see the vehicle in the community more. You may see a yellow marking on the ground indicating, indication. And I will say city staff has been great. They, we, they require permits any time we dig. Well, if there's an indication. And this, this vehicle can detect past, like, we tell, we tell people the infrastructure to the meet, from the meet, from the line to the meter is ours, from the meter to the house is the customer's. Well, this line, if there's a leak up at the foundation, it's on the customer's piping. This technology can pick that up. We go up there, we turn the meter off if there's a danger, and they have to call a plumber and get it repaired. But it also picks up our own system as well. Speaking of that, the city was great when working with us because we, there's permits required for any time you're digging in the city right away. So they know what you're doing. Well, this vehicle, when it, when it's out there detecting stuff, we're going to have a lot of guys out there doing the research. So the city was able to work with us to kind of grant us instead of a permit for every single, it was more map sheet. So if they ran a street or two block radius, that map sheet, we got a permit for that so they could go work them all. Because think at the time, there was about a 25 to 30 permit limit. And with all the city projects going on, you don't want to limit yourself on being able to work a repair job, you know, a leak detection, because you're, you had your hands tied with a permitting issue. So they were very gracious in working with us on that. But I just wanted to mention that other technology and that's, that's part of the investment in the community about the focus on safety. Anything we can do when new technology comes out that we can implement to make sure we have a safe system. That's what we're going to do. And that being said, I'm happy to entertain any questions. Council Member Riggs, I think you were cued up first. Yes, I had a couple. Thank you for showing me the website and the, I wrote all the ways to get to the map down. That's going to be very helpful for project completion. So I appreciate that. On the sheet that you showed us, it had the different types of pipe. I think one of them was 60 something percent. Is that where you're trying, is that the best kind and you're trying to get all of it the same? Is that why that information was there? That is a very good question. One type is not better than another. All the pipe types, there's guidelines on how you monitor them, how you take care of them and everything else. So we still use our high pressure assets in our pipeline division, our 600 pound, 1000 pound pipelines. Those are steel pipelines. Steel is a very good quality material when it's inspected properly. And we follow all compliance guidelines. Every guideline set by the federal regulators, state regulators, we're in compliance with all of that. I don't want anyone to fear steel. Steel is not a bad product. May I follow up? I'm just asking because I know that there's updates that you're making and you've been on Windsor. So I didn't know if you were changing over from one to another when you do go in just to update the pipeline. Anything we put in the ground new. If we go out and we remove, I mean, we might do on a road overlay project. We might, the service lines may be too shallow. We replace those service lines even if they're poly. I mean, if they're steel, they're getting replaced. But pipeline, same thing. I mean, if there's a steel line there and it's great quality and it doesn't need to be replaced, we're not just taking it out of the ground because it's steel. Now, if it's in conflict with the road, when we go back, we're using that new is black and it has a yellow stripe indicating gas. And that's the pipe that you're seeing put in. That's what we use today when we put in new pipeline today. That's what I've seen on the side of the road. I have two more comments, one pretty quickly. The, so we know now to go to your website for updates on projects. What happens if Atmos is in? And I've had some comments or questions here. I've had to afford city staff. But if we knew a place where if Atmos cut frontier or charter line when they were in someone's yard, is there a place or a number that you can show us that we can refer them to if there is an issue in that situation? On the website? Not on the website. There's not. Because what we do is we track all of the damages to our own facilities. Charter or Verizon or one of those other companies would have to have that. You're talking about if Atmos cruise or Atmos contract are damaged, another parties, we do not track that on our systems. Okay. Okay. And last question. So with the, are you guys concerned with the changing climate with drought or extra rain affecting any of your underground facilities? No. No? No. They could do. Thank you. Go ahead, Councilmember, I'm sure. Yeah, a couple questions. One, so there was, we've had, there was an issue a while back where one of the contractors you all work with had mismarked a gas line and it led to fortunately nobody being hurt and that was taken care of. You know, my question is, you know, what, well, number one, if you could kind of talk about what the company's response is when something like that happens, you know, do you continue to work with the same contractor when there's a mismarking? It was, obviously it's frightening, you know, when that happens, but they're, that contractor is working for y'all, not for the city of Denton. So what, how do you respond to that? We do have facilities that are mismarked. Because we're marking in most instances, polyline, we are not actually locating that facility. We run a wire separate and that is what we're actually marking. If that wire becomes broke underground at any point, that signal can bleed over onto any other metal facility in the area. Now to your question, do we continue working with them? What happens in a damage, whenever we have a damage like this? First thing Atmos does is respond and we have the contract line locator also respond to the incident. Atmos will make the facility safe, get the service back up and running. Atmos will then do a replication of those marks that are on the ground with the actual line locator who put the marks on the ground and that line locator supervisor and we document all of that. We use that for coaching and training. We will go back and find other hookup access points to that facility to show if we would have hooked up here, you would have got a different signal. So we use all of those opportunities to coach and train line locators. If it becomes a hindrance, that line locator will no longer be locating on our facilities. We've also instituted internally, we're requiring our own damage prevention specialist to do 40 audits per month per damage prevention specialist on our contractors that do the locates. In addition to that, we require the contractor themselves to also do audits on each and every one of their line locators. So we audit them regularly. What we'll do is we'll pull any ticket that they have located, we'll drive to the site, we'll get our equipment out and we will actually check their marks to verify that they're accurate. If we see something incorrect, we will bring them out, we will bring their supervisor out. Thank you. Just sort of to piggyback on that, because when you're talking about contractors who are located, when you all do projects, I'm presuming you call 8-1-1. Absolutely. So 8-1-1 is what dispatches the line locators. Or are you dispatching the line locators yourself? It's 8-1-1 that says, "Hey, we've got to dispatch." Someone else is doing that. Texas 8-1-1 is a non-profit organization. There used to be two facilities. Used to be Lone Star Locates down in the Houston area and Texas 8-1-1. Lone Star Locates is no longer around. What happens when you hit 8-1-1, you're going to go to a call center. Their main call center is on Greenville in Dallas. They staff with about 100 people. And they have also, in addition to that, they have staff that work from the house. So it's kind of a backup plan. Anybody in the state of Texas, when they hit 8-1-1, it goes through their system, they input all the information on the ticket, and it is sent to our ticket management system. Or DME's ticket management system. We all have our own little ticket management systems. And it's from our ticket management system that it goes to our particular locator. Okay. So you do have specific contractors. Like me, just as a residential customer, if I'm doing something in my yard and I dial 8-1-1, and they come out and they locate DME, Frontier, Atmos. Obviously, I don't have any Lone Locate contractors. But you're saying there's, for those that don't have specific contractors they work with, then they get farmed out, dispatched somewhere. If it's, if you're a member of Texas 8-1-1, then you get the ticket and you have the opportunity to go mark your facilities. If you have private sidelines, if you have a meter at the alley, and you're, you go, that's private side from the meter all the way up to the house. That would, a customer could either get a plumber to do that. Utilities don't do it. So in the locating incident that was referenced, what I'm hearing you say is that, I mean, it may not be the fault of the Lone Locator. It could be something underground that, as you said, caused this electrical current on the yellow pipe to bleed onto something else. And so they've got a wand that picks up those electromagnetic, I guess, fields. It's a radio signal. Yeah, and that, and they're able to, to mark it. That's absolutely correct. Okay. So question on the piping. Because you said you have 30 miles of bare pipe. And what is bare pipe? B-A-R-E pipe. This one? Bare pipe has no coating on it. Okay, is that, is that galvanized pipe? No. Okay, all right. It's steel pipes. Okay, all right, all right. And so you said there's only 30 miles in, in Denton of, of bare pipe. And then you've got your steel coating pipe. Correct. Then you've got your yellow, I guess, that, what do they call that? Yellow or black, poly, poly thing. Yeah, okay. So of those 30 miles of the bare pipe, would you say primarily those are service lines from distribution lines up to residential homes or, I mean, because obviously residential customers are your primary source, primary customers here in town. Is that right? I'm going to defer that question to our director of operations, Danny Johnson. Yes, Danny Johnson, director of operations for Denton and several other areas. Sure. It's a pleasure to be here today. Thank you all for taking the time. Yeah, most of our steel lines, our bare steel lines were our main, and they had steel lines trunked off of them. Back in the early 80s, we went out and replaced a lot of the steel service lines with poly. So we still have the steel lines out there at some point in time. As we like to do a street project right now, if we come across steel, we'll replace that with poly at that point in time. If we're doing a street relocation program, we'll probably have to lower the lines or move them out of the way. But the steel that we have in our system right now is cathodically protected. We have what's called CP zones that we have to test every year. And it has to be a certain reading, or we'll add an anode to that pipe to keep it up so it doesn't degrade over time. So we keep a constant record on that. It is a compliance driven by the Texas Tribal Commission. We've got them all over the system. We do have some new technologies. It's WMR, you may have heard of it. It's wireless meter reading. And we're using that same technology now within the beginning stages of it to actually read the zones for us continuously. So we'll know immediately if a zone goes down, it'll give us a trouble ticket. And we'll be able to go out there and address it right then. Instead of wait till it's time to go do the survey on it again. I guess my primary question is on the steel pipe, because you've heard sort of anecdotally when accidents happen, where there's been loss of life, houses, you know, that explode, that there's been some type of gas infusion into either the ground or underneath the home, and then there was an ignition source. And a lot of what seems to be said around those kind of incidences are that somehow the piping in the ground is rusting and deteriorating. And so my question is, are the bare pipe or the steel pipe, given certain circumstances and time, the passage of time, are they subject to that kind of deterioration through rusting that can, with higher pressure, blow a hole in the side because, you know, it's being held barely together? And I think that's really the thrust of my question is, and is that what's typically or what has been what was used many years ago for the service lines? And that's why you guys are going back. And as you see the need, replacing service lines with the yellow piping, because it really is not subject to that kind of degradation. And a lot of those cases where you do have those events happen, it's where the cathodic protection has failed. And that's where it's not being maintained. I won't say it's neglect, but you have hear of those things like that. San Bruno was a good example of that where they had some problems with their cathodic protection in that area. But for the most part, cast iron. We do not have any cast iron and dentin that we know of. We got a little bit out several years ago. That's probably the biggest nemesis of all. And we're working diligently right now with the city of Dallas and Fort Worth. I mean, we have a team working in both areas. And that's all they're focused on is getting that out. And we've got a plan of having it out in five years. But fortunately, we don't have that here in this area. We do have a small percentage of steel. But again, steel is not bad. I mean, we have what's called mill wrap steel as well, which is great pipe. We've got pipe that's been in the ground over 100 years, steel pipe. It's in great condition. And then you'll run across some where you have some bad cathodic protection in areas. And then those are the pipes that we're going to get out of the ground. But we are measuring it. We're taking voltage readings on it continuously. And going back to what Lance said, safety is our first and number one goal. And transparency, if you look at the railroad commission records, we're audited almost weekly in almost every area. I've got 32 towns. I've got an auditor and that's their job. And I appreciate what they do. They come out and they help us with checks and balances. But that's the last thing we want to have. Anything in our system is not compliant. And what is the 1-800 number in case of someone, like one day I was running, I won't say where. And I think there was a compression station there. And of course, as I ran by it, very strong smell of gas. And so made a call. I think there was a valve or something that was leaking or something. So if people observe that or they smell that outside of calling 911, I mean, who do they call it at Atmos to report something like that? Well, first off, 911 is the right action to take. I mean, we do have an emergency number. Do you have any of those handouts here? I actually have bags over in the chair for all of y'all. Okay. And in the bags, it has every bit of contact information. It's got samples of door tags we leave. It's got every bit of- Microphone, yeah. Yeah, sorry. When I get the light on, that means I'm in trouble. So go to make sure you- We actually have bags sitting on the chair over there and it has all the handouts, any type of communication material we use with customers or if we're out at community events. So in the bag, you'll see door tags. So if we're doing service in your area, you'll see the tag we leave on the door. There's stuff about energy efficiency. There's stuff about calling gas emergency, listen, leave, all that type of information. Everything is in those bags. Okay. I do have the number. I should have it. You know what? I can show you the number real quick. And since this is on TV or whatever, we might as well show it, right? And what you're saying is your first recommendation is you smell gas, call 911. Yes. And then call Atmos. Absolutely. Okay. And we have signage on it like where we have a compressor station or any of our drug-bound facilities. We have signage on there that has the numbers on there that they can call also as well. Lance. There it was. Right there. 866-322-8667. Yep. And there it says leave the area immediately and from a safe distance call 911 and then make that one. I will add, do not use any, don't flip any switches off. Don't use cell phones because any of that can cause a spark. Okay. One other thing, when a customer or someone in public calls in to our call center to report something, they're advised at that point in time. It's all recorded, you know, to leave the area, don't touch any switches, no electrical switches and to get away from the area and then make your phone calls to whomever 911. So it's repeated over and over. We find it that a lot of times our customers don't listen as well when they're calling in. They're more concerned about the leak than listen to what the rep tells. So when we get there, a lot of times customers are still there, you know, inside the house and, you know, we have to remind them and do the evacuation. But our folks really do a great job. Can't say enough about the team we have here in Denton as well as throughout the operations. I want to just say this as that really to encourage those who are renting that have landlords, if they smell natural gas, sometimes the tendency is to, you know, call someone besides 911. And I would encourage them to call 911 because when they respond, Atmos, it's my understanding, Atmos will also respond and turn the gas off. And therefore, the gas cannot be turned back on until there is an inspection, I believe, done of if they can identify the leak inside the house that you have to get permit and find the source of the leak and get an inspection by the city to do that. If it requires a plumber, the gas will be turned off and they'll have to get a city inspection before we turn it back on. So I just want to put that out there because I think a lot of people don't really realize that or they don't they want to avoid that kind of perceived trouble. But it's a life safety issue. We appreciate that. I would add to that if they don't have gas, if they have gas service but no gas is coming on, they need to call us or 911 as well because that could be the indication of a leak if they're not getting a plane to the cooktop or the water heater. A lot of people don't realize they just keep trying and trying. There could be other issues. So it could be flowing out somewhere else instead of flowing through the pipe to get to that particular appliance. Yeah. Correct. All right. I would just like to at lance the ambassador program. I think it's a really important program that we're rolling out. Did you explain that a little bit more because the more we have out there looking for opportunities to say that we as a company go ahead. No, Mayor Pro Tem, I believe, had a did you have a question Mayor Pro Tem? Real quick. I didn't see I went to the website to try to find it myself. 811. What is the timing on the dig? So you call it in, you need to call it in a day. 48 hours. 48 hours before. If you will call 811, someone, any member of Texas 811, they should have their facilities located within 48 hours. Okay. And then you mentioned you showed us the report that we can look up. What is the upload time for that? So there's an incident. How many days do you need to get that? The railroad commission requires us to file incidents within 30 days. And that's both the excavator causing the incident and the operator, which is us to file within 30 days. Okay. And then. So I want to thank you, Mr. City Manager, because that permitting issue was one I heard kind of from from someone when I was out and about. So I appreciate whoever worked to get that resolved. That sounds like a great fix. And then lastly, Mr. City Manager, I'd like to see if or make sure that our home minor repair grant would cover a plumber coming out. Because I know sometimes that's an issue that if you, if it's on the homeowner side, if there's a way for us to help our residents kind of bridge that gap to cover that, that expense, that'd be good versus someone thinking they have to wing it because they can't afford to have a plumber come out. If we could kind of somehow share that information that if it fits and if it doesn't, we can come back and talk about that. How long does the locate stay active? In other words, when you do a locate, if you don't dig within so many days, you've, I think, technically, you're supposed to get another locate. Is that correct? 14 business days. 14 business days. Excluding state holidays and weekends. I think you had something that was on the plumber. Well, residents that experience financial difficulty in addressing safety concerns, we have an energy assistance program. They're managed, those funds are managed, and they can, we can send them to the agency. The agency is not through, it's not Atmos Energy, the agency manages them. But we can put them in touch with those agencies and help them get the financial assistance for yard lines or leaks on water heaters or whatever the case may be. Is that in the bag? There is, there should be information in the bag about it. Everything that was in my drawer at the office, I took one of everything and said, this is, well, that way we, you touch on everything, right? Yes, thank you. Is that information on your website about the family assistance? If we maybe could pull that up just so that we have a record of that and people can see it. Is it the sharing the warmth? You would have to, I broke the website here. We have, there's also a program for people that are having trouble paying their bills. And I think that's this one, the sharing the warmth. Where is, you know what? [BLANK_AUDIO] Yeah, that's it. [BLANK_AUDIO] Well, I'm not sure where the number. I'll have to, I'll follow up with you and get that information. And we can maybe include that in a resident update or something like that. There's a, there should be a number. [BLANK_AUDIO] Council member Riggs. [BLANK_AUDIO] Just to follow up on the list you have here in the city of Denton, there's 393 miles of pipeline. Is that a lot for a city or is that kind of typical? I know I have one directly across from, from my house. I'm just curious, is that? [BLANK_AUDIO] Oh, behind the mic, if you would, please. Thank you. Yes. Yes, typically we have a distribution main in LA to be in your street or in the alley. And off that you'll have a service line that comes off of this. So depending on the length of the service line, the length of your block, your city. So the bigger the city, the more mileage you'll have in it. So you just look at how many constituents you have here, 21,000 I believe. So just that growth in itself would incur that much mileage. Well, I only ask because you mentioned the new vehicle and how that travels through. And so I didn't know if there was a correlation between how many miles of pipeline and how often the vehicle travels in the city. And if there is a request that we can make that it come through so often. We just actually finished Denton back in July driving it out. You probably didn't see the vehicle because it has to run at night when everything's kind of, the wind's down, the traffic is down low. So we have drivers who drive starting around 11 o'clock at night and they'll drive these routes all week long. We'll drive four nights out of the week. And I never see them because they're asleep during the day time. So, but they do an awesome job and all this data is uploaded. And then we have a team that goes behind them. And it's called indications and it's actually worked off of now. And each of these individuals have these indications on their phone. And they go out and investigate each one of them. So it's like once a year? >> Right now we have prescribed by the federal commission to survey all of our pipe. Either annually depending on the pipe type like Polly was every five years. Our goal is to survey every pipe we have in our system annually. That's our goal. I think we can attain it through this new technology. As John mentioned, when you're talking parts per billion versus parts per million. It's helping us see a lot more than we did in the past. And really the capability of looking beyond our system into customers' homes. Around their homes in a grill or something like that. >> Any other questions? Yes, Councilmember Meltzer. >> See if I can frame this. You might have noticed there's a lot of development. And I've seen correspondence. I think Councilmember Davis was on this too. From a constituent concerned about an area where it's been mostly single family. But a big change in scale is coming. Large multi-family development. What is the process that gives you the assurance that the old infrastructure that was designed for the previous scale is going to be adequate for a very big change in scale? >> I think the only way we would really change anything is if that pipe is going to be compromised in the development of it itself. But other than that, I mean, it's part of our survey program, our schedule. >> You might get a little closer to the mic. He's giving me the -- oh, no, Paul. >> Which one is it? >> Paul, did you have your mic on? >> I think I did. >> Okay, yeah. >> Can you hear him? >> Yeah, we can hear you. Go ahead. >> Yes, if the pipe is going to be in the way, then yes, we would go in and probably change it. If it's going to be in the way, kind of like we do with the street projects right now. So we'll relocate it and replace it if needed. But other than that, the pipe is part of this survey that we do annually. If it gives us an indication that there's a risk or something, we'll go out and investigate and then replace that pipe if needed. But typically, I mean, we're all over the state of Texas. We've got, as you know, growth going like crazy. So in metropolitan areas such as Dallas, Fort Worth, Frisco, we do have a lot of steel pipe in Frisco -- not in Frisco, but in Dallas, Fort Worth, the old part of town, North Dallas, some of Richardson. So if you see over the years, we have steel. And as we replace pipe, we replace that if it's in our way. >> Let me add to that. When a developer reaches out to us, like, I know big issue has been development up here in Denton. And we did some research. That developer has reached out to Atmos. We terminated the services on the development site. So the only lines in that area would be in the public right of way. That developer is required to -- if they're going to do digging excavation work, they're required to have those lines marked by calling 811. So I'm not sure that development would be any different than any other development we have across our system. >> Sure. >> Yeah, I think the -- my point of my question was less about the construction process and more about scaling for the capacity that would be required. You know, in other words, would you wait until after a very large change in demand to notice looks like we're not at the right scale or -- you follow me? >> Yes. Our engineering department, when we get a request for gas service, it goes through our engineering department. They look at the availability on the system, what we have available. If that development requires additional sizing of the pipe to get additional gas, we upgrade the lines or put in new lines or whatever is necessary to meet that demand. Or -- I hate to say this, but I will -- if we can't meet that demand, we tell them this line is at capacity, we can't -- unfortunately, we can't serve you. But it's extremely rare that we wouldn't be able to serve development in an existing community. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, and that's -- I mean, I know the particular one you're referring to. And that's only if they have natural gas for those units, which my hunch is, if it's a large multifamily complex, those are typically all electric, except maybe for some dryer components or things such as that. >> We are starting to see a few more apartment complexes go to individual meters nowadays, but typically most apartment complexes are all electric. >> Yeah, but if they were natural gas, you're saying, hey, they've got to tell us, we do an analysis to see if our pipe can handle the requirements of that development. >> They provide their load demand, and then we run the calculations and modeling and see if our system can handle it. And if not, we let them know what it's going to take to provide that service to them. >> Okay, great. Anything else? Mari, do you have anything else? >> No, sir, unless council has any questions of staff, if once we're done, we're going to actually meet engineering and -- or city engineer, myself, and these gentlemen are going to meet for a few minutes, just talk about our upcoming road rehab program and just kind of keep those things moving along. So it's a good opportunity to -- while we have some face time with them, to go over those plans and keep things moving. >> All right. >> Mayor, if I could. >> Yes, Mr. Eman. >> I'd just like to -- John alluded to it earlier, our conversation a couple years ago, and so we're trying to get our road program back on track. And I just want to thank you and your team for doing what you said you were going to do. It's been a -- it's been huge in terms of helping Todd Estes and his staff start catching up our road program. And I also appreciate the constant communication, very quick to respond to us, which is helpful. So thanks for everything you've been doing the last couple years. >> Thank you. >> All right. Any other questions? All right. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Appreciate it. Thank you for the information. >> If you have a bag on your way out, it's great information to tell you. >> Thank you. >> As long as there's nothing over $50 in there. So, yeah, no. >> Take the papers. >> You know, I think the next item, 3C, which is discussion on the gas wells, reverse it back. Let's take a quick break because this one may be a while, and I just would hate to take a break right in the middle of it. Welcome, everybody, back to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Tuesday, August the 27th, 2019. It is 1.35. Is that right? 2.35. I'm sorry. And we're moving through our work session items. 3C, which is receive, report, and hold discussion, give staff direction regarding changes to subchapter six gas wells of the Dent development code related to reverse setbacks and associated definitions and appeals process. So just real quick question on the caption. So we make sure we understand the scope of it. So this is, is this limited to discussion on reverse setbacks or no? >> Yes, it was our understanding from your July work session that you wanted us to come back with an amendment to the reverse setbacks. >> Okay. >> And that's what it was limited to. >> No, no, I understand. I just want to make sure that we don't stray too far or any. >> Good afternoon. Hey, Liz, with the development services department. So this work session, of course, is to talk about the updates to the gas well ordinance that came out of our previous July work session. First, I wanted to give just a little bit of background to set the stage for the discussion. Generally, in the ordinance, there are two large types of gas well setbacks, the first being those applicable to the operator, second being those applicable to the protective uses, the homes, churches, schools, things of that nature. So I passed out a handout prior to the beginning of the work session that shows these diagrams. Just wanted to run through a couple of them very quickly to make sure we're all on the same page. So the first type of setback that I referenced is called the gas well drilling and production site setback. That is what is applicable to an operator when they're either putting in a new pad site or expanding an existing pad site. From that, there's a 1,000 foot standard setback for a new site, for an existing site that is 500 feet. And this is the distance that that operator has to keep the boundary of that site from any protected use. So any church, school, or dwelling. The second type of setback that we'll be discussing today are called reverse setbacks. These are what a developer or a homeowner or any owner of a protected use would have to maintain when they're developing that use in close proximity to a gas well. And where we stand today is that that reverse setback is 250 feet, measured from generally from the structure to the edge of the pad site. If it's a new single family subdivision, that is measured from the residential lot line to the boundary of the pad site. So again, just a little background. What's led us to today, of course, were the two work sessions that we've had in last September, where we began the review and discussion regarding gas well setbacks and how we compare to other cities. And then most recently in July, we continued that conversation and left that meeting with a general consensus from the council that we should look at increasing our reverse setback from 250 feet to 500 feet. So as staff began revising the ordinance, we first looked, of course, at what direct changes that would call for. So this is the table showing our existing setbacks as they are today. So all of the reverse setbacks in every scenario, be it new or existing pad sites, are 250 feet. Here, as I mentioned, is that 1,000-foot setback that an operator has to maintain for a new site. And then their minimum setback is between 500 and 250. And that's what they could go down to if they sought a waiver or a variance, which we'll discuss later. So as I mentioned, our first action was to start redlining this. And what that would look like is just changing this column in the table, multiple sections of the code from 250 to 500 across the board. So all reverse setbacks would be increased by 250 feet from where we are today. As we worked through this, we came across a couple of areas where there would be implications of this action that we thought we were worthy of bringing back to you all for a policy discussion before we proceed with a formal code amendment. Those two general categories that we'll look at are non-conforming protected uses, so things that would be made non-conforming by this change to the code. And then variance options, because as we'll look at later, there's several options laid out for operators to reduce their setback. Now that the reverse setback is higher than that minimum, there may be the need to add similar variance options for developers of protected uses. So the first of those items that we wanted to discuss was non-conformities. You all may recall with the adoption of the 2019 DDC, there was a statement that caused a lot of stir that was, we wanted to ensure that single family homes, dwellings and town homes would not be made non-conforming with the new code. So I wanted to clarify upfront that that would not protect, protected uses in this instance. Anything that is non-conforming today would remain non-conforming under the new code. So anything non-conforming to the 250 foot today would remain non-conforming. This action were we to amend the code would be separate from the adoption of the DDC. So those would be new non-conformities created by the adoption of an amendment to the Gaswell Ordinance. It wanted to also point out that there are provisions in the code for non-conforming structures that say that no modifications or expansions can be made that would increase the degree of non-conformity. And those structures cannot be rebuilt if they're destroyed by more than 50% of their existing square footage. So again, this is strictly for informational purposes. We wanted to bring this to you all. Staff isn't recommending any amendments to the code to address this situation because one of the overall goals of our zoning ordinance and our comprehensive plan, of course, is to bring everything up to the newest standards by eliminating non-conformities over time. But the data that we ran with the help of our GIS team was to look at what we have on the ground today. So all existing structures that we were able to map. We also inlaid with that all of the projects that have been recently approved that may not be reflected on DCAD's records yet. As well as all of the plots that are currently in review because by the merit of those plots being submitted to staff and being in review, they could be vested under the 250 foot. So they could still plot lots and build on those lots. But those homes, as soon as they're built, would become non-conforming. So the numbers, as we saw them, a total of 349 structures or lots are non-conforming to the 250 foot reverse setback in place today. 342 of those are single family homes. And then to the 500 foot, if this were extended, there would be 1213 total non-conformities. 1204 of those being from single family. The numbers that are in parentheses here with the asterisk are structures or lots within ropes and ranch, which really could be netted out of this conversation because they do have their own setbacks within their PD ordinance. And this does not include any of the MPCs that we have that may be soon to develop but have nothing on the ground today. Is there a question? I just want to, this is a question of clarification. Council Member Davis. The numbers in italics, the asterisk numbers, are those included in the bold totals? Correct. Okay, so of the 349, 272 are in ropes and ranch. So that means only about whatever the difference. That's 70 something or something. It's actually the opposite of that. The 272 is that total minus ropes. And I think ropes and only had about 70. Got you. Okay, correct. Sorry, yeah. All right. Were there any other questions while we're on this topic? Because this was, like I said, purely for informational purposes. Then we'll move on to the variance options that we wanted to get feedback from you all on. All right. So as I mentioned, the second broad topic we wanted to bring forward were variance or relief options. So just for some background purposes, the gas well ordinance in 2015 created three processes for a gas well operator to reduce their either 1,000 or 500 foot setback. That included a property owner waiver, whereby the operator could get 100% of the owners of protected uses within that setback to sign off on a reduction. That could take them down as low as 250 feet. The second option would be kind of the standard variance procedure through the Zoning Board of Adjustments. So since a setback is a zoning regulation, an operator could seek a variance through the normal hardship process through ZBA. That, again, could go as low as the minimum of 250. And then the third option was for administrative relief, which doesn't go as low as the others. In this case, if an operator has multiple sites within the same mineral lease and they are willing to restrict or give up one of those that's closer to a protected use, a different site could be added or expanded and get relief through staff that could either go down to 625 or 375. So along those same lines with, again, with the reverse setback being increased to 500 feet and the minimum being 250, we wanted to look at whether those same relief options or similar ones should be extended to developers of protected uses. So for entirely new development, greenfield large sites that we would typically see, we wanted to extend the same standard ZBA variance process. So again, in this case, that would be ZBA being able to approve a reduction from 500 down as low as 250. All of the standard hardship criteria for a variance would apply. So things like whether there's special conditions on the property that make it unique, whether it would have any adverse impacts, how reasonable the request is based on existing development patterns in the area, all of that would still apply. In addition, staff is recommending two additional criteria specific to the situation that would be whether there are any alternative site designs or subdivision layouts that were considered and in this case, it may also be that this request overlap with other variance requests to say front yard setbacks or side yard setbacks that may be needed to make the site work. And then second, rather the proposal is compatible with existing gas well development site plans or plats and that is intended to ensure that access to the gas well site is maintained with the design that's proposed. So again, this is just our first option. Staff feels that this is in line with all of our standard variance procedures that exist today for zoning regulations and gas well operator setbacks. So unless council has any questions or concerns with this one, this would be something we would propose to add into the ordinance when we bring this forward. - So I'm against any kind of variances to the 500 feet because it's about public safety and that's why we decided that. And I know that under the setback variance when this was, when there were still parts of Denton, you know, that had not been all fracked up, anytime somebody requested the minimum variance, they tended to get it. At least that was what I had heard when I had asked the question at least once in the past. So please correct me if I'm wrong about that, that if a variance was ever denied, I think is the question I had asked back in the day. So anyway, I'm against it because it's a public safety issue. I can't see a reason to go to 250 feet or anything below what we've decided on. - Okay, Council Member Davis. - I think it's probably a question for the city attorney. The last bullet point on this page, the compatibility of the existing development site plans or PLATs, is that intended to help address the vested rights issue? And if not, I know we're gonna talk about, on the next slide, we're gonna talk about something that's built to address the takings question. But if that is the purpose of it, and we're just looking at gas well PLATs, I'm a little concerned that we're maybe leaving out of the conversation other types of action that could have triggered a project under a vested rights argument, and that we're not leaving enough room to avoid litigation in those situations. - If I understood the question, litigation vis-a-vis the gas flow operators, is that where you're going? - Most of the, and now this is mostly a planning bullet that's up there, but your existing gas well operators already have site plans that exist. And so it's the, and what we see, the trend, or what we have seen the last several years has been residential subdivisions encroaching upon them, and on top of an existing site plan, which is a different issue. I think that's, and Haley, correct me if I'm wrong, but the purpose of this is to see how those two developments can actually are compatible with each other, with respect to external or separate access for the gas well sites, that that's not blocked off as a result of a large PLAT issues that we faced in the past, as well as, you know, that there's the 250 between the two that does exist, or in this case, it will be up to 500. And if there are any other planning issues that you look at with that, I see that more of a planning than a legal bullet point. - Oh, sure. - So I'm thinking more from the other direction. You know, let's say we've got a developer and they've got PLATs in, and they're working on one part of a project, and that would obviously, if we pass an ordinance today or tomorrow, then what they've already done so far is outside of the new ordinance. - Yes. - But they've got, their entire project is premised upon, well, we've got phases two, three, four, five coming online, everything we've submitted to the city so far included. We didn't submit a PLAT, but we've started that project. We've laid out the rest of our development. It's here. Do we have something built into our process that grandfathers in the folks who are past the point that I think legally would trigger a project? A project is well underway. Are we thinking along those lines with this draft of the ordinance also? - With respect to this, I'll be honest with you that that wasn't a consideration in the reverse setback. I know what you're talking about, the vested rights. The vested rights, most of the time we will know when a developer is planning to do a multi-phase development. They'll come in under a GDP under the current, the 2002 gas well ordinance, or at least they will submit a large PLAT that actually shows the first phase and the other two that are shaded out in a lighter gray color or gray scale so that we know that that's going to happen. On those such situations, arguably, there would be a vesting event that may apply, but if they come in and just show just a single PLAT in that area, we don't know of a future development and they may just, for whatever development reasons, they may hold off on developing the rest of the land until they build out the first one and see how successful they are. So it really depends on the facts as presented to staff and to our department. - Anybody else? - Council Member Melser. - The three-quarter vote ZBA, is that modeled on another process? - Correct, that is the process for any vote of the ZBA, I believe. That's built into state law. It requires a pseudo-majority vote, which is six of seven. In theory, variances are hard to obtain, and that's why the existing hardship, and I know in the past, although ZBA doesn't meet very frequently, when I was there in their council, it wasn't uncommon for ZBA to deny variances for not meeting the hardship criteria. - I appreciate knowing that, and that gives me some comfort. I mean, in general, my reaction so far is it's a health and safety issue. I can't think of another situation where you sort of have a flexibility in a health and safety thing. Like, you can't park in front of a fire hydrant because fire trucks need to get there. Maybe an ambulance could, or someone with doctor's plates, MD plates, but it wouldn't just be because all the other spaces are filled. So I'm listening. I'm inclined against. - Good. - All right, so the second variance option that we're considering is an entirely new process. This is because of the unique situation that's created by the reverse setback. So for any new development or redevelopment on sites that would be what we're calling substantially affected by this, which is 50% or more of the sites would be affected by the reverse setback at 500 feet, that possibly combines with other requirements within the Denton Development Code for maintaining ESA, floodplain, required right-of-way or easement dedications, tree preservation, things of that nature. For smaller sites, we're imagining this would be most applicable to sites, say 10 acres or less, maybe infill sites, situations where the development would be substantially cramped already by the standard DDC regulations that would be further affected by this. There is a need there for some sort of variance or waiver or relief process. This, again, would not apply to those nonconforming uses we addressed earlier. The variance options are not available to them. So just wanted to make that clear. And we do have several options that staff has considered here. So I'll walk through those so that you can weigh in and see how you feel about them. First that we considered was an administrative approval. That 50% threshold is pretty clear-cut. When a development comes in, it's something that they could easily show and graphically display on their maps combined with all the other impacts so that staff could analyze that. So if council was comfortable with that, we would look at option one being that staff be able to approve a reduction from 500 down to as low as 250. Whatever in between there, staff could also approve if that's what it would take to make the site developable as the owner is intending to do so. If council weren't comfortable with this being entirely a staff approval, option two or option B, and one B in this case, would be that staff have some limited approval. So much like staff could grant under the gas well ordinance an operator reduction down to half of the difference between their required setback and the minimum, we could look at that being applicable here where if they meet that 50% threshold, staff could approve a reduction from 500 down to as low as 375. That could be used in conjunction with the ZBA options that are below. So if you were inclined to allow for limited staff approval, then ZBA could make up that difference from 375 to 250 if you're fall within that bracket, then you would go to ZBA for a variance in this case. Or the final option here would be this, only be a function of ZBA. Any reduction, even if you meet the 50% threshold, go to ZBA if you're in between 500 and 250 feet. So I don't know if you all have any questions on those. We were looking at kind of as three options. So all staff approval, a mix of staff in ZBA or ZBA. Happy to talk through them further. - Council Member. - There was some mic issues earlier. When does this come for? Like say if it needed a zoning issue, at what point in this process would that take place? So would the administrative approval for say like a zoning change to multifamily or whatever, will they need this reduction to get that? So staff gives them the reduction and then it comes to the public for the zoning change. - What step is that in this process? - Typically zoning an SUP would be the first step in the process and then if a variance is needed, that is typically handled in the planning or site plan phase once they've laid out the specifics of the development. And I do have an example for this, if that would help you all to see what we're talking about. - So the information that they would need this would be in that presentation dependent on the zoning request change or no? - Correct, it could be as we looked at with an SUP earlier this year where there was an adjacent gas well. The setbacks certainly come into play at that point but that actual approval I imagine would come later in the process with the site plan or the either platting one of those two. So to give you an idea of what we're thinking of here, this is a property off of Windsor Road. It's currently plotted, they've been to PNZ with an alternative development plan but haven't begun work on the site yet. So the entire lot is just under 10 acres. It does have a floodplain and ESA on the back portion of the property. So everything shaded in blue up here on the north end of their site is drainage easement that covers that floodplain and ESA. They do have some other standard easements along the right of way there also shown in blue. There is a gas well pad site immediately adjacent to this site to the east. So the red semi-circle on the map there is the 250 foot reverse setback that was actually applicable when they plotted. And then the yellow or orange line shows what that 500 foot would look like if they were to have come in and plotted after this were in place. So with the 250 foot reverse setback in easements, they were already dropped down to 37% of their site being left developable with, in this case, there's a church looking to go on the property. If the 500 foot were applicable and they were coming in after this change, that would be down to 1%. So in these scenarios, and I'll let Erin weigh in further on this, but it seems that there would be a good case for inverse condemnation or a taking argument here and that's driving the need for these unique sites to perhaps have that special consideration or that variance process available to them. No, sure, yes, of course. And this is a very real world example. And we have other properties who are going to be less than 10 acres who are going to want to come forward and develop whether it's currently existing or split off from a larger parcel when families create smaller parcels for children to live on with their families. This is a real life example where a 500 foot setback would completely prevent them from developing. At that point, it becomes a takings claim where the city would be put in a position of basically buying the property. And so this is one of the reasons why we separated the variance from the general one to a greater than 50% to actually address these types of situations. These are the ones that are going to need, who are going to be the most concerning for the city as well as the Development Services Department to review and work with. Council Member Armitage. We're weighing two different kinds of risk here. The risk of a legal takings claim versus the public health and safety risk. In my book, that's a no-brainer. And I thought that we decided on the 500 feet because of public safety issues. So again, there's a legal risk with a lot of things and there are public safety risks with other things. So I think we each need to weigh in our own minds which is the more substantial risk for the public. And I know in my mind it's a no-brainer. Council Member Davis. I'm not sure we're using the word risk the same way. When we're talking about the takings issue, and then as I alluded to earlier and I'll come back to, when we talk about grandfathering and invested rights, the slides that we saw some weeks ago, millions and millions of dollars that the city would be paying out of taxpayer coffers to buy property we never asked for if we don't build in some way to work around the takings argument. And if the advice from our legal staff and our city attorney is that this helps us combat the legal taking, the reverse condemnation and the takings argument, this is a perfect example of a piece of land owned by a church that's rendered completely undevelopable and that we would have to, if this was after we passed an ordinance that had no variance process in it, that we would have to essentially buy as the city. We don't have a budget for that. Our taxpayers don't want us to do that. We have to build a process in that balances the equities and manages the risk. To do something different would be wildly irresponsible, more irresponsible than doing nothing at all and leaving our setbacks exactly where they are. So the way that this was posed a moment ago was, you know, I thought we talked about this. I thought we were all on the same page with 500-foot setbacks. The conversation, as I remember it very clearly from that day, was that I'm personally on board with 500-foot setbacks if we do it in a way that doesn't get us sued to the gills and just empty the city coffers through litigation. I would like to have more conversation. I think this is a good solution, the beginnings of a good solution for the inverse condemnation. I'm still concerned, though, as I mentioned earlier, about what the triggering event for vested rights of a developer is going to be. So if we write the ordinance that this ordinance takes effect on such and such a date and applies to projects that X before such and such a date, we just have to decide what is it that we're comfortable with saying a project begins and this ordinance applies to a project after what? After we've seen a brochure that's got their phases laid out and we know they're going to be there, or after they've filed a plat, after they've had a pre-application meeting with planning. We just got to find some way of doing that. You got to go ahead then, Council Member Ryan. I think it's the way the Vested Rights Statute works. It's the vested protection starts at the time they file the permit with the city. They could be either physically bringing it into the city down to development services or mailing it to the city if they're from out of the city. And so that's when vested rights protection begins. Most existing or those plats that Haley referred to that are in the pipeline have already met that. That's the first permit. Then that will also continue on if there's a series of permits required. So it's going to be your building permit, clearing and grading permit. All of that is all part a series of permits, but they all have protection from the date of the first filings. And so that's, by state law, that is the triggering event for vested rights protection. And when I alluded to the GDP, if they file the GDP and that's approved, that is the first vested rights petition or vested rights date in which they get the protection even if it takes them 20, 30 years to build out. Of course. So in our ordinance when we're drafting it, what kind of language would we use then? Would we say, would we just kind of mirror what's in state law? Would we say this applies to projects with the first permit filed after effective date? What's the best way to do that? We've never included language like that. We've known internally that we just drafted as the amendment and then that amendment development services is really good that once they receive a plat, let's say the next day after the effective date, they will tell the developer that I'm sorry, you're one day after this ordinance took effect, you're subject to the 500 foot. So there will be some plats that are in the pipeline that this won't touch. But at some point as new ones come in, they will be subject to the 500 foot. Another question for a city attorney. Is it possible to offer variances only in certain zoning districts? So that if you're in an RR or a heavy industrial, you can get the variance but you wouldn't be able to get it if you're in a... That does pose some legal issues. Usually variances across the state, I should say. I've never seen a variance provision in a zoning ordinance across the state that limits it only to certain sectors. It's basically citywide because it depends on not on the zoning, but it depends on what is it about the actual land that's preventing you from developing. So floodplain knows no zoning district boundaries, it's just where it is. And so limiting like that could pose some legal issues. Yes, Council Member Meltzer. I would just say as far as vested rights, they're vested. I mean, as much as we might want to or not want to strip preexisting rights, they're vested. And I think that procedure is well established. There are people of all kinds of different setbacks based on what ordinances were in effect at the time of those developments. But as far as the characterization that we would be in a position to buy all these properties, that's only if those challenges are successful, right? I mean, wouldn't we also have the legitimate counterclaim that we have a legitimate right to regulate health, public health and safety? I think is that any question? We would certainly raise those arguments. And I think that we have pointed that out in the AIS from the work session. However, in this event, looking at this property here where only 1% remains, we can use that. How successful that will be or persuasive in front of a judge or jury in such an instance like this would be very unlikely. And so in other cases, this is what will be an example in the future, but there will be other areas where it's 10 acres where it's not as impacted as this, where we can mount a better defense in that regard. Quick question of logistics. 'Cause I know there was some conversation in the last work session about is the measurement from the pad site boundary or the wellhead. I'm assuming because we've gone through this quite a bit because we have gas well plats that cover 500 acres or a hundred acres. So we're not saying that a gas well plat is the boundary of the 500 feet. It's whatever is defined as the pad site within that gas well plat, is that correct? Correct, the definition of the pad site and the gas well ordinance from 2015 specified it's either from the boundary depicted on a gas well site plan where they clearly define the perimeter of their three to seven acres or for most of our older well sites that don't have a gas well site plan, it's from the edge of the improved surface. So typically from a fence line or a gravel edge of the site. Yeah, gotcha, okay. So it could be if they don't have a platted site plan that shows, okay, here it is. If they don't have that, you go out there and look at it and go, oh, here's where the improvements are. Here's the road access. Here's where either a fence or something that, you know, if it's in the middle of a field, you've got to make a determination of where is this pad site per se. Correct, and typically it's pretty well defined even on an aerial, you can see the boundaries of the gravel or the perimeter fencing. When they prepared it originally. Correct. Okay, any other discussion? Yes, Mr. City Attorney. I did forget to add to Council Member Meltzer's question and what I answered. I remember that from the presentation what we had told council that, you know, public safety could be argued as a defense. However, we would have to prove that. And I think as Trey Lansford had advised the council, it'll become a battle of the experts at that point of whether or not we have valid studies to justify and to support this. And so I just wanted to add that that that would be the hurdle to overcome in litigation. Yes. Just my recollection of our conversation was we're ultimately anchoring this on the Fort Worth study. And that is correct as an air quality. But again, it still comes down. Even their study, even though it is accepted by the city of Fort Worth in a courtroom, it's a different story. Well, the Fort Worth study, too, wasn't about finding the minimal distance. It was just about finding a distance. And I can't remember if we refresh my memory. Was the Fort Worth study, is that 600 feet based upon the pad site boundary or the wellhead? I cannot remember. I don't think there was an answer. It's based on the wellhead. 600 feet to wellhead. That's what makes it roughly comparable to what we're doing. It depends on the size of the pad site. Yeah. Well, so then I think if we're going to do that, if we're going to base it on, if somehow we're using the Fort Worth study as one of the foundations for our discussions, but really that study is predicated on a very different paradigm of measurement. So I think if we can find a way that if you've got a 600 foot from the wellhead or 500 feet from the pad site, why don't we take the minimum of those? Why don't we say if it's 600 feet from the wellhead or it's 500 feet from the pad site, because if your pad site is extra large and you're 1,000 feet away from the wellhead, we're sort of punishing inadvertently, I think, surface developers. Because I will point out, and we're not -- this is in regards to talking about the appeals process, and that there's been some comments about saying that we don't want it to be an appeal because it's about public safety instead of legal issues. But let's -- look, we've had the appeals process for the operator on the books for five years, at least, I think, or four years since, you know, as far as moving it down from 1,000 feet to something else, whether it be 250 or 500 or something like that. So I think I would be very comfortable at a little bit more conversation. The appeals thing, I've got to really look through that a little bit more. But if we're using Fort Worth Study as sort of a foundation, and they're 600 feet from the wellhead, and this council sort of rejected that measurement, if I remember correctly, using the wellhead as a measurement, but we're going 500 feet from the pad site, I'd really like to see how that shakes out as far as, you know, looking at just the regular pad sites. Is it very comparable, or is it too small of a setback, or is it too large based upon what we're saying is we're using this study as sort of a -- I don't know if benchmark's the right word, but a guide. Councilmember Armitage? So I would like -- I have a question and then a kind of request moving forward. I would like to know if any of the developers potentially impacted by this with projects in the pipeline such as this. This is a Windsor development. Have any of them reached out to staff? And so I would like to hear more about that, and I would also like to suggest moving forward just for transparency's sake. Sorry, didn't mean to spotlight that. Just mine was distracted by that noise from a phone. Anyway, I would like to see moving forward, just like we have a policy for council encouraging, that we be transparent about our interactions with developers. It would be good to know from me anyway, and I think the public, if developers have reached out to and had conversations with members of staff, particularly on this issue because this is -- not in general because, well, gosh, that's what you do in the planning department is you're communicating with developers, and that's part of the job. But this is kind of an unusual situation where the city legally could end up at odds with the people that are coming to the city to ask for information. So anyway, I would like that. And if you could kind of speak to which developers you've heard from, what the response has been. Certainly, I can think of two specifically so far that have reached out, and their direct inquiry was how do we ensure we're vested in our project to not be affected by the 500? In one case, it was about half of a site that would be taken out by the difference between 250 and 500, and in another case, their entire property would become undevelopable with the uses that it's zoned for if this went into effect, and they weren't vested under the prior regulations. Can I ask a follow-up question to that? Yes, yeah. We're still good on the post. Okay, yes, go ahead. Yes. I'm just curious, and is that a question that planning staff is prepared to answer, or is that one of those go talk to your lawyer questions, or how do those kind of questions get answered? We would not interject our opinions to draw any legal conclusions at all. We have been very open with the development community that we believe this is where the council's going, based upon the last workshop we've got, but until you codify something, all we can do is say we believe this is where you're heading, and please plan accordingly. That's as far as we go. We need an ordinance on the books before we get much more specific. That makes sense. Okay, all right. Council Member Ryan. Just a couple of questions, and maybe even get the temperature of my fellow council members. Can you go back to slide six? I think I added a couple since your draft went out. This is the one with the... How many would be affected by the two? Yeah, what's currently and what would be. When we passed the new DDC that goes into effect on October 1st, we put in there a clause that said we would not create any nonconforming by this new ordinance, and I'm wondering kind of what the feel is. If you currently live 300 foot from a well, and your house is destroyed by fire or tornado or flood, and you need to build it back, are we going to say no, you can't? Or are we willing to allow them to not become nonconforming that you would allow that build back on? And then my other question is two slides prior to that, or at least it was at the time that's got the reverse setbacks, yeah. Under industrial use, I'm seeing up here that the drilling production setback is 250 feet, and we're now going to change the reverse setback to 500 feet. Is that... Correct, the drilling and production setback would be for, in that particular instance, it's for an existing gas well site, so that is perhaps a site that was shown on a gas well platform that was approved previously, but may not be built yet, so that could come in as close as 250 feet to a protected use if we were in an industrial zoning district. Okay, these are only protected uses? Correct, all of the setbacks within the gas well ordinance are applicable for protected uses, so it's either a gas well site coming in to a protected use or vice versa. Okay. I guess then on this slide, when I see... So maybe I'm reading this slide incorrectly. Let's go to the bottom one. It says existing gas well site in an industrial district, which I don't think an industrial district or some forms of industrial uses are not "protected uses" subject to the protected use setback. Am I wrong in that? No industrial use that I could think of would meet the definition of a protected use. It's dwellings, churches, schools, daycares, public parks, things of that nature. So then on this existing gas well site industrial districts... I'm not hearing the definition. I'm not reading it correctly. Why is there a 500-foot reverse setback if it's an industrial district? So the reverse setback would be for a new protected use. It'd be very unlikely that a new protected use, I guess a church or a school that could be allowed in any zoning district could come in adjacent to a gas well. So you're saying if there's a protected use within that industrial district. Correct. I'm sorry, I missed that. I apologize. Yep, okay. All right. Questions, comments? Yes, Councilmember Briggs. I like the idea Councilmember Ryan had about putting in that exception there. If somebody's house were to burn down or flood or something and they needed to rebuild if they wanted to, I feel like they should have the ability to do so. I mean, if they didn't want to and take that opportunity, then they could do so. But having that option in there, I think, would be wise. I agree. Yes, Councilmember Martin. Yeah, no, I was... I'll just say that what Councilmember Ryan touched on is exactly my concern. I was surprised that it didn't come up before then, but that exactly is a concern. That's 1,200 people in our environment that as the housing prices go up, that we would make it such... And I'm still curious. I got to go do some more research, but I don't know that a bank will loan or the insurance company will allow you to go back if they research it and find it to be non-conforming. I don't know what heartburn that gives them to even bankroll the ability to come back. So fire, flood, natural disaster, and 1,200 people, worst case, can't put their house back. And I don't know that they're living there now. And if it is a true emergency safety concern, then we need to contact the county and get them evicted. Or somehow we're saying they're okay there now until a natural disaster, and then somehow it's a safety concern to go back. You know, just the messaging is inconsistent. If we're going to say it's a safety concern, then it's a safety concern now for 1,200 people. What action do we want to take to rectify that? If we're saying we're okay with it until a period of time, then is it truly a safety concern? And so that's what I'm hoping, and I'm just listening. Again, I didn't want to go down this road, so I'm just trying to understand that better and try to pair up some consistencies because the arguments don't line up currently. But so I'll just, that's my concern. And then otherwise, am I right when I look it up? $250 for ZBA? Consideration? Current fee. Yeah, and what is it going to be? I would have to check on that one. Same? Okay. Okay, so then that's another thing. Are we okay charging people $250 to then say yes or no, you can be there? I've heard us discuss about much smaller fees. $250 is significant to me to force someone or mandate someone pay to then get a consideration. Yeah, so again, I'll just listen and see if I can pair up the consistencies. But if the issue is, it's a safety issue, then I'm listening to hear what we can do to get those 1,200 people out of the houses right now. Yeah, go ahead, Councilmember Meltzer. I have no objection to, you know, kind of public information campaign I brought up before that we ought to be notifying people who may not realize their distance from a well. So I think that I would favor letting people know what their distances are. I have to reply briefly. Then would you advocate for the city to mandate they move out of their house? Since I've been asked directly. You know, a few things are just pure black and white. You know what I mean? We try to move the boat in the right direction. So, you know, I also know that we can't affect people who already have vested rights, even though that's a health and safety issue. And you could argue that we should be able to, you know, supersede that and take it to the Supreme Court or whatever. But we're kind of within the realm of reality. I think this is moving things forward. I really, as I've thought about this, and when it came up again about the Fort Worth study, I'm okay with moving the setback to 500 or 600 from the wellhead, whichever is less, because that's what we're really trying to do. I mean, if we're using the 600 feet from the Fort Worth study, then we're saying we want them to be at least 600 feet from the wellhead. But if the pad site is 200 or 250 feet from the wellhead, where we're measuring and that 500 feet begins there, you're looking at 750 feet. And I can't support that because it's not being consistent with the basis that we're trying to say we're using in order to craft a number. I will say I'm all for Councilmember Ryan's proposal of putting something in this ordinance that does not create nonconforming uses, because this city should not be in the business of changing things for people that they've had around for a long time and all of a sudden, if something happens, it's no fault of their own, they cannot rebuild because of our ordinances. And that's what we did in the DDC for that very reason, is to say, hey, if we're gonna change the whole zoning in the city, or at least put some new classifications in, we don't wanna create a burden on someone where there was no burden to begin with. So those are my thoughts on it. Councilmember Armitage, oh, Councilmember Meltzer, I'm sorry. Did you have your hand up? I couldn't see you at the front of my, okay. I'll be brief, I agree. With both 600 feet from the wellhead and the not creating nonconformities. Yeah, so to address two issues that have come up, I think that this 500 is a minimum recommendation for public safety, so at least if I understand you, Mayor, and I might have misunderstood the question about the distance from the well to the, et cetera, the way that you framed it, but as I understand it, you're saying that in some cases, it'll be a greater distance than that, than 500? What I'm saying is that as we've decided to measure this, you have 500 feet from the pad site. Fort Worth measures 600 feet from the wellhead. The comment was typically pad sites may be 100 feet from the wellhead, and that's sort of how we've, I think that's how the 500 sort of got crafted. I'm just simply saying that if that's the case, you've got either 600 feet from the wellhead or 500 feet from the pad site, whichever is less, whichever is less, because that's sort of what we're talking about. Was that what you were saying you were in agreement with? Absolutely, the rationale that we're hitching it to an existing study that we've heard is relevant to us, it's a stronger case if it's more clearly aligned, so I'm fine with that. I would just go more with what Councilmember Davis has said in the past that the farther you are from the gas well, the safer you are, and to me that seems pretty commonsensical, so I'm okay with that as long as what we're doing doesn't reduce that distance, and anything to make it greater, that's fine with me. For me, that's the ultimate goal. I will say as to the question of current uses, I definitely would not want to tell people that they have to move from where they live because they're in an unsafe situation. I don't know that anybody's making, I haven't heard anybody make that argument, so I feel like that's kind of a moot point unless somebody wants to argue that. - Councilmember Briggs. - I have a question about your 250 from the wellhead, I mean 500, 600 from the wellhead. The reason I said 250 is I'm looking at our little handy dandy sheet here, and the reason I think in our discussions several years back and when I got on council and part of all through the conversation was from the pad site so that it could be consistent, because a pad site is pretty large and a well could be drilled with anywhere within that pad site, and so if you had one over here closer to the edge, then you might have I guess 250 out from this way, and if you had a wellhead over here and it was 250 from the pad site, then you could have a house with it's like right next to the pad site, but then another well could come in and drill and then it wouldn't be consistent, and so I think that for if I remember correctly the reasons we use the pad site so that the circle all the way around would be consistent on the property. - No, I understand. - And so our issue and part of what we discussed in the past and I think still is in the future is that lots of pad sites have empty spots for more wells to be drilled, and so if we did it from the wellhead, it wouldn't be consistent all the way around. I mean, I'm asking. I don't think it would be. - Well, I think that depends. I mean, if you're drilling a well, that may push it out further. If you've got one well that's 600 feet from there and you build a well that's closer, you're moving 600 feet out from that way. It's not like that one wellhead stays static. That 600 feet just is like on a pinpoint and then you just draw a circle around that, a diameter. If you have other wells that come in, if those uses have not been built up to that wellhead yet, it's 600 feet from the wellhead. It doesn't say this one particular wellhead. It says if you've got another one over here, you've got to take that measurement as well. I'm just saying that if we are using the Fort Worth study as one of the benchmarks, and I have to be honest, I hear the term public safety a lot in this discussion and I'm still trying to understand because there's different parts of that public safety. There's some, the explosion risk, and I think the fire code is 300 feet. They're saying that the explosion risk of the wellhead is it disperses, I think, within 300 feet and I know Dr. Banks is here. So if we're talking about the air quality effects, if that's really what we're talking about when we say public safety, is the air quality impacts or effects, I need to understand that because I think there's a lot of different literature on that. So public safety is a huge kind of category and there's certain things within that category that I think 500 feet would be more than sufficient for certain aspects of public safety, but then for some others, it may be what's needed. But that's really sometimes when I hear these discussions, I'm not quite sure exactly what we're talking about. And the comment about the further away from a gas well is the best way to be, I get that. I mean, who's gonna argue with that? But then you also have to bring back the boundaries of, 'cause if you were gonna say that, then you could just increase it to 300 feet from 250. That's further away. So there's gotta be some boundaries of taking in all the competing interests in this. And so when we say public safety, that if you're not for something, that you're therefore not for public safety, if you're not for this particular setback or that particular setback, I think that gets a little, I think that's a stretch. But I mean, I'm okay. I'm just saying we've used the Fort Worth study. The Fort Worth study obviously took in constraints or situations such as what you're describing that yeah, somebody could come in and put another well on the pad side. And if they haven't built houses, those houses are gonna have to be 600 feet, at least 600 feet away from an existing wellhead. And then that begs the question of if you've got an existing residential and you wanna add another well, then you have your other setback that you have to be concerned about, which is the coming to it, which is that's a thousand feet away. So I think the well being, a different well being put on a pad site is not necessarily problematic. If there's nobody there, if there's no development there, you simply measure from the pad side or from the wellhead, whichever is, and you're gonna create a boundary. If there is residential construction there, if there is residential development, they've gotta be a thousand feet away from those residential developments. So I'm not so sure that that necessarily is applicable given the different development scenarios that might exist. You look puzzled. - Well, just for clarification, so if there's already a pad site down, right, and there's a neighborhood residential built around it, it was my understanding that someone could come go ahead and come in because they've already had that-- - 'Cause they're vested. - They're vested. - Okay, right. So then that wouldn't matter anyway. - So that would be more important. I mean, yeah. So I just, that last comment just confused me when you said it could be a thousand feet. - No, I agree, no. You're right, but that really sort of is a fact with your comment, and that is it doesn't matter what our setback is, they still have a right to come in and put that well in that pad site if they're vested on whatever. So I wanna make sure that that's, I wanna make sure that's correct. So you've got a pad site with one well, and we've got a thousand foot reverse, I mean, a thousand foot setback now, and we've got our reverse setbacks. Somebody comes in and at the time of the first well and at the site plan, let's say it's, I don't know what, pick one, a thousand feet, 500 feet, 100 feet. If they put in another well, if they drill another well on that pad site, which code are they subject to? - The 2015. - The 2015. - If it's a gas well operator, yes, 'cause that's, we're not changing anything that pertains to gas well operators. - Okay, so it's a thousand feet, yeah. Okay, all right, thank you. - I did have a clarification. - Okay, he's got a clarification. You can recognize Mr. City Attorney. - But before I begin, I just wanted to just say that Council Member Briggs, your recollection of the discussions on using the measurement of the boundary area is exactly spot on. I just wanted to say your memory's great on that. I had forgotten that, but thank you. The second part is the, when you all are talking about allowing them to be able to rebuild, if they're within the 500, let's say in the future, allowing them, homeowners to rebuild if the damage is greater than 50%. I think one of the things I'm just seeking clarification, the current provision that Haley has cited up there applies to any nonconforming structure in the city that doesn't have to be close to gas wells, it's just generally across the city. Are you all wanting to revise 1.5.4 to just basically eliminate the distinction of greater than 50%, they'll be allowed to rebuild, and that would also include houses that are within the setback? Or are you trying to limit that exception just for homes that are within the reverse setback? I can answer that for me. Because the greater than 50% rule has been around for a long time. That nonconformity rule has been around for, gosh, since I can remember, probably since the original code back in 2001 or whenever the first DDC was actually adopted. I think what I've heard, at least from Council Member Ryan and some others, and of course from myself, is that if we're gonna go in and change code that creates a nonconformity, now they could have approached this back in 2001 or whenever they approved the first DDC saying, we're not gonna create any nonconformity, sort of like what we're asking here, but they didn't do that. I am not saying to take out the greater than 50%, even though I struggle with it, but that's beyond, I think that's beyond the posting here, that particular, you're just saying, if we wanna expand it, we can't put it in this, we've gotta have another ordinance or another work session to do that. - That is correct. - Yeah, okay. Yeah, yes. - I think in terms of sort of sequence of events, all we really need to do today, in my opinion, is give direction on nonconformities, give direction on variance procedures, and that's kind of it, given that we've already covered in the previous work session, you know, the recommended setback, reverse setback of 500 feet from pad site. I happen to be open to contemplating that, 'cause I agree with the mayor on the point of what we're anchoring this to is the forward study, but I don't feel like that has to happen today. I feel what my opinion is, what has to happen is direction on variance, direction on nonconformities. - Well, and I appreciate that. I think what I brought up is part of the discussion as far as the reverse setback. I mean, I know we talked about it last time, but obviously we have these work sessions to be able to interject new ideas, which then council can give, council can give new direction. So variance, you want direction on variance as far as what type of variance, or if there is gonna be a variance, if you could go back to that slide. - Correct, and there were the two options, so the standard process we wanted to get a feel for if everyone is comfortable with us following, allowing the same procedures that already exist to extend to this new provision, and then the second is that new option for those sites that are over 50% affected by the setback, or a combination of setback and other regulations. - Okay, all right, Mayor Pro Tem. - I have a question to help me kind of process this. Hey, does this fall under, and I'm not too familiar with it, so the development shot clock kind of our conversation with developers, this process, would that roll into that? Or is that separate? Because if, yeah, just if you can help me understand that. - And Erin, you may jump in here. I think the discussion was that the variance itself would not be subject to the shot clock, but it would probably be a required approval before say a plat could get approved. So plat may come in and then be denied by the P&Z until that required variance is approved, is my understanding of that process. - Right, and I agree the shot clock only applies to Chapter 212, which are the plat's. A variance is under Chapter 211, the zoning statute. So they will have to get this, but we're not under a 30-day time frame in which to approve it. - Okay, and then if I may, Mr. City Manager, I'd love to hear you on just kind of your commit, your conversations kind of our as a city's commitment to developers being more succinct, faster, not faster, but more diligent, more streamlined, increased fees, et cetera, kind of that whole conversation. And just make sure it all fits. And the reason I ask that is because I lean towards the option that staff laid out where it gives staff the option to make an kind of administrative decision, because I just don't know if we meet enough, if it were to come up where we're, hey, we've made promises kind of as far as what our new process is gonna be, we've increased fees, and then come back and say, hey, your fees increase, and you gotta wait the same, you know, I don't know if that makes sense, but that's what I'm trying to just kind of forecast to see if it kind of meshes well. - Well, I think the conversations have really focused on how to get folks through the process quickly. When it comes to a variance process such as this, we haven't really had many conversations like that, because it doesn't exist yet. So as I stated earlier, our main messaging to the development community has been, this is where we think council's going, they're gonna be kicking this around, but until we get the feedback from you on where we're going with the ordinance, where it's gonna be measured from, which we're assuming right now is edge of pad site, and whether or not we've got a variance process in place, we really don't have much to tell them. One of the things that we're trying not to do is confuse them, either saying, here's the rules, and then come back 30 days later saying, no, here's the different rules, and just really trying to get one compact message that we can communicate with them very quickly. - Okay, got it, thank you. - Okay, Council Member Armitage and Council Member Ryan. - Yeah, so I just wanna say I wish that there had been either a third option or that there had been some discussion or a slide in place asking, do we want to have variance options at all? So I feel like this is one of those choices where we're having our choices limited, what kind of variance do you want? Again, I've made it clear for me, I want no variance, and I realize that we can still say that if we want that, but so I choose option three, which is no variance, and I would just hope that in the future, we're given something like this that is where we're crafting a new policy, that we not feel like we're being kind of guided to make a certain kind of decision. And I don't mean by you, you're just the presenter, I mean, by the way this is presented. - Okay, all right, Council Member Davis and then Council Member Milser, I'm sorry, Council Member Ryan, yep, Council Member Ryan first, yes. Council Member Davis, let me go with Council Member Ryan, he was on key, sorry. - Thank you, Mayor. - Yep, sorry. - I don't know if this was kind of the way it was thought through, but my thought on the, using the new process of 50% affected is that I would feel comfortable if staff had the ability to reduce to the 375, and if that still kept them at less than 50%, that they could do the 250, and if it didn't, then if they wanna go down from the 375 to the 250, they'd have to go to ZBA. Yeah, all right, Council Member Davis. - I agree with Council Member Ryan on that, and I don't feel pushed to that option, I think we've gotten excellent legal advice, and I think y'all have done a good job of crafting a solution that balances the equities, and I appreciate that, and so I agree with Council Member Ryan on down to 375 for an administrative variance or administrative approval, if they need to go down to the 250 to develop, then they have to get that from ZBA and the citizens. - Council Member Meltzer. - Yeah, yeah, my preference would not be to have a variance process, but using the paradigm of the retreat, I could get to three fingers on ZBA process, because it requires six out of seven votes, and you know, I trust that it would have to be pretty compelling to get those six votes. - Okay. - Yes, Council Member Briggs. - So I too would prefer there not be a variance, because I feel like we're making it to 500 feet for a reason, but I also recognize the issues here legally, so I would be more comfortable with staff if staff was allowed to do it to only go down to the 375 and then ZBA to 250, as the last resort, so that would be mine, and I just wanna make a comment on the fire code, 'cause the fire code's 300 feet, and that's been used over and over again as a safe distance, but I have talked to firemen, and they say, you know, well, that's minimal, that's like the minimum standard, and you don't use the minimum standard in a lot of other things that you do with codes, and so I just wanna kind of put that out there. So I'm okay with the staff 375 and then ZBA, if I have to choose, that's what I would choose. - Okay, anybody else? Mayor Pro Tem, any? - Yeah, no, I think I follow, I'm okay with staff having that option. Again, I would probably, in a perfect world, for no variance, I'd rather, but-- - Say that one more time. - My first option is no variance. And because I feel like that's the only way to get to the conversation we need to have, which is exactly what you pointed out, which is what is the pain point, what is the goal? Is the goal air quality, is the goal safety, is the goal, and that's a substantive conversation that we're not having, it's all couched under safety, and then, so I have a problem making a decision based on safety and we're not acting on it, right? I've gotten, no one's gone as far as to say, there's 1,200 houses that we know are in an unsafe area, and no one has said how to address that. And so for me, I think that there's a legal process that would fix that, and at least have the conversation, and we could go forward, because everyone kind of has this, well, you don't know what you don't know, well, absolutely. You know, and you can be successful and spend $300,000, but we'd find the line. And so that being said, and absent the consensus to do that, I think staff's option is good because it gives them the ability to work with the developers or homeowners, and that's my key concern. Homeowners that would need to be able to get a letter to say that they could build their house back if they had flood, because especially, think about it, it targets older homes. Newer homes, you may not have that issue, but older homes, if you've been able to keep your property values low, and all of a sudden something happens to it, 50% comes pretty quick, and you're in a real bad situation, and it's not your fault. - Yeah, I'm okay with taking off my proposal of the 600 feet off the table, because I think if we, I'm comfortable with the administrative approval to 375 only because I think that gives staff an opportunity to look at a site plan, to look at the gas well pad site, and determine, okay, it may be more than 200 feet from the wellhead to the pad site, so you're still almost within that 500 feet. So I'm sure that, you know, I trust that staff is going to use their professional judgment in that, and then with the ZBA, it's a super majority vote. So I'm real comfortable with that because I think that's a big threshold, and then the appeal process from that body is to the district court if there's an issue. So, yes, Council Member. - I think when Gerard mentioned that he would prefer no variance, that was four of us who would prefer no variance in that discussion. - So you're saying, I mean, you've gotta choose. No variance or staff. I mean, because you're sort of the swing. Sorry. - No, no, no need to apologize, I'm happy to do it. (laughing) Could you switch to... Yeah, no, I think the staff's approval reductions, that's fine, that is. - Okay. - And let me preface this. If it's my money, I'd absolutely pull the trigger and let's go and let us get teed up and fight that fight. It's not my money. And so I have to make a decision that's in the best interest of the taxpayers. And even if you prevail, you spend a whole bunch of money and that's not right. And I trust staff and I want them to have the flexibility and not subject them to those conversations. That's how I get there. - Council Member Ryan. - Quick question for legal. If we didn't have a variance process, would it then go directly to district court? - CBA. - What I'm saying is if we don't have a variance process, it couldn't go to CBA. - Right, the project and Haley, correct me if I'm wrong, when they bring in that project, that plat, it would be denied because of the setback and therefore their option, they being the property owner, would be to file suit or move on. - And I think that's what Mayor Pro Tem was saying was that if it were just him and he only considered his interest in, but it sounds like what you're saying is, I wanna make sure that I'm clear that you're giving direction that you're okay with the appeals process of administrative appeal down to 375 setback from the site plan or the pad site boundary and then ZBA of three quarters of a vote. - Correct. - Okay, all right. So I think we have direction in that regard. - Could I get some further clarification? - Sure. - So this option was kind of the second form of variance, were you all, this was for those unique situations like the one on Windsor that we looked at, were you all comfortable with us also adding this in for, this would be like new green field development on the perimeter of the city if they felt they couldn't design their site adequately at the 500 feet, do we want to add in the standard hardship variance process and allow them to pursue that through ZBA if they don't meet that 50% criteria for staff consideration? - Well, okay, so I was a little confused. I'm okay with the variance process for staff going down to 375 and ZBA of three quarters at 250 for the whole thing. - Okay. - I mean, that's what I'm okay with. - Okay. - And if it's a non-conforming issue of greater than 50%, that applies, if it's someone that's coming in that has a small track, large track, it gives people a chance to look at it. - Okay, so across the board, all variances? - That's me, I can't speak for anybody else but that's what I wanna make sure 'cause I didn't quite understand that we were limiting that variance process to just the conformity. - Yeah. - Yes. - So the original discussion was for development areas that were less than 10 acres and then this exception would be for any development, no matter what size? - Correct, the 50% consideration that we brought forward was only for those sites that meet that single criteria that more than 50% of their site would be covered by the setback or some combination. This would be for sites that may only be 10% affected but they want to still appeal the 500-foot setback to gain more of their property. - I just wanna add that this is more designed for those large subdivisions as 60, 100, 150-acre subdivisions that have more land to be able to play with to comply with your 500-foot setback. There may be that possibility that they may seek a variance because of an existing hardship but that's what this is designed for those larger-scale developments. - Well, I saw the benefit mostly for the ones who were 10 acres or less and how that could be an issue and was willing to go there but for this, with the larger site, I feel like there's more alternatives for different site plans and a lot of other ways to work. So, I mean, I consider them two different. - Okay, all right, so then let's take them into two separate considerations. So, the first one was if it's 10 acres or less and I don't even know if, I mean, whether it's impacted 50% or not. I mean, good grief, that's quite a calculation but I'm okay with the variance. If it's 10 acres or less, the one we just described. Administrative feet, 375, ZBA, 250. Now, if you wanna go to a bigger, anything over 10 acres, okay, I mean, you're saying if any variance do we wanna have in that? - Correct. - Okay, Council Member Davis. - So, for me, I think the 50% is a little bit arbitrary. The city attorney said one is designed more for smaller sites and one is designed more for bigger sites but really, you could have a 15-acre site that has 50% of it affected. You could have a 500-acre site that has 49% affected and we still have the basic legal arguments still in play. So, for me, I think it's better to have a standard process that applies to everything equally because they still have to go through, either way, if they wanna get down to 250 feet, they've gotta go, they have to line out all the normal hardship criteria and they've gotta line out why they can't do anything else with this site and they have to do that to get all the way down to 250. They've gotta do that in front of the ZBA and get six out of seven of those folks to say, there's no way, Mr. Big Developer, you could ever make this pencil without having your 250-foot setback. So, I'm happy with the protections we've built in there for that variance. I think the 50%, I understand why we had that part of the conversation but I think it becomes a little bit arbitrary. I'd rather have one process for the whole thing and so I'm on board with what we just discussed a little while ago, just to cross the board. - Okay. So, I wanna make sure I understand to clarify. So, this variance process that we're talking about only comes into play if the development is burdened to 50% or greater because of this setback. Am I, is that correct? - Correct, that was our intent for those sites. Then the 50% threshold was something that Erin felt comfortable with. We wanted that for those situations that are, I guess, unduly or overly burdened by the new setback, not just for a new development that wants a setback. That would typically go to ZBA across the board for any development if they sought that. - Okay. All right. Council Member Meltzer. - I just think extending this to the big developments beyond the 10-acre deal, it's just too big of a hole in the intention of the ordinance. I think it effectively just changes the intent of the ordinance. So I'm okay with the idea that there's an extra administrative step available for these small cases, but I think you gotta be looking at ZBA for the big developments. - And so big developments, according to staff's presentation, is anything over 10 acres? - 10 acres was a threshold we were using just for analysis, but we could certainly quantify that. - All right. Mayor Pro Tem. - No, I'm with Council Member Davis. I think we just paid a consultant to pare down our rules so that they're easy to understand, easy to apply, and easy to kind of universally adopt. And I think to go then and bifurcate this goes against that to some degree. And so I would just be for it applying universally. - Okay. Council Member Ryan. - I agree. - Yeah, Council Member Briggs. - Can we not just do use as percentage? So like he just said, no matter what the size of the property, if greater than 50% of your property is going to be undevelopable with this, I consider that a hardship, or then that could go to the alternate. I mean, instead of, 'cause I'm just really confused about the difference between the two. I mean, if there's not a difference, then why are we looking at them in two different categories? - Well, because I think that's how it was presented. And I think what Council Member Davis is saying is that what was presented was if there's something that's 10 acres or less, and it's impacted 50% or more, can't remember what the equal or greater than is, then let's say you've got the staff administration reduction of setback and/or ZBA, that's one. And then what was presented was, but for something that's greater than 10 acres, do you want to have the same appeals process with the same percentage of encumbrance on a larger track? That's not what this is saying, but that's what he was proposing. This is just saying, do you want to have a variance with anything over 10 acres that is going to the ZBA? They took out the staff option in the greater than 10 acres appeal process, where I think what Council Member Davis was saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, was that let's make it consistent across the board, no matter what the acreage, if it's encumbered with 50% or greater because of the reverse setback ordinance, that staff can either reduce it to 375 based upon whatever criteria they decide, and/or ZBA can reduce on an appeal, but it has to be three-fourths vote, it has to be a supermajority, is that correct? - Mostly, but I think we've kind of started to cross our wires by calling the under 10 acres and the over 10 acres. It's the not encumbered 50% or more, and encumbered 50% or more. Staff used 10 acres for analysis to kind of gen up the numbers for us, but really, we were presented both of those options. We've called it the big development one, but really what it means is, and what's on the screen, is a developer who would probably apply to ZBA anyway, because of all these combinations with your ESAs and your tree ordinance and everything, all adds up to a hardship under our existing criteria. So the question is, I understood it was, do we have a variance process that's different for the gas well setbacks? And then the one that was different, that was proposed, was the 50% or more affected. So what I'm saying is, I would be fine with having a gas well variance process that's across the board, whether you're 50% encumbered or whether you are under some hardship because of your site and our existing hardship criteria. I'm fine with having the same process for both of those. Combine the two slides, nine and, or yeah, I guess up there you've got them nine and 10, that they would be the same process, whether it's because you have hardship on your site with all of our other criteria and you throw gas well setbacks into that, or because you're more than 50% encumbered. - So question of clarification. Does that also still include the staff ability to reduce just the setback to 375, what you're proposing? - That's what I'm saying, yeah. That it would be exactly mirror image process. - Yeah, and so you're saying that all the hardships combined on a track of land, ESAs, gas well setback, anything, if it's over 50%, you can go to ZBA. - So existing hardships are listed in the parenthetical, the special circumstances, adverse impacts, et cetera. That for gas well setbacks, you would go through the staff and then ZBA, just like we outlined on the next slide. And then in addition to our existing ZBA, our existing criteria for hardship, then you could also say, one of my, I guess I'll call it a super criteria to go through that process would be that I'm now 50% or more encumbered. So one of, on the standard hardship process, we're kinda adding a criteria, which is my gas well setback has made it hard to develop. And then we're adding a new process with the 50% effect that I'm just saying, I'd like to see those be the same if the ZBA application is gonna be for gas well setbacks. - Council Member Leslie. - In order not to blow a hole under what we've already agreed to, and if we wanna keep it the same and keep it simple, then I'd say, just ZBA. And then you got the six vote sort of protection. It's just one step, it's not if and then. And then you're not introducing essentially a different reverse setback. My perhaps jaded life experience is that when you create an exception path that's very easily accessible, that becomes the rule, not the exception. So I go with just ZBA. - So you're saying exclude the administrative variance procedure. - And I'm finding that it's one process that can apply to all these situations. - So I'm gonna, so what you're proposing or what you're stating includes the staff variance process. Am I right in that? Okay, all right. And you're saying no, it'd just be ZBA. Okay, all right, yes, Councilmember Morricone. - Again, I prefer no variance, but I would definitely prefer having everything go through ZBA. And I think it shows, again, in a city that voted to ban fracking that we're choosing the most democratic process. And it's also the most streamlined as far as just knowing what to do, all the rules that one has to memorize. I will say it's kind of, to use the term of the retreat, it's kind of a pain point for me to hear the term hardship. I realize it's just, it's the term that's already used to refer to the impact of our own laws on people who want to get around them for profit. But I understand we're not inventing those terms. - Councilmember Ryan, I think I know where you are, but go ahead. - I'm okay, I believe if it's more than 50%, 50% are more encumbered, that it can be a staff decision down to the 375 and anything else can go to ZBA. - So what Councilmember Davis was proposing? - Does that sound? - I'm on board with what Councilmember Ryan just said. - Okay, all right. - Let's make it easier that way. - Yeah, you still on board with that or what? - Yes, no, that's fine. And I don't even, and it's not a for-profit thing, it's a homeowner thing, right? I mean, there's no profit in that. If my house floods or burns. - Well, that's part of it, but it's also if it's new development. - Yeah, but I just, I hear the for-profit thing and I don't think, I just wanna distance. My focus is the homeowner's component. - So, yes, Councilmember Davis. - For clarification, this isn't talking about the non-conformity issue of somebody rebuilding their house, having it go through-- - No, because I think we had consensus that we wanted to take out a creation of a non-conforming use with this current gas well ordinance is what my understanding is. - I just wanted to clarify that that wasn't part of this just for my own benefit, thank you. - And I'm good with Councilmember Ryan's synopsis of if it's 50% impact, you got your staff administrative appeal process to 375 or ZBA at 250 with a super majority. Okay, all right. Okay, was there any other, okay, and then we've got the non-conforming, the non-creation, excuse me, of a non-conforming use, so however staff legal wants to draft that. And what other direction did you need in this presentation? - I believe that was everything. - Okay, yes, Councilmember Meltzer. - From the time this is enacted as assuming it will be, I'd like to see at six months some kind of a report back on what happened, what variances came up and what distances were actually utilized and so on. - Okay, yeah, all right. Councilmember Briggs. - I'm gonna support that staff request if we need for, so that I'm sure that might take a couple of hours. So just in case, I'm gonna go ahead and get ahead of that process. - We'll be sure to put it in writing. That's, yeah, be sure to put it in writing. - Councilmember Davis. - I'll also put that in writing. I think it's good to check back in. But I also, today or another day, I think your point about, I think Councilmember Meltzer agreed with this, your point about the Fort Worth study and that if we're gonna find ourselves in a position to have to defend the paradigm in a regulatory scheme, I think that puts us on really good footing to do that. So if we tie back to 600 from the wellhead or 500 feet from the pad site, whatever's lesser, I think that sounds pretty solid to me. We've already got the study on the books. - Just need one more. - One more. Oh. Well, yeah, I don't think we really put that question out there, so. So you're okay with doing the greater or lesser than, 600 feet, 500 feet, whichever's less? - Right, and if you've got a 100 foot pad site on the side, those are roughly coterminous. You just kind of round off some corners. And it's all gonna be taking a tape measure out there anyway and measuring from whatever to whatever. I think that makes a lot of sense. - So Council Member Meltzer, I'm sorry. - Yeah, I spoke out of turn, but I had already registered my support for that pad. - Anybody else okay with that? Okay, Council Member Romer. - I mean, so are we really, we're getting consensus on whether we want a six month and update? - No, no, this is-- - Okay. - No, that's gonna be submitted to the city manager in writing. And what this is is about. It's 600 feet from the wellhead, whether it's the first one or the second, from the wellhead or 500 feet from the pad site, whichever's less. Okay. - I would say whichever is more. - Okay, all right. Council Member Ryan, Council Member Briggs. - Yeah, somebody's gonna have to draw it for me 'cause I don't understand how it's consistent and whichever less sounds suspicious to me. - Yeah, well, the minimum it'll be is 500 feet from the pad site. Or no, it's either 600 feet from the wellhead or 500 feet from the pad site, whichever is less. - So on the pad site, if there's-- - Yeah, if the pad site's too big, then if it doesn't get off the pad site, then yeah. - I mean, if it's a greater distance, if it's 600 feet and you're protecting that 600 feet from the wellhead and it's more than what the, I mean, it's not less than the protection of the 500 feet. - So let me say this. I threw that out there sort of in this works. Let's just workshop it a little. When it comes back, just if staff could just prepare a couple of scenarios so that we can see it so that we understand what the facts are. That'd be great. Right now it stands at 500 feet from the pad site and as we look at some scenarios to understand what are some of those potential unintended consequences, then we will take a look at that. - Do you mind if I summarize real quick? - You can summarize, yes. Yes, I appreciate that. I was gonna ask you to do that. - Yeah, so moving forward to 500 feet is what we'll prepare but we will do some scenarios and analysis to see how that compares with the 600 from wellhead. We'll work with legal to put in provisions to reduce non-conformities being created by this change and then in terms of variances, what I heard was if it meets the 50% threshold that we discussed, staff could go as low as 375. Everything else beyond that or a standard hardship would go to ZBA. Is that correct? - That's my understanding. Yes, Council Member Mayer-Protein. - Yeah, I have a request, Erin. If we could, in that when it comes back, if we could have a draft letter that, I mean obviously we know the houses already, maybe we could become proactive and send them a letter that kinda outlines the change but hey, you're okay, but if you have questions, call. Something that just kinda gives them peace of mind in advance for those homes affected that we could send out just to be proactive versus have them hear something that causes concern. - And that letters to the, I think it was 1,200. - Yes, sir. - That will become non-conforming. - Yes, sir, thank you. - Well, that would become non-conforming but for our ordinance. - Yes. - Within that, there's still, I believe it was 300 and something that are currently non-conforming that wouldn't be able by that, but okay. Council Member Briggs. - I wanna go ahead and second that request. - Put it in writing. (laughing) Council Member Armitage. - And I would request that it come, that the wording of it come before Committee on Citizen Engagement 'cause that's a kinda letter designed to assuage fears that could actually end up unintentionally creating fear where there wasn't any so we need to be really careful to make it simple. I think ultimately it would be like a kind of a, you live near a gas well, notice there's new policy but just plain language. - Okay, I would suggest that we're gonna come back with the revised ordinance variance process and the letter just so everybody sees it. That way Scott's got direction as far as when he publishes. That's the other thing, just so we're all on the same page in terms of expectations out there. - Yeah, coming to all of Council is great, that's great too. - Okay, Council Member Meldstrom. - That include the six month follow-up thing or you still want me to write that up? - We haven't passed it yet so I'm gonna let City Manager make the decision. - I've already asked Scott to calendar for April so I just had a feeling the Mayor would be the fourth. - I'm gonna take that off my to-do list, okay, thank you. - Okay, all right. Okay, all right. Thank you very much, Haley, appreciate it. Let's take about a 10 minute break. - Welcome, excuse me, welcome everybody back to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Tuesday, August the 27th, 2019, it is 4.23 p.m. We are moving back through our work session item reports at work session item three D. Receive report, hold discussion of staff direction on the FY 2019 through 2020 City Council priorities as discussed during the August 17th, 2019 City Council retreat. - All right, good evening, I guess. Mayor, Council, I'm Rachel Wood, Chief of Staff. - Good afternoon. - Afternoon, it's afternoon, yeah, we'll keep with that. So before we go into the priorities that we discussed at your August 17th retreat, just a quick reminder that you did establish eight priorities at your August 25th, 2018 retreat. Those include a new bond program, updating the Denton Development Code, mobility plan, open space planning, tree canopy strategy, downtown master plan, city facility planning, and a master plan to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring. And you did hear in the city manager's mid-year update as well as leading up to the retreat an update on those items. Additionally, David Gaines throughout the budget process communicated the priorities as a part of the budget process this year, and that's something we plan to continue going into the FY 2019-2020 process. So at the August 17th retreat, all of the participants in the retreat were able to list major priority areas that they wanted to have considered as council goals for the upcoming year. There were 53 different topic areas that were discussed, and then each elected official was given eight sticky dots to essentially vote on the highest priority areas. So of the 53 items discussed, seven received a vote of three or more, and so those items include updating the sustainable Denton plan, completing the revision of the mobility plan, City Hall West, affordable housing strategy, county-wide homelessness strategy, a public-private partnerships, as well as Hunter and Cole Ranch. So just really quickly to compare your 2018 priorities to 2019 priorities, the items highlighted in the light blue color have either a direct or a kind of associated correlation with each other. City facility planning, when you adopted that last year, it did include specific requests to emphasize City Hall West, and so we listed that as a connection as well, but just wanted to show you just a comparison of the two. So tonight we're seeking feedback from you on the list of priorities that were receiving three or higher votes to see if you want to go ahead and formally adopt those. We are recommending formal adoption of the priorities this year. That's something that was not done last year, but because this is going to be the basis for how we structure the budget process moving forward and the council priorities really will take the place of the strategic plan moving forward, our recommendation is to formally adopt them via resolution. After they've been adopted, city departments are gonna develop meaningful metrics to help track progress on achieving the goals set forth in the priorities. An online dashboard is being developed with technology services so that you as well as residents will be able to go online and see that progress regularly, and then as I mentioned, your priorities will continue to serve as the foundation for budget development moving forward. So with that, I just wanted to get some feedback from you all regarding the priorities that received the highest votes, see if there are any provisions necessary and see if you all were comfortable moving forward with the vote on those items. - Let's start over here on this side. Council Member Meltzer. - Yeah, I think this is a very good exercise, although kind of compressed, just because of the available time, and we didn't really have a lot of discussion about it, and I have a couple questions. What happens to things that are unfinished business from the previous set, specifically, do we not do a downtown master plan now? There are massive changes coming in the, potentially in the profile of downtown. I'd still advocate for that and I'll tee up one other one. I just don't really understand everything that might fit under sustainable dentin plan. I'd like to hear what people assume that means. For instance, does that include the open space plan that is kind of in development? And where does the 10 minute walk goal fit? Is that part of sustainable dentin plan or is that part of mobility? So those are some loose ends for me. - Okay, did you have a, did you want to comment? I mean, if not, okay, all right. Council Member Briggs and Council Member Malauulu. - I had this removed. I pulled it from the consent agenda item because I wanted to discuss and kind of have a question about the mobility plan. I'm trying to find it on our, because it's, we're having meetings. It's already in progress because it was set on our last retreat and so that's already in progress. And so I don't know about wasting, like using a spot for something that's already in production. And I mean, it's coming to us no matter how bad we want it to or not, because it's already in process. The community meetings are set. And so I'm just curious why we're using it there for a priority if there's not something else that we could maybe put in there like a youth complex or an entertainment center, you know, something that's not even on our radar yet. - I can go ahead and answer that. Well, first of all, it's up here because enough of you had a high enough priority that it was, you basically wanted it finished. And I think to Council Member Meltzer's point, absolutely, things that are still on the work plan for this year that are in process, we're going to continue working on your beginning of briefing those sometime the next month, right before my annual review as well. So just because we were adopting new priorities doesn't mean we're not finishing the last ones. I think, and I think to Council Member Briggs point, you know, obviously it's a hot button issue comes up constantly and how do we move people around? How do we invest? We get it, but I was, as I went back and was kind of looking at all the projects that were number twos, and I think I might be answering your question, we had issues such as food deserts in the Downtown Master Plan. I'll just give you a quick update if I can get two or three minutes from you here. The Downtown Master Plan, we're already moving on that, potentially updating that. I kind of put it on hold because of some other developments that had been in to see us recently, but so I've asked our Tony Puente and Jessica Rogers to bring on board a firm that specializes in TURZs so we can do an updated pro forma for you and talk about some of those plans. The Economic Development Plan was one of the funded supplementals that was recommended. Fire location studies getting wrapped up. That should be presented to you in the quarter four. Our Economic Development Plan, we're already going out to RFP on updating that, so that'll talk about target industries that we're looking for is what our strategies, uses of incentives are. So many of these with investment in street replacement obviously is a huge priority that we've been pushing as a staff and we'll continue to do so. So really all of those are already in progress in one way or another that were your number two, I guess that had two of you supporting it. If you wanted to potentially add, investigating a multi-use event center, and I'm unclear as to what that is exactly, in a youth sports complex, we can certainly at a minimum start investigating that, see what it takes, that sort of thing, would not be a huge imposition on us in light of the fact that we have so many of these projects already in the queue, and already being worked on. We could certainly add those in if it's important enough to you. But many of the things that had two of you support it were already working on. - Did you have a follow up to that? - Well, yeah, I mean, I just wanted to get confirmation that the mobility plan, it was something that our last year is already, I mean, it's coming to us. So having it take that priority spot of something that, I mean, even though all these things are on, I just wanted to have this conversation here with council because we, it was towards the end of the meeting, we saw what they were, and then we had to leave. So we really didn't get to vet them or talk through them. - Council member, I'll go. - Yeah, and so I, and thank you for pulling this 'cause I agree it was kind of rushed towards the end. So it's good to be able to have this discussion. I had a similar concern about the mobility plan and maybe if the wording was changed to simply finish mobility plan so that it doesn't sound like, take everything we've done so far, radically revise it. In fact, that was, I noticed one thing that I liked about that part of the discussion at the retreat and found kind of charming was a number of staff people stating their priorities was let's finish this, finish the things we're doing now, which is such a, I mean, and that is really a noble goal. So it's important that as kind of a reality check that yes, let us finish the things we're working on now. I don't have a problem with changing it to finish mobility plan. I had the same issue with Hunter Coal Ranch and I guess kind of more of a question from my colleagues who chose that. I don't know who chose that, but because that is something, it's a private development that we know is coming before us already. What exactly is meant by that being a priority? I'm just curious those who chose it or the person who suggested it. - I don't mind sharing. I think for me, it was just let's get through that process, whether we move forward with it as they proposed with some type of MMD or we decide against it. Let's just make sure that we're timely with the process. So that was my only, I mean, that thing could stretch out for two or three years, but that's the point for me. So maybe then something that is timely completion of Coal Hunter Coal Ranch, just so that it's not seen as an endorsement of this private development, unless that's what it was intended as. Again, I didn't vote for that one, so I don't wanna change the substance of it, but again, City Hall, those are two priorities that are both locations. And so my sense is that City Hall West means we want to go ahead with the plan to renovate it and do something with it. It's what seemed to me like an endorsement and whole Hunter Coal Ranch, not necessarily an endorsement. So just to, if those both end up getting in there to make a distinction clear. And then I had a question, similar questions about just the people who chose public-private partnership, county-wide homeless strategy, exactly what that means. For me, one reason why I didn't choose the county-wide homelessness strategy, I chose, I forget, something else. There were a number of different iterations of it. But county-wide, we can't make decisions for the county. We can make decisions to partner with the county. And again, we're already working with the county, so is that a similar, kind of continue working with the county on the homeless leadership team? Is that what was intended? And then similar for public-private partnership. I'm just curious for people who voted for that to say exactly what that meant. - I think if these, my suggestion would be a council, if these are the general areas that you'd like to stay in there, we can certainly provide some sub-bullets to this, to each one of these, as well as at least timelines on something like Hunter Cole Ranch, to give you some perspective as we're kind of thinking through how to spend our time. And that's really what the point of this is, is how do you want staff spending our time? But we can come back with some sub-bullets on this. I'm happy to move some of the things for number two. The votes, the items that received two votes, we keep in there as well, because there is so much interplay with what we're already doing and studies that are ongoing. And I think Council Member Meltzer's question on the sustainable debt and plans, it's a good one. It means so many things to so many different people. And some of the things that he suggested are already being addressed. And we budget money for a 2030 update. We budget, Gary's going through the parks master plan update. So you're gonna be seeing a lot of these things. And I think if this is generally where you wanna go, and if you want us to look at a couple of those other areas, we're happy to do so. And we're happy to provide sub-bullets. So there's absolute clarity. - Okay. Council Member Ryan, then Council Member Davis. - Kind of looking at the comparison 2018 to 2019, we had facility planning in 2018 and just City Hall West in '19, but a couple of the different ones in the two. And then one that probably only had, I guess only had one 'cause it wasn't on that list is the development services. But just, I think the city facility planning is probably a better way of putting that 'cause we can include fire stations, that can include looking at a youth sports complex. And I think there's one other one on that list of number twos that could be fit in there as well. - Council Member Davis. - So I think kind of the fundamental issue with the list as it's presented, and I like the cutoff, I think that makes sense. I'm also fine with if we feel we have too many and it's too, we're kind of spreading our focus, I'm fine with dropping mobility plan two just 'cause it's already in process. But I think it would be helpful if we decided on some verbs. I think that's the main thing. So like update, what does that mean? Right, so that's the, like Hunter Cole Ranch. A verb would solve that problem. What Hunter Cole Ranch? We have the subject, we don't have the verb. City Hall West, for me, for Council Member Armenter, it sounds like that might mean time to adopt the plan. For me, that means let's decide what the plan is. So I think we need some verbs before we can really decide what we're doing with these and whether we wanna sit and hash that out now or if we want staff to kind of divine from the post-its and the stickers what it was they thought people were going for. I don't know what's best there. But I would suggest, for instance, City Hall West is a good example. Finalized plan for City Hall West or whatever. Hunter Cole Ranch may be, you know, that we are defining the relationship with Hunter Cole Ranch or making decisions about the MMD or however that needs to be couched. 'Cause I think, and then on sustainable dent in plan, I could see where there could be room for different things to kind of fall under that. I don't know if it's necessarily that we need bullet points and all need to decide today or at our next meeting what that means. I think it just means that five of us wanted to see maybe a work session on what goes into that plan. And we decided that work session, here's what the plan means. Maybe it's zero waste policy. Maybe it's open space. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's one. Maybe it's not the other. Anyway. - Okay. Let's see. If you-- - I spoke before. - Yeah, and you did as well, didn't you? Okay, any comments? - No, I mean, yes and no. I like the looking deeper into it, but I think in the spirit of efficiencies, should we not kind of, to Councilman Davis's point, have a work session that then gives staff consensus on-- So for example, City Hall West, my pain point is where is the money coming from first before we get to designing? So if there was a full work session that said, here's what it's gonna look like. Do you like this? You like that? I'm still two fingers until we get to the money part and then I can get the three or four fingers. And so I think maybe if we could have work sessions that generate kind of those bullets, and then at least staff can find consensus because if money's not a hang up for the majority of the council members, then they kind of know, hey, we can move forward. We have, it's time well spent. Same with all those, so I think there are layers and as much as we can give consensus to say, okay, we have consensus, these areas, that's what it looks like overlaid against the mobility plan. Because to me, the mobility plan could be as simple as the Muse streets in one way or two way, or I mean, you can go down all these kind of rabbit holes. So I think that maybe a consensus from a work session allows efficiencies. So before I reconnect, I mean, I understand about the word smithing. I think though, these are general categories. I don't think that these priorities are to say definitively what is our intention with these other than, you could put discuss in front of every one of those, because that's exactly what we're going to be doing. So it's not a matter of whether we're gonna say, we're gonna approve or not approve Hunter or Cole Rance, or public private partnership. I mean, these are just the things that we wanna bring forward to discussion to get some direction on. So I'm okay with it like this. And in the ordinance or the resolution, you can always put in there that these are general categories, that it's not an indication or endorsement of any one particular direction one way or the other. I mean, that's just where I am with it. I mean, so Council Member Briggs. - So just a couple of things. Yeah, I think that moving facilities over would be good because we're also gonna have to talk about the planning or development services department. And that's gonna be a priority for us, whether we want it to or not. So we might as well put it on our list. I think for me, I did the countywide homelessness and you asked why we did that. And sure, we have a responsibility here in the city for our residents and what we can do, but it's also not just our issue, it's countywide. And so voting for that reaffirms that, and it's going to strengthen our desire for this council to have those partnerships and to keep on with the data and working on that because the data we have right now is countywide. And so, and as we keep strengthening those relationships and we have it as a priority, I think it will help other municipalities and also the county see how important it is to us. - Yes, have you spoken council member? Okay, council member Armitage. - Oh yeah, so, and thank you. So the answer is my question, which was, so it's kind of continue with the work of the county homelessness leadership team. In other words, everything you talked about is to continue with our approach or move it forward as opposed to let's take a different, let's take a countywide issue instead of something else. So anyway, that's helpful. I prefer the kind of more general categories. To go back to the point council member Ryan was saying, I think that some of these categories are so specific, again, City Hall West, Hunter Cole Ranch, that I wonder, and maybe these fears are unfounded 'cause I haven't tested, I didn't test this out on anybody. I didn't get any emails about it. But if the public would feel like this was narrowed down too much for them by council, maybe if we keep it broad, city facility planning, and that would include an opportunity to get input from people for whom City Hall West is important, but might not feel like we're singling that out. And by the way, I totally support funding for City Hall West, and I like the plan the way it is. I just think for the public, it might send more of a message if our priorities are broader, and also that the verb, and I agree with, and I appreciate the suggestion adverbs. I think, so discuss, obviously, that is a verb, but for me, that is more of the method by which we deal with anything that comes our way. I feel like priorities should be bigger than that than just simply discussing. So that would be my suggestion. - I heard some general concepts, but I didn't hear any specific propositions or suggestions specifically. - So my specific suggestion, the one specific suggestion I made was the city facility planning. I'm okay with continuing that and saying, continue city facility planning, and that could include City Hall West and any other city facilities we wanna discuss, and the other was more just a kind of statement of my preference. I mean, I could make suggestions all down the line, but I don't wanna do that, since some of these are things that I didn't necessarily put my dot on, but I would just encourage when verbs are added that they not simply just be discuss, but it should show, somehow, something a little more specific than simply talk about. Okay, so for instance, promote public-private partnerships. - Maybe, maybe not, it depends, so that's my point. I mean, if we're gonna wordsmith this, I mean, promote, I don't know if we're promoting 'em or not, depending on what they are. - Well, and so, and that's an excellent point. That's why I asked, I mean, because I don't understand what public-private partnerships up there on its own means. I would not agree to myself a priority to discuss it unless I know what we're discussing about it. You know, it's like saying discuss the weather. So, again, I'm curious to know those who put it up there, what they intended. - Can I make a suggestion? - Okay, go ahead, I'm sorry. - That, anyway, that was just my-- - I think this is getting really sort of an interesting discussion. I mean, so I don't wanna spend an hour trying to figure out what we all discussed and what we put our stars on. So I'm saying, let's revisit this. You guys can take a stab at trying to make this as generic as possible, but the truth of the matter is, those up there had, you know, some had five stars and some had three stars. And if you weren't one of those that put a star in some of those, I understand the concern, but that's what we did. Now, if we did it too rushed, then let's set a work session to say, here's what the stars were, now let's talk about it in detail, let's talk about it in earnest. But, I mean, trying to figure out how we're gonna put the words in this ordinance to talk about the priorities that receive five stars and three stars, I just don't think that's a good use of our time. - Do you have the overview that's got the kind of the sub bullets, what we did this last year? - I can search for it on the shared drive if I may take a second. - Well, that's okay. I mean, if not, we'll bring back some sub bullets and I think it'll facilitate the communication a lot easier and if there's things you wanna alter, you can certainly do that, but I think we've got a fairly good idea of where you wanna go and where we are with some of these things. And if there's a couple items that you wanna add under the sub bullets, let's do it. It's usually easier to edit these when you see the full work plan than sit here and use your time vetting it out. It's just always easier to do it that way and if we're off base, you can let us know. - Council Member O'Brien had a question and then Council Member Briggs. - And that's kind of the direction I was gonna go in is that it seemed like we rushed this at the end and usually we'll take that first round of issues and we'll combine them down before we voted on them in the past and I think that that's a better route to go. - Council Member Briggs. - Yeah, I was just gonna say instead of promote, you can say explore public-private. That was one of the things that I chose because we're going to see more restriction on taxes and fees and things that we can do here and so being able to explore the public-private partnerships to reduce the tax burden for certain projects in the city I thought would be a worthy thing to discuss and look at it as something that we haven't really had a big discussion on before. - I think that's, as we all placed our stars, we all had in our head the language that we would associate with that particular issue and I think what we're asking is just to come back and let's discuss that more in detail to try to flesh that out. Yes, Council Member Meltzer, you had the last word. - Yeah, totally happy with next step of letting staff flesh it out a little and pick some verbs if you think it'll help us. I would caution against overly blandifying or watering things down. When you've got a specific impulse there to resolve City Hall West, I think it ought to say City Hall West. I think you ought to add a verb if that helps. Explore, set direction, figure out the fate of. But I think if you just go buildings or something like that, in a year from now, nothing will be different. - Well, and that wasn't the exercise, yeah, right. Okay, thank you very much Rachel, I appreciate it. All right, we'll move on then to our next item which is agenda item three E, receive report and hold discussion if you have staff direction regarding polling locations for the November 5, 2019 bond election. Okay, sure. - Actually, if you would mind staying before the topic begins, I guarantee you it'll be safe for you. I would like to propose-- - Okay, before, yeah. - Yeah, I'd like to propose that we postpone this item until we can hopefully expeditiously take up an amendment to the ethics ordinance to exclude discussion determination of polling locations from the definition of pending matters. I haven't found anybody in Denton yet who thinks this is substantively an ethics issue, including former Council Member Don Duff who originally raised the question and including the complainant in the cases that we've had on it. So I offer that for consideration. I would like, not just myself and Council Member Armitage, I'd like Council Member Davis to be able to weigh in on these things. And I don't think polling locations are sort of private pending matters in that sense. - Well, what you're saying, I think we're under a time deadline. - We are. Unfortunately, we have to have a decision made by September 10th, which of course is the next time the city council meets. The county originally had a deadline of September 6 and they've extended it for us. But because they are running up against their own internal deadlines, we do need to get that solidified by September 10th at the latest. - Yes, yes, 'cause I-- - Point of personal privilege. I am going to recuse from consideration of this item, whether that's postponing it or anything else, I'm not gonna be a part of a conversation involving this item, so. - Yep, thank you, appreciate it. Yep, Council Member Armitage? - Yeah. Anyway, I'm sad that Council Member Davis is leaving. I respect that, it's up to the individual to decide to recuse. I support Council Member Meltzer's proposal for the reasons he stated. I don't see anything in the ethics ordinance even that suggests that there's an issue with Council Member Davis Meltzer or myself being here. As he said, even the ethics committee, the ethics board has taken this up as an issue that they want to work on, and they have made their statements on it. So anyway, I would like to be here to discuss polling locations, and I think that we should all be here for that. - Mayor Pro Tem? Is this an action item or just direction? - Tonight we're seeking direction, and if there is a decision that you wanna add to the list that the county has already prepared, then we would come back next week with a resolution for you to adopt those locations and endorse the additional cost associated with those locations being added. - Got it, all right. Yeah, so no questions here. I'd support it when we get to the vote. - Support. - Support it as provided. The time is an issue. - Well, I think what the question is is to postpone this until if or when the Board of Ethics makes a change. I'm gonna be truthful. - I don't think that's an option. - Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna be honest. I mean, we have a code, and I think, Council Member Meltzer, by just your statement that to remove it from pending matters means that based upon the code, whether how flawed or not, that's how it was defined. And so, I mean, everybody has to make their decision on what they wanna do here, but I don't mind postponing it. I just don't think we're gonna be able to get to it in time for September the 10th. - Just to clarify, I understand that the code's a code. That's why I'm proposing that we amend the code, which is in our, you know, it's within our purview to do that if we choose to. - Okay, that makes me very nervous when we've given direction to the Board of Ethics to bring back recommendations, and what you're suggesting is that we amend a code that would work to the, I don't wanna say to your benefit, but sort of, it would impact you more than it would impact any of us, and I don't feel comfortable with that, quite frankly. If the council is gonna take unilateral action to change the code to remove this concern, then I don't know why we gave the code to the Board of Ethics to come back with recommendations. - It's just a timing thing that this came up. You know, I'd be happy to wait on them except for the fact that here we are. - Okay. Well, I'm not sure, first of all, are we even still in posting, I guess, is my question. - It's more of a parliamentary procedure. You're trying to debate whether to postpone the item or not before we get into it. - Well, so on the table is to postpone the item. All right, that's what you're saying. And I don't have an issue with postponing the item. I will have an issue with the council changing the ethics code unilaterally, which would have to happen the night of the September 10th deadline. - If my understanding is correct, we don't have a meeting until September 10th, is that correct? - Correct. And Mayor, if I may, just really quickly, just hopefully to help clarify this a little bit. Council is not required to take action. If we are comfortable with the county proposed locations, no resolution is necessary. We've had resolutions recently because the city council has wanted to add locations. But if the council is comfortable with the list as prepared by the county, no additional action is necessary. That's why we wanted to have the work session tonight is to get to that point. And one additional piece of information that's new from when this was posted is the county has confirmed that the Gateway Center at UNT will be an election day polling location. - So I'm not sure if we're still in the discussion about the postponing, you know, the timeline, now knowing what the timeline is. You know, I don't know how the Board of Ethics would be able to, I know they have a meeting on Thursday. If they could have a meeting, again, 'cause I don't want to unilaterally, and I don't think you were suggesting, as I heard it, that council do anything that would take away a power of the Ethics Board, only saying that something the Ethics Board has already spoken out on, and at least in the deliberation on my case, I haven't heard the deliberation on your case, they all said, yeah, this should be changed to make it more clear, it was almost more of a tweaking. To me, it was clear, but again, it was an issue that I feel like they've discussed already. So if they could have a meeting on it, that would be great. I did want, let's see, I will say that for people, for anyone who thinks that it is a conflict of interest, for me to talk about this, because there's a UNT polling location on there, simply deliberating would be a problem for somebody who would make that argument. So it's not just voting on it, it's the deliberating that's an issue. So I wanted to mention that. I was going to suggest that we add TV coverage to the list, I've never seen why we have kind of one, not the other, but that was the one change that I was going to suggest, so. - Sorry, Mr. City Attorney. - It was insane, I know that you all were, the discussion was about whether to postpone or not. Now, there's been some discussion about moving into what's on the screen as well as proposed locations. I think that's a later discussion. - Thank you, sorry, I was just responding, and you're right, I was just responding to what Rachel mentioned about that if we approve of the county plan. - I mean, we can discuss this right now. I mean, that's not an issue. - I'll go then, I'd rather be in the discussion. There is no such, I mean, the idea that it's unilateral, if we take up the amendment. - You're talking about the council. - Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's not a power of the Board of Ethics. We delegated that to them to advise us, but we're the legislative body, so there isn't some other lateral that would make it bilateral or trilateral. We're the only lateral. - No, I understand that. I guess there was a lot of discussion. There was a lot of talk going back and forth about that this council shouldn't be the one making those decisions, that the Board of Ethics should be the one making those recommendations. So I'm just repeating the feedback that I received from many, many, many people. So I would just, I would not wanna necessarily say, well, we'll take it back when we wanna change something that is, I'm not saying so much convenient for us, but will create sort of a temporary stopgap measure when if we delegated it to them, and you're right, we didn't give up our legislative authority on it, but what we said was, based upon the feedback from the community, based upon the feedback from council, that this would be the best course of action. So it's not a criticism, it's just my observation, yeah. Council Member Briggs. - Yeah, I'm not inclined to postpone, but I just want some clarification here because there's not really anything that we're voting on. Everything's already set, so there's not really a lot of this. I'm just curious where the recusals would take place because last time we were discussing on whether or not there would be a location here. Now the county has given us their locations, so. - We have to approve them and we pay for them if there's ones that are not on that list, is that correct? - We don't have to approve the list the county already has. If we want to pay for additional locations, those have to be approved. - Okay, I'm not arguing recusal or not, I'm just responding to Council Member Melser's concern that, or request that we postpone it to fix the ordinance so that there's no doubt about this not being an issue. I mean, the discussion, the vote, or whatever process we take. So we can discuss it right now. We can, if, I mean, there was a request to postpone, you don't want to do that, Council Member Armitage? - So, I mean, I would just like to know, is it realistic for the Board of Ethics to be able to meet? I know that they're meeting on Thursday, so that's not enough time under TOMA for an adjustment to their agenda unless there's something already posted on their agenda that's broad enough to include this. My guess is no, so that they would have to have a separate meeting if there's time. I would like it to come to them. But, you know, and if not, then we need to go ahead and I will, you know, I didn't recuse before, even after the ethics opinion, board opinion, because I disagreed with it. And again, I don't see really in the code where this is, how this would be an issue. But I know that there's some, you know, at least a person who made the complaint who feels that way, anyway. So, but I will go ahead and deliberate if there's not enough time. I'll deliberate now just to be consistent, 'cause I did before. - So not hearing a second, I'll recuse, just 'cause I feel it's been adjudicated and I, you know, obviously, you know my recommendation. - Sure, of course, yeah, okay, all right. And Dennis here, do y'all wanna grab dinner right quick? How long is your presentation? - It's very brief, but I certainly don't wanna-- - No, let's go, let's go, it just got here, so it's still. - I won't go through the dates, but on this slide are the dates for election day as well as early voting. Just a quick reminder, if we do decide we wanna add locations, it's 3,800 for any additional location not already currently on the list for the city to pay, and then $7,200 for any additional early voting location. So the list here are the county proposed polling locations in Denton, Council Member Armenter, you mentioned TWU. The county is having conversations with TWU. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to identify a location for the November 2019 election, but their goal is to absolutely have something ready for the May 2020 election as well as for the fall 2020 election as well. So those conversations are taking place. They just haven't been able to identify a location. I would also note that the Civic Center and TWU are located in the same precinct, so for election day, it would have to be either/or. - TWU, and what was the other one? - The Civic Center. - Okay, gotcha, okay. All right. - So next steps I've already mentioned. So we do need to make a decision by September 10th. As I said, no additional action is necessary if we're comfortable with the list as proposed right now by Denton County. If we wanted to add locations, we have traditionally had those adopted via resolution, and so September 10th would be the date we'd need to have that added to the agenda. - So if we don't, the one additional location that was brought up was TWU, and they're in contact with them, but they've not identified anything yet. So they're already thinking about it. - Correct. - But then it would be either TWU or the Civic Center based upon what was chosen. I'm okay with the list. I don't need to add anything to that, don't need to take anything away from it. I'm okay with the list, and if the consensus of the council is that we're okay with the list, that means there's no more action to be taken. Is that correct? - Correct. - Okay, Council Member Armitage. - Yeah, so just to make a plea, so I'm happy to know that the county's already in conversation with TWU, but I feel that if word came to them that there was consensus on council to encourage them to see both TWU and the county to try to nail down a location, then I think that that would help. And it also shows that university community that's sizable, that we support their access to vote. Now when it comes to the voting day location, because you can't have both, I would say then the voting day, have it be the Civic Center and the early vote, if I understood you correctly, but early voting you could do both. So I would say that TWU then for early voting would be for students who are on campus all day, students, faculty, and staff, it's really convenient. And again, because we have the one university there, I think it's only fair that we show our support. Again, what the county and TWU decide, that's up to them. But if we put that in there, I think that it would send a message to the TWU community that we support them having early voting access. - I'm good with the list as it sets. My slight concern is that I know of an event in November that had to move locations because of the parking lots being redone, and I'm assuming that's being done in phases, so there'll still be enough for the parking lot available for the voting. - You mean at the Gateway Center? - No, at the Civic Center. The Civic Center parking lots being redone, and I know that's a large event that had to move because of it. - The Civic Center's parking lot schedule has been revised and will not impact the election day or early voting planned at that site. - Okay, then I'm fine with the list as it sets. - Mayor Pro Tem. - A couple of things. So I'll start with the end. I'm fine with the list as is. I just wanna be careful that I distance from a couple of things. So one, the characterization that the Ethics Board doesn't have the autonomy to change their mind, or that somehow they've made up their mind, and it's predestined what they're gonna bring back to us. I distance from that. They need to have, heaven knows, this group makes the statements and then walks 'em back daily. So I want them to be free to do whatever they think is in the best interest to bring that back to us. So I don't adopt any of those characterizations that they've made up their mind or that anything's foregone or concluded. And then the characterization that if you somehow don't advocate for TWU, that you don't support voting is a bridge too far for me as well. Spent a lot of time on that campus. I talk to people regularly there and work very hard to grow that relationship as do several others here. And so I think that goes a long way, more so than something that is here, that is done in front of millions and millions of people watching online. You know, I think, thank you, I'm working hard over here. But yeah, so I think that, to me, that's, to me, I just wanna kinda say those things and say I'm fine with the list as is. I think it's important to shape conversations sometimes. They get a little broad, and so I think it's important to bring that in. - Okay, Council Member Briggs? You okay with this list? Okay. And I'm okay with the list, and I do wanna say that just because we're not adding TWU to early voting location doesn't mean that we don't support the students. In fact, I know I've had numerous conversations. I think TWU is very aware that the city supports that university in all areas, including but not limited to having the opportunity for their students to have access to a polling place, which the Dent Civic Center has served as that for many years, that I can remember. But we've got to quit having these, this isn't about staff. We've got to quit having these conversations on council at the final hour. I mean, if people want to support TWU to have a polling location, we need to start working on that for the next May election so that when we get down to the deadline, we're not faced with this deadline and with these kinds of, this idea that somehow if we don't add it, then, but I'm okay with the list. We've got, it looks like, four that are okay with the list. So we're gonna go with the list. Real quick, Council Member Armitage. - Yeah, so back in May, I mean, back when we were discussing the last polling location discussion, I made clear I supported TWU. I don't remember any objection. And so I'm not saying that that means that everybody supports a TWU polling location now, but I don't consider that waiting till the last minute. I also want to say, just real quickly, because this is public, that I disagree with the characterizations of what I said just because I say I am for something because I think this would be a good show of support to the TWU community. It should not be insinuated, again, per Robert's rules, not to imply intention that's not there. It should not be insinuated that the inverse is true, that I'm saying that, and if you're against this, then you're against TWU. That is sheer projection. I find that happens for whatever reason. To me, a lot. I make sure to say, here's why I'm for something, here's why I'm against something. I disagree with this or that. But I don't, I do not imply, and did not imply that people, that this council does not care about TWU. - I appreciate that, thank you. All right, so you have the, we've got this list. Council Member Briggs? - Are we gonna have another discussion on how this list and information is going to get out? Or is that gonna come maybe to a different committee on publication of, and how to, of this information? - We could certainly give you a communication plan on it in terms of how we plan on getting the word out if you'd like us to circle back. I mean, if that's what council is. We're happy to do that. - Sure, I mean, I think, yeah. I mean, obviously, the county's running these elections, so, but we can certainly put these out. Is this very different from in the past, other than the Gateway Center? - It's not very different from the past, and we will be including on our Vote Denton website listing these polling locations, and a part of the bond election information that will be publicized will include polling locations, so that will be a part of the communication effort. - And just the election date? - Correct. - Correct, correct. - Okay. - Okay. - Thank you. - Thank you, Rachel, appreciate it. All right, we now will, if someone could retrieve our council members, please. One, two, three, four, five. I will now convene the closed session at 512 p.m. We will consider the following items. Consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code Section 551.071. Didn't we have two? - We don't need to ask for one. - Okay. - It's over there, and if the council, who is deliberation, needs to know how to talk about new deal points with the developers. - Do we need to ask that now, or in closed session? You can, I think that you're going through the-- - We'll do it in closed session. We'll just convene it, and then we'll get it. All right, so convene the closed session at 512. We will consider the following items. Consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code Section 551.071, and then subheading deliberations regarding economic development negotiations under Texas Government Code Section 551.087. And dinner is served, so let's take about a five-minute break. And everybody turn your mics off, please. Let me turn my mic on. Welcome everybody to this special call meeting of the Dent City Council on August the 27th, 2019. Actually, it's our regular meeting time. It's 6.30. We've completed our work session items and our closed session, so we will now go on to the agenda for our special call meeting. First item on the agenda is our consent agenda. Council Member Ryan. - Move approval, except for items C and D. - Okay, so we're pulling items C and D for individual consideration. All right, so we have a motion for consent agenda items A, E, and F. A, B, E, and F. All right, we have a second. All in favor of the consent agenda items A, B, E, and F. Please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed? Motion carries six, zero. We will now consider agenda items C and D for individual consideration. Agenda item one C is consider approval of resolution of the City of Denton adopting the 2019-20 City Council priorities of the City of Denton for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2019. We had a work session on this prior to, Council Member Ryan. - I was gonna make a motion to postpone until an event's certain when it can be brought back to us for an additional work session. - Okay, second. And so that's the correct verbiage on that. So we have a motion to postpone to an event's certain upon staff bringing back to Council work session. Agenda items one C. We have a motion to postpone. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed, but like signed, carries six, zero. Who made the second? Council Member Briggs, I'm sorry. Thank you. Agenda item one D. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton adding section two dash 30 to the code of the City of Denton and adopting procedures for member of the City Council to submit information requests to staff and establish consensus regarding the use of staff time. Oh yes, yes, Council Member, I mean, Council Member. Mr. City Attorney. - I just wanted to remind the council that you all received an updated ordinance for adoption. So if you make a motion to approve, please refer to this substitute ordinance. - So we had, oh yes, Council Member Heltzer. - I wanted to move that, we've already given staff direction today essentially that this would be our standing rules of procedure. I would move to postpone enshrining it in ordinance for three months. So that'd be November 19th to just try these out and modify as needed before codifying it into ordinance. - Okay, Council Member Briggs. - I will second that. I enjoyed the conversation today and I thought we troubleshoot a lot of problems, but I also would like to just wait and see how it goes before it's an actual ordinance because it's a lot harder to go through and amend or get rid of an ordinance than it is to wait and make sure that it's all working because there may be some other changes we need to make before it is actual ordinance. - Okay, we have a motion to postpone and a second. So the vote will be to take action to postpone this until when? - Well, I said November 19th without knowing if in fact that's a council date. I just counted about three months. - Okay. All right, all in favor of that motion, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by raising your right hand. Okay, let me count real quick. Okay, so the motion to postpone fails four to three. Three to four, I'm sorry. Motion to postpone fails three to four. Mayor Pro Tem. - Motion to approve is this one D? - One D as in David, yes. Oh, is your mic on? - No. - Yep, please restate your motion if you don't mind, please. - Move to approve consent agenda item one D. - And is that with the modifications made on the latest ordinance that was corrected based upon our work session? - That is correct. - All right. Council member Ryan. - I second. - We have a motion and a second to approve items one D with the amendments made as passed out in our updated draft ordinance. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Motion carries five to two. All right, we'll move on to our items two on the agenda, which is items for individual consideration. Consideration of the use of eminent domain to condemn real property interest agenda item two A is consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton determining the public use, need, and necessity for the acquisition of various permanent sanitary sewer easements and temporary construction easements generally located along South Bonnie Bray Street near the intersection of Vintage Boulevard and US 377 and near the intersection of Corbin Road and Interstate Highway 35 West. - Good evening, Mayor and Council and City Manager. I'm Deanna Cody, Deputy Director of Capital Projects, Real Estate Division. The item before you this afternoon is for the Hickory Creek Sanitary Sewer Interceptor Project phases one and two and is shown on the map overhead. I know that one's a little difficult to read, so I did, oh, well, I saved better maps, but I can't pull them up, so sorry. But this indicates the location, the general area of the project. And the project is located near Vintage Boulevard and US 377, which is Fort Worth Drive, and also near the intersection of Corbin Road and Interstate Highway 35. So as we'll see here, 35 is on the northwest corner of the page, and Vintage, or Highway 377, is on the southeast side. Approval of this item will authorize the city manager, the city attorney, or their designees to acquire the necessary property interest by agreement, including making all offers required by law. In the event agreement cannot be reached on either the purchase price or terms, it will also authorize the city attorney's office to initiate eminent domain proceedings to acquire the property interest. The subject properties, again, as I mentioned, are located near Vintage Boulevard down to the southeast, and 35 on the northwest. And upon receipt of a favorable motion, the survey and legal descriptions will also be displayed. - All right, so it's my understanding that there's a motion to be, yes, Council Member Ryan. - Oh, I had a question. - Okay. - 'Cause I had never seen where we do a single motion for multiple properties that are not connected on eminent domain without having an acreage listed as well in the motion. - They're going to follow. - Well, normally it's listed in what we read as far as total number of acreage. - Can I call on Trey Lansford to answer that question? - We didn't list them all out here. It's not necessary in the motion itself to call out the acreage separately because the motion actually incorporates both the exhibits that are attached to the ordinance should it be passed and the exhibits on the screen. So by incorporation, it comes in that way. - Council Member Briggs, do you have a question? Are any of these residential homes? - Just one second. The Holloman Tract, there are no homes that will be taken if that's your question. So there are relatively large tracts of land. One of them is 195 acres. So there are large tracts of land and we won't be impacting any homes themselves. - Okay, so no homes will be affected, just the land. Thank you. - They're just going to be sewer easements, permanent and temporary easements. - Council Member Armitage, did you have a question? - Yeah, and so who is it, Denton Partners, LLC? - 195 Denton Partners. Let me see if that was included. You know what, I'm sorry, I don't think I have that on there and I know that is supposed to be one of the items. - Okay, well I should have asked in advance. I'll try looking that up, I know it's, so anyway. - I can provide that for you. - Okay, thank you, I should have asked that in advance. - Okay. So Chair would entertain action either, yes. - I move that the City of Denton, after having made offers required by state law use, required by state law use the power of eminent domain if needed to acquire various permanent sanitary sewer easements and temporary reconstruction easements generally located along South Bonnie Bray Street near the intersection of Vintage Boulevard and US 377, also known as Fort Worth Drive, and near the intersection of Corbin and Interstate Highway 35 West and being situated in the William Rourke Survey Abstract number 1087, the SA Pritchett Survey Abstract 1004 and the William Sajavis, one more time? - Sajavis. - Sajavis Survey Abstract 1174, Denton County, Texas and being particularly described in Exhibit A to the ordinance now under consideration and on the screens overhead now being displayed for the audience, all of which are for a valid public use necessary to provide for the construction, operation and maintenance of the municipal sanitary sewer system improvements necessary for the Hickory Creek Sanitary Sewer Interceptor phase one and two projects, projects to serve the public and citizens of the city of Denton, Texas. - And I believe all the surveys and legal descriptions have been displayed for each of the tracks noted in the ordinance. - Yes. - Council Member Ryan. - Second. - So we have a motion and a second for agenda item 2A. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Motion carries six to one. Moving on to now our items for individual consideration. 3A, consider nominations and appointments to the city boards, commissions and committees. Do we have a presentation on it? Council Member Ryan. - I move approval. - We have Council Member Davis. - Second. - We have a motion and a second for agenda item 3A. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. All right, the motion carries unanimously seven zero for agenda item 3A. Agenda item 3B, consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton determining the costs of certain authorized improvements to be reimbursed by the Razor Ranch Public Improvement District number one. Approving a preliminary service and assessment plan, including proposed assessment roles, et cetera. - Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Jessica Rogers, Director of Economic Development. I'll be presenting this item tonight. Tonight, we'll go over an overview of the preliminary service and assessment plan that was submitted to the city council for consideration and then submit for council consideration the preliminary, the resolution approving the preliminary service and assessment plan. This is a new slide that I added that I just wanted to clarify some of the questions that had come up. The conceptual site plan that had been discussed previously that was not adopted as part of the 2010 overlay ordinance or the economic development agreement, that's the information that we shared with you this past week in the informal staff report with the site plans. And then to clarify that the PIT itself is related to a reimbursement for public improvements that were made by the developer in their specific street and utility improvements. That information was also submitted to you in a memo that I attached to this agenda item, but certainly we'll go over those tonight. So some very quick background that we went over at the last work session. This started back in 2014 when the razor ranch PIT was created by resolution. Also in 2014, the memorandum of understanding was adopted by ordinance. In March of 2016, the reimbursement agreement for phase one was adopted by city council. November, 2018 was when the draft service and assessment plan was submitted to the city. And here we are in August, 2019. We held the work session a few weeks ago to review the draft SAP and tonight you will consider approval of the preliminary SAP and the noted in red there with affirmative approval tonight. We would move forward with holding a public hearing considering the amended and restated reimbursement agreement and considering adoption of the final SAP and assessment ordinance. - Council member Melser. - Yeah, I moved postponement until on or about February 25th, in other words about six months in order for city management to negotiate a greater role for city management and council to participate in the planning process. - Okay, we have a motion for postponement. Is there a second? - I'll second. - So we have a motion to postpone and a second until date certain, event certain? - Yeah, event certain, which is on or about February 25th, a council meeting on or about February 25th. - Yes, council member Ryan. - Friendly amendment to just make it for the city manager to have time to, once he negotiates it, so it might come sooner, it might come later. - I accept that amendment. - I'll secondly accept it. - Okay, all right. Okay, well, we'll have some discussion on the motion to postpone, 'cause we have a motion and a second. Council member, Mayor Pro Tem-Hudspeth. - Yeah, no, I don't, okay. My thought is and kind of my comment is that I feel like there needs to be clarity on what's going forward in that development. I don't say that I'm trying to stake anyone to any plan, but I am saying I can't support anything without a plan. I'm not willing to postpone because I wanna send a clear message that if things aren't organized in such a way that invites transparency to at least a vision forward, I can't get behind that just because I think that's what the citizens would want to understand. What does it look like? What is the plan that that's 'cause the, I think the number given to us is just north of 70,000 people visit the convention center and the 90% of what we're talking about sits right in front of that view. And so it would be irresponsible for me personally to say I'm going to sign on not knowing what's going in front of this key asset. Understanding it's a reimbursement, I get that and I think that's important. So for me, the rationale is simply this. There's a 2007 plan, there's a 2010 plan that was modified at some point before I was here and then there's a PID and a bond timing issue. So I think, okay, so by right, the 2010 plan is in place and what that looks like, but by right, the PID bond should be, we should be here talking about dissolvement. I'm willing to forego the dissolvement and at the same time concede the 2010 plan and say we're even, Steve, and let's put a plan forward. So that's kind of my hangup is I can't support anything that does not have some shape, form to it, goals. I mean, call it what you want. I'm not saying it has to be a static thing, but there do need to be goals and kind of targets in place so that I can understand what's going in front of this key asset. - All right, we'll go Council Member Ryan then Council Member Briggs. - Thank you, Mayor. You know, I understand those concerns and I know that there's been a lot of public discussion here recently about this, it appeared in the newspaper and I think this is an opportunity since there is a new owner to kind of create those plans and I know that some of the documentation has expired on some of this stuff that we need to get those updated and that's why I'm willing to support this is to give the developer in the city some time to work through these items and figure out what is actually going in there. - Council Member Briggs. - Yeah, that was my understanding as well by giving a little bit of time for the city manager that that would be the plan or those would be the items that would be discussed and would be brought back forward. If that's not correct or I'm mistaken, then I'd like to know that because that's really contingent upon what the future will bring and how I see this project. - Alright, Council Member Armitage. - If I had to vote yes or no today, I would have to vote no because more clarity is needed so I would rather vote to postpone knowing that when that comes before us, that's when we will have a public discussion so I don't see any sacrifice of transparency. Anyway, as I see it, given the motion, those are my two options right now so I'm gonna support the motion to postpone. - Council Member Davis. - Question for staff. On table three, we've got the different phases and I know that if we, there's kind of a deadline of if we don't approve an SAP, that we don't accept an SAP, excuse me, that certain of these will not be, we'll accept them as the city, we'll take ownership of those assets and the developer will not be able to be reimbursed for them from the PID. Phase one, Heritage Trail non-water and water improvements. If we don't approve a preliminary SAP, are they eligible for reimbursement in the future because they were in the reimbursement agreement or are they, as soon as they're accepted, they're out and we're done? - Phase one is eligible because of the existing reimbursement agreement. We have been working with the developer to negotiate an amended and restated reimbursement agreement to add phase three east into that. If we were to able to successfully negotiate that agreement and bring that forward for council consideration and council approve that, that could allow the city to accept phase three east prior to executing an SAP. - I guess my question is if we miss a deadline, is the phase one that's the number that's already in the reimbursement agreement, is that eligible for reimbursement later on or is it possible that that time expires on that also? - It's eligible later on. - Okay, then I would prefer not to postpone and to just go ahead and take care of phase one and negotiate regarding the remaining phases, but if the will of council is to postpone, then I don't think we've lost anything. - Yeah, I mean, we'll see how the vote turns out. I guess what I wanted to have was a little bit more discussion in public because we had a fairly lengthy discussion in closed session under economic development exception to the Texas Open Meetings Act. And I would, I mean, I don't know if I'm opposed to a motion to postpone. I think I would like to flush a little bit more of the data out and the facts out for the public so that they can understand sort of what the situation is, what some of the thoughts are of each council member. And then if it's, so if we have to take the vote now, I'm gonna vote against motion to postpone because I think that the public deserves some information on this issue that I don't think has really been forthcoming from this council because we haven't had a chance to talk about it until today, really, in an open session. So that's why I'm going to, if we're taking the vote now, then that's why I'm gonna make a motion. I'm not gonna support the motion to postpone. Yes, Council Member Nelson. - I'm not opposed to having substantive discussion before the vote is taken. I don't think those are opposing values. And just to add to that, there's a lot of discussion about the fact that what's evolved with the current, well, I guess it's the third owner, is different than what was envisioned. It was not required to occur, but what was envisioned in 2010. I think there's maybe some feeling of disappointment or a feeling that we could, that we should steer this better if we're gonna agree to support it with more public actions. And I would add my characterization that what people liked about the town center idea that was shown in 2010 was that it was something distinctive that would add to the regional appeal of Razor Ranch. And we now are hearing that's not really a viable economic model, but I think we wanna understand that what the new economic model will be and that it will continue to be something that will add to the regional appeal of the development, that that's the reason for the city government to even engage in this, 'cause otherwise they can develop on their own. But we have an interest in doing things that kind of really add to the pie. - Okay, so help me understand, because I know we have a motion in a second for a motion to postpone. I don't think we can have substantive discussion on the underlying posted agenda item, because that's not necessarily discussion related to the motion that's on the table. Is that correct, Mr. City Attorney? - That's right, the motion can be withdrawn or a superior motion to lay that motion on the table can also be made in allowing the discussion to go forward, this to go forward. - So let me make sure I understand this. So there's two options, there's three. The movement and seconder could say, "We will withdraw the motion." And at any time during the discussion, they could proffer that same motion. Or someone makes a motion to table the motion to postpone, which is a superior motion. And if that gets seconded and voted on, then we have to come back and make a motion to pull the motion postpone off the table and then vote on that, is that correct? - Yes. - Okay. - Whatever is the preference of the council. - Okay, I'm gonna leave it up to the movement who made the motion postpone. I'm just gonna let you sort of, do you wanna withdraw it or do you wanna, if? - I don't really wanna withdraw it, but I'd like to understand, can the mayor make motions? I mean, I know there's some question about that in the past. - No, the mayor can make motions, yeah. - Yeah, so, and you know, if you motion to table it, I'll second it. - Okay. Congressman Ryan, you wanna, mayor pro tem? - I'll just say for you, because on this course, Ron, I agree with you. It's unfortunate that it was, I just feel like you're too quick on the trigger to make a motion to postpone without having a conversation. You know, it begs a lot of questions that I won't go into, but it absolutely is maddening. I mean, I'll just, there's just no other way to put it. It's just frustrating. - All right, well, I'll make a motion to table the motion to postpone. Is there a second on that, Council Member Briggs? - Can I second two things? - Can she second two things? A motion to postpone and a motion to table? She seconded the motion to postpone. Can she second the motion to table? - Yes. - Okay, I second the motion to table and withdraw my second motion to postpone. - Well, if you withdraw your second to postpone, then I think it comes off the table, so we can just discuss anyway. - Okay. - Yeah, so are you making your motion, are you withdrawing your motion for a second? - Yes. - Okay, all right. So then the motion to postpone has dissolved, at least at this time. It could be resurrected at any time during this discussion. So I have a question for you. I've been wanting to ask this question. I see the red lettering on the slide. So it looks like, so in September, you're saying we're gonna hold a public hearing, consider amended and restated reimbursement agreement, which is you're saying if all three of these phases get approved in the SAP, and consider adoption of a final SAP and assessment ordinance. What are we doing today? We're passing a resolution to do what? - So it approves the preliminary SAP. It allows the developer to have an understanding of what the assessments will be. The developer still has to negotiate landowner agreements and get executed landowner agreements prior to the September 17th assessment. - Okay, all right, okay. All right, I'm sorry, you can continue with your presentation. Or is that it? - I'm sorry, I didn't count the number. - Oh, Mayor Pro Tem. - No, I thought, shoot, you can go ahead with the presentation. Yeah, I'll wait. - So I'm going to just walk you through sections of the preliminary SAP. The full document was attached in your backup. Section one is just the introduction and definition. So we're gonna move right into section two, which is the property in the PID. So the red outline that you see here is the public improvement district. The green outline that you see here is assessment area one. Today we'll only be talking about assessment area one. Section three of the SAP defines the improvement area and then public improvements that are eligible under the PID. So as we talked about, there are two sort of sections of improvements. Phase one, which includes phase one heritage trail and phase one utilities, which includes sanitary, sewer, storm, drainage, and water. And then also phase three, east improvements, which includes phase three of heritage trail and phase three of panhandle. Full documentation of those and descriptions of those are included in the SAP. So I didn't want to reiterate that again, but it's in that section and it's a link to the description of those, as well as exhibits for each of those are incorporated and the cost for each of those are incorporated as exhibits to the SAP. Section three also includes table three, which you see the outline of the costs of the improvements. So you see the PID funded improvements with a total of 8.214 million. Non PID funded public improvements at about 6.579 million for total public improvements in improvement area one of 14, right at $14.8 million. Section four of the SAP is the assessment plan. This is a section that's required by the law. In this council must make the determination that the value of the improvements is equal to or greater than the amount of the special assessments being levied. Table seven that you see here, pulled directly from the SAP does that by showing the total special benefit exceeds the total special assessments by $114,000. Also included in the assessment plan is the benefit allocation model. Here you see kind of broken down by percentage. This is the cost of the benefit that's allocated to the improvement area. All of the improvements are 100% with the exception of the phase one heritage trail water line. And engineering ran a model on that and established an 85% benefiting the improvement area and the developer has accepted that. Also in the assessment plan, you've established the special assessment methodology as we discussed in the work session. The developer's proposed using a per square foot of land basis and staff concurred with that methodology based on the timing of the development and the different land uses that were being proposed for the development. In section four, you also have the assessment allocation table that you see in front of you. It has the individual parcels, the parcel IDs, their square footage, the percent of the total that it makes up of the total land area. And as we talked about during the work session, that assessment is based on that percentage. So 1.3% of the total land area equals about 1.3% of the total assessment. This table also includes the tax rate equivalent rate and it's at 0.24. That was a requirement that it stay under 50 cents in the MOU. So that is the demonstration of that term. Section five is the service plan. The service plan outlines, or excuse me, the service plan is required under the PIT Act to cover a period of five years. So you see here the five years following enactment of the service and assessment plan. It demonstrates what the annual installments will be for the first five years after the SAP is approved and it would be updated annually as required by the law. Section seven is the assessment role. That's the chart you see in front of you. It outlines the individual lots and parcels, the property owners, the amount of the special assessment and the average annual installment for each property. Following that in the SAP is the amortization table for each property. So you see the 30 year payments for each individual property. This is parcel A, as an example, this is the same one we saw at the work session. So it outlines what that payment will be, the annual installment for that property owner would be every year over the 30 years. And so tonight for council consideration, as I mentioned, the resolution determines the cost of certain public improvements, approves the preliminary SAP and the proposed assessment role. It calls for and provides notice of a public hearing on September 17th to consider an ordinance levying the assessments. It provides for the staff to file the proposed assessment role with the city secretaries for public inspection and direct staff to publish and mail the notice of the public hearing to all property owners. Based on the staff recommends approval of the preliminary SAP as presented. Upon an affirmative action of the preliminary SAP, staff would take all actions necessary to implement the items that we just discussed. And then on your September 17th city council meeting, you would hold the public hearing and consider the final SAP. You would also need to consider the amended and restated reimbursement agreement to make phase three eligible for reimbursement. You would have to consider an inter-local agreement for collection service, and then lastly consider the assessment ordinance. If council does not wish to move forward with the preliminary SAP, council could direct staff to bring back or work with the developer to terminate the pay. And that's it for my presentation today. - Okay, questions, comments, discussion? Council member Briggs. - So I made the second, so I'm just saying this. So I thought that the first and the second could take place so that then discussion for the council. I didn't realize that you could only discuss what that would be, so. - The motion to postpone the discussion, yes. - Yeah, so yeah, I wasn't trying to like cut off discussion 'cause I think this is really important. This has been a long drawn out project. And I still feel like I'm still there with my belief that we should postpone it, but I would like to know a little bit more. Last time we met, it was said, we thought we had to approve it, and then you reiterated that we weren't. We weren't obligated to because of the process. And finding out a little bit more about the process has been very enlightening about how some things were taken out of step, which normally would go, and that's why I don't feel obligated today to go ahead and do an affirmative vote. - Okay, yes, Council Member Meltzer. - Yeah, I was actually motivated by Mayor Portem's, I thought, solid suggestion during the retreat that we get a motion on the table first before discussion. And I was also so sorry to have upset you by trying to actually respect your impetus. Yeah, and I didn't realize it would cut off discussion, it was not my intention. - Yes, Mayor Portem. - Thank you, and thank you. And yes, everything I offer, run with it, it's good. But no, so I think if we could, Jessica, if you could help me out, let me see if I can get there, I'm sorry. Google Maps, right? And if you Google search embassy suites, Denton, and then I have another location for you, I'm gonna get there, though. Yes, that's good. So zoom in a little bit, that's great. So, and out, just so you can get the whole phase one, if you can pan out a little, perfect. Yeah, so just, I'll have a pointer, but I won't grab it. So envision this, so at the top there, the driveway that ends there to the right of Chase Bank, up at the top of it, so that's, yeah, it's right there. So I do believe that is going to be, if you zoom in, that's gonna be town center, right? That, I'm making a point here. So that's gonna be town center, that road, coming in, right? Now, if you zoom in into the embassy suites, and right there, their driveway had to be named town center because you can't find them otherwise. So when you talk about the significance of getting a plan in place, what better, who drives around without using Google Maps? You're new to Denton, you don't know where to go, and but for the genius of somebody putting town center in front of embassy suites, you don't have a road to go to. And so when you're talking about the importance of getting a plan down and getting to work, because they're getting our tax dollars, and we need them to be successful, and we need to do what we need to do to make everybody winners in this development. And so again, somebody had the foresight to work around this imperfection, and so that's a problem. And then if you'll go to, so the other thing I want to point out is we've heard from the new owner, and he, and I gotta drive it, so I've not driven it yet, but if you'll, I don't have an address, I'm sorry. Let's see, if you'll go to Google Maps and type in Firewheel, and that's in Garland. 'Cause this is the example we're given that does not work. Okay, and you can kind of pan out a bit. And so what you don't see here is one, you don't see a hotel anchor and a convention center that would bring business there by default, right? So just organically, we have an anchored hotel. And I don't know how many of these businesses are closed, but I also understand that if you pan out, it's not surrounded by the similar development that we have in our area. So I get it, I'm not in a real estate business, but what I do need someone to do is explain to me, not superficially that, hey, it doesn't work. Let's get a little deeper to say why it doesn't work, right? Or what does work? And so that's my hangup, that's the detail kind of I need because those questions are gonna come to me and I have to be able to answer those. And so that to me is just the best way I can indicate the fact that we don't have an address for a key asset in our city because the street's not finished. And the comparison we're given that says does not work, and that's a little smaller green space. I just don't think it's comparable. Now again, I'll drive it and I'll see which businesses are closed there. But I think it absolutely is important and why I'm not, I absolutely would support the motion to postpone coming back but the reason I can't support it is 'cause I need to send a clear message that I'm very serious about even whenever it comes back, there needs to be a level of peace provided and some familiarity. And again, I'm willing to accept all kind of business norms, but we just need to have some level of detail that I can communicate back. - Okay. - Thank you. - Okay, Council Member Davis. - So I think there's kind of generally consensus on the council and probably in the public that we are not, we didn't get exactly what we thought we were gonna get with Razor Ranch and that we're not satisfied with the reasons why we didn't get exactly what we thought we were gonna get when we started talking about this more than a decade ago. I'm not convinced that the PID is the way to make that happen, to get what we want. We have, just the public remembers, we have two different things at play here. The PID is money assessed on site owners and property owners. The PID is not tax money going to the developer to pay for the roads that they're building and the water they're putting in. The Chapter 380 Economic Incentive Agreement is sales tax incentive. So that's a different thing. And to me, if we have big policy directives or big vision directives, for me, the time to put those into place, if we were gonna get our hooks into this developer to do exactly what we wanted, I think the time was back then when we negotiated the 380 or if we need to renegotiate the 380 and the sales tax incentive. For me, the PID is about putting in roads that are eventually gonna be city roads, putting in water pipes that are eventually gonna be city water pipes and having these property owners that are buying the land to put in the stores, have them pay for it. So I understand, like I said earlier, if the council wants to postpone and negotiate this some more and go back and forth with the developer, I'm okay with that. I would prefer, we already have a reimbursement agreement in place with the developer that covers Phase 3 Heritage Trail. I would prefer to go forward with just that, not the full ask, not everything the developer wants to have reimbursed, but just doing what doesn't require amending our existing agreement and going forward that way. But if we need to renegotiate, I understand that too. - Council Member Briggs. - Can we reopen and renegotiate the Chapter 380 agreement with the new owners? Is that something that we could do? - We can ask. - Oh, okay. So what you're saying is that agreement transfers over no matter who, we wouldn't have to go back in and update that anyway? - The agreement was assigned to the new owner. - Okay, all right. - Council Member Arbiter and then Council Member Mouser. - And can you remind us of the, and the public, the terms of that agreement that are binding in terms of time and the amount of sales, sales tax revenue or the maximum, it's up to a certain amount or by this time. - There's a lot of numbers off the top of my head I had to make sure that that had happened. - I'm only asking now that this is part of this. - This is the terms of the Chapter 3. So the phase one had a term of 20 years and phase two had a term of 25 years. The combined total cap is 62 plus an additional 6 million. That was for specific, for specific improvements. One was a tax on improvement, but a total of 68 million. - Yeah, I mean, I can't make that obviously decision. Like you said, it would be up to the developer. That would be interesting if they, I can't imagine being open to renegotiating that to make it worse for me if I were the developer. I would wanna renegotiate to make it better. So I'm not sure if that's realistically even on the table or if that can even be discussed in posting, but I don't wanna, I don't wanna make a decision now assuming that that's a possibility. - Council Member Meltzer and then Mayor Potem. - I agree with Council Member Davis that the optimal time would have been 10 years ago. I would move for doing that if that were possible. But since it isn't, I'd say now's the time to, with a new counterpart, to be able to bring sort of everything to the table and reach a new meeting of the minds together. - Mayor Potem. - Thank you. Question for Council Member Davis. I think I'd adopt your position. I guess the hangup I have is the PID assesses the current property owners that then are disadvantaged by the lack of interior streets, right? So I, and so the property owner in and of themselves, themselves, they, Fidelis, they own a large chunk of the property, but also Embassy Suites is next up, I presume, and they have a large chunk and they have to name a driveway after a street to get people to them. And then for that, I say, I'm gonna make you pay, you know, an assessment. I get it that it's not that street. I concede that. I just have a hard time okaying an assessment on something that, when they're disadvantaged. That was my thing at the beginning. It's like, I have to make it easy for you to flourish so then I can make these assessments on you. And I think, and so that's where I get, that's where I need to understand, do you see a sense of the current owners being disadvantaged by the lack of interior streets or the lack of a plan going forward? - May I respond? - Of course. So, I certainly see that there's a disadvantage for a long term, one of the properties that's been out there longest so far is the Embassy Suites. That's a good example because they've been out there longer than some of the other places that are developing now. And I could see the disadvantage to that particular property owner with the plan changing and not being known and a new developer comes in and it's gonna be different. My point is, the PID is a different process. The PID has a process for the developer negotiating agreements after we do this, if we were to do this, then the developer goes back to the individual property owners and they have their property owner agreement and then those owners can lodge objections with us before the, well, I guess they actually lodge their objections with the developer and then we hear about them at our public hearing on the 17th and that's a public hearing. They can also appear and that's kind of their mechanism to do that. I see your point that they're at some disadvantage for the plan changing, but at the same time, I'm just not convinced the PID and changing up the PID is the way to achieve what we want out of this property. I don't know that we're gonna get the hooks in the developer that we think we're gonna get negotiating when and if they get reimbursed for streets that they're building and then handing over to the city. I'm more in favor of going forward with the agreement that's currently in place, that's the reimbursement agreement that's already in place, honoring that portion of it, which is just the first couple lines on table three and then for the rest of it, if the developer is gonna keep coming back and asking for assessment under the PID, that that's the time to hold their feet to the fire and make them do the things that they're supposed to be doing all along. - Yeah, I've got a couple of comments. Good heavens, I don't know where to start. Well, first of all, the fire wheel development had a Dillard's anchor and a Macy's anchor. And when you look at, I'm probably the only one here that's probably been involved with this over the last 10 years. I mean, mainly as a, in the beginning, as just a single member district representative in the last six years or five years as mayor. And, you know, that, and I'm certainly not gonna say that I didn't wanna see that concept plan that was presented, whether it was codified or not, it was presented to during many different meetings to say this is still what we're doing. It was presented probably to some of the people who built properties out there. But I don't know if this is the, this is the opportunity to make that happen. I will say, Dillard's didn't come, all right? And that was a big factor. I mean, that concept plan had a big anchor tenant with a lot of the, the leases did not materialize in that format according to that concept plan. But I think what we have seen, and that Google Maps representation that you pulled up is very misleading because there's a lot more development out there that's actually finished and on the ground. I mean, there was a lot of dirt. It showed where the Chetters was and the IHOP was gonna be, but it wasn't represented in that photo. The Alamo draft house wasn't there. So the multifamily going up on the east side wasn't there. So I don't know if we're trying to use this as leverage to get something that they're not probably trying to get anyway. These are a new partner with the city. These are new owners of this development. And they purchased it with all the associated risks, all the associated disclosures. And I'm okay with, as I've looked through this, if our current reimbursement agreement says that part of that reimbursement is phase one of Heritage Trail, which is the road and the water, I believe, water improvements, which totals about $5 million. I'm okay with approving that. I'm not okay with doing the phase three east improvements, which would require an amended reimbursement agreement. I don't know what it means to say total non-PID funded public improvements. What exactly does that mean? - Those are public improvements that were made and accepted by the city. So they're not eligible for reimbursement under the PID. They would be eligible for reimbursement under the chapter 380 agreement. - So they won't be coming back for some other SAP for the PID. This is the, well, if we approve the 8.1, then this would be the only time anybody's coming back to us for any money for the PID to reimburse, is that correct? - For improvement area one. - For improvement area one, okay. So in improvement area one, the phase two and three non-PID funded public improvements, which are the same thing, roads and water infrastructure, those will be recovered under the 380 agreement, which says it's an eligible cost. - They would be eligible to be submitted by the developer under the chapter 380 agreement. - So I have a question, and this may be a legal question, 'cause I understand that there still has to be a owner agreement or property agreement that is entered into with the developer for the PID. Is that correct? There's still another level of agreements that must be entered into? - Yeah, it's a land owner agreement between the land owner and-- - Land owner agreement, yes. - My question is, is that just sort of a ministerial action that here's a template contract and there's really no negotiation in that? I mean, does our approval here, in essence, provide a stronger hand to a developer over a land owner to say here's what we're gonna assess you at? And what if they don't agree? What if they don't come to an agreement? What happens? - Yeah, Mayor and Councilman Mack Ryan won with the city attorney's office. So the land owner agreement is not part of the statute, but it was part of the agreement that the city has in place, the reimbursement agreement with the developer that said before you come back in to get approval of the service and assessment plan, you go out there and make sure you have the land owner agreements, which basically is the land owner consenting to the assessment that the city would be put on the property. So that's part of actually the reimbursement agreement itself. It was attached to it as part of that agreement. It's a template that just has basically to fill in some of the assessment values for that property owner. So when it comes back to the council, you'll have the consent of all the property owners that are being assessed that they agree to the assessment of being levied. - So you're saying that land owner agreement has to be completed prior to this September the 19th or 17th public hearing where if it moved to that timeframe, if in other words, if we just continue to move forward, that's when those land owner agreements would have to be in place, not today with this preliminary approval, is that correct? - Based on that agreement, they would come back by the 17th. - All right, so my question then still remains, what if land owners don't agree? What if they don't sign the agreement? - Yeah, we've talked about with the developer, I think the developers, first of all, very confident based on his agreements that he can get those. But if they didn't, then we would postpone the actual levying on those properties, likely until the future date. - On the ones that don't have an agreement or on all of them? - On the ones that don't have the agreement. - The ones that don't have the agreement, okay. All right. Okay, so yeah, I still stand with my thoughts that I'm okay with phase one heritage trail non-water improvements, phase one heritage trail water improvements, because I think if you look at the schedule of property owners, it's the developer that has most of the property, is that correct? That table, where is that? Yeah, okay, so RR Town Center Associates, LLC, are the properties that are still in fee with the developer, there's not another owner of that property, is that correct? - That's correct. - So on these land owner agreements, how does that work with the developer who owns the property? In other words, do they sign one for themselves or they're just agreeing? I guess they probably would if they want to satisfy the statute, I mean satisfy the ordinance or requirement that you have to have consent. - That's right, they would sign their own. And just to clarify the prior answer I gave, so one of the options would be to delay on those properties, according to the agreement, they have to have all those agreements into the city by that September date, September 17th. If they didn't have those in, one of the options the council could have is not levying the assessments until all of those come in. So that's another option. - So there's still a opportunity for the council to look at how things are progressing, at least at this September deadline. So my hunch is then, if it's a developer owned property and they execute their own land owner agreement, if they sell that property, that's gonna be part of the due diligence and the discussion with the new property owners that, well, you're gonna take this subject to this land owner agreement and this PIT, I mean, that's a private transaction, but it's good to understand sort of those processes. - Yes, sir. - Okay. - Yeah, and the levy would be put on the deed records as well, so anybody buying those properties would know about the assessment on that property. - Right, so I think it's important for me to share and then I'll stop. I don't talk very much this long, so I think this is important. When this was originally approved in 2007, right before the recession, there were many things that were promised. You know, you hear the term over promise, under deliver, under promise, over deliver. Well, this was the former. Because some of the names that they threw out there and so forth, we were all excited. I wasn't on the council at the time, it was originally approved. But then the recession hit and it, I mean, well, I think the development went under before then, but the recession hit and now it's taken this long to get it to where it is and I will tell you, the construction of the convention center was a game changer. That was a game changer for this development and I think you've seen it over the last year as it's gotten its momentum. There's a tremendous amount of business that that convention center is creating. In the grand scheme of things, our reimbursement agreement that we approved, that the council approved back in 2014, I think the first week of May, had specifically phase one of the heritage trail and those other, the water improvements in that reimbursement agreement. So I'm okay with approving that as the SAP and letting the phase three, just if they wanna include it as a non-funded PID infrastructure that would then be moved over to the 380 agreement, I'm okay with that. I don't know if we're gonna set the tone and we're gonna have the leverage that we think we're gonna have by putting it off because there's no way we can negotiate for specific tenants. There's no way we can negotiate for specific tenants. I mean, I guess we could but I don't know who would do that on the other end of the negotiation. But we can limit it, we can approve a limited version of it and that's why I wanted to have this discussion because we had a work session last time but it didn't go into this depth with each council member's perspective and the developer is here hearing all this. That's why I thought that this public discussion was very, very important. That's where I am, I'm okay with moving forward with the phase one, the two phase ones which equate about $5 million and that's where I stand. Council Member Meltzer. - So we do have a new counterpart. We don't know what leverage or help it would provide for us in reaching a meeting of the minds to do it all together with everything on the table. As was discussed earlier, there's nothing lost, some time value but substantially nothing lost by having that come later. While we don't know, while it's doubtful that city manager could negotiate specific tenants because they're not a party to the deal, I don't know what kind of terms can help get us to a clearer vision of what the plan is. I imagine the terms don't include specific name tenants but I don't think that we can conclude that therefore no planning is possible. So I remove, I move again, that we postpone this item to allow time for the city manager to negotiate an understanding of what the plan is with a time limit of six months which would be honor about council meeting of February 25th. - The only thing I would add to that is I understand what you're saying about it can't hurt but you're assuming certain positions and certain styles and negotiations on the other side. The thing that's gonna make this project successful is a good solid relationship between the parties. And so that's the risk we take potentially but that's the risk we always take. So I'm not saying that to advocate for or against but we cannot predict necessarily how things will play out because if we say no, and if you can't come to meeting of the mines, they're gonna include it in their reimbursement, they're gonna get it back anyway, and then if we've created an environment that isn't as much of a win-win then in the end we've hurt ourselves and they have to take the same position. I mean, they're in the same place. How do we continue to move forward in a win-win? Council member Ryan. - Okay, just for clarification, we've only had a movement, we haven't had a second so I can continue on the discussion. - That's correct. - Okay, well, just a couple of things. Back in the 2010 time period I was on planning and zoning and there were a lot of design standards that came through planning and zoning. I don't think, I can't remember the PID coming through for sure but the town center concept has been there even though it just went to a bubble on the map at that point. I think that that's right now a lot of citizens' concerns are when the new, when developer number three says, well, that's just not gonna work anymore. Well, what is? We have no idea and that's why I'm, much as I would, if we didn't have that issue, I'd have no problem moving forward on this today but because of that issue I'd like to have at least some idea of what's going on. - What issue, help me understand, the issue of what specifically the site conceptual plan would look like like we had with the elliptical development. You're saying you wanna site specific concept plan? - Yes and it doesn't have to be exact. It just, through developer one and developer two it moved very little and with developer two we developed standards for what the orientation was gonna be, the building products that would be used on those around there which, yeah. Well, we can still do orientation. There's nothing wrong with that. - Building material. But I will say that when Embassy Suites opened up at the grand opening I was talking with developer number two and I said, you know that this is a game changer. This is gonna take this from being a 10 to 20 year build out on this property to a five to 10 year and I see it happening and there's, but we're at about 50% but it's picking up speed as we go through here. Not knowing what that, how much change there is in that concept plan that has been shown to us on a slide. It just has never been incorporated into an ordinance. Not knowing that, I would prefer to give the developer, developer number three and the city manager's office some time to at least make us and the public comfortable with what's going on in there. - Casper Arrometer. - Yes, was that a second or? - In that case I want to speak for the discussion. - Oh, okay. - So if I second, does that shut off for their discussion or that opens up discussion of the postponement? - Just regarding the motion. - Yeah, that's what I thought. So anyway, I am happy to second the motion to postpone and I want to reiterate the very last thing you said about input from the public or trust of the public and I welcome the public also to weigh in how they feel about this and to ask questions. If we can't answer those questions, we'll get them, find the answer for you. I know this is all very complicated but I'm happy to support the motion to postpone. I'm being transparent about my skepticism but I'm willing to listen to what comes forward to us afterwards as a result of those discussions and I really don't see the harm in having them. I think it's best for everybody. - Thank you. So question for staff, what date was the last work session we had? - August 14th. - 14th. - 13th. - So about two weeks? - Yeah, it was two weeks ago. - Okay. And you've been in contact with the new owner developer? - Yes. - Okay. And we had a newspaper article about this issue. We raised this issue during that work session and in that two weeks, any communication on any future looks or any specific kind of hey, here's what we're leaning just in case you're asked about what it's going, what shape it's gonna take or what it's gonna look like? - Generically, yes. We provided the marketing concept plan to council as part of the informal staff report. - Better said, from the new ownership. They provided it. - Yes, we provided it and we provided it to city council earlier this summer as well as we've been discussing with them as it relates to the questions we've been getting was specifically was the concept plan previously presented something that they had to comply with? That was a requirement of the 380 or of the overlay. So our research has focused from that perspective. It has not been focused on a necessarily forward-looking what is the vision for the future over the last two weeks. - Got it. And I guess regarding the postponement, why I can't get on board with that is, and I absolutely possibly could get on board with what you're saying, Mayor, but what derails that is I sat in the same chair raising the same issue and the newspaper picked up on it that I was extremely concerned about it. I think staff did due diligence over the past two weeks, but the people that need to provide the answers and I just, I cannot, I think I absolutely agree with you, but I don't know how else to say not driving down or making blind corners is not, that's not, I'm not okay with that because I just can't say what did I support? What did I vote for? What did I, what was I okay with? I don't know, they said it'll be okay. You know, I just, that's tough for me to get over. I think if there's any response over the past two weeks, if they would have done like the didn't record chronicle and said, hey, we understand you're concerned, come meet with me. And matter of fact, red development did that when I was on planning and zoning. He, I had some issues and we sat at Chick-fil-A for an evening and looked over there and said, hey, this is going here, this is going there, this is why a gas station won't work on that side of the street. We stepped through all those processes and it was unprompted, unsolicited. He pulled me aside after the meeting and said, hey, let's go so that you can see. And I think that to me is not telling, it's not indicative of the future, but I just would have, my personal preference is, so I absolutely could have gotten there. I just don't know that the message is, is clear. - Okay, so we have a motion and a second to postpone until, until city manager, you know, can reach, I forget the exact language I used before. Maybe you can help, John, you know. - And events, yeah, an event certain of the city managers working through these issues that we've discussed today. - Yeah, coming to an understanding of what the plan is, basically, with a maximum time of six months. - Okay, all right. And so we have a second, council member Armitter on that. All in favor of a motion to postpone, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Motion carries five to two. All right, thank you all. All right, we're going to move on to agenda item three C. Consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton appointing one member to the board of managers of DENCO area 911 district, providing an effective date. - Good evening, mayor and council. I'm Rachel Wood. I think it is officially evening this time that I'm presenting. So I'm not going to crack myself this time. - It's night. It's good. - Good night. - Yeah, yeah, it's good night. Yeah. - So really quickly on June 11th, you named Sue Tamil to the slate of nominees for the DENCO 911 board of directors. The purpose of tonight's item is just adopting the resolution naming the city's official nominee to the DENCO 911 board of directors. Based on feedback from other cities who are DENCO members, Sue Tamil, Phil Castleman and Dave Terry are the nominees that were added to the slate. So tonight we just need you to adopt a resolution naming who you would like to have serve on the DENCO 911 board. - Council member Davis. - I move that we adopt the resolution appointing Sue Tamil to the DENCO 911 board. - Okay. Council member Ryan. - Second. - All right. - We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. All opposed by like sign. Motion carries six to one. Moving on to agenda item 3D. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton at Texas Municipal Home Rule Corporation reimbursing LGI Homes, Inc. A Delaware corporation, $236,000 as a credit for assessed and collected roadway impact fees for Beaver Creek additions, phase 1B and Beaver Creek additions, phase two. - Council, I'm here. Todd Estes, city engineer. Beaver Creek Homes is a subdivision that was built, has four different phases that was built on the north side of town. We'll get into that. They did pay $238,000 in impact fees and they're requesting a refund of $236,000 of that. They built Long Road, which is on our mobility plan and is impact fee eligible. Just to give you a quick rundown of where this is located, we have five different service areas that are impact fee eligible. They are in service area D, they're this yellow block on just the north side of loop 288. So they built two phases and Long Road along with it. Long Road is on the mobility plan. Now, originally it actually curved this way. It now goes this way. But between staff and the developer, they agreed that would be an equitable way to make that line up on the mobility plan long-term. And then phase three was considered as part of the overall development anyway, but it was the last piece to go. Construction costs for Long Road between phase one A and phase one B totaled about $714,000. So the impact fees assessed at time of platting for all phases would equated to about $674,000. Staff would recommend ordinarily that we would credit the impact fees towards the public improvements. In this case, the way the impact fees were credited, it was just after the impact fee ordinance went into effect in 2016 when the first phase was plotted. So it was impacted by the impact fee ordinance. The staff member at the time who evidently had the way the pathway forward worked or the way the process worked at the time, we had a staff member in the development review side that had the ability to credit the impact fees or give that commitment. This was done via email and some digital memos passed between certain staff members to credit those impact fees for the improvements. Now, when that staff member left, any homes that were built after that person left, that information got lost in translation. So about, if you look at this table, about 90 homes were built, most of which landed in phase one B or phase one A that did not have any impact fees assessed. They were credited those impact fees towards Long Road. And then when that staff member left, the loss of communication occurred between the development review engineering staff who was aware of that and the building inspection staff who actually assesses these and collects these fees when people come in to build their homes and grab a permit. That's when that fee gets actually collected. About 120 of those homes, when the permit came in they were, the impact fees were collected at that time to the tune of about $238,000. Now, as all phases were built, the contractor or the developer came back in April, May and started to ask, can I get a refund for those impact fees? 'Cause I have an email and some documentation that says that we were to be credited for impact fees to build Long Road. Our staff said, I'm not aware of that until we did a lot of digging. They helped us find that information. It's that loss of communication again. We did find that information and do still believe that they are entitled from staff's perspective to that refund of $238,000. They are requesting $236,000. We would also intend to further credit the remainder of phase two and phase three impact fees towards the construction of Long Road. Going forward, staff definitely would recommend that any and all cost participation requested by the developer be encapsulated in some form of a development agreement. That way staff does have a way of going forward. When other staff leaves, there is a document that's either been approved administratively if it's under $100,000 or by council, if it's over $100,000 to make sure that that staff doesn't lose this in translation. There is a document that both the developer and the city has in their hand to say, you really are entitled to that credit. So tonight, we're recommending that a refund of $236,000 from the service area D roadway impact funds be refunded to the developer. And I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have. - Council Member Briggs. - So a couple of questions. Do we still do credits in that same way? I mean, I know that you're requesting that our process change to actual development agreement, but do we give credits ahead of time still? - No, we go through the development agreement as the process to get there. - 'Cause that's, I remember some other ones where the reimbursement happens after the fact. - The most recent one that we actually did, and you are right, you can do that after the fact as well as beforehand. The ordinance does allow for that to happen. The Ebers way subdivision was the most recent where we actually credited impact fees and it was in a development agreement. - And so on this one, it's impact fees and you kept mentioning long road. So this impact fee only is for the construction of long road? Because impact fees were different things as well. - Well, there are several different kinds of impact fees. So the roadway impact fee applies to the service area in which the roads are identified. So this piece of long is on the mobility plan, right in this service area D. If we collect impact fees, typically the way this works is you credit the impact fees towards the construction of the actual infrastructure built or the city has the option to not credit the impact fees, collect them when a building permit is drawn. And then at a later date, we would use those impact fees to either go construct that facility or some other facility within that service area. So say this particular road was constructed by the developer or wasn't and we didn't need it in the long term, we collect the impact fees, but we did have a need to build a different road within service area D before you do this one, you could use that money elsewhere in service area D. - And just on the long road, 'cause when you think long road, you think the stadium there and that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the long road that starts at Stewart, right, does it start and then goes through the development? - Yes, so here's Stewart, the stadium road is actually the little angled piece here that goes off to the right. And then the stadium is actually back on this side of the screen. - What, does it exit? - Yeah, right now it dead ends. - Are we, is the city on the mobility plan, are we gonna be responsible for that or will that be another development? - On the mobility plan, there's another roadway that lines up next to this and that continues out as development picks up. - So that'll be the developer doing that? - Whoever comes in next, yes ma'am. - Okay, thank you. - Council Member Armitage? Oh, I thought she had a question, okay. So just so I understand. It's my understanding that because they're building the road, so this is how I've understood impact fees in general, that you can get a credit against, if you build out infrastructure that would be required or that is impact fee eligible, that you therefore, technically, you don't pay me the impact fees, but you build the road. - Correct. - Is that correct? - Exactly. - So what happened here is we collected it, they built the road, which in a normal circumstance, we probably would have said, if you're building the road, you don't owe us any impact fees 'cause it's gonna be, that segment of long road will qualify for that. And so reimbursing them is just getting us back to how the process was supposed to work, in essence. - Exactly, correct. - Okay, all right, fantastic. Yes, Council Member Bray? - I'll motion to approve. - Council Member Ryan? - Second. - We have a motion and a second. Let's, oh, I was gonna say vote on the board. Everybody who is in favor of this motion, please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries seven, zero. We are moving on now to concluding items. Concluding items. Council? Mayor Pro Tem? - There's the overdose awareness event Saturday on the courthouse. And then before that, there's tailgating for UNT's first home game. So, two great events. - And what time is the overdose awareness? I think it starts at 6.30. - Yes, starts at 6.30, goes to 8.30. - Okay. - Yes, sir. - Any others? I just wanna give us another shout out to Brian. It's his last meeting, it's not his last day, but it's his last council meeting that he'll be working behind the scenes. So, again, congratulations and wish you all the best of luck and success. So with that, we will stand adjourned at 8, or 7.47.