>> All right, after determining that a forum is present, the Charter Review Committee will
reconvene in a regular meeting on August 22nd at 6, 532 p.m. in Thompson rooms 3, 4, and
5 at the Development Services Center in Denny, Texas. Seeing that we have a forum, I will
now call the regular meeting of the Charter Committee to order at 522. We will now receive
comments from members of the public who wish to speak, must be present at the meeting,
and submit a speaker card to the staff liaison prior to the item being called. Up to five
speakers may speak for two minutes each on any item on the agenda. I have two cards in
front of me. First, Charles Lee, if you could come to that podium up there. You have two
minutes, and all of your staff is going to set a timer that will go off when you're doing
this, Earl.
>> Yeah, how are you doing? My name is Charles Lee. I want to start off with this quote from
the Federalist Papers by Brutus Bourne on October 18, 1787, and I think it's very important
to this committee that people know this. "But remember, when the people want to part with
power, they can seldom or never resume it again but by force. Many instances can be
produced in which the people have voluntarily increased the powers of their rulers, but
few, if any, in which rulers have willingly abridged their authority. This is a sufficient
reason to induce you to be careful in the first instance on how you deposit powers of
the government." You're basically saying that what we're doing right here, that whatever
powers we give over to the government is not only going to be for this generation, it is
going to be for generations going forward. And I just want people to be mindful of that.
And as far as the topics that are going on here, first of all, I really don't want to
change the city chart at all. I'm going to leave it the way it is because people have
agendas and they're down to power, and I know that, and you can say that you're not, it's
not true. I know you're basically lying. But if you are going to add council members, it
needs to be at a balanced rate of one to one or two to one when it comes to at-large and
district levels. And in the second part, I see that you want to extend the power, not
extend the power, but extend the term of public officials from two to three to four years.
I believe that's actually no-go. I think it should be two years. I'm a tightwad with money,
but I'm not a tightwad with elections. I think we should have more elections. If anything,
we should go back to one year and have more elections so we have people have more opportunity.
If these people aren't doing a good job, we can take them out of office at a more rapid
rate. Other than that, you have a nice day.
Are we allowed to ask questions in the video? I'll take a question.
I just want to comment. I don't think we're necessarily proposing what items are considered,
and I think you said that we're proposing to go to three or four. I think we're just
discussing that to see if that's a proposal that we want to vote for and go for. So I
don't want you to think that it has been put forth that we think we should. That's what
the discussion is for. All right. I just want to be mindful that I'm personally against
that. I think it should be two years. That's all I have to say. You have the next speaker.
All right. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mary Cappell.
Good evening. I had read a little bit of sketchy information about one of the directions of
the city to our review committee was going for to remove the at-large seats, and I was
concerned about that. And also, well, I'll mention that. So I'm strongly in favor of
keeping the mayoral seats and the two other city council seats at-large seats. I think
I read that there was concern about the at-large campaigns cost a lot of effort. And I just
think that that's a short, that's really not a watershed reason for eliminating those positions
and having to reach out to more of your constituents. But I think that's a good thing. More of the
citizens in the Denton area are likely to participate if they have at-large campaigns,
which is, of course, what we want. Each citizen has a say, not only in their district rep,
but also for the mayor and the two other city council member seats. We don't need to discourage
voter participation anymore, as it already exists. And in a city this large, we want
every voter or citizen to know they have some influence and say what the city covers. It's
worked for over four years, even as we grow. And I don't think we need to isolate our citizens
more. The second concern that was a rumor, and it may just be that, but it can become
a reality, is that perhaps UNT would be given their own voting district. That's a bad idea.
I remember as a college student, I was learning a lot. College students are very influenced.
They are ready to go, get on the bandwagon for anything the teachers tell them to do,
and they should not be telling the 140,000 or more citizens, they should not be determining
the laws and ordinances, anything on the scope. So I really do not want to see, I think they're
well represented. And we do want them, we do want the students to be involved and learn
how to be an active part of how much time we have.
Alright, so we have a new member of the body. Fortunately Ms. Margarita had to step down.
So Commissioner Trevino, you could introduce yourself and say something that you love about
Denden. I see that you're eating, let's go around the room and we will all just introduce
ourselves with our names, what she is.
Jeremy Fikes, moved to Denden in 1992, went to high school here, went to college here,
got into banking, I'm the market president for parenting banking trusts here in town.
I'm involved in several different chamber, and in the past I've been involved in city
committees as well. I'm currently on the economic development partnership board for the city
of Denden. I'm the chair for the downtown economic development committee. I've been
on the airport advisory board 10 plus years ago. I'm currently on the chair of the public
board.
Going down the line, that was fine thank you, but going down the line if we could just do
our names because we have already introduced ourselves. We're available online, so we're
just going to try and keep our names.
My name is David, I'm a pharmacist and I'm semi retired. Brian Danoff, lived in Denden
for about 14 years, live in district one, love Denden, so happy to serve on all sorts
of different stuff.
Nate Johnson, born and raised in Denden.
Gabriel Kirkpatrick or Gabe, welcome, been here in Denden since 2003.
My name is Christine, I'm also on zoning board adjustments and mobility.
Julie Ramsky, had been on the bond committee last summer in there, and I've been doing
since 2014 and I'm getting my feet wet slowly and slowly.
Jesse Davis, look at the DA's office for the day, formerly on the state council, the
board of ethics and currently on the bond committee currently represent Denden on the
Denden municipal power agency board.
Leslie Moore, I moved to Denden in 2016 and I currently serve as my son's PTA president
and they're happy here.
I'm Janie Siegel, I moved to Denden in 1978 for graduate school, been here ever since.
Hi, my name is Esperanza Marie, I was born and raised in Denden, I went to Denden high,
I went to UNT, I have three kids here, they go to Calhoun, were you at Calhoun, you look
familiar, yeah, I went to Calhoun, I was on the city bond committee so I remember a few
faces, and yeah, thank you.
All right, we will now move on to item B, number CRC24-012, consider approval of the
minutes of August 8th, 2024 charter review committee call.
Is there a motion to approve the minutes?
Commissioner Molina for, thank you.
Second from Commissioner Siegel.
All those in favor say aye.
All those opposed say nay.
All right, the ayes have it, the motion passes.
We will move on to item C, number CRC24-008, receive a report, hold a discussion and give
staff direction on modifying the mix of single and at large districts, this item was postponed
at our last meeting pending responses to outstanding committee questions, committee members received
responses to questions prior to the meeting, if the committee has any additional questions,
please use this time to let staff know, if not the floor is open for a brief discussion
and any motions the committee might wish to make.
I have a question, so we're talking about the districts at large and since we have to
do this again in 2030, by the time we go through all the civil rights boards and government
passing, you know, that it's good and going through the lawsuits that people don't like,
we're going to be back to 2030 again, so to me it's a big waste of public's money.
Thank you.
>> Go ahead.
>> First off, we're putting this together.
There's no absolute pattern which will assure everybody's got an equitable representation
by taking this off of stage 13 of the mock chart that is put together.
My recommendation is to maintain the mitts.
Just support that.
It's voiced many times within the model.
It allows for the districts to have a new member or two, depending on how many members
you have, to interact with.
There isn't no -- there is no need for --
>> Excuse me, can I ask you to speak a little louder, we've been having some issues on the
livestream because there's the overhead mic, so I would just ask the committee to speak
up.
>> Okay.
>> Apologies.
>> Where do you want me to start from?
>> I'm sorry.
I just want to make sure we're getting everything on the record.
If you wanted to start from the top, maybe.
>> Okay.
All righty.
From the 85-page sample make-up for council recommendations, I'm taking on page 13, the
fact that there's no absolute pattern which will assure that there is going to be an equitable
transportation and representation.
Equity -- and this is my comment, but it's also from page 81 of the same text, that the
definition of equity reflects the perception of those that are impacted by it or affected.
You are what you were when is a statement that I like to use.
If you're 12 years old, a daughter and your father passes away, you're going to have a
different perspective on life and everything that goes on after it than someone who loses
their father at the age of 30, 50, or 90.
Okay.
So I am recommending that we maintain the mix because one, that's what the model says
in many pages.
It allows for the districts to have another member or two, depending on how many at large
you are on the committee to interact with.
You don't have the issue of concern with everybody having an individual district that you're
going to have quid pro quo.
So I'm district two, and I want this, but district six wants this, and this is meeting
with everybody, is an individual district, and therefore looking at the problems as it
relates just to their district rather than the whole.
And then there wouldn't be quite the need to go for -- that they were going to be a
quid pro quo.
So there's a follow-up to the voter regulations, as mentioned by Mr. McClure, and so that's
for that.
And so, you know, so you don't have these pragmatic interests.
You don't worry about quid pro quo.
You've got a system that's already been in existence and has worked for several years.
The model says that's their best recommendation.
And that's basically my thought process.
Thank you.
>> Commissioner Kirkpatrick.
>> I heard both of my fellow -- what's the proper term we're using?
>> Commissioners.
>> Commissioner.
I like that.
Commissioners have said, my concern is always the idea that let's kick the can down the
street because we might come back to it six years later.
And I can understand that thought, but I think if we can get something right now for the
citizens, that's important.
For me, the way I see it is, I would like for us to expand and have smaller, to have
more council members because I think the way I kind of look at it is this.
You know, if whenever we're talking, let's say like this body right here, if you've got
two people who are representing everybody here, you can do the math on that.
If you've got four representing everybody here, you're getting in much smaller groups,
they're hearing the concerns much more, and they're able to, one, truly hear more of those
concerns and really get a sample of, okay, this is my community, this is what they're
saying.
It becomes easier and more efficient to do so.
I think also one thing that we don't talk about enough is when we do this and we have
these smaller districts, it makes it much more cost-effective and accessible to all
of our citizens, all of our residents, excuse me, to be specific.
I think that I've seen just at the local level how expensive these elections are becoming,
more and more.
More and more money is being involved, where I see, you know, a good example of our last
city council election where you looked at two candidates right next to each other, one
that was able to raise upwards of $25,000 over a whole cycle.
That's a lot of money.
Another who was able to gift themselves $25,000 numerous times.
It's very telling about, you know, the problems of money being too involved and having these
bigger, at-large seats where you're trying to cover the entire community and you're trying
to reach out to everybody.
I mean, it's simple enough if I'm looking at, and we're two at-large now, so forgive
me if I get the numbers wrong, but we're roughly at 150,000 and I don't, you know, if we're
wrong on that.
So each at-large is covering 75,000 people.
That being said, if we have more single districts and we're cutting that number down, all of
a sudden those single districts, instead of representing, we're currently at 35,000 with
the four districts, if we had those seats and we're getting down to some of those numbers,
which many of the comparable cities have, you're having the ability to, okay, this person's
representing 20,000 people, 25,000.
That's still a large number of people, but it's much more concise.
They truly have a feeling of the community.
I find it too much, too, when I go to city council meetings and I have not been to enough,
so not to over-speak, but quite often I come out of these meetings with these plans and
people from the community still feel like their voices haven't been heard, consistently
seeing that.
And that's concerning to me, for any district.
I think just simply enough, when you're able to have more representation that's a little
bit smaller, a little bit more efficient, you're going to have a better opportunity
of knowing your constituents.
And I understand the idea of the quid pro quo, but in the process, anytime, and that's
what we're doing in here, right, not quid pro quo, but we're discussing things and we're
trying to find common ground.
So I don't think that if you get to more people having a better understanding of smaller districts
that that's going to create more quid pro quo than you have if you have, you know, at
large seats.
My main concerns, and I know I've taken up a lot of times, forgive me, are that the smaller,
more efficient is better, getting more money out of the political system.
So people, a lot of the people I talk to, I don't know about yourselves, just from my
experience, they don't have the time to be here tonight.
They're working.
You know, there's a lot of that going on.
There's a lot of people working two or three jobs.
So when I have these conversations too, quite often it's the same thing like, look, you're
great.
Why don't you, man, I got a wife and two kids.
I got to work two jobs and I'm still not able to pay my bills.
So the more money that's in this process in the city council, the more we get a representation
of people who have the money and the ability to do so.
I think it naturally creates a chasm where we don't have people from all parts of our
residency.
So those are some of my basic thoughts on it.
Thank you for the time.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you for that.
I kind of want to back up with what Weaver and Julie said a little bit.
We've got a city charter that meets the best practices.
We've got, it says in there, seven to nine people.
We've got seven.
We've got comparable local cities that are similar in size, that have similar representation
per district.
If we do redistricting, it's going to cost a bunch of legal fees, 40 to $120,000 of our
money.
We do have large growth, but we can also review the charter in another two years if that becomes
an issue.
Plus, we have a 2030 census that will basically tell us exactly what the growth is.
I think we're putting the cart before the horse a little bit.
We've got something that's worked for 44 years.
We've got an independent voice outside of this, of an independent organization saying
we are following the best practices.
The other side of that is if you get the council too big, people don't like to maybe hear this,
but a lot of the people who do the work for the city the most are the city employees.
You've got to support your city employees, and if they're getting pulled in more and
more directions from more and more and more council members at a city our size, that actually
makes our city less efficient because they have to answer to all these individual inquiries
and those things.
I think there's a lot of unintended consequences that happen.
I'm not saying that we don't get bigger as we grow, but I think for right now, we're
kind of in the sweet spot, and if we want to do that later, again, there's nothing to
preclude us from doing this again in two years.
We can see some of the growth.
We can do those things.
I think there is a good mix.
I really don't like the idea of having only single districts because I think that can
be very politically fraught with things that everyone complains about depending on who's
in power at the time like gerrymandering.
That can go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
That can cause a lot of problems long term.
I just want to say my voice is for now, I think we've got a very good mix.
I think it meets the best practices, and I very strongly think we should keep it how
it is.
I just want to clarify before further discussion, the item up for discussion right now is districts
versus at-large, not total number of districts.
Mr. Johnson?
I think that it should be six districts, and if you go by the North Texas Council of Government,
it estimates that the population would be 215,835 in 2035.
That's 11 to almost what, 10 to almost 11 years from now.
So we're here, we think we have to think forward for the future of the city.
And then it said it's going to be 298,019 in 2050, which leaves four districts to have
53,958.75, my number's correct.
The population.
Now, is the population supposed to be the same around the city?
Because in the next 10 to 20 years, out in the Robeson Ranch area, that side of town,
they should be getting approximately probably about 25,000, maybe 30,000 new homes built
in the next 20 years.
So that needs to be, the district needs to be broken up all around and redrawn.
Now, if you do six districts, you have 35,975 in each district 2035.
You have 49,669.8 in each district in 2050.
And if you modify to eight with one at large, then you're going to have 26,979.3 in 2035,
37,252.3 in 2050, which are smaller numbers for council members to deal with as you have,
once you take away the enlarged seat.
So you're not taking away the number of people on council.
You're just getting rid of the enlarged seats, in which you don't have to raise a lot of
money when you are just doing a single district.
So you don't have to hear people complain about developer money coming in because you
don't need that much money when you're just focusing on your particular district.
So I think modifying the council, and that's the way I would go.
Hi, Commissioner Davis.
I have to back us up a little bit, y'all, because nothing that we do on this committee,
even if every one of our recommendations goes forward to city council, and they agree
and they put it on the ballot, and the citizens agree and they vote it into the charter,
nothing that we do is going to constrain or change the political process.
It just spends money on what candidates, how they raise their money, whether they raise
money at home or somewhere else.
I take great issue, Mr. Kirkpatrick, with you specifically singling out a particular
race from the last cycle, because what that does is shows us that we're talking about
the last couple of political cycles, and that is not our job.
Our job is to set the parameters, well, to recommend the parameters for the governing
document of the city.
From there, whether we change it or not, that's the law of the land that the city council
then uses to draw the district lines.
We're not deciding how many people live in District 4 or District 3 or District 2 or
District 1.
We're not deciding who gets to run for which places.
We're going to have a conversation later about some things that touch on that.
But we're not setting that out.
We're setting the ground rules, and the ground rules we have right now, our best practices
according to the National League of Cities, are comparable with our peer cities, whether
you're saying peer cities because they're around us or you're saying peer cities because
they're the same size as us or the same kind of mix of people as us.
The exception to the rule is either all at large or all single member.
The general rule that works very well is to have about seven, that is a mix, of single
member district and at large.
That works very well.
Why does it work well?
Because I get four votes on the city council.
When I speak about my pothole or where I want the sewer plant to be or whatever, at least
four people need to listen to me as a constituent.
If I have just my person and just the mayor, then the rest of them, they're going to have
to never take my calls.
They don't have to answer my emails.
They don't have to pay attention when I come to the dais and talk, or come to the podium
and talk rather.
They don't have to give a roof about me.
They're never going to knock on my door.
They're never going to want to know what I want to say or my perspective on city things
because they don't have to.
They have no accountability with me as a citizen.
And you split it out.
You make it to where the city council acts more like Congress and less like a board of
directors.
Why does the board of directors work well for something like a multi-billion dollar
company, like the city of Denton has?
Why does the board of directors?
Because it's close to people and it's close to the problem because it's an effective group,
effective size of people.
It's an effective dynamic.
When you get up to some of these cities, we live close to at least one big city that has
added so many people to their city council.
Like, look at Houston, that city council is not a group that gets together and gets stuff
done.
That's a group of people that's constantly shifting political alliances.
That's factions and partisanized.
That's not an effective way to get things done.
You look at a big city like New York, all these multiple districts, are they able to
effectively do things like we do in the city of Denton?
No, they're not.
I want to also push back just a little bit on some of the statistics, and again, this
narrative that we've heard about one particular part of town, not to correct me, but I think
the number is about 2,500 to 3,000 homes and about 30,000 total people by that date.
It's the number of homes, residential units, is around 3,000.
In the year 20 ... Excuse me, scrolled down too far.
In the year 2022, across the city of Denton, not a single home was built in the Hunter
Cole Ranch area, and 4,000 were built in the rest of the city.
To date, we've issued 1,200 permits just in the first half of 2024, and not a single house
permit or apartment permit, not a single housing unit has been built in this area that we're
talking about.
If you look at the population density map, District 2 is going to grow at the same rate
as what we call Mount's current District 4.
Why do I bring that up?
All that's to say, that's not our job today.
We're not drawing these lines.
We're not saying where these districts are.
We're just talking about, should we have some that large, and eventually we're going to
talk about how many districts should there be altogether.
The last thing I'm going to say at this point is this, there's a philosophical or a thought
problem that's called Chesterton's Fence.
You've probably heard of it.
It's the idea that, and it works well in Texas too, even though Chesterton was from England,
when you come across a closed gate, when you come across a fence, the first thing you do
isn't kick down the fence or open the gate, and then let whatever's in there out.
The first thing you do is stop and figure out why is this gate here in the first place
before you start changing the status quo.
We've talked about the many reasons why this status quo is here, why it serves the citizens
well, and the only reason we've heard to change it are based on incorrect data,
unfortunately a politically driven narrative that doesn't match the data.
The closest thing to a cogent argument we've heard is this tighter representation idea.
Some of us are from Denton, have been here a long time, some of us aren't.
Some of us were here during, I don't know how many rounds of protests and wet/dry elections
and all sorts of different things going on across town.
This has never been a town that has an issue with people making themselves heard.
It's never really been our problem.
Maybe that's a problem somewhere else.
That's never been our particular problem.
The idea that if a council member has a little bit smaller area, that there's somehow
going to be a better council member, as opposed to just one more player on the board,
as opposed to someone who can actually effectively represent the whole city.
That's something else we also heard last time, our council members say it all the time,
that they represent the whole city even though they're elected from their district or their neighborhood.
How is that possibly going to be the case if there are six single-member district people?
Why would they bother to represent the whole city?
Why would they go out of their way to represent what somebody across town needs
when they're just a baby legislature and the only people they really need in their corner
are the ones right around them in their neighborhood?
But they still have to vote.
So at this time, I move that we recommend to council no change on this part of the charter,
on the mix of single and at-large districts.
All right.
Do I hear a second for that motion?
Seconded by Commissioner Moeller.
So we will now have a discussion on that motion.
I'll just add at the beginning that the conversation thus far has ranged around sort of seven versus nine
and mixed versus primarily at district seats.
And on both of those issues, both of the options are contained within the best practices recommendations
for the League of Municipal Cities.
I don't think anyone here is recommending anything that falls outside of something that is described
as best practices by the League of Municipal Cities.
Commissioner Johnson, I saw your hand first.
I understand what Commissioner Davis is saying, but the statistics that I quoted
came from the North Texas Council of Government Estimates of the Population of Denton in 2035.
Those weren't the numbers that I came up with.
Those were right. Those were actually right.
That's the population.
So in order to get anything done on city council, every councilman member has to vote.
So it would be to the council members representing that district's best interest to either invite
another council member to hear what his constituents have to say because they've done it in district one before.
I mean, you shouldn't just have to be just bogged down in your district.
When I've seen district two, district three, enter at large, come to a D1 meeting and sit in and listen.
So just to say that nobody would, they have no reason to listen to you or whatever that was.
Council still has to vote together to get things done and move.
So it's, I yield.
Commissioner Kirkpatrick.
Quickly, and if I may staff, I have a couple of questions because I've heard these concerns on that too.
So the cost, if we have any change, you know, understanding what cost that would be, understanding that.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the peer cities that we have, and I believe from two sessions ago,
it was noted that McAllen and Mesquite were both the most recent to make changes. Is that correct? Am I correct on that?
Correct, I believe so.
Okay. And so what they have done is they've gone to six single districts with a mayor at large.
And what they've done is narrow their numbers to what we would be if we did the same.
We're at 35,000 each for four districts.
They are currently at six, excuse me, six each with a similar population within four to five thousand.
So we'd be much more. So that recent change has been that.
That's all I have for the city.
What I did want to respond to is I've heard a couple of times, and forgive me, I can't move off from who said it's been working for four years.
I'm not sure it's been working for anybody for four years. I think that's a statement to be made.
But who is it working for? So I asked that question of the entire body.
My next one is, you know, it's interesting, Commissioner Davis, you both in the first session and tonight bring up politics.
And bringing up representation and, you know, who does a representative have to be careful to?
And I can see you being sensitive to that, because correct me if I'm wrong.
But when your last election, when you ran as a city councilman, not only did you lose that election,
but the recall for you had more votes against you than you had for you.
