Sep 10, 2019 City Council on 2019-09-10 1:00 PM

Welcome, everybody, to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Tuesday, September 10th, 2019. It is 1.02 p.m. We'll begin working through our agenda. We do have a quorum. Call this meeting to order. Work session report. Our first item on the agenda is citizen comment on consent agenda items. Any citizen comments? No citizen comments? Agenda item number two is request for clarification of agenda items listed on today's agenda. Okay. Councilmember Meltzer? I'd just like to pull out A and C for separate votes. I'll be recusing. Okay. Is that on consent? Okay. A and C. A and C. Okay. All right. Councilmember Briggs? I would like to pull E and K for separate votes, please. E and K. So no staff presentation on any of these that have been pulled so far? Not for me. Okay. Councilmember Meltzer, any staff presentations? Or just simply? Okay. All right. Thank you. You all can have a presentation if you want. I won't be in the room. Okay. All right. Councilmember Davis? Same for item B. I'll be recusing on that item. All right. And I trust that we'll have all the paperwork. Okay. All right. Fantastic. All right. Councilmember Armitage, we're on request for clarification if you have any. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. So we so far have agenda items that are being pulled for just a separate vote. A, B, C, E. Am I missing one? K. K. Okay. Yep. I've got it circled. Okay. All right. Any other clarifications for agenda items? I believe one that I had was on our nomination process for Dent Central Appraisal Board. I was a little confused about how this went last time in 2017. I thought there were no nominations, but I think we wound up nominating Mr. Pryor. So I'm trying to understand what are we -- what's this process going to look like? Might as well just try to sort some of it out now instead of out there on the dais. Mayor, so Tony pointed the Chief Financial Officer. So this is just a work session to let you know that we're going to be coming back to you in the next couple of meetings asking for nominations to be submitted to DCAD to potentially put in a slate that then the council will vote on. And so my understanding is in 2015, there was no nominations submitted by the City Council. In '17, there was one nomination. All right. So it's purely completely up to the council on whether or not to nominate anyone. Certainly there's a number of current members that are wishing to be renominated. You can certainly pick one of those or anybody else that you would wish to select. You can submit up to two recommendations. Thank you. All right. I've got my dates confused. I appreciate that clarification. All right. Any other clarifications? Seeing none, we'll work through our work session reports agenda item 3A. Receive a report, hold discussion, and give staff direction regarding the ATMAS rate making process and the proposed ATMAS 2019 gas rate increase. Thank you, Mayor and City Council, Ryan Adams, Public Affairs. I'll just give a brief background before introducing our guest today. Denton has over 20,000 natural gas accounts with ATMAS and every year goes through a rate making process. This is what this presentation is about. We are a member of the ATMAS City Steering Committee. The ACSC, for short, is a 170-member coalition of cities that group together to negotiate for the lowest rates possible from our natural gas provider, ATMAS. And collectively, the ACSC represents over a million natural gas customers. Now we have with us today Georgia Crump, who's with Lloyd Gosling. They are the representatives of ACSC and she's going to walk the council through the rate making process and the information that was provided in your packet for the agenda tonight on the consent agenda. The item is not on the consent agenda. So, Georgia. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. It's nice to be back in Denton again, appreciate y'all having me up here. I was here last year and I think most of y'all were on the council last year when we went over the RRM, which last year actually was your first year to be a member of our ACSC group of cities. My law firm's been representing this group of cities since its inception back probably about 20 years ago at least by now. The RRM or the Rate Review Mechanism Tariff, just to bring y'all or to remind you about that, is a negotiated tariff that the group of cities negotiated with ATMAS back about 12 years ago as an alternative to the legislative rate increases that ATMAS has been -- had been filing up to that point. Under a provision of the Gas Utility Regulatory Act, ATMAS is -- all gas utilities are entitled to file an interim rate adjustment on an annual basis that recovers a return on their capital investment for that past year and the taxes associated with that. We don't like that. We call it piecemeal rate making where you're not looking at the whole picture of the gas utility. So this group of cities fought that in the courts. We lost all the way at the Supreme Court because the commission -- the Railroad Commission was not allowing the cities to participate at all in those annual rate filings. We couldn't file comments. We couldn't participate and have an overview of the entire company's financial situation. So back in 2007, we negotiated this Rate Review Mechanism Tariff with ATMAS. It's been improved a number of times over the years, but it's still an annual rate adjustment for the company. Historically, it's been better result for customers to participate and to have this RRM tariff in place rather than the -- what we call the grip mechanism, because really it looks -- it allows us to look at the entire financial situation of the gas company. So they -- we look at not only the investment that they've made over the past year, but we look at their expenses, whether they've gone up or down. And so we're looking at the entire picture and we're avoiding expensive, lengthy rate cases. As I said, we've generated significant cost savings for the ACSC cities. The grip filing is still in effect in the environs, outside cities that have adopted an alternative tariff, and those grip rates have been historically higher than the RRM rates. So what we did last year, and you all may recall, we renewed the RRM tariff and got it on the same filing schedule now with the city of Dallas, which has their -- they call it their DAR. So it's basically the same as the RRM. It's just got a few little things that are a little bit different, but they had always been wanting their own separate rates. So anyhow, last year what we did is we renewed the RRM and adopted new rates for that. So this year in April -- end of March or 1st of April, Atmos filed their 2019 RRM, which we've been reviewing through the consultants and -- there we go. Right button. And these numbers can get a little confusing. So let me kind of walk you through them. The initial filing was about $70 million. Atmos said they needed that more in additional revenues to recover what they had spent, to cover their expenses, get a return on their investment. And that's a system wide. The ACSC group of cities makes up about 72.8% of the total connections in the Atmos midtech system. So when we take that down to just a -- an Atmos city case, those numbers are different, but the $70 million is what they filed. And we said, well, wait a minute, you didn't do anything like you were supposed to do in the tariff. You didn't cap your return on equity. You didn't cap the -- the increase in the customer charge. So I think they filed that originally because they wanted it to be known how much revenue they thought they wanted needed on a system wide, but we said if you would refile that or show us your schedules where you comply with the tariff that you've agreed to, that's what brings it down to this $54 million. So that's really the starting point for the ACSC cities in terms of looking at their request. As we always do, we hire consultants. We've had relatively the same consultants over the past 15 to 20 years that know Atmos really well and they also participate when we have full scale rate cases. So our consultants looked at the filing and determined that there was a lot of things that if we were to go to hearing that we would contest about the filing. They did determine that a number of expenses were valid, that yes, Atmos had invested large numbers of many millions of dollars in improving their system. So in looking at the city's absolute best case that we would present in a hearing, if we were to go to hearing, the consultants recommended a $28 million increase for Atmos. We sat down and we gave that report to Atmos as we always do. We talked about it with them, and we then reached this settlement of about $35.4 million as an increase to the ACSC customers. And you know, it's a negotiation process. We knew that if we were to go to hearing, we would not prevail on all our issues. We seldom are able to do that at the railroad commission. They just have a very dim view of anyone that wants to take funds away from the utilities. So we felt like the $28 million or the $35 million was a valid settlement. I sent some -- perhaps I didn't send this to y'all, but the items that we were able to impose upon Atmos through the tariff filing, we do limit their return on equity to 9.8%. That's substantially lower than what the railroad commission has been granting, which is closer to 11 or 11.5%. We limit the capital adjustments that can be made after the test year. We limit the look back or the look forward on expenses. We always have them remove certain of their cost centers. They're always wanting to put in the Dallas Cost Center, which is basically support of their board of directors. And we always find things like -- I can't think of the name of their mascot now, but they have a mascot where a person dresses up in an outfit and does public service announcements about gas safety and how you do certain things and don't do certain things around gas utilities. So things like that, we've always identified and we've always taken them out of the recommendation. A big item that we actually won in the last rate case was dealing with employee compensation and incentive compensation and putting caps on that and caps on how much of that is capitalized. So we feel like the $35.4 million settlement is a good outcome for the cities and that we recommended that then to the ACSC Executive Committee and they recommended it to their membership and the membership did approve the negotiated settlement. So now that's been recommended to all the cities for you all to take action to adopt the ordinance or the resolution, setting the rates for Atmos based on that. A lot of information. I know you all have questions. I'm happy and glad to answer them. >> Yes, Councilmember Volkner. >> So first I want to say it's a skunk, the mascot, I remember from the last presentation that gave to us, a woman's -- an anthropomorphic woman skunk. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you and to say how glad I am to be -- to have our city represented by you. I remember your presentation from last year and how much I appreciated your honesty about the difficulties of dealing with a monopoly like this. And so thank you for that savings but also for your honesty and it's just really validating for people. I know for myself because we get a lot of resident complaints and just questions about their Atmos bill. And so it's good to tell them that we've got representation who's really doing their best to fight for us and for other cities. So I just wanted to thank you. >> Thank you. Appreciate that. >> Anybody else? Questions? >> Thank you. So understanding the kind of rate look is system-wide. How as a city can we assure that we're getting our kind of equity? So for example, I know a lot of work was done in Dallas this year due to some issues they had and ruptures, that sort of thing. So how do you -- is it normalized per city to say that this is the average amount that Denton will spend and this is the average amount of work that was done or is it truly a system-wide look to say of these cities we're just going to -- it's an even split regardless of the amount of work that's done in that individual city? Am I asking that right? >> Right. Yes. I think I understand. You've got their system improvements to update their lines and get rid of leaks and things like that. >> Yes. >> Yeah. That's -- their line replacement program was put in place I want to say about four years ago and I could be a year or two off on that, but that's when there had been a whole spate of leaks and the railroad commission was actually wanting to -- wanted them to replace all those lines in 12 months and we knew what a disaster that would be in terms of the city streets and they couldn't get their workers. So what Atmos did is they prioritized the riskiest lines and put in their program to replace those first so their line replacement program will impact cities differently depending on how old the system is in that city. But because it's a system as such, it's not -- the system serving Denton is not isolated from the system serving Lewisville. So it's all together so really the whole system -- the theory is that the whole system benefits and all the cities then benefit from these improvements being made. So I guess the answer to your question is that is all spread out across the system. So all of their capital investment is reflected in Denton's rates and Dallas' rates and Kerrville's rates. So it's spread out that way which I think -- you know, if you think of it like a water system if you spring a leak over here it's going to impact somebody over here so that's how it's done. Okay. And if I may. So is there a report that either you or the consultants have that kind of lines out how much was spent line improvements in Denton? Is there a way to get that information? There is a way. I don't have that here with me but the company definitely has that information and they share general information like that at our quarterly meetings that we have with them. But that's certainly something that I can ask them for to find out how much was spent in Denton and maybe compare that with what they've spent in other cities. Is that -- would you like for me to do that? Yes, please. I'll definitely do that. If we could make a note, Mr. City Manager, I think going forward that quarterly report would be interesting just to kind of understand where we are and if maybe midyear or after first quarter to advocate for certain issues or at least understand where all that would be good. Thank you. Yes. And I believe there's a website for the -- what is it, the ACSC? Yeah. What is that website? TexasGasConsumers.org. And I haven't looked at that in a while, Larry, so I don't know if that information -- we may have posted on it but that would certainly be a way to check into that as well. But in the event it's not there, I'll get that for you. Questions, comments? Any questions or comments? Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Well, thank you. I don't know if you want to advance that. Was there anything else on that? Okay. Here we go. Just that we -- item E on the consent agenda is this item to approve the negotiated settlement of the new rates and I don't believe George will be with us tonight, so if there are any questions that are perhaps more of a technical nature, now might be a good time, but if not, I'll walk away. And that's one of the ones that's being pulled for individual consideration, item E. Yes. That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you. Thank you, counsel. Yep. All right. All right, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding credit collections and performance and processes. Here, city council. I am Krista Foster, customer service, and I'm here this afternoon to be able to give you guys a little bit of a follow-up on some questions that were raised in an earlier council meeting to give a little bit of background, in February of 2018, credit collection policies had been updated at council request. We increased our funding to our plus one utility assistance program by $25,000. We allowed residents to get a larger amount of help, up to three times per year, as well as getting assistance with deposits. We also added additional deposit waiver options for customers, including deposit waivers for bank drafting, recurring payments, and a homelessness waiver that's part of the rapid rehousing program. The other thing that happened, and which is what most of our presentation is going to be related to, is the internal credit rating score, which was modified. So what we saw is that the accrual of late payment interest no longer acts as a credit event for customers. The credit scoring was broadened to allow more credit events before it negatively impacted the customer for deposit. And one of the deposit rating scales was decreased so that we received one month of deposit versus two months of deposit for those customers. It was asked at that time that we return after a year and provide some updates in terms of how that has affected performance of our credit and collections. We came to you in March with that information, as well as a Navigant Consulting Study, looking at our credit and collection performance versus the industry, as well as our internal performance since the changes were made to our policies. Again, in June 2019, when we were here with budget, we had some questions that were raised regarding the informal staff report that we had issued on follow-up questions. So that's what we're here to talk about today. So the first thing that I'd like to do is we were asked to continue to closely monitor the overall performance of bad debt. When we were here in March, we were just beginning to see some of the months that would have fallen within the time period since changes had been made. So I wanted to go ahead and provide a little bit of an update because we indicated then that that number is very volatile and because we didn't have a lot of information. So what we saw is when we put ordinance in place in 2010, we saw that our, at that point, our unrecoverable debt was in excess of $1.1 million annually. And so we put into place strategies to help reduce that amount. Over that eight-year period of time, from 2010 to 2017, we saw a reduction of about $719,000 annually in bad debt. In 2017, after the changes were made, we only had a few months of data that would have impacted that, but we did see an increase of 18% over the previous year. That is the first year of growth in bad debt since policy was put into place in fiscal year 2010. And then the first quarter of FY '18, we have seen a 44% increase over the same time period of the previous year. So we're already looking at just off of Q1, $153,000 in bad debt that was accumulated. Again, looking a little bit more is that over time and changes on debt performance, in FY '15-'16, we were following the same practices that had been put in place after Navigant gave us initial recommendations in 2009. Again, in 2016 and '17, we had the same changes. Over FY '17-'18, you'll notice that any of the areas that are outlined in black represent the time period post changes to our credit and collections policies. Then FY 2018-'19, we're still following those policies. The thing that is most notable from this information is that over the last 13 consecutive months of credit and collections performance, we have only exceeded an average of $50,000 a month in bad debt for three quarters. And two of those quarters are the last two consecutive quarters. We're still saying that we're still seeing a lot of volatility here. There's still changes that we're seeing from month to month. So we will continue monitoring this very closely. One of the questions that was raised by council for review was what impact deposits, late fees and interest have on bad debt? So the first thing I want to clarify is deposits are never a part of bad debt. They never create a negative impact to bad debt. Any time we collect a deposit, that is money that belongs to the customer. And at the time they terminate their service, we return that to them with interest for the entire time that it has been held. So that would never contribute to the overall amount of bad debt. It would lower it. