I understand we have a full agenda, Steve's running late, so I'm going to kick us off today for this meeting.
Good morning, welcome to this meeting of the Economic Development Partnership Board.
It is Wednesday, August 14, 2024 at 11.05 a.m.
We have established a quorum, so I'll call the meeting in order.
We now have with items for consideration, item A, EDP 24-059, consider approval of the meeting minutes for June 12, 2024.
Are there any questions?
At this time, the Chair will entertain a motion to approve.
I'll second.
Got that, first and second?
All in favor aye?
Any opposed?
Motion passes.
Call items for work session, start with the first item, calling out, I'm reading that.
We will now begin our work session.
Our next item is item A, EDP 24-055, receive a report, call the session and give staff direction regarding the update and therefore master plan.
Chair recognizes Ryan Adams to speak.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the board.
My name is Ryan Adams, I'm the director of the Denton Enterprise Airport and knowing that you all have a pretty stacked agenda, I'll move through this at a pretty good time.
Just to give you an overview of what we have coming up with our airport master plan.
Give you a little background on Denton Enterprise Airport.
If you didn't know, we have an airport in Denton.
We started in 1943 as an Army Airport training field.
And as recent as the first 40 years, it really didn't grow all that much.
As you can see, it still had a pretty small profile in 1985, just one small, one outdated terminal, a single runway at 5,000 feet.
That was its first 40 years since 1985, so the next 40 years we've grown pretty substantially.
We now have two runways, one at 7,000 feet, one at 5,000 feet. We are a towered airport and we're actually designated as a national airport and a reliever airport for Love Field and DFW,
which generally means that general aviation traffic that cannot get into DFW because of all the passenger traffic, that falls to us in a couple of airports in the area.
Just some quick facts on DTO, we are over 900 acres. About half of that is actually built out, so there's a lot of room to grow.
And you'll actually see that this land right here to the west side of the airport is airport property that is right now making hay for cows.
And we're waiting for Luke 288 to drop down and get vehicle access to that side of the airport so we can start developing it
and eventually double the footprint of Denton Enterprise Airport.
So we specialize in general aviation traffic and that is almost everything that's not scheduled passenger service.
So you can't buy a ticket and fly out of Denton Enterprise Airport, but you can go to flight school, you can do small cargo, you can rent a hangar if you have your own plane.
You can even get your plane painted and finished. We have a paint shop there.
Charter flights, corporate travel, everything that falls under general aviation we do, just not that scheduled passenger service.
We are a busy airport. Right now we are the fifth busiest airport in the state. We're only behind DFW, Lovefield, San Antonio, and Houston International.
And we do about 2,000 operations a year, 200,000 operations a year that's takeoffs and landings.
So that equates to about two or three every minute. If you spread it across the entire day, of course, when it's peak, it's quite a bit.
And we have fantastic tower staff that really keep that going.
We have lasted an impact study for the airport's impact on the community in 2018. We actually have an open coming up.
But at that time, the airport supported over 1,400 jobs in the local economy, pumped $45 million in annual payroll into the local economy,
and had an overall impact of about $150 million. And of course, these are old numbers. It's 2024.
So we expect those have gone up quite a bit since that one study just done by Tax Stop.
And I'll also mention on this, we are trying to view ourselves right now as an economic engine for the community.
So part of our plan and part of what you'll see just as a theme in this master plan is that we want to be an economic generator.
We don't want to just be an airport that serves people who have planes.
We want to make sure that what we do is a force multiplier for the local economy so that the airport benefits the community, the regional economy, they all benefit as well.
So master plan is something that we do about every 10 years, give or take. It's mandated by the FAA.
We had our last update in 2015. So it is definitely our time to do our next master plan. And a lot has changed in DFW since 2015.
We've grown substantially. We weathered the pandemic. We're lucky that the FAA funds about 90 percent of this project,
which means that we can do it and we don't have to really take a lot of financial hit for doing this planning effort.
It's about 12 to 18 months to do a master plan and do it well.
And this is going to give us a 20 year guide to how the airport will develop, what our operations will be and how we need to maintain the airport.
And if you think about it, even in 2015, a lot has changed in aviation, particularly with UAS unmanned systems drones.
That, in effect, is the next frontier that really wasn't part of our 2015 plan. So that'll be a big part of our current plan here in 2024, 2025.
And what this plan will do is it will forecast what the aviation demand is here in our region, what the aviation demand is nationally,
how we can operate efficiently and safely, what's the optimal land use for the airport.
So we're just not doubling out leases just because someone happens to knock on the door.
But we have a plan on how we want that property to develop and really what our potential revenue generation profile looks like,
not only for the airport, but for the community. How can we be that economic driver?
And you'll find as we give you updates on this master plan, our goal isn't really to be all things to all people.
Our goal is to find those one or two things that we can do as an airport and do them incredibly well and better than anyone else in the region if we can.
That way, we really distinguish ourselves in certain areas.
That's really what we're going to be pushing the staff is to make sure that we can carve out a niche for ourselves that really fits what the demand is for aviation.
So a little bit more about what the plan is. So it is very much a comprehensive, long range plan is going to identify those future needs.
It will be adopted by the city council. So we're going to bring a plan that the council approves up because it in turn becomes a policy document.
It will tell us how we manage the airport for the next 10 years.
And it's also an opportunity for people with a stake in the airport to talk about it.
So we have public meetings. We're going to have our next one in October.
We have a planning advisory committee that met in July.
And our goal is to get a very broad cross section of community to tell us what they think the airport should be, match that up with the data and figure out what our path is.
What it isn't, it's not a guarantee of any particular projects for the airport. So it's just like your mobility plan.
You know, we think a road should go here, but it may not go exactly here. It may not be six lanes and maybe four. But it's a general idea of what we can forecast in the future.
It's not a guarantee of funding. FAA will definitely say that. And it's not any kind of guarantee of any type of environmental clearance.
We still go through all those processes as we develop, but it just gives us that vision that way forward.
This is just a very brief overview of what the plan is. We are currently in phase one.
We are just getting a sense of what our conditions are and the aviation ecosystem here in the region nationally, globally.
And our consultants are working on getting that information to make sure that we just know, at least currently, where do we sit.
So what do we expect to get out of this? Now, I put a picture up there of our 2015 master plan.
This is probably one of the the best images we can pull from it and what they envisioned for the airport.
They did take into consideration that we would have a second runway, which is right here. And we do have that couple other items that are listed on there.
We have a couple items we don't have. As you'll notice, they thought that we might be developing the west side already.
We've not done that because we don't have the vehicle access. But what we want to get out of it is really a focused approach.
We want to know what is our niche? How do we want to develop? What do we need to focus on for the next 20 years?
And what does that look like in terms of development? What types of buildings will we have? What types of development will we have?
What does that look like in terms of operations? What types of flights do we want to attract at the airport? Who will they serve?
And then, of course, I mentioned earlier, maintenance. What is going to be our maintenance standard to accommodate that aviation traffic?
How often will we need to go and update and renew and improve our pavement to make sure we can carry the planes that we need to carry if they're bigger or if they're different?
What type of infrastructure will we need to have if we want to, say, build a vertical for drones?
They don't really need that much pavement. They do need a lot of power. And that is going to be a big discussion as part of this master plan.
And essentially, it's going to give us a vision for the west side. But more important than that, really, it's going to tell us how we can optimize our contribution to aviation and our contribution to the community.
Because, again, we don't want to be just a service. We want to be a driver for the economy and a driver for the region in terms of aviation.
So that is my very brief, very quick summary for you guys. I'm happy to take any questions, but I do want to give you a quick link.
If you want to just stay up to speed on our master plan, we do have a website. You can get there from the QR code or this really weird URL link that starts out with DTO.
And it's just strange. I've never seen one like that. But that will have all the updates as we have materials become available, forecasts become available, meeting minutes, diagrams, everything will go to that site.
And that is the one place where you can get all the information on where we're at right now with the study. Again, it's a 12 to 18 month process.
So it's going to be a bit before we actually finish it. And it's going to be a bit before we have a draft plan to bring to this group, to bring to our airport board, bring to the council.
But there's a lot of work that happens in between. And it's really interesting stuff. So I encourage you to go there.
And quick plugs. What's going on at the airport? All right. So we have a main runway that is getting a complete, complete reconstruction. That's going to be done next week.
So I invite you to come out, take a look at it. We have our Halloween events coming up in October. If you were there, if you were able to get in last year because we had about 5000 more people than we expected.
Great. We're doing it again. We're going to have more parking. I encourage you to bring your families out.
We are going to do an economic impact studies. We hope to bring that back to this group when it's done. I expect that to happen in the next six months or so.
We're looking at about 300,000 square feet of additional development on the airport. We are in negotiation for that right now.
And not listed there is we are starting to have food trucks over at the airport every other Friday. So if you work out on the west side, you know, there's not a whole lot of restaurant options over there.
So if you go to a city, I'm sorry. It's a didn't airport dot com slash food trucks. You'll see the schedule. You see who's coming and we invite you to come out, get some grunt.
So that's all I have. I try to make it quick for you guys. I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.
On the west side of the runway, is it is it going to be for sure when text starts or is there an alternative plan in case that projects gets delayed or is that something you guys are going to look at right now?
In terms of what we can get funding from the FAA and TechStop to give alternative vehicle access. The timeline for that would match up about with what TechStop is projecting for 288.
So it makes sense for us to just let TechStop come in and give us that access. However, if that project gets delayed, and this is one of the things the master plan is going to contemplate for us, we're going to want to probably find some alternative means to get vehicles over to that side, whatever that may look like, so that we can go ahead and develop that.
For me, I don't want to be looking at our next master plan 10 years from now saying, well, we hope we can develop the west side in this next range.
So we want to do that within our 10 year window. So if it does get delayed, we're going to start looking at other options.
Are you doing an economic study of what our ground lease and our terms look like to all the surrounding airports in Gainesville to Alliance and all those things? Will that be part of your study?
We've actually, we did separate from the master plan, we did financial analysis that kind of viewed where we sit with all those kind of comparative. We have about a big set of eight or so competitive airports, and we're generally in line with what our competitors are doing in terms of leases and lease terms.
Now, there is there's a caveat there that no airports like another airport. So, you know, we're going to get the best deal for the airport and lease that we can. And so we don't want to fall down to the to the kind of the midline, the mediocre line.
If we can get a really good for a really good deal, or a really good rate, we're going to do that because we feel like we have an airport that's got a lot to offer. So we have things in our airport that other airports don't have.
And so if the market can command, and it's all market based, we're an enterprise company, we're a business. So if the market can command us getting more out of the development, we're going to get more out of that belt on behalf of the stakeholders and behalf of the community.
Do you think this board or board that we might be on can be advocating for or helping with, as far as I know you have an advisory committee for input and stuff, is there like gaps in that? Maybe you'd like to get some opinions on that you're seeing already or you'll reset, like you kind of talk to that?
I think right now with for the master plan, I encourage anyone who has an interest or perhaps even a business interest in the future of the airport to come out to these when we have them and we try to promote them as well as we can, our open houses for the airport.
We have our consultants there and the whole goal of those is to get input from the community as much as they can.
We do have a planning advisory committee, which Peter Vilt is on, and so that is a more of a focus committee with certain folks, certain stakeholders from the academic area, business, the city, but I think just being plugged into this process and letting us know from the private sector, if that's what you represent, letting us know how you feel things are going from your end and what you need in terms of aviation access or how your business could
benefit from enhancing the aviation profile in Denton and what that might look like, because they want to factor that in.
You know, what we need here in Denton may be substantially different from what they want down in Dallas exec and substantially different from what someone wants in Oshkosh.
So, I think they, hearing from the local business leaders here is going to be pretty critical.
So, the more voices the better.
We had a briefing on the highway situation, they hoped to start to be on the north end in 25. I hope so. Yeah, me too. Well, we were promised that.
20 years ago. And you say, well, why is that big a difference? Well, they wanted us to shrink it to 100, but some of the bigger equipment that Peter Vilt brought in and things like that, we really needed to stay that wide.
And they finally relented and let us keep that. So, we've been fighting hard to try to keep this a major facility. The other runway is 100 or 75. It's designed for the smaller aircraft and things like that.
So, we have a very serviceable air.
Lots of airports don't have that second runway, and it's a huge asset for us. We had our main runway closed down for six weeks, seven weeks. We still operate at any other airport with one runway. We would just shut it down.
All the businesses would have suffered. So, it's a huge asset to have that secondary runway.
Very fortunate for the folks who are on the board.
And the city council recognized 17th or the 19th Aviation Day of that month.
It is on the 19th, so next Monday.
Hey, Paul, I had a question. Yes, please.
I'm very intrigued by your ambition to be a driver, not just a service, carve out a competitive position.
I know it's early days in this process, but do you have a sense, just from having been there as long as you have, about what kinds of things would be our sources of competitive advantage? Is it the two runways or what things give us an edge that you've got to figure out a market application for?
You know, I think certain things that make us certainly unique, certainly location.
So, that may play into whether it's corporate or whether it's cargo, but you can come right off the highway and be in our airport within 60 seconds.
And 1515 is also going to get reconstructed. Not a whole lot of hope on that one either, but sometime in the future it should happen.
And that's right at the split. So, you can fly into DTO and you can be, if you're taking a vehicle, you can be in Dallas in 45 minutes or sometimes even less, you can be in Fort Worth in 45 minutes.
And that works great for cargo. We also have off to the west of us, and this may play into UAS or drone operations if we go that route.
There are not any airports of our size to the west of us, and we could be a location for, again, picking up cargo or maybe far in the future people, taking them out west where you don't have as many airports of this size, depending on what you're flying.
Our secondary runway is certainly a benefit. The open space that we have is certainly a benefit. It's a blank slate.
And so, if you are coming in and you have lots of planes or you have a handful of larger planes, you have a lot of space to work with right there that you can kind of make your own.
And so, I think the opportunity is very much the canvas that we have on that west side and make sure that we develop it in a way that's going to bring in planes that fly.
And to the extent that we can, planes that have those strictly bound benefits to the airport in the community. So that may be more jets running cargo, that may be more corporate aircraft, that may be air ambulance.
That could be a lot of different things that has spillover benefits that don't just, you know, they don't just buy fuel or they don't just pay on a lease. They bring actual value to the community.
That was very rambling, so I hope some of that was a good answer.
Yeah, thank you, Ryan. And one of the things I asked about when we got this kind of abbreviated version of this presentation, but I want the group to be thinking about, is the corner of Western and Airport Road.
We own that, that's the old gun range, right? And so, that study is going to incorporate that, but as you're thinking about that, we're cleaning that area up. And as this group is thinking about use cases, that can be in play potentially, depending on what the study says, what comes before us, but just putting that out there.
Then, Ryan, if you could give us in the next presentation or an email, just a understanding of the size of airplanes we can, can't handle, or what's in reach if we do these things, or what currently we can service, I just want to have a feel for that.
And then, I do want to point out to the group that if you didn't know, the U.S. Congress Ways and Means Committee held a hearing at MedTrans at our airport, which was really significant to have 11, 12, many Congress members here in Denton for that meeting.
So that was a really good opportunity for us to be featured and for the area to be featured at that level.
If I can make a mention, since you mentioned MedTrans, we talked about those spillover benefits. MedTrans does somewhere between 11,000 to 12,000 room nights at MDC squeeze a year, and they are very under the radar.
They fly in and out, but they mostly focus on training. That is a huge spillover benefit to the community. And so, that's just something that the airport brings that's not on the surface obvious, but it's a great benefit, and what we're very fortunate to have.
- And lead to your point, my bet is not so much on TechStock, but on Hillwood needs that to connect us down south. And so, I'm banking on H. Ross Breaux Jr., knowing some people in Austin, to get them to hit the gas.
- Yeah, I've got some difference.
- Good conversation. Anything else before we wrap up?
All right, thanks so much.
- Thank you for your time.
- You bet. No vote is needed on this one. It was informative, very informative. Thank you for that.
Next item B, EDP 24-060. Christine and Brittany will be updating us on Razor Ranch Buildout and Public Improvement District.
- Good morning, everyone. I'm Christine Taylor, one of the Assistant City Managers.
And today what we want to cover is the goals of what Razor Ranch was going to look like at final build out. They are nearing completion and have been interested for several years in forming a public improvement district.
So, we'll talk about how we got to this point and then what the vision of final build out is and then what next steps look like of going through a public improvement district process.
So, general background on the area of Razor Ranch is a 410 acre mixed use development located generally between I-35 off University and Bonnie Bray.
We have two existing, an existing economic development agreement for sales tax revenue. Phase one is the marketplace side located closer on the north side. It's a 20 year agreement.
It started in 2012 and has been anticipated to end in 2032. The second phase is on the south side, the town center side is a 25 year agreement and initiated in 2018 will end in 2043.
And the sales tax out of that incentive is capped at 68 million.
So, in 2014 there were two primary developers for Razor, Allegiance Healthview and Red Development. They petitioned the city for the initial formation of the Razor Ranch PID.
Staff and the developers and our con council did a lot of work of what would be eligible, what improvements are eligible, what would that do to the existing properties as far as the rate.
So, and they began working on that 2014. In 2019, there was an ownership change and they sold the interest to Fidelis Partners.
A city council work session was held that same year to update the council on the work that had been done up to that point of implementing the public improvement district.
And during that work session, council's general direction back to the group was we really, Razor has gone through a ton of changes.
There are things we don't even understand what the final vision looks like and before city council gives approval on moving forward with the process of a public improvement district, we're interested in what does it look like at final build out.
So, jump to 2014, Fidelis has come back to the city to discuss what their vision of final build out looks like and express their interest in restarting the process to initiate a public improvement district for Razor Ranch.
So, they have several goals that they are envisioning for final build out and they are very near completion. So, this is kind of the last chance to discuss those goals.
So, completing the construction of the Town Center Boulevard promenade and that's going to be that main entrance into the embassy suites.
Some of the questions, frustration is, is it appears the entrance to the embassy suites is off the access road off the highway and there's not an actual grand entrance.
So, the promenade would be off of US 380 where there already is a light and the construction of that roadway is under construction. We'll run through those phases and talk through final completion.
The additional goal is to improve the pedestrian connectivity in town center to improve that connectivity from as we have conventions or guests coming in to the embassy to be able to easily get to any of the retail, the restaurants, the city has an underutilized park over there.
So, just creating an easy way to connect throughout the property. There are a couple additional opportunities the city is interested in working with Fidelis on. There are several opportunities to have public art components throughout the property.
Specifically, one we're interested in is the roundabout located in the town center promenade right beside Alamo draft house. And then is there an additional opportunity for signage that could be seen off of the highway off of 380 just trying to do a destination draw.
And additionally, we're interested in signage within the property. So, if you're staying at the hotel, you know that there is entertainment this way, restaurants this way, shopping, kind of way finding signs throughout the property.
So, to go over that first goal, the town center promenade will be right off of 380. The first segment of that is already completed as a signalized intersection.
Just a quick look from Google of what that looks like. You can see the embassy on the back.
The second segment is currently under construction. It will go between the dip sporting goods, which is now open and the target, which is under construction.
These are a couple renderings from Fidelis that demonstrate those additional improved pedestrian connectivity options that they're putting in.
They're going to have bike lanes, a shared path, visual marking cues for the crossings. The second segment behind Target and Dix, there is going to be a multifamily.
Going in there, 324 units with the intention to start construction before the end of 2024 is currently in the permitting process.
And one request is to work with Fidelis to ensure that segment is open during construction.
This is a rendering of the multifamily that's being proposed and going through the permitting process and shows a little bit of that additional connectivity.
And the last segment is already completed, but without 2 and 3, there's not an actual direct connection yet.
So, it will connect to the roundabout next to Alamo and then be the entrance straight into the embassy.
So, opportunities for public art. One of these is our public art and two other ones are in the Metroplex.
But we want to focus in on how do you draw Razor right now as a destination organization or entity.
So, when people are coming for the hotels, they stay. So, there are several opportunities around the property, especially with the goals for the connectivity to have some public art components.
And the second one that the city is interested in is signage, just a way of placemaking or some type of draw or way that people can see it from the highway to draw into the Razor development.
So, the one on the right is just an example of something that we presented to them and then the interior signage to help navigate wave time throughout the property.
So, that is their final goals vision for what it will look like at Build Out. They're interested in the Public Improvement District because it is a tool that can help fund public improvements within a defined area.
It isn't allowed under Chapter 372, and we have a couple of Public Improvement Districts. It would be upon the property owners within the pit boundary.
And the benefits are to increase the quality development throughout with better amenities, allocate cost according to benefits received, and the developer can deduct in depth or be reimbursed for any public infrastructure.
So, recapping, Fidelis came back to the city in 2024, interested in restarting this process. The steps that had previously been taken in 2014 to 2019, several things have changed, including ownership, prior agreements have expired.
So, meeting with Fidelis and city staff, we recommended to City Council that we restart the process for the Public Improvement District. That would mean re-looking at what public improvements are they proposing? What qualifies? What would the rate look like? What does that do to the property owners?
So, we are proposing to bring this process back through an estimated take a 6 to 9 month process. We'll provide updates to the Partnership Board and to Council as that item progresses. And we had this in a work session with Council on July 16th and received an update and support to restart the process and general approval of their vision of Final Build Out.
Are there any questions?
Any questions? Any actions or recommendations from this group?
I don't need any actions or recommendations, but open to feedback as we're working with Fidelis on any of the general vision or if there was something not captured that we think is beneficial to explore.
The only quick question I have, would those funds be allocated just for public improvements or will they be allowed for any on-site reimbursement?
Just a couple of questions.
One thing I didn't think about is, are we in discussions with the connectivity from the North development to the South development? I know that's 380, it puts tax dot in the middle of it, but that is difficult to navigate currently.
Have we talked to them about that?
Pedestrian connectivity, again, between Marketplace and Town Center?
Correct.
We haven't, but that is something we can bring up with Fidelis to see if there's anything we can do to start that conversation because you're right, I don't know that anybody would want to cross those lanes to connect between the Marketplace and the Town Center.
Just a reaction, I'd be interested if anybody feels the same way.
A lot of the focus is on pedestrian connectivity there, and my just personal reaction is that there's a lot of hot pavement there, and I think the way it's done now, you neither increase canopy nor do you provide shade.
I just don't imagine people really doing it.
Whereas, this comes at an expense, but if those pedestrian walkways were treed, you would have both. You would increase canopy and our canopy goals have been stalled for the last four years.
So you'd increase canopy and you'd have shade so that maybe people would actually walk on it.
Personal reaction. I'll have them treat the requirements for the landscaping through the property, but we can talk to them about if there's any interest in going above that to make it more desirable.
There's another piece that will separate from this, but we'll be coming back. There's an interest to utilize all parts of the area, especially with the Convention Center and the Home Two Suites being built as a way to move people around.
Thank you. Next item is item C, EDP 24-063, report and discussion from the Municipal Electric.
Good morning. I am Jerry Hilder. I am the engineering division manager for DME, so I handle the transmission, substation, distribution, project planning, all that good stuff that happens behind the scenes.
And we've been asked to come in here to give you guys kind of a, you know, information about how we begin planning the capital projects and the system that we have out there.
So let's see if I can work this fancy stuff.
We've got to do the sales pitch for DME. We're about 100 square miles. We have about 67,300 electric customers, 188 employees. System P, this is old. We hit over 500 yesterday. We probably will be higher again today.
And we have an annual revenue in excess of $330 million.
We are a vertically integrated utility, and what that means is that we have generation through the Dinton Energy Center. We have transmission and substation. You can see there's some of the factors that we have as far as miles of line that are in between us, TNPA, et cetera, et cetera.
And then we have about 953 miles of distribution line, which is 62% of that is underground.
We are award winning, so we have won the Excellence in Reliability Award, Smart Energy Provider, as well as the Safety Award of Excellence, Gold Level, and this is all from APPA.
RP3 is APPA also wears a diamond level. That's the highest level that you can achieve for APPA. We are SoulSmart Gold, Texas Sierra Club. We had a ranking of 82, and we are a tree-lined USA designated utility.
Just a little information about key accounts. Those are typically for us. Those are large and unique loads. They're generally 20 megawatts or larger. That's a pretty good size load for us.
There's about 26 of those that we have identified now, and it's kind of a fluid thing. We'll look at that, and if somebody doesn't necessarily meet 20 megawatts, let's say they're 15, but yet we think that they're critical enough, we will put them as a key account.
And what this provides those folks is they get really proactive communications during the weather or system emergencies. For example, when Yuri hit us, we were in constant communication with the biggest accounts, letting them know what's happening, why the rolling blackouts, and all that other stuff was occurring out there.
And then one of the other little things that we provide is UNT for their events that they have at the stadium. We usually have crews sitting out there ready to go in case something happens. Nothing's ever happened, but in case something happens, DME has crews out there.
So I have my four supervisors here, and I'm going to let them talk about each one of their functions uniquely. We have Doug Breon, who's the supervisor over distribution. We have Mark Zimmerer, who's my supervisor over transmission and substations.
Randy Key is the supervisor over the project planning and logistics function, and then Aaron Bingen, which is the supervisor over engineering services. This all really kind of starts with Aaron, so he'll be the first one to speak to you, and he'll talk to you a little bit about how we start the budget process.
And this actually will kick off next month because we're hitting our peak this month. So by the end of next month, we'll start to gather all the data we need to have and send it over to firms to start doing some analysis on the system.
Thank you. As Jerry mentioned, I'm Aaron Bingen, supervisor over engineering services. There are five of us that work in that group. And if I was to summarize it, I would say our specialty is information.
So we begin every year with a study, a forecast, working together with a consultant to build a system model. What is DME currently looking like at our peak load? And if we were to expand that based on historical growth, what's going to get overloaded?
Where do we need to build up our infrastructure? So we do that yearly and we plan out for 10 years to try and make sure we're keeping ahead of the curve, making sure that we've got power where people are going to need it.
With that information, then we add in projects that we foresee into our capital budget. My group says manage, we're more like the compilers. Everybody else is able to manage their own budget, but we compile the information, we prepare it for the general manager to then take to council.
We're also responsible for standards and drawings. We live in an awesome world where technology is just constantly changing and updating. And so in order to stay cutting edge, to stay on top of all of the technology that's moving even into the utility space, we have to update our drawings.
We have to update our materials and just keep on top of everything that's happening. And so my group is responsible for that. We have a few other items as well, including street lights and joint use attachments on our poles.
And then lastly, as part of the standards, we own and we manage the electric service standards. Now that's key. That's really the foundation of the responsibilities between developers and DME. That's where we've laid out the rules. Who's responsible for what in terms of materials, how they develop, what they develop.
All of that has been coordinated with City of Denton ordinances and the development code to make sure that we're aligned and we're constantly tweaking that. As things change, as developers try new things, they want to build a different way, we have to go back and look at it.
Okay, what are our rules? What makes sense? How do we divide up these responsibilities and the electric service standards are where that takes place. We also have the line extension policy and both of these documents have been approved by council in the past.
The line extension policy specifically governs who is responsible for the financial contributions of extending DME lines. Now DME is unique in that we have service territory that is 100% served by DME and that's more the core of the city.
Then as you move to the fringes, we have multi-certified territory, places where we're in competition with CoServe and Encore. Our goal is to try and be fair. As we have new customers that are adding costs, they should be responsible for part of what they're doing, but we also have to be competitive, especially in those areas.
So the line extension policy governs that and how we manage that competition and invite new businesses, new developments into the city of Denton, our service territory.
In preparing for the future, as we mentioned, we do annual studies. One of the things that we've been looking very heavily at is the growth that's coming, especially out west. West of 35, west of Fort Worth Drive, we have a lot of undeveloped space.
And so how do we plan for that? A lot of the homes are becoming more electrified. In other words, they're adding more electric appliances, more electric utilities, electric vehicle chargers. How do we plan for that?
And one of the things that we are doing right now actively is preparing to increase our distribution voltage on the west side of town. So the power that you're able to deliver, quick physics refresher, power is directly proportional to the voltage.
So if we double our voltage, we can double the power that we can provide to customers without having to change much of our system requirements. We can still use the same size wires without having to get much bigger if we focus on the voltage.
That's one of the things that we're doing is working on 24 kV distribution on the west side of town. And also one of the other things that we're focused on is adding automation.
Why automation? Why bring all of these smart systems? Well, a lot of these automated devices can detect problems like outages or trees touching the line and can react, they can switch much faster than we could by sending crews out to try and reroute power.
And so in theory, if you've got your distribution system built up correctly, and this is a process that takes years, maybe even decades to completely build it this way, but in theory, if a line goes down in one area, your system can recognize it, reroute the power until the crews can get out there and fix the initial issue and the whole time the customers just saw a blink in their power.
So that's the long-term goal. That's what we're working towards.
Lastly, as part of all of that, my group is responsible for reliability. How much of the time is the system up and running? How well are we keeping the lights on for our customers?
So for the last six years, we've actually earned the American Public Power Association's Reliable Public Power Provider Award, which basically says we're in the top 10% of the public power utilities in providing reliable electricity to our customers.
It's a great selling point for businesses or developers that want to come to Denton. We've had several ask, "Do I need to bring a backup generator? Do I need to invest in this or that?"
And so these are our reliability numbers, and we've had some say, "Okay, cool. We're good. We like that." So I'm getting the hint I'm taking too long, so I'm going to turn it over to the next supervisor and let him take over for the next part of our process.
Yeah, the next supervisor is Doug Brion again. He's over at the distribution. He prepares the projects. His group prepares the projects for the distribution service that we do.
Thanks for taking all my thunder, Jerry.
All right, so as Jerry said, my name is Doug Brion. I'm over at the distribution group. Our primary responsibilities are distribution design for everything related to the distribution system.
Some of the different categories are listed up here. We do a lot of estimates. We do a lot of project management. We do a lot of tracking of expenditures and closeouts.
Like I said, distribution voltage here is 13.2 kV, and then Aaron talked about adding another distribution voltage. We're going to 24.9 kV for some of our areas.
What distribution does to support economic development and business prospects, we do just about anything that anybody needs, right? We'll answer all kinds of questions. We'll provide all kinds of maps and information about our system, what our capacities are,
what we have in an area. We provide a lot of feedback and comments. Two guys in my group do development review for all electrical things, so they will tell them that things need to be changed electrically in order to match up with our system.
And we also work directly with developers and contractors and builders on a regular basis for all kinds of projects.
One of the biggest projects we've got going on with distribution, well, this also affects transmission and substation, but Hunter and Coal Ranch and everybody here are probably familiar with it somewhat.
We've been working with them since 2020 when they initially came to us and asked about electrical facilities in the area. As Aaron stated and showed on the previous map, we don't have a whole lot out in that area right now.
When we started building, we do have facilities to serve what they've currently been doing and are working with them through development review on what we can do for their first phase of development and for the ultimate layout of the entire development.
We will initially be operating their distribution facilities at 13.2 KV by designing everything to upgrade and switch over to 25 KV when all of our facilities are ready for that.
As Aaron mentioned with the reliability stuff, there will be significant automation out in this area in order to automatically take care of outages, improve flexibility and restoration facilities.
But this is just the largest development probably that's going in the area. We've got other developments going all over the city that we're working with people on a regular basis.
Questions on the distribution side?
I guess one thing, I don't know if we're holding questions to the end, but it kind of peeked my ears twice because we both said it.
On the automation side, what are we doing? Are you all have a good cybersecurity plan to complement that?
We are well aware that the cybersecurity concerns with that and we do have our technology services group is kind of responsible for that.
And so as the plan is being developed, we'll make sure that we meet any SIP, NERC, whoever it is responsibility, state detectives, RCOP can put some of that stuff and we'll make sure that we meet all those cybersecurity needs for that.
It's always delicate matters.
It is. It is.
All right, next up for our group is Mark Zimmer.
Thank you Doug. As I said, my name is Mark Zimmer.
My responsibility at AME is projects for substation and transmission lines.
I have a group of seven guys and gals who do really anything related to substation and transmission lines.
One of those things I'll focus on today is capital projects.
We do a lot of things for capital projects and I won't go over all of these for you.
One of the things we do is transmission planning studies to ensure the system in the area is adequate and can serve existing customers and all future customers.
So I'm going to focus on a couple of projects that are going on right now.
One of them is the Hickory GIS substation, located at Bonnie Bray and Oak Street.
About 10 years ago we identified the need to replace the existing Hickory substation at that location, right across the street from it.
It was built in the 1960s and reached us then alive. Pretty old.
Back then we started reaching out to City Council, had public meetings, open houses with the public to get their feedback on potential sites for this.
City Council chose this one with input from the citizens from those open house meetings.
We also talked to the historic district in that area, and I think Mr. Meltzer, you were on that commission too, and got feedback from them on the appearance.
Council directed us to build a, as you can tell, kind of a fancy wall around substation. It's about 22 foot tall.
Its appearance is supposed to look like old storefronts, kind of mimic some of the older downtown area, and tried to make it fit in with the area a little better than a traditional substation would look.
So this station is about to go in service here by the end of the year.
Obviously it'll serve this area, but we have the ability with the technology we put in this station, which is called a gas insulated switch gear, to add more capacity to the station in the future.
One of the other projects, one of the other substations that just went under construction is called Underwood substation. It's down there by Coal Ranch and Underlanch that Doug referred to earlier.
A few years ago we identified a need to build a station in that area because there's no substations on that side of town. That substation, as I mentioned, did go under construction here about a few weeks ago.
It'll serve that whole west side of town. It can serve to back up stations on the east side or north side as well.
Any questions Frank?
How long does a, like we all are doing five year, ten year planning, how long is a capital project typically, what's your cycle you're looking at? There's a lot of changes right, electrical, so it's like how do we know, for example, an AI data center wants to come into them, like how do we know we're good or how do we plan for that?
You know, as emissions regulations change, more electric vehicles, electric trucks, those kind of things are going to put the band on the grid, local, how are y'all, can you kind of give us a flavor for how you're planning for that?
The transmission grid itself has tons of capacity on it. The bottlenecks or the issues are typically at the substation. So anytime we build a substation, we'll build the ability to add onto it. So things like that come up.
So we need to hear maybe through Christine's staff, but hey, DME is good, check.
And like we mentioned earlier, we do transmission planning studies every year. We do sensitivities on those or we'll add on other ones in the area and see what happens.
We have regulatory requirements by NERC and ERCOT to perform these studies every year. So we definitely try to do sensitivities around those things and make sure we can do whatever comes.
You know what you're talking about, we've done several times, Brittany has sent us for the past few weeks, several new people looking at it. It depends on the load, it may be a distribution load, it may be a transmission load, but these guys, Doug, Mark, Aaron, even Randy that's going to speak here in a second, will all kind of give input saying, hey, are we prepared to do this or if we're not, what's it going to take to serve that customer?
Everyone provides that information. It may take a whole new substation, it may not. So that's done on bias or a regular basis. That's kind of an on-call basis. When Brittany sends us something, we look at it and make sure we can do what we need to do.
I don't know how to answer this, but are we a fairly unique community being able with our all-electrical generating capacity? How does that play out with our community versus other communities throughout the state?
Municipal utilities, maybe Jerry can probably speak to that later.
As far as having generation, I'm going to say we're probably in the rarity. Some of the other bigger ones probably have it. I know some of the small ones, these will not have generation.
But it's a big advantage to us to have that here. I mean, again, the energy center is not meant to serve all 100% of the load. It's here as basically a hedge against higher pricing and being able to do stuff.
So it's been very beneficial to us and kind of on the planning standpoint, whenever we have large loads coming in or we know it, that's the way something that Mr. Nolte's group will talk to us about, about do we need to have additional generation, et cetera, et cetera.
I don't know, Terry, if you want to spit more information out about that or?
I need to be covered.
Okay. But yeah, I would say that we're fairly unique. There's not a whole lot of unis throughout the country that have their own generation. So it's a positive. It really is.
Follow-up, does that give us a more efficient cost of energy for our residents?
It's a hedge. Yeah, I'll put it that way. That it's a hedge. I mean, through that, through the use of it, I mean, the EMO that Terry manages, they do a really good job of trying to find out what, trying to determine the best cost of energy for a time.
And so they'll buy and sell and, you know, the deck's going to be on today. We know the deck's going to be on today. And again, the way the deck works, it doesn't serve, didn't proper, it serves per cot.
And that's the rules of the state of Texas that any energy needs to go on to the ERCOT grid. And so we may be selling at a certain level, but then buying at a different level.
So hopefully we are selling higher than what we're buying and the utility is making money.
Yeah, the opposite way on the substations, because it's noteworthy for DIC, certainly I'm tracking that one really close as well. North/south of town, Barney Gray, Rodney Road, we're deconstructing that one.
How is that going? And then I know we're also deconstructing the one, I don't know the name of the street, it's off Fort Worth Drive there. It's the back way to McDonald's.
There you go. Sorry, that's the only reason I use this to go back there to McDonald's.
But can you speak to the other side of that? How are those, how is that process going to deconstruct those? Obviously we need to do some work on Rodney Road for the new school coming on board.
Right, yeah both of those substations you mentioned are old substations that were built in the 60s as well, just like Kaker mentioned earlier. Yeah, we're having discussions with our general manager, hopefully get those withdrawn I think this year.
Yeah, well if I say in the budget for next year, not this current capital budget that you guys looked at, but I think after that we're going to put money in that budget to go ahead and make those sites clean sites as far as grass and stuff like that in there.
Yeah, the idea would be to get rid of fencing, buildings, everything, just have grass there.
Okay, thank you.
Last piece will be Mr. Key.
All right, good afternoon. My name is Randy Key, electric engineering supervisor. Thank you for saving the best for last.
All right, I have a project planning group of three employees. These employees have a little bit of a background of field knowledge they're all ex journeyman lineman.
That's a bad term but we use it.
We do a lot of the project coordination a lot of project management for each project.
You heard Doug say all the projects that go through development review and then design. Once they're designed, we kind of take all those development inspections we get the management from there.
We manage the, the project cube so we set the priorities for all the scheduling and kind of try to coordinate each project and all their timelines.
We talked a lot about all the automation, Aaron touched on it, Doug touched on it, employee that does all of the programming for the installations, ATOs and all the dual feeds so when the project is planned and it's coordinated.
We set it up and we'll, we'll give it this timeframe for the programming troubleshooting and maintenance.
We do have around 30 ish automatic controls right now, along with about 140 capacitor banks that we try to troubleshoot.
We do a lot of development and management and civil inspections so the guys that I'm speaking of right now, let's say there's development, and they're laying all the conduit and they're doing all the transformer pads, they call us, we go up, we do the inspections, make sure they meet our code and all the standards that Mr.
We do the estimates for labor, the time and the equipment.