I.E. the people in your community did not want to have you on council.
Let's not wander. Look, and I'm just saying so I can understand the sensitive. I'm not trying to be.
Point of order. Sure.
That really brings up something that should not be used as a rationalization.
Have you ever been on a jury? If I may finish, may I?
And I'm just bringing up the point that because he literally he specifically brought up the point about the idea that if we go to single districts and people in those districts, we're not going to have to be as communicative.
They're not going to worry about everybody else. So and I find it interesting, too, that you've twice brought up the political thing, but it's been you bringing that up.
It's been you twice that's done that. So I think that that's that's gaslighting 101. So I'll yield the floor to that.
May I speak to my motion? All right, let's run this down. First, Mesquite McAllen.
Those were not grassroots efforts. Those changes were calculated political operations to change the makeup of those city councils.
It's well documented. It's out there in the media. Those were not groundswells of the people talking about how I can't get hold of my at large member or we've got to have a single member district.
So we only have twenty five thousand people per member. That's just not accurate.
That's not the case. I didn't bring up politics last time. The way politics came up is gaslighting.
Okay, gaslighting is when you say everything except the word politics and then freak out when somebody says the word politics gaslighting is when you talk about incessantly about the cost of campaigns.
And then when someone says the word politics, they're the ones bringing it up.
Gaslighting is when the guy that's at the Democratic National Convention right now says, can we get that data at the precinct level?
Because it's not about setting up the playing field to be even. That's not what you're talking about. You're talking about a particular political goal.
We are not here to do politics that preserve a majority for one group or hurt the majority of another group.
We're not here to make sure that folks in the ropes and ranch area get to vote better or don't. We're not going to do any of that.
We're here to say what is the best model for a city and then later on the elected leaders of our city will decide what these districts look like.
Okay. And I'm not going to go around the room. I don't think it's fair to go around the room and call every single person out for their involvement with partisan politics.
I'm involved in partisan politics. I wear that on my sleeve. Everybody's known it forever.
Gabe, you're a professional door knocker and a campaign manager. That's inaccurate.
Does staff have concerns about the conversation at this moment or?
I do think we just need to keep it respectful and not personally target any members of the committee.
That's all I'll say. And I will just say that we are on a time crunch. So if we can.
I would like I would like to wrap up. I would like to wrap up.
I was very, very personally called out. I have an absolute right to respond to that.
And we are not stuck to however many meetings and however many hours we can stay as long or as short a time as the committee wants to.
We can take as many meetings or as many means we don't want to answer these questions or to tell the city council that its committee that appointed can't decide on a way forward and they ought to leave things the way that they are.
Go back and watch the city council meetings where we were each appointed. Go and talk to your city council members, anybody who's watching this at home, Google some of the folks on the committee and tell me that I'm gaslighting when I call this out as a political operation in the city.
I would ask that any follow up, the germane to the topic of districts large. I do want, as Jesse has said, we are not necessarily bound by a timeline, but still both who agreed to be part of this committee.
I assume had some assumption that they were agreeing to eight one and a half hour meetings. If we run over that a bit.
Yeah, we run over that excess believe that something.
Did the city ever find out what the cost of adding new members and getting it through the government regulations that we have to get it through for both at large and single districts.
Yes, or at least to some degree.
What we do have is information from when we did the twenty, twenty one redistricting cycle and we the city budgeted roughly a hundred thousand dollars for outside council to consult and do all of that work for us.
The city ended up only spending thirty one thousand dollars of that roughly, but that was because the council elected to bypass some of the processes that were not budgeted so we ended up under budget but that's that was twenty, twenty one redistricting.
We budgeted a hundred thousand dollars. Okay, what did it cost for the city employees to the whole process. I mean, there was a big cost of the city on that.
That information. I don't have. I could try to track down some numbers on it, but it certainly does cost staff time and money, so it should be a lot of money.
I would guess.
All right.
So I did listen to me last week. So a couple points. I still struggle with if I have four people that represent me, how going to one person is an advantage when I have four people that I can talk to now.
I just struggle with that obviously at large gives me that advantage.
I see I hear what different people are saying about the number of council members that we have, whether they're at large or by district, but at the end of the day, you have seven represent seven representatives or, you know, one representative or four.
Look at it. There's seven people representing the entire city. However, you do the math, you can either do the whole population divided by the number of districts and then program program.
The you know, the mayor and the other two, you get the same number. You got seven people supporting the entire city, except in one scenario, you have one person that represents you and the other scenario, you have four.
So I don't know how less representation is more favorable for any individual.
First off, secondly, I think it by having individual districts, it creates a divide. Whereas now, there should be more community because you have more people focused on the entire city. And, and Mr. Johnson, one of the comments you made on the video last month, which at least I thought I interpreted is there was a meeting in district one, I believe, where there was an at large and a district.
Your district council member, and there was a difference of the message that was sent back, but you were glad that the right message was contained in the message that went.
So I think the current structure seems to benefit that. And in my profession, I'm probably going to know most all council members, so it doesn't have as much of an impact on me. But if I was an individual citizen, which I am a citizen, but if I didn't have the position that I have, I would probably want to have the opportunity to have a relationship with more people.
Then less.
Is there anything in the chart of the states that.
Nope, no other council member can sit in on another district's meeting. Is that a question for staff for staff? No, there's not.
All right. Was that all. Yes. Okay. Commissioner runs key. A couple of things I was trying to find and I do not have my page cited, but there is a statement that you can't ensure how well of a representative you're going to have, whether you have them as an at large or as a district.
So therefore your statement about can one sit in on another district, you may have somebody from an individual district who does attend, you know, district two goes to district for this meeting.
District three goes to district one.
Or and or the at large, you may have at largest show up at all of the be any of them at all of the meetings and vice versa.
One of the things is.
Chair Christine has mentioned is we're not supposed to really be looking at numbers.
But one can't help taking the numbers of the population out of this issue.
But the first thing is looking at the mix.
If we keep a mix.
And we then discuss the numbers.
We've got a potential to look at it once we have the numbers and say, okay, I want to up the numbers to 37, which we have 12 districts and the rest of them at large.
So that is kind of in an estimation as to a way to do it.
And I think perhaps if I may, I don't know if we finished the motion and took about.
So let's perhaps go back to that.
See how the vote comes out.
If we can't reach a consensus and have a good vote on it.
Then we move it to the next thing or we perhaps have another motion.
That would be a good approach.
If we have a motion on the floor, we vote for it.
If that doesn't, then there's no emotion.
If it doesn't pass, then it's supposed to be bad, right?
For this meeting, there can also at later meetings be a motion to have it brought back up.
So it's not necessarily doesn't totally end the discussion if there's consensus to bring it back later.
Please let staff finish their comments, Mr. Dan.
Can we I agree we should we should vote on the motion.
Commissioner Davis, can you just restate the motion?
Because we talked about that a lot.
I just want to make sure everyone understands what they're both not.
I mean, I mean, I get it word for word.
But it was that motion that we recommend to hear some start to talk to maybe they had written it down motion that we recommend to the city council not to modify the current mix.
The current mix of single and at large, single member and at large districts.
So I ask a question.
So we're just voting on if we need if we're going to have single and at large districts, no numbers, no nothing.
That's just the same.
He's making a motion that will maintain a mix.
The committee recommends things to council council, I believe, will get final say on those particular items.
But I would take it.
Not modifying would mean not changing from four to three.
Would not that would preclude like a five, two or three, four or so on. I believe that would mean keeping it as four, three legal motion.
The motion is to keep them to not modify that would preclude.
Yeah. So then your vote is in favor of not modifying or not.
All right. I'll just add my thoughts here.
I suppose to refer back to the model charter, the model charter specifically says that having entirely at large districts can result in communities where there is not a homogenous population.
Minority voices will be excluded from that because they may not get any seats.
That means to me that seven at large and zero districts results in suppression of minority voice.
The further that you kind of move along the scale in the opposite way, the more minority voice that you get.
I think that's important because voting is not just an individual activity.
Voting is your community having a voice.
And so it's not just that I, Christine Bray have a certain voice when votes are conducted in a certain way.
It is that the community of people who are like Christine or the community of people who are like Patrick or like Julia or like Nate Johnson, that community of people.
And we know that different communities vote at different rates.
That's why the Voting Rights Act recommends district seats as a remedy for that because you can have populations that get overruled and entirely at large.
So Commissioner Davis, I think your point is well taken that we should not necessarily be discussing specific elections, specific events within the city.
So I want to bring in some data from national evaluations.
There was a team that looked at 7,000 cities or municipalities across the country, not just cities, but also school boards.
And they determined that districts aid racial and ethnic minorities because more traditionally underrepresented candidates choose to run district races.
If the organizing, fundraising, and campaign costs are substantially different between districts and citywide races, this may well be a factor.
Other research shows that district seats increase representation for racial minorities.
So that's that's kind of my thought on this is that it is not just about individuals.
It is about communities and how we can adhere to community representation.
I don't make that you said the further you get away from all at large, the better.
That would be that's your opinion.
That would not be the same as saying if it's 10,000 degrees, I'm right next to the sun. The further I get away from 10,000 degrees, the better chance have a living.
But if I'm negative 10,000 degrees and I'm dead to sure.
So in response to that, some data on the relationship between the type of representation and I'm quoting this is cited in the effective at large versus district elections on racial representation elections.
At large seats result in a substantial deviation where minority groups are substantially underrepresented mixed results in a slight improvement and district is nearly directly proportional.
I think we're probably a happy medium.
That data and this is probably the case in several cities. We know stuff has happened throughout history assume that people are geographically distributed based on what community they belong to.
I mean, you know, I mean, yes, that's not necessarily the case all the time.
I mean, if you looked at the district makeups that we currently have, that's maybe not the case now for us in this.
I just I don't know without your data.
But we bake just by the pure fact that you have to district by geography. It's like a constraint, right?
Assumes that communities are also minority communities. All these other communities are also district geographically.
If you want to give them more representation, I don't know that that's necessarily the case.
I think there's an assumption that exists in that data and data shows that the less geographic concentration is the less bad that there is.
So you would be correct.
We have that data. It was provided to us because of the redistricting process. The city went through in 2021 and in Denton, broadly speaking, is a well distributed city.
There are some pockets where you have a we have currently right now one majority minority city council member district.
If you were to attempt to draw, of course, that's not what we're doing.
But if you were to attempt to draw more in the city of Denton, it's virtually impossible to do.
And people tried there when people were trying because we have generally speaking, a broad distribution.
There are, like I said, pockets and enclaves like any city has. We do have some historical things that have helped shape our city.
But we also have a city that has grown quite a bit. And as we've grown, the distribution has been pretty even.
There are not, like in some cities, especially some bigger cities, huge giant pockets of one type of person in no other type of person.
We have a roughly homogenous outside of a couple of areas distribution.
So I take Brian's point really well that I think the term was used last time, opportunity districts.
So that meaning again, that's a term from the political world.
A opportunity district is a place that's a potential opportunity for a to become a minority held seat.
And in some ways, I think that's the goal. And that's a positive thing to do.
You can't really create those very well. And then we have exactly one place where that has been possible to do because the distribution of ethnic groups is very it's very even compared to some other places, especially other places in the South.
If I may offer back up to what Jesse just said, having looked at the demographic distribution, it was part of what was the attachment page six that showed all the demographics were looked at.
And it lists all the individual districts. It lists the respective demographic and that the substantiated when the last three district was done.
One of the reasons that the city managed to save money on it was the process that evolved without totally utilizing the consultant.
There was a lot of animosity demonstrated on cultural. There was demonstration of the animosity between the populations that spoke either for or against it.
If I look at again, was going ahead and it's something else, but I am going to just stick it in here. There are several things that are in the model charter that when the city is doing redistricting, we may have come out right in regard to the numbers.
But we bypass several policies on it. Again, I would like to second the function or reiterate that I think we ought to take a look.
See where this vote stands in regard to what Jesse has put, and I will rephrase it or say it in my own that we do not recommend modifying the mix of single and at large districts, because otherwise we keep.
I don't know if this is appropriate to Texas or what the what phraseology of you're beating a dead horse.
Is that amendment to the language is that culture.
I don't think it's an amendment. I think it's a restatement.
I think we're still on Jesse's original motion, and I think we were second of that. And this is just to clarify, just for modifying the mix of single and at large districts. The next item we're going to bring back up from last meeting is the addition of new council seats.
So those are two separate votes, just for clarification.
All right. All those in favor of the motion to maintain the current balance, or current mix of single and at large districts, please say aye and raise your right hand.
All those opposed to say nay.
Is that court. I believe that we need a task at this moment so that motion fails.
Would we like to entertain a second motion.
I think that's going to be productive.
All right.
So, we just, we do we need a motion to postpone.
No, so this, this stays as is, if committee wants to bring it back at a later date, that can happen.
All right.
Commissioner Ross key point of order on this.
We have a quarter.
And we've got, quote, the numbers that we have.
Does it have to be eight, even if you don't have everybody here.
Because it's written specifically in the charge, the resolution that council passed that every recommendation that the committee puts forward has to receive a full majority of the full committee.
But if you look at the other way if they, if someone made a motion to change it, it would take eight in that manner as well. So until that until eight votes for something to change or to propose.
No action would be taken to the city council's my understanding.
I'm going to briefly reiterate that Robert's Rules of Orders indicate that commissioners should request the chair to speak.
Okay, so we will now move on to item number CRC 24 dash 009. Receive a report call the discussion and give staff direction on the need for additional council seats based on population size.
As Robert wrote, this item was postponed at our last meeting pending responses to outstanding committee questions.
Committee members received responses to questions prior to the meeting. The committee has any additional questions, please use the time to let staff know. If not, I'll open the floor for a brief discussion.
Any motions the committee. Does anyone have any questions for staff.
Forgive me I was just looking at these numbers right here. Do we have. So, and forgive me it may be in this projections on future growth for ourselves with comparable cities, where they're at.
So I have, I have hours, I do not have information on comparable cities. And the reason I asked that question is because sometimes you get caught in okay here's a comparable city.
We're going at a different rate than these other cities. Is that something that we could request for? I guess that's the request I have and if. Okay.
Like many other things, if things get pushed on to other needs.
Any other questions for staff.
I have a question. If the answer is no, then just a flat no is fine. But I wonder if staff has been given any direction in discussions about a process, if by election the city, the citizens choose to add council seats, because you can't just take the folks you got and shove them off to the side and add some on the end.
You have to have a redistricting process, which if you follow all the steps about $100,000 outside fees, maybe more to get sued after you set the districts.
And, and then you have to have basically a clean slate program wrong, but a clean slate single member district election.
What I just said that that line of thinking is that a discussion staff has already had about here's how this is going to have to go. Here's how the city attorney is going to have to advise the council on how to structure the next election.
If we add council seats conversation kind of happening already.
Any further questions for staff.
I appreciate I appreciate your question about growth and other cities. To me, the data we have, I think is already very helpful because the idea is we're talking about number of constituents to a council member and it's okay to look at a city that's bigger than us now and has the same number of council members.
But the idea that they might be bigger later, and they might need to add some seats later. It's kind of irrelevant to me. We already have comparables from cities that are bigger than we will be that have the same 7 on their city council.
So, I move that we recommend no change that we recommend to the city council no change in the current number of city council members further discussion.
All right, let's take a vote on that. All those in favor of recommending that we make no change in or no addition of new city council seats. Please raise your hand and say aye.
All those opposed, please raise your hand and say nay.
Item E, CRC 24, Bureau 13. Receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff direction on increasing the two-year council terms to three or four-year terms.
So, we're on charge E, increasing the two-year council term to a three or four-year term. So, this is the breakdown of the current provision.
The highlights or breakdown of that is that we currently have a two-year term, the term limit of three consecutive terms in a place and nothing prevents a council member from seeking election to another place, except if they have served 12 consecutive terms.
Any council member who becomes ineligible to run under these provisions can restore their eligibility by being off of council for one election cycle.
The history of this is that we have had two-year terms since our inception and state law allows the Texas Local Government Code stipulates that council members are elected for a two-year term unless they're established for a longer term, which is allowed by Texas Constitution, but cannot exceed a four-year term.
Some of the best practice recommendations, the National Civic League Model Charter recommends four-year staggered terms and the Texas Municipal League's Texas General Home Rule Charter book says was published in 2010, so it's a bit outdated.
Unfortunately, they haven't provided an updated version since then, but in 2010, they noted that a majority of Texas cities call for staggered two-year terms with a recent move to three or four-year terms.
Some of the, here's some of the surrounding city comparisons. As you can see, a lot of them have, Addison has a two-year term and then several of the others have moved to three-year terms in recent years.
And then here's comparable city comparison. As you can see, it kind of varies between two, three, and four-year terms and when they most recently updated them. And then we have a large city comparison just for context that kind of vary between four years.
Austin and El Paso have four years and then Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio have two years. Oh no, Dallas and San Antonio are both going through charter reviews right now and they have a proposal on the table.
I'm not sure exactly where they are in those proposals or when they will be coming forward, but to increase the term in those two cities.
So with that, I know that's basic information open to whatever questions you all have for me and then committee discussion. And just as a reminder, if at the end of the discussion, the committee is ready to move forward with a motion.
The motion would be whether or not you recommend moving forward with changing the two-year term to either three or four and then either three or four.
Can you give us an idea if the committee were to adopt three or four-year terms? How would that be implemented? Would existing city councilors immediately receive term extensions or would that happen as?
That would have to be a conversation with legal.
You would have to say something like the time of the time council members and.
Right, because mechanically, you would need to say this.
You're changing the, you're staggering your elections differently. So you do have to sort of stretch some terms and then maybe stretch. If you were to do four years, stretch some terms by one year and some terms by two years and some terms by no years.
Okay, Mr. Davis, do we know how so Louisville just had their charter charter amendment to take in Castle Hills. They added the seat to represent specifically Castle Hills, and they changed their turn at the same time. They changed to a three-year term at the same time.
Do we know how they did it? Did they do it? Like, so in the government code, when you, when you first write your first charter, there's like a procedure for who gets a staggered, who gets a one-year term and who gets a two-year term.
Do we know if Louisville did something similar if they drew lots? Do we know kind of the process that they followed? I know I can certainly look into that though. I know that they did have a provision in their charter that allowed for switching from all at large districts to all single districts.
With the annexation of a large, a portion of land that was X amount of population, and that's exactly what they did in 2021. So I know that existed in their charter, but I don't think it's specified exactly how they did it, but I can get information on that.
I think there was, I'm not mistaken, I think there was something in there when they did the term change specifically on how they were going to do that. And the way that it happens when you first write your charter is that nobody gets an extension, you get a new council, and some people get a shorter term.
You draw straws basically for who's going to get one year and who's going to get two years.
Appreciate your insight, Commissioner Patrick. I wanted to clarify, forgive me, when you're going over consecutive terms, and you said 12 consecutive terms, I want to make sure the language on that, is that terms or years?
Terms. So it's terms? 12 years. Okay, so that was okay. And my second question is, so are we also discussing that, where we're setting maxes on that in this charter review?
Not within this charge, that would need to be something brought at a later date.
So my question is though, but do we have the opportunity to discuss that and bring that charge in this? We can. Anyone who wishes to submit an additional section of the charter for us to review should submit that to staff before our next meeting.
I don't know how you do it if you just say okay, your next, that person when they come up, you get a three year term if you get elected.
I believe Commissioner Davis described a system wherein current council members terms would not change, and you would have kind of like a single election cycle, where some people are getting elected for two and some people are getting elected for three, to create that staggering, and then once that's done you are three or four.
So current council members would not be having alterations. In other words all the elections wouldn't be coming up at the same time? Is that what you're saying? They would the first, I'm speaking out of order. Yeah, Commissioner Dammel.
So they would the first time you'd have like almost like a clean slate, but you would have like say just for example, this is an example, district one you get two years, district two you get one year district, three you get two years, you know, but it'd be understandable when that cycle would happen the next time after the one year, that first one year, then everyone would basically be on two years in that example.
I understand that people are getting vote for somebody for two years and this other district won. I don't have words, but I guess it would help.
I think you understood it as Commissioner Davis explained it.
You get walkiness.
We're really got a rabbit hole on this.
You know, going down the rabbit hole.
All of this meshes in.
Okay, we talk about whether or not we're going to keep a mix.
We go to all one format.
We talk about
the numbers.
And then you go into the terms.
You maintain, or you try to increase say to a three year term.
People generally, the way we do it now is 2024
had three people up for election. It was the two at large and the mayor.
2025 will have four districts.
So we have three in the one year, we have four in the other. That takes care of the seven.
If you go to a three year gap,
how are you going to be equitable to the population
and to their representative to take care of
the election that would come in 2026?
Realize anything that we recommend to the council.
We give them, they hear what we recommend in January, I believe.
They then go and vote on it. They put it on the ballot.
And we vote and the population votes on it in May of 25.
So nothing is really going to happen and change anything
until after 25.
Because of the timing.
You're right on that.
I may have added a year or subtracted it.
But one needs to take into account
when they look at the length of the terms.
How are you going to make an equitable distribution?
One way to do it would be to take district one and two and put them
and say, I'm just going to throw out here. Said I'm going to go into the 30s.
So it doesn't confuse me.
In 2030, district one and two get voted on.
District one, district three and four get voted on.
In district 32, we would then have the at-largest,
all of them, which are your two at-large and your mayor's position.
So that to me in my head for a statistical equal distribution
would take care of your three-year setup, I think.
Commissioner Johnson.
I prefer to just keep it simple.
And the reason why two terms, what happens if you get a representative
that doesn't do their job within the two years,
and then you got to wait another year to get them out of the seat?
I don't think that's fair to the people that vote.
So I highly suggest that we stick with the two terms.
Two years.
Two years terms.
Two years.
Two years terms.
I think Commissioner Johnson brings up a great point,
that you do have concern that when you do get someone in there
who is not representing their community,
and then you're stuck with them for an extended amount of time.
That's a great concern.
I hope it is for all of us.
You know, the other kind of on it too, though, is I, one thing that,
and I don't know how much this affects,
but one thing that I've seen that I've been in here in my time is,
as we're moving forward in the city and we have these plans,
these 2030s, these 2040s, which are coming upon us,
it seems like we have these broad visions, but then we're not,
I don't know if it's the stability of having so much turnover in city council
that we talk about, then we've got this 2040 plan.
A great example is the, and I'll get it wrong, downtown didn't design,
I forget how the Ds work and what order they're in.
But I find, you know, I think it's a really good plan.
But coming out of that city council meeting was very interesting
to talk with other residents who,
the majority of them said this to me, "Yeah, yeah, but it's never going to happen."
You know, and that's, that's what I think about too.
Does, if we do give more stability or more length to council members,
does that help that process where, you know,
maybe we take in some bigger swings, for lack of a better,
that we're really moving down the road?
So that's, that's just a question I had on that.
Why have we had the struggle on that?
But to mate's point, I can't,
I am not at all pushing back against the fact that we have bad actors,
and in my time we've had a few, you know, you don't want to wait three years.
So what I'm saying is I see some sides to this and trying to figure out what is best.
You know, and how do you decide, is two better than four?
Because four is great if you get somebody in there who's, hey, they're doing it,
they're coming out, they're listening to constituents,
they're willing to take in new information,
they're willing to say, "Hey, you know what, I was wrong on this."
But if you get somebody in there who is, and if for the wrong reasons,
especially if they're pocket lining or something of that nature,
then you get them on for four years and residents and citizens are thinking,
you know, that's when they start to lose faith a little bit more.
So, you know, that's where I kind of see both sides of it and I yield.
Commissioner Molina, four.
Yeah, I would just speak in favor of keeping it two years.
I think when you have a two-year term, you can't get comfortable.
You have to be responsible to your constituents.
Like, if you're there for four years, then come six months before the election,
no matter what side you fall on, you're like, "Oh, maybe I should start planning these."
When you have two years, like, what we need is folks on council to be having meet and greets,
to be having listening sessions, to be booking the libraries, to be active and engaged.
If we give them more time to get comfortable, to listen to bad actors and outside thoughts
or whoever you think is influencing the decisions, what happens to all the work the staff has done?
I agree with that downtown plan. I agree with what happens. It's awesome.
If we're giving them four years to, like, change their mind, I don't know, it gets a little sketch.
Commissioner Ramsey.
I'm not advocating for a three- or a four-year term.
I was just saying what you have to take into consideration, number one.
Number two, one of the things that can happen on a two-year term, and, you know, this is...
is sometimes it's thought that, number one, I get elected, okay, and I'm on,
and I've got to learn all of this stuff. I've got to come up to speed real fast.
Some people can come up to speed fast. Some people can't.
Okay? So if you were to have a three-year term, I'm playing bad enough, good enough.
If you have a three-year term, you allow for the person who maybe comes a little bit slower to get up to speed.
Now, do you want to elect a person like that?
[laughter]
At least, at least, it addresses the issue of allowing everybody in the community, okay?
Now, by that same token, if you get someone in there that it's, oh my gosh, okay,
whether they have a two-year, a three-year, or a four-year term, it is already written in the charter
that you could do something called a recall after six months.
So the recall could address the fact that you put someone in, be they two, three, or four,
and you find out that, oh my gosh, I didn't realize that they had nine I's and 12 years, or whatever it is, okay?
Is that a positive or a negative? Sorry.
[laughter]
I throw out on lambish things, okay?
[laughter]
And, you know, at that. But the idea is there is a recourse at any time,
and I just wanted to be sure that people remembered that.
Commissioner Ziegler?
Yes, I think, I agree with what Commissioner Lee, of course, said, but I think the two-year term keeps them on their toes.
And nobody needs to run for a city council seat that doesn't know what that job entails.
They better know it before they get in it, and if they're running, my idea is they better be prepared to hit the ground running.
It's not a place to be slow. It's a place to get to work.
Commissioner Fikes?
I was just going to say, Thousand Morning Days had an article that was written by Mike Rollins, Tom Leppert, and Ron Kirk.
And it was referring to the 15 proposals that they're committing, and they reduced it to 12.
And then they, being past mayors, gave feedback, and this one was specifically cited in there.
And it said many council races are decided by low voter turnout and razor-thin margins.
And from an accountability standpoint, these unfortunate electoral circumstances argue for shorter, not longer terms.
So having said that and all the discussion, it's okay with you. I'd like to make a motion to keep the term at two years.
Motion?
Seconded by Commissioner Ziegler.
I'll just say, from my part, I see the virtues of vote, and I think there's compelling arguments.
I would say three years. Four seems excessively long to me. But two years, I think I'll be voting for two years.
I've heard quite a few good arguments from the committee, as well as people kind of leaning on me in the community and saying, hey, you know, two years, two years is plenty.
My only hesitation is that I've spoken with some folks who have, I think, really been trying to address some very substantive issues in the city.
And what they've told me is that it feels like to them from January to May, elections are happening and nobody wants to touch big topics.
Nobody wants to work on important and difficult issues during that time because they're up for election.
And then from May to August or September, that's budget season and they're focused on the budget, which is, of course, incredibly important.
But that leaves very little time for consideration of kind of larger, more complex issues you get.
And I'm not trying to speak for staff or city councilors. I'm trying to speak on behalf of advocates in the community who have been working on issues.
But they said it feels like there's not very much time to actually try and get substantive issues. But on that note, the motion is to keep two year terms.
All in favor say aye. All those opposed say nay. All right.
That motion passes. The ayes have it. The recommendation is to keep the two year council term.
We're at six fifty seven, so I'm going to ask staff to present, but without discussion, item F number CRC two four zero one four.
Receiving a report to hold a discussion to give staff direction on modifying mayor and council stipend.
I'll be quick on this one as well. So the charge here is to evaluate modifying the council stipend.
So currently, this is the section of the charter. The breakdown of that is basically the mayor's stipend is a thousand dollars per month.
The council stipend is seven hundred and fifty dollars per month.
And then council, the charter does allow for council by ordinance to approve an adjustment to the stipend. There are some limits to that.
It can happen no more than once per fiscal year. No increase would take effect until the next regular term cycle.
And any increase should not exceed three percent of the then current stipend amount unless approved by a two thirds vote of council.
And then the stipend is reported in the annual city budget as a separate line item.
Some considerations, the history of this and the twenty seventeen charter election that mayor and council stipend was established for the first time.
Previously, council received reasonable reimbursement for related expenses, but was not otherwise compensated.
And then the state law that allows for this local government code section one one forty one authorizes councils to establish the salary for themselves by ordinance or through charter.
Some of the best practice recommendations, the national civic league model charter, the city should reimburse council members for expenses incurred and performing their duties.
Council should determine salary by ordinance, which allows for more flexibility and annual adjustments.
And the mayor should receive a higher amount than council members as the mayor has additional responsibilities, including intergovernmental ceremonial city related promotional responsibilities.
And then here's just a couple of the different types of council pay that I found per council meeting rates, a monthly rate, which is what we have an annual salary rate or a rate based on annual median income or some other amount.
This is this first graph is estimated take home of each the mayor's and council members stipends. You can see they do pay into federal FICA and Medicare.
Their federal income tax varies per person. So the net estimated take on these are estimates is nine hundred and twenty three dollars for the mayor and six hundred and ninety two for council members.
And this inflation adjustment is if we adjusted a thousand dollars and seven hundred and fifty dollars and what that what the value of that was in twenty seventeen to what that would look like today.
So you can see the one thousand dollars would be raised to twelve hundred and eighty one and the seven hundred and fifty dollars would be raised to five hundred and sixty one.
And then again we have some surrounding city comparisons and how much their mayor and council are compensated each month and then whether or not they this is governed by their charter or through ordinance.
You can see a lot of cities have moved to doing this through an ordinance as opposed to the charter and recent years. But we are relatively on you know it kind of varies between city to city but we're certainly not kind of worse in the middle of where these other surrounding cities are.
Comparable city comparisons a lot of them are still.
Comparable city compares Abilene is fun. They only get one dollar per year and most of these are done through the charter.
So you can kind of see the differences between their way go I could not find a definitive amount but I do believe they are compensated I just couldn't find an amount.
And then these are some full time council comparisons the larger cities do have full time councils. So these are annual salaries as opposed to monthly stipends or part time council like we have.
And El Paso recently you can see went to an annual median household income so they have something in their charter that basically says annually the salary will be changed based on AMI.
And I will note Fort Worth has done I think three or four unsuccessful charter amendments to raise their salaries.
Question. Yeah. You mentioned something about a 3% earlier. What was that. So the current provision allows for council to approve their own adjustment.
It just can't be more than 3% unless it's voted on by two thirds council to be a super majority.
So given that 3% that the council was approved in 2017. So that 3% was added up to right now which came up to $961.
So that's that's different. That's just what council can say in the provision right now. Council can increase theirs up to 3%.
So what and the inflation. These numbers are inflating it 28.17% which is just $17 to $24. So that's not actually what they're being paid now. I guess my question is if they had been making the adjustment themselves on the 3% up to now without taking it to the review board if they had approved an ordinance for them
to automatically do that. What would they be making now.
We got a banker right here.
There we go.
What's your total time so I'll get to this out of your regular job.
The mayor would have.
It really depends on the council member and how much they put into the council members.
For council members who didn't want to participate in other committees for whatever reason that council members that have been on as many outside committees they could super engaged remember Keely she had her meetings every month at that library.
So you really have a big range. It's hard to give an average because the difference in personalities. And of course the at large folks have a larger area generally to cover.
It is easy to spend 20 to 30 hours outside council meetings on council work answering emails talking constituents. It's easy to spend five hours per week per week plus work sessions so you have a Tuesday meeting right now every other Tuesday.
That can run anywhere between, you know, six to 10 hours depending on how many people are there's become zoning.
And if you're if you're putting into it what you would need to put into it you could spend, I'll say, on the low end 10 hours outside of outside of council meetings.
I would like, if possible for staff to send out a question to the current city counselor, and just ask them to maybe summarize their hourly commitments both numerically.
So, that's the question earlier for Mr Johnson is, is 19.4% so 1000 would go to 1194, right around 750 but nearly 20% which would be.
Once we get the, the number, the number of hours we just multiply times well like we're getting paid per hour, and that's what we should.
And let me start let me further it's that you like, I'm not looking to kind of pour through the hours and be like oh this counselor is spending so much less than this other counselor.
Maybe as an average, right. I'm not I'm not looking for that to be any sort of issue.
Oh yeah, to echo that if we do get that can we just call them counselors, a, b, and yes, yeah, I don't want to know.
I think you know we're not gonna be able to pay them a living wage.
As a reminder, we're postponing for discussion. So, these are these are questions for staff.
This is kind of interesting when I saw that the council had the authority to set their own based on 3%.
And when it takes effect to them. I'm surprised that no member of council was aware of that from 2017 to 2024. I know that they do about it but they just okay.
They haven't taken that opportunity. Do they, do they need the approval from the child board to actually pay themselves to make the adjustments to make the stipend adjustment, not within the current as the current provision is written.
They have the authority to buy ordinance annually adjusted up to 3%. If not, if more than that, it has to be approved by two thirds council. So short answer is yes, they do have that ability.
I'm good. I was just going to say the idea of if they wanted to take a bigger swing, they have to do a super majority. Correct. They want to go above 3% and do something larger has to be. Yes.
Commissioner Davis for their session next time, could we get a few more examples, and I believe just have how many or the best way to sample of some peer cities that that do it by ordinance, and how they set it up, because to Julie's point that she's highlighted.
They can't really even politically speaking it's very difficult for them to even adjust for inflation to do the 3% and 3% barely adjust for cost of living much less real inflation.
So, if we could get a little bit more information about how some of our peer cities do that, because I think that's probably where we best use our time is talking about how to how to really address that versus are going to pay him $150,000 a year, or we're going to pay him.
Yes, you said in the past, they had reimbursement for expenses, and then in the future, then they get the stipend. Do they still get to reimburse in addition to that stipend or is it now just a stipend, because the way it's presented now it's just a stipend they don't get to reimburse anymore.
They do get reimbursement for expenses incurred in their service. The thing that happens most often is travel for conferences and stuff like that.
So they are better related to that in the presentation so it shows that they are getting reimbursed for that because the way it was printed presented now they don't get reimbursed for that.
Do I need a motion to postpone the item. Yes.
I motion to postpone items CRC two for cash 014 until the September meeting.
All right, concluding items is the committee have any other business to discuss.
I have one point, the consecutive on the term. It says 12 consecutive years. So if I said five years, I did 10 years, and I set out a year. And it's nothing to say that I can't run for another 10 years, I set out that one year.
Correct. You are sitting out a term, not a year, or actually to your term. Okay, so if I set out that to your term, then I can come back and serve another 10.
Recently, I believe Commissioner, Councilmember Watts did six, six, two years off, came back and did another term. So is it 12 total? No, as long as you take a year off. You can switch from single member to at large and just take a year off. You can take a whole term off and go back to a single member. You can move across town and two years later run for another one. As long as it's just consecutive.
Any other concluding items.
I'd just like to follow up on Commissioner Fikes statement I believe it was in regard to the No Vulnerability Act.
One of the questions that we've given to staff was about, you know, the demographics of, you know, down to the precinct level, which wasn't available.
I, however, did go into the election results and went by district, which precincts were in which district, and what percentage of voters voted in May of 2024.
And we had the three at large in places five, six in the mayor. I also went back to 2023, when we had three of the four districts, and the reason it was only three of the four districts was one of the district commission council members did not have an opponent.
So he did not stand to vote. So for that one, I went back to 2021. Now granted, populations have it have varied.
And when you look at the population. It also gave me the number of actual registered voters at that respective election time, which doesn't necessarily, you know, relate, you can have 3000 residents but only 50 150,000 that actually are registered, because you got those that don't qualify by age, or just don't care.
If anybody would care for that information. If there's a way, I guess if I were to go under the comments or something as a means to send it.
I can send it as a blurb. I don't know if that's going to be email it to me I can share it with the committee. Okay, so if it goes out through you that I don't have to worry about that. Okay. So is anybody interested because we need to kind of clean up my
I would definitely be interested in receiving. Okay, appreciate the work. Generally, the turnout runs 10% from us.
So, you know, any one more question. Mr. Johnson, the recall. I've been reading, so I have questions. So with the recall, and maybe you can help me with this.
You don't have to have a solid reason to recall a person you just have to get signatures.
So we're, yeah, we're looking behind you talking about it.
I just have one quick announcement before we close. We kind of mentioned it briefly but the committee has the ability to review additional items that were not set out in the charge.
If you submit those to me either through the after committee survey, or just by email shoot me an email anytime with any additional sections of the charter that you'd like to review at our next meeting, we're going to bring all of those to the table
and any items that receive an eight person committee consensus will bring back towards the end of the committee process for the committee to discuss. So, that's my staff announcement.
You're going to do that next meeting. Correct. All right. If there's no other business, I will know during the meeting at 716 p.m. Thank you for your time, everyone, especially you a little late. Thank you.