We initiate all material orders and schedule contractor pickups for all the developments that I'm speaking of.
We do the project close outs and reconciliations at the end, after all construction is complete.
One of the main things that this group does is we monitor the warehouse forecast material requirements for future projects.
As everybody here knows there's a big supply chain issue so all the forecasting that comes from the projects that are in development review which is under dug.
We try to make sure that we have enough on board.
We also deal with the right away permits.
We did just go live with IV of maximal around three months ago so all that Q and all the projects are in there.
I also have the logistics crew, which is consists of three people as well.
We are responsible for all assets and inventory management.
We supervise all the assets materials, as of right now we've got around $45 million worth of assets across our three locations.
Currently there are over 3200 assets under our hand DME logistics, along with around 2000 on order.
The reason why there is 2000 on order I'm sure everybody has heard that majority of our items that used to have around a four week turnaround has now anywhere from one year to even three, four years.
We purchase receive all the assets based on the project forecasts from the coordinators of my other group and we're forecasting we try to make sure that we have enough on order.
We do that based upon yearly usage with the contingency along with all the big projects that we're planning.
We update and maintain the asset statuses and responsible for scheduling and distributing all DME distribution assets for maintenance and outages contractors and projects so this group schedules all the pickups for all the materials.
And as you can see in bold, not many utilities surrounding us can say this we have had zero projects that have been delayed due to supply chain issues.
With that I'll take some questions.
Thank you.
That is the last bit of information that we have for you.
Hopefully through this information you'll see that DME is preparing its system for today, the customers we have today as well as well into the future.
Again, if you have any questions, be more than happy to answer those or get them to us later and we'll respond back to you.
I guess one thing on the customer service side, I'll bring this up because it's a little bit of a hot topic at Peterbilt. If we could, we are one of your large customers and you all do a great job of communicating the outages and risks and those things.
Just something to kind of keep in mind with the larger customers and if we could tie those anticipated increases into budget cycles and those things, I understand things happen. It's just for future. It would be nice that we can plan those in our cycles as well.
Appreciate the feedback. I'll take that back to the business services folks.
Great partnership overall. I don't want to drag anything through the mud too much, but that's an irreversible concern.
Any other questions, comments? Appreciate it Jerry, thank you.
Our next is EDP 24-061.
I don't know everyone else, but I've got to leave tight, so I prefer to just keep moving and if people want to eat, is that all right with everyone? I'll understand if you need to eat, Mr. Mayor.
Yeah, as soon as he gives his name, you'll see me get up.
Hello everyone, my name is Zach Lockman.
I'm with Med Collaborative. We've been working with the city for about a year now.
I will try to go pretty quick for you. I know we're running a little late.
I'm Minnesotan. I talk very quickly. Hopefully you'll understand my accent.
As I said, we've been working for about a year with a team of other consultants, including transportation, a couple of different economic development consultants, as well as a preservation team on the downtown plan.
Sorry, it's okay. Well, again, I might skip a couple of slides. We started last June and are moving towards adoption.
We have a four-phase process. First phase, really looking at what are the opportunities, challenges in downtown.
Second phase, beginning to think about what we would do in order to meet the community's goals that have been laid out in the first phase.
In the third phase, really focusing on implementation, specifically to economic development that I do want to speak to.
One of our considerations from the beginning of the project was looking at the city's economic development plan that had been done previously.
What are the specific competitive advantages of downtown and how does downtown fit into the economic development strategy for the city as a whole?
Really wanting to make sure that we were thinking about how we were emphasizing, even as we're making recommendations about parks and open space and streets, that we were really thinking about the way that ties together in terms of the economic engine of downtown.
Our study area went from University on the north, Eagle on the south, Carroll on the west, and Bell on the east.
We did an extensive public engagement process. We used a method where we did everything both online and in person so people could contribute in a number of different ways.
I can say that we talked to literally thousands of folks throughout the community and got feedback from them, either online or in person at a number of different engagement events throughout.
That was really key to shaping the strategies that we laid out.
We had an advisory group that we worked with as well to establish a vision for the project, as well as community priorities in these eight areas.
All of the recommendations that we made are really focused on one or more of these priorities and really thinking about the ways that we can push forward these specific areas.
We ended up making 23 specific recommendations, and I'm not going to go through them all today, but they're grouped in four categories that I'll talk about.
I'm going to focus primarily on the recommendations that have the biggest impact on economic development, as well as a few that I just like and have pretty pictures that I want to show you.
The first section of the report, and we essentially laid out the report thinking about the areas that the city has the most control to the areas where we're thinking about partnerships.
The first area of the report focuses on downtown streets.
This is the majority of the land that is actually owned by the city is actually the streets in the public realm and thinking about the ways that we can utilize those to, again, establish downtown as a brand, establish a competitive advantage.
And one of the big things that we heard from the community about was that downtown's blockability was really one of the key assets that people really love about downtown.
So, I won't go through every recommendation, skip through a couple here, but one of the ones that I do want to point out to you.
This is one that when we actually polled the community about their favorite recommendations and the plans and the things they wanted to see implemented first.
The thing that actually rose to the top was this idea of what we call a chill street.
The chill streets are a network of streets where we have created connections between the universities, between the transit center and then throughout downtown where we are going to emphasize things that will create shade to make it more comfortable to walk.
So, the idea is really emphasizing a public realm that is bringing in a lot of tree planting, that's bringing in awnings on buildings and really working to make a comfortable pedestrian routes throughout the downtown that would really connect all of these destinations, connect parking and connect the downtown shops.
The second set of recommendations is focused on the network of public spaces. So, a lot of these are projects that would be done in partnership with the Parks Department that has included a new master plan for Bakertown Park, which we worked very closely with the Parks Department.
And as a part of this, we also conducted focus groups with descendants of folks from Bakertown that were actually displaced from the park. So, talking about the history of the park, thinking about memorialization within the park, thinking about the ways that we would tell that history.
While also focusing on what are some of the opportunities to improve the park for events, to improve the park for everyday opportunities, as well as looking at with some of the land on the southern end of the park that the city owns, what are some potential economic development opportunities right around the park that we can build within those areas.
We also looked at vacant lots, you may recognize this as the vacant lot on Eastware or you may not because it looks very different here, but really looking at the way that we can leverage some of those spaces to bring new open spaces, but also create economic development opportunities.
So, in this rendering you can see, it always really strikes me that you were really lucky that this was the building that burned down, because it creates this great view of the courthouse and I think in a dozen years when this is actually a reality, no one's going to believe that this hasn't been here for 100 years, that it wasn't planned that way originally.
But you can see that we've designed a space that really brings together opportunities for gathering, helps with some of the great changes, creates an ADA accessibility between some of the parking on the east side as well as downtown, but also creates some new economic opportunities with actually establishing some new restaurant spaces as well as flexible vendor spaces within a site like that.
This is just one example, there's a number of vacant lots throughout downtown that could be utilized in the same way, but thinking about the ways that we continue to build on those sorts of opportunities has been important.
The next slide is going to kick down to the third area, really focused on development opportunities. So this is an area that's a little bit more external facing. It does talk about what the city needs to do in order to encourage this type of development, but does focus on what we would do in partnership with private sector developers as well.
So part of that is really focused on the south side of downtown. As you may know, there's a large portion south of the square that had previously been in the floodplain. That is an issue that has been fixed now, which would allow larger scale development to begin to happen.
And so we've begun to look with some of our development consultants on what type of development would fit in there, how could we leverage new investments in public improvements, including a new potential park within that space or performing arts center within that space in order to help move the needle on the private sector development side and really see that southern part of downtown really become a really thriving, vibrant part of downtown as a whole.
Another area that we looked at is really looking at bringing more households downtown. We've set a goal of 1,500 additional units in downtown over the next 10 years. We believe that that's really achievable with the market conditions that are out there.
And we believe that bringing that many new households will also serve to bring new customers into downtown and to continue to really develop the feel of a kind of live, work, and play downtown.
We talked a little bit about historic preservation opportunities. And again, I'm going to skip through a couple of these as we're moving quickly. And establishing guidelines so that when we do have development, we are really looking at the way that it connects to the whole that we're getting high quality development, that we're getting a high quality public realm around that as well.
Of course, we can't necessarily dictate what development happens downtown, but we wanted to have a section of the plan that essentially communicated to developers. These are things that we've heard from the community they want. And if you were to come forward with a proposal downtown around these things, it would be something that would be happily received.
So a few of those things, looking at public and shared parking opportunities, folks have talked about the desire for a public market of some sort, hotels being a really key one that we do focus on some as well. And then also thinking about expanding music and art venues downtown.
Again, as one of those sort of economic hooks within downtown, that nightlife component being an important part of downtown's current and future, we believe.
The fourth section focuses on policy. First, as I mentioned, nightlife being a really important part, we have a section that really focuses on what types of policy we can update in order to continue to encourage music and nightlife as a key component of downtown's economic strategy.
We talked about the development of a new performing arts center and give an example of the Mid-Conference Theater in Houston. This would be a space that would be shared by a number of different arts organizations, nonprofits, etc.
Containing new performance spaces, office space, as well as rehearsal space and other things like that. It could also be done in partnership with the universities.
We talked about expanding programs to support small businesses. Again, another one of the things that we heard from almost everybody we asked, the small businesses are key to downtown.
The fact that we heard more than once the fact that we don't have a Chipotle is a really, really good thing. And really wanting to focus on the small local businesses that are unique as continuing to be, again, an economic differentiator for the downtown.
We talked about branding for downtown as well as advertising marketing and how we can continue to expand that. And then we also talked about the establishment of a public improvement district within downtown.
This is a tool, most cities of your size in Texas do have a public improvement district downtown. There's work to be done in order to move us towards that.
This would actually create a new funding source that would be dedicated that would really be able to focus on some of the clean and safe sorts of opportunities as well as things like maintenance and even project delivery in terms of some of the public projects as well.
So I went very, very quickly. I do encourage you to check out the whole report and all the recommendations that we worked together in order to really show what this vision will play. We will be presenting tonight at the Planning and Zoning Commission looking for their approval as we move forward towards a September 17th council date, after which this will be adopted to the city's comprehensive model.
I'm excited to take some questions. Okay.
Any questions?
Yes, sir.
I heard nothing about how we're addressing the homeless problem.
We own a lot of buildings downtown, probably the most apartments downtown, and we'll be hearing about that later. I've read the full report of everything downtown. But that is our number one problem in people living downtown, getting our rents, we have lots of vacancies downtown, and we can walk down the street and show multiple buildings.
We can show how our rents have dropped over the last five years when I was going into downtown.
And so I would be real interested to hear what part, I didn't see anything in the report about that anchor that I read through. There was like a little hint of it, but it didn't address, but that's our number one economic problem.
We didn't have that as part of the scope for the downtown project, but we do have community services here who's going to speak up about the existing initiatives going on. The ambassador program is one pilot program that we put in for collecting data, and then we did a community survey, which was updated to council, kind of sharing residents' thoughts on how to deal with specific things going on in the community.
And then we do have a council work session scheduled for October to talk about policy.
All that's wonderful, right? That's all wonderful things. But everything, all the work we've done here, and I'm not meaning to be aggressive. I mean, I read the whole report, and again, I've done probably the most development downtown in Denver for the last four years.
And until we address that issue, all these wonderful things, which are all super cool, which are things we've been saying for years, cool streets, we've worked aerial leases out, how do we lease from the city doing aerial leases, and I mean, cool stuff. But until we solve that problem, I mean, if I was on PNZ or city council, I would say, throw it in the trash until that problem is solved.
I'll say that there's three things that are directly influenced by those issues within the plan. One is the residential growth of the residential population. There is both a need for affordable units, which is called out in here, as well as there is a best practice within the specific area that says the more positive activity that you bring to an area, the less negative activity you're going to have to do.
And so, there is a, it's a long-term strategy, but that is about increasing the activity in downtown that is really focused on that. Another area is, speaking specifically to establishing funding that can go directly to services, including clean and safe, as well as the potential expansion of things like the ambassadorship program and other areas that would be able to do that.
One of the biggest challenges right now is that downtown does not have specific funding that is downtown-specific to deal with an issue that impacts downtown more than other places. So, while not being as maybe directly called out as you would want, it was a consideration in the way that we were developing these strategies and thinking about the long-term ways over the next 10 years that we can have positive impact on downtown that is going to help impact.
Well, you know, there's some things that we've just done naturally as far as like bringing NCTC downtown. You know, we brought them downtown to keep daytime traffic, right? So, we can keep our, you know, we took it off the tax rolls, which was a problem, but I thought it was when we sold it to NCTC that it would keep us daytime traffic eating at our other restaurants and buildings and keeping our apartments full downtown. So, there's things like that have been happening, but even with the growth downtown, even with the things you're talking about, you know, it's continued to be happening.
It's continued to be a problem. We have vacant buildings and, you know, we have young people that we want downtown at night that won't come downtown and they go to highland villages and prisons, right, because of fear of being downtown. So, nice job. I read the whole thing. Great vision for what we're doing. You know, I think that was a nice job, but for me to get on board to support any of it, this is another one problem. But thank you guys for your work. It's just wonderful. Great job.
Can you expand, I think it was point two, you just made another three, that increased activity decreases that issue, but other towns that have plenty of activity, that's not necessarily the case. So, can you expand on that a little bit on how you're going to do that?
Well, so I will say, this is a national problem. It's been expanding and it's representative of, in part, the decrease in funding that's gone for services over the last decade. And it is something, in my hometown of Minneapolis, we're seeing a ton of as well.
There have been very well regarded peer reviewed studies that have really looked at the ways that positive activity can both decrease that sort of negative activity, but even in areas where some of it still exists, people don't feel it in the same way.
If, you know, 80% of what's going on around me feels good, even if something's happening off to the side, I don't maybe like, they feel better about it. You have to remember that a lot of, in a lot of cases, folks that are experiencing homelessness are actually drawn to these very public spaces because being homeless is very dangerous.
And they want to be in places that are very visible because they feel afraid as well. And so it's a very challenging problem in thinking about that. The addition of services, the addition of ambassadors, the addition of folks downtown that are helping people with the wayfinding, and the addition of economic activity, all has been pointed to as ways that people feel more comfortable over time in those spaces.
I don't know if that really addresses the question, but okay.
Well, the most direct answer is that there needs to be more services.
Okay.
Downtown plan may not be a good idea.
So point two is not really a valid point then?
No, it's still a valid point. It will still feel better downtown the more people there are downtown doing positive activities.
And what's that positive activity?
Economic activity, people living, people walking their dogs, events, people shopping, all of those are key to that.
All right. Any other questions?
I'm held to chip in a couple of data points. It doesn't address all of them. I totally hear what you're saying. It's undeniable. Something that addresses a significant part of it.
In this room, when we had our retreat, our city magistrate said that if there were 15 more psychiatric beds that he could commit people to, you would reduce the caseload that reaches him by 75%.
I'm saying everybody that's homeless is in that overlap, but you know, it's a factor.
So 15 beds would reduce the caseload that hits him by 75%.
Another data point. The governor just appropriated a billion and a half for construction of psychiatric services, 0% for Denton County.
Just saying, 0% for Denton County. Closest is in Wichita Falls. So got to work at all levels of government.
But those are some of the kinds of services that would make, that appears to me, would make a big dent in that problem.
So what did we do in the past 12, 24 months to try to get those funds from the state as a city?
I bring it up at every meeting I can. I mean, I'm not, you know.
But bringing up a meeting is one thing, but like, what have we actually done to solicit that?
It's a fair question. I don't know the answer.
Well, why would it start there? You got to ask for it. Yeah, I totally agree.
All right. I'm going to bring us back in. Great conversation.
I don't know if it's for this particular presentation, so it might be something for us to further discuss.
Any other questions? I'm not directing. I am just saying this in general. I would try to be respectful.
I mean, I'm sort of letting it go and let people feel that sense of demand.
I bring it up to our standards. I appreciate it.
I didn't mean, I wouldn't attack him. I understood.
Any other questions?
All right. I appreciate it. Good conversation. Thank you.
All right. We're going to move into our staff reports. We're ready to roll.
Good afternoon. We're directors. That's our hard presentation to go after.
As always, thank you again for supporting our economic development efforts.
I know that this takes a lot of time out of your day, but we really do appreciate it.
I'm going to zoom through my presentation. I'm actually going to set a timer for five minutes,
so let's see what I can cover within that time frame.
All right. Over the past two months, we've continued to streamline and improve our processes.
We're almost a lean operating machine, so we're excited about that.
Our last phase is really analyzing our performance measure reporting
so that we can tell you all the leads that we're working on.
We're developing an economic trend newsletter.
Formerly, our team developed a stand report that they've been reporting on, I guess, years past,
and so this will be more user-friendly.
When I wrote this, we had just extended an offer for our business recruitment special school.
During our last meeting, I announced that it was vacant, and so we do have a new employee.
We're excited. He starts on Monday. His name is Clay Parker.
He's a recent graduate of UT Austin, and he just received his master's,
so we're excited about joining him or having him join our team.
His position will be a three-pronged approach.
It'll have business development, project management, and data analytics, so we're excited.
Our past upcoming events and trade shows.
Two weeks ago, we attended the Dallas Meetup Networking event.
This was an event put on by Robert Half and Associates based out of Dallas.
They invited all the economic development directors in the region,
and it was a really good networking event by the time Matola Weed and our economic development specialist
and I attended. We got there a little bit late.
There was over 800 people in attendance, so it was a little hard to meet people,
but we did get a free ticket to the Data Center Investment Conference at Expo.
That was held in August as well.
Last week, we are going to the UAV Drone Expo in September,
along with our partners at UNT, DME.
Who am I missing? Airport, Ryan Adams, and which one am I missing?
Okay, I'll remember later.
And then the Move America Conference in September.
That is the Transportation and Mobility Conference.
Many of the large auto manufacturers will be in attendance,
so like BMW, they were there last year.
They discussed some of the newer fuels like hydrogen and EV-related technology,
so we will be there representing Ditten.
We are working closely with UNT right now.
Dr. Terry Pollan has put together a consortium of academia and economic development agencies,
business leaders to develop innovation corridor from here to Choctaw Nation,
to South Louisiana, and to now Corpus Christi, who I just contacted then.
So the goal of this NSF grant that they are applying for,
they actually applied for this last year, and they won a million dollars,
and so they're going for the second round for $160 million.
The application is due in August, so we will learn if they won next year,
but Ryan Adams with the airport and myself, we're staying close to that.
If there are any funds related, then we'll be able to participate.
We don't want to leave them behind.
But the goal is to build the corridor where UAS technology can fly,
so we're going to try to recruit drone companies in,
and we'll be able to utilize Choctaw's services as well.
During our last meeting, Charlie Rosendahl,
our business services manager for development services, presented a site database.
It is complete, so if you haven't checked that out yet, please do.
I did attach one of the flyers for the sites on the agenda,
so if you wanted to go check that out, you can.
Moving forward, we are using data to lead our decisions.
Every time that we now are presenting to group organizations,
we're starting to collect data.
In May, we had a realtor day presentation.
This is something that the city puts on every year,
and there was a group of about 30 residential realtors in attendance,
and so we asked, "What are the top challenges for Denton?"
And they said traffic, homelessness, and then parking downtown,
and then they put city stuff.
I forgot to take that off, but we are listening,
and we hope to build programming to resolve some of these issues.
It may not come as fast as lead, though. Watch this, too.
We also asked for the top opportunities for Denton.
Somebody said a sports bar, H-E-B, Trader Joe's, manufacturing, central market.
So we are listening.
In case a developer asks us, "What do we want to recruit in?"
then we'll be able to show them this data.
Every year, the city, our office of strategic planning services,
yes, puts out a survey to 15,000 residents at random,
and they ask, "How is the city doing?"
So I found this really beneficial because I won't go over all of these,
but two that I want to point out is the employment opportunities.
We were ranked at 41%.
The U.S. average is at 50%, and the Texas average is at 56%.
So that means that we do need to work on recruiting major employers,
and it's something that we all know, but that's a concern for us.
And then our economic development efforts was ranked at 47% compared to the Texas average at 54%.
So this frankly doesn't make me happy.
I think there's room for improvement.
Hopefully we'll get at 75% next year, but I didn't want to point that out.
I will say that the safety measures is not on this PowerPoint.
The residents ranked downtown at 75% safety.
So they do feel safe downtown, which is good.
Those 15,000 residents, anyways.
But they did want us to attract large employers to secure high-paying jobs
and focus on support for small businesses.
One thing that we're doing is adding more tools to our financing toolbox.
I don't know how many of you had a dad that collected tools on the side
and always had a tool whenever you needed a home project done,
but this is what stage that we're in right now is we are just preparing for the future.
We want to make sure that we do have the tools when presenting with the right projects.
You never know when it's going to happen.
We're working on extending the TERS as Zach just presented for the downtown master plan.
We want to get that extended by the end of the year.
If everything goes right with our procurement process, then we should be good to go.
Public improvement district, again, that will fund our downtown ambassador program.
Right now it's funded by a grant through our community services department for $800,000.
It's only a two-year program, so we need to ensure that we have funding when we work with that.
Citywide, our community services department has worked with our city council to establish a public facility corporation.
That is a tool through the state of Texas that will allow for affordable housing.
A lot of multi-family developers use this.
I know in downtown Louisville, they had a multi-family that went up
and they used this PFC credit because they can pass it on to their tenants.
We are looking to that.
If you wanted more information, that's included as an exhibit on the agenda.
Our entrepreneur tech grant, we currently have an existing $50,000 grant.
We're looking at the guidelines right now to see how we can follow that.
We'll also work with UNT and TWA to see how we can support some of those businesses that are coming out of the university.
Since I'm on a time limit, these two I won't go over in detail,
but the site selector skill is one of the largest associations for site selectors.
They come up with a report every year just analyzing what type of concerns that businesses have when they're expanding.
That's listed as an attachment if you're interested.
Then so is this site selection group, 2024 incentives report.
The site selection group is that local with the Dallas Bay site selection firm.
That was very interesting.
Texas payment as a third team.
That's all I have for now.
Thank you.
Any questions?
All right.
Next.
Thanks.
Don't ask tough questions when you're about to get on stage.
You got a question already.
So this is my first year being on this committee and downtown economic development committee.
So it's been a good adventure.
But I wanted to give this my first update to you guys on what we kind of come through that committee.
So some portions of it you guys see as well.
But I wanted to give an update on basically three separate areas.
One, we're just the grant update here today.
Two would be some of the online stats, the downtown openings, closings, and then which the ambassador program.
And I think that was kind of three separate areas.
But anyway, we'll start with the grant stuff.
I'm not real familiar with Bullseye.
I think that was early on in the year, which you can see is already committed or completed.
That's 50,000 for the facade.
Little D, that's an engineering group on the north side.
It's the old McBride's building.
They took the facade of the building.
There's 50,000 on a grant for that and then fire suppression.
We've had a couple of the fire suppression businesses that take their building owners have taken advantage of that.
But that's an engineering firm that I think was on the square, but they rented and they're moving to this facility.
And you can go by the I don't know what the engineering term is.
The facade of the front was taken off and you can see the original windows and all that now. So a nice improvement.
The next one is the Voodoo Brewery building.
It's 100,000 total right there, which is 50,000 for fire suppressant and then the facade as well.
Eagle Surveying, which is down at I guess Sycamore and Elm Street, 50,000 for facade.
And then the access group that did the fine arts theater that came through here.
That was a 380 incentive grant and there was two folds on that.
And those are obviously larger amounts and all that has been approved through city council.
The last one is not under construction yet, but the other ones are.
I'm not going to details. We saw all the economic incentive here on the fine arts building. So, but this just shows how they derived the 544 for the second grant, which is basically the operating loss until break even.
Downtown Ambassador program, which has already been mentioned a little bit.
This is the earlier months. There was a huge volume of activity the first month, just trying to catch up and then it slowed off a little bit.
But that data is in there. There have been some benefits associated with that.
And it's helpful if you need a hand or need help escort the vehicle or things like that as well.
This is for each month, April through June. You see the numbers are down a little bit as a total overall, but they have kind of leveled off a little bit.
Downtown openings and closings, a total jobs for the first quarter created.
There were.
But there are obviously businesses started businesses closing some relocated as well. I think there were two in the second quarter they relocated.
And then three jobs gained in the second quarter.
This was in the last meeting that we had. It just basically shows the hits and where they're coming from.
Obviously, 80% about are coming from the Denton area. You can see on Facebook, you've got Fort Worth, Senator Crump.
So our outlying areas are, you know, going to the Main Street social media outlets.
And then Dallas is also on the Instagram side at 4%.
These are all the hits, you know, nationwide where they're all coming from.
And then the stats, all that should be in the cover that you have.
And then the October focus, I guess the city of Denton is trying to have an event that we're known for.
It's going to be the 31 days of then in Halloween.
So we've got a bunch of different events throughout the month that are going to be on that 13 different locations.
But that's obviously an effort to increase activity, hotels, you know, visitors into the city of Denton.
I think that's the main update. A lot of it we've kind of seen through here, but some of it we haven't.
Jeremy, thank you. Any questions?
I think the I can't say enough. The impact is generally on day to day festival and that and then so the city's activity.
I'd love to continue to monitor those hits or whatever, because we've just sent a spike between the stickers and the posters that are going out.
That's what I think that I think it should drive a lot of traffic. And then there's.
I use as a metric, the price went up for the coffin races. Not a lot about 50 bucks or so, but it's sold out in 2 days and there's a waiting list on top of that.
Really important to make sure we're mindful of that. What kind of track coming to prepare for, but then also sort of the businesses can leverage it.
We can get that information out or if you want to sponsor those sort of things, I know they have sponsorship some of the sold out, but some are still available for that.
One day that one weekend, but still more broadly. Yeah, another event that wasn't noted on there was just the Fourth of July.
I had a lot of activity in the downtown area. I don't know if anybody went to that, but the drone show a lot of the businesses in and around that area did benefit as well, I would imagine.
Thank you. Quick Jamie Adams economic development partnerships. I had a presentation, but as we finish here, we enjoy a sandwich together. If you want to dive into some numbers, I can feel free to share them on our website on our investors and on some vacancy concern.
One thing I wanted to mention really quick is I want to thank extra Tara and the nice to staff are allowing us to use that high school for our forum on July 24. Thank you.
Mayor Husbeth for speaking at that forum. Also, it was a great event when we got to hear knowledge from Hillwood to hear about landmark and also hear from Dr. Wilson give a presentation on didn't I see and funding and their growth and their need for funding and so there's a great room to be able to speak that in front of and your staff was wonderful and thank you.
And the last thing I want to mention, you know, we've talked a lot today about where else automation or cybersecurity we had a forum last week two weeks ago that's focused on that there's a tetrapack well attended and a great conversation I can share some information on that if anyone is looking for
but we do have an upcoming HR roundtable next week it's going to talk about growth and then talk about the next wave of workforce and can they work here do they always have to go to fourth of Dallas can they stay and then are they going to work to make toys can they not make toys and then how do we how do we connect.
Any questions for me.
I'll understand, I really like how the communication the email is coming out regarding some of those events and ease of registration so really well.
I realized today Aaron's not on those emails, so she's never been receiving them.
Sustainability update.
I know we're short on time. I'm Catherine Barnett, sustainability manager, Julie's on the corner, both work in our office. We just wanted to let you know that we're refreshing our green business program. If anyone has any feedback about what we may be missing or what we could add that you think businesses in town could benefit from once we start with education and awareness, and then we can work into awards and recognizing businesses.
That's a program changes since we originally released a program back in 2019 so we can help share best practices with other businesses, whether it's the organics recycling.
Where we can help share how that works better for folks, water conservation, just trying to put cohorts together, different businesses, you can share their experiences with others. So, this is in your backup there's contact information on it and we also have this is the refreshed version, you want to grab it on the way out.
If you have any ideas, feel free to reach out to us, and we will be happy to work with you.
That's all I have. I'm going to get out of here. Okay. Great. Appreciate the progress that's. We talked about the large, large employers and those kind of things and this is a big deal to large employers.
All right, thanks so much.
We're going to talk about homelessness. Is that right.
I'm going to be director for community services.
We do have a short presentation, I'll just touch on the first slide and you review some of the data that's in the backup that you've got any specific questions, I'm happy to answer them.
I just want to kind of provide an overview of what the city funds this isn't all of our homelessness funding because we do have some covert relief dollars that were not included in this presentation this is the city's annual essential allocation for almost
every household. This focuses on councils, key focus areas, and the city's approach to homelessness is collaborative, and we fund programs that help address various points what we call our housing crisis response system so we are engaged very collaboratively
in Denton and outside of Denton. We work really closely with our United Way on some countywide leadership teams and collective impact initiatives to develop and implement strategic planning to address homelessness, collaboratively across the region.
And so we do fund street outreach, through a local nonprofit we also have a homeless outreach team through a police department that provides some similar services but we fund a nonprofit to outreach to folks, get them connected to services, divert them from homelessness as much as possible, get them connected to mental health, behavioral health resources as limited as they are in our county and our region and our state.
We also provide funding for the Denton community shelter, $400,000 annually. There are some additional American Rescue Plan or ARP funds going to the shelter for the next couple of years to help them ramp up their operations well.
We also provide funding for United Way to help kind of what we like to say wrangle the cats and provide that background support to some of that, those collaborative initiatives I mentioned, both through staff support to not only facilitate and bring folks together but to help facilitate sharing of data so that our nonprofits are rolling in the same direction and we're serving people experiencing are at risk of homelessness as efficiently as possible.
We also provide some funding to what is called the Barriers Fund, which is a fund of last resort for households at risk or experiencing homelessness to quickly help them maintain or return to housing, and this is administered.
The United Way is the fiscal agent for this fund, but it is available to any nonprofit serving people experiencing our risk of homelessness. It could be anything like a bus ticket to return home to family, because they found the way it made their way to Denton and this is, you know, not their, their home base or where their support system is.
It could be something to help fix the car so they can maintain employment and not lose their housing. It could be a rent payment or some sort of, you know, amount of funds to help get into housing or sustain their living situation.
If all other utility assistance dollars are exhausted, for example, it could support something like that.
So about $700,000 is the city's annual allocation. As I mentioned, there's additional data on some of those programs I mentioned in the report.
I would like to touch on some of the conversation that came up earlier in regards to how we are working to address this on a policy level.
We are working really closely in those collaborative teams that I mentioned with the county. We're engaged in a cross, what's called a cross care collaborative work group.
But it's focused on homelessness and behavioral health and kind of the intersection of the two, behavioral health, meaning mental health and substance use disorder needs.
And so it focuses on the intersection of those two systems that are large and operate in different ways to ensure that we're not kind of duplicating efforts, but also really understand that for a lot of folks on the street, we don't have many services to offer them locally other than jail.
A lot of times, not for lack of a system that is here to serve them, but just resources in that system.
And so we are in close collaboration with the county and our local mental health authority, MHMR. We have visited crisis stabilization units somewhere that someone either experiencing a mental health crisis or
tied to or independent of substance use disorder episode could go and receive services and stay for a temporary amount of time and then get diverted or transferred to some more longer term treatment opportunities.
Those opportunities are few and far between. We are engaged with our chief of staff to help stay aware of what's coming in the next legislative session that might impact that positively here in North Texas and specifically, whether that be funding for
healthcare facilities, hospitals, that sort of thing, and any other legislation that could impact that. So with that, are there any follow-up questions or comments?
Just a quick question. Do we know how we compare to other communities in Denton County, Collin County that are similar size relative to our population of homeless people? What may cause or not cause our level of that population?
Yes and no. I will say the way that we track homelessness data collaboratively is countywide data, so it is a little difficult to parse out what is Denton specific. And so, yes, we know generally how Denton County would compare to Collin County.
And it's difficult to identify concrete causes for that sort of thing. It's a fluid population. Resources vary. We are along the 35 corridor, so we get a lot more visitors of all kinds, including unsheltered.
So that is a very loaded question that I'm happy to chat with about, but just in terms of being able to identify what that cause might be, it's difficult. It's lack of affordable housing, it's increase of rents, it's increasing healthcare costs and all that sort of thing.
There's a lot of real impact there.
And totally we hear that, you know, but the same could be said for any community who's got a public transportation system or a train system like that. People are coming and going all different directions being sent from all different directions.
I was going to ask the exact same question. You know, throughout our county, do we know how Denton is? And you answered the question, but we don't. So the other thing is, is, you know, other cities that have helped fund certain things in Denton County for our services.
I have heard from other city leaders to say, yeah, we send them to Denton because there's more services there in Denton.
And directly from other city leaders, right? We gave funds in to try and help get that done, which when this whole thing started, you know, like it was probably 10 years ago is when it started really getting aggressive here in Denton.
You know, there were so many initiatives put forward, right? We were included in those then for a while until I realized that, oh my gosh, the more services we're offering here in Denton, other communities are sending those things. It puts even more of a stress on our Denton community.
So I think that's why what Tony asked that question is that sounds heartless and I don't mean for it to, because there's different levels, right?
There's there's obviously mental health, which is we got to really help and there's then there's the addiction. And then there's people who are like, hey, we're what you said, but right before they get homeless or how can we help that tier?
That's where I'm real interested in, right? But in our city, you know, as we're offering more and more of these services, more and more of the smaller cities around us are sending their issues to Denton because we're growing our service base, right?
So this is a hard thing that we got to think about. And how do we do it? And and we really I'm going to I brought these. I'm going to pass them around. This is what I showed up to my office this morning.
It's funny. We're having this conversation. We'll pass these around. Somebody had written all over my buildings and asleep on my sidewalk and urinated on my front porch today.
This was when I walked in my office today. So anybody like to take these can just take a little. This is my corporate office. You know, I barely have paid people in our office.
So this is the thing we have to look at where this is the CDC. And that's why we're giving these presentations of how does this affect the CDC? I have vacant buildings downtown.
My friends are less downtown. People are scared to be an after dark downtown. So we have to look at it as we do want to help help the situation. Where do we know how do we know?
But how is it affecting our community? This is a loop. This isn't even downtown. This is 25. So it's a real problem. And we're having a problem sometimes getting employees that want to work in them because of this issue.
I have an employee that won't even go to Target and then she drops out. So while we're I think we're doing everything we can do, we know how to offer these services in which are needed.
I think we're drawing more issue because I think the whole I don't know is for fact is what I like to know. Has the homeless population increased in the last 24 months?
I agree. And we have increased our services heavily in the last 24 months and then which is a good thing. Right. But as we're solving our own problem, we're creating more of a problem in our own community and how we balance that.
I'm not sure I have the answer to that, but it had it is growing tremendously. I when I leave work, you know, the food pantry, the days they're doing it, it's backed up all the way on to loop 288. Obviously, there's a need.
How do we protect our community from attracting these and serving who's in our community? That's a hard question to answer. It is a hard question. I appreciate the feedback. It's a conversation we have regularly with a lot of our nonprofits and internally as a city when it comes to the programs that we provide.
It's a conversation we've been having for the past eight years with a lot of our nonprofits who have have and are continuing to go from maybe more of a small town, Denton feel on their boards of directors and the types of programs they provide and growing with and into the new look of Denton and Denton County.
We're growing exponentially. Well, I stand up to say we are growing but how how do we how do we maintain our nature as a city to be generous and to be helpful without Craig but we're creating more of a problem.
Exactly. Well, while also understanding our capacity, having having that realistic kind of line up. This is where our resources stop and this is where we have to deal with. So it's still early to talk through exact strategies that we are deploying. But, you know, I appreciate the feedback and look forward to coming back in October and other needs to be able to kind of communicate what we're doing to help addressing this.
And I'm just overall I can show you over the last 24 months how our rents have dropped in certain areas, as far as office and employee rents and where people want to be, and just to sure be able to we're talking about hiring people keep them then, you know, that's that's a problem.
Or if they want that downtown or for office bill. It's everyone. And so this is this is a huge economic problem we've got to get out of control or we can spend all the money we want on consultants, which is a lot that we spend your day, and it's not going to be good.
That's for all that you guys are doing. We know you guys are working your tail off, but you're getting you're on a treadmill, then unless we stop the flood in y'all's job is never going to be a checkmark.
Great. You know it's it's a tough job and thank you guys for seeing a week a week. It's counsel, is the city manager bringing something to council next in October.
Okay, yeah so we have a work session so I'd advocate those interested please take a look at that. Take a look at the budget, I am absolutely biased. But if you look at the council priorities, I like one because I don't like it.
It's adding water stations outside that I think exacerbates the very issue you point out some that's $80,000 would be that to this list of stuff we're doing to your point on that I let them come to my office for a long I will go make a deal with
if y'all are gone by in the morning, y'all can use my outside I did for five or six years with these guys we had to deal just protect my buildings at night y'all can go wash your bikes fill your jugs do whatever you want to be gone by 6am.
Yeah, so I'm just saying to this point that's exact watch the budget conversations, watch this conversation when comes and you know, Ray staff is doing a great job, but I'll tell you this from my, this is my individual thought.
The answer to your question came from United States Supreme Court. When the United States Supreme Court said that that city can enforce in a different way because they have a shelter.
And we have a shelter. That's the only fix in my mind that makes Louisville engaged that makes current Highland Village, all those people engage. If they don't have one that it changes how they can enforce.
Yeah, so so there is there that that is developing right how people address that you see Gavin Newsom in California changing based on that. And I'll tell you it is a healthy discussion discussion for us to have.
I want to see the data. I want to see the information. That's what that presentation is about. But the answer to your question is if didn't is uniquely situated to enforce different than our neighboring cities in our neighboring cities will feel what they've been.
Yes.
And that's that's Gerard's opinion only not as mayor just as a concerned citizen in the city of death.
Thank you.
All right, last item.
We appreciate everyone being here today and the forum note was a very long meeting last month canceled.
A lot of topics over. So package agenda, but it is all items that I hope you appreciate that you've asked about that we're bringing back so next month.
Our focus is going to be on it's already time to talk about the agreement with the chamber for the partnership. So we'll bring that one back.
Aaron and I shall do an update on the report on how that's going will present the agreement.
Same thing with Stoke will do an annual report and then the agreement for consideration prior to go and counsel and then some of our just standing items.
So if there are any additional topics that you're interested in, we've heard them research them and got them back on the agenda quickly.
One item, Brittany didn't mention, but that she did a really great job with out of leadership, didn't the project on child care talked about the best place for working parents. We have received that designation and also our corporate.
You can add in to get it licensed so that economic development can work with businesses, give them that designation, which is also a tool you ask for as we go through the incidents when looking at compensation packages.
So they're listening and working and if there's any other topics you're interested in, you can let Steve and Brittany know, and we'll get them open to the agenda and appreciate it.
Is there anything else spring for.
104 we will come to the German. Thank you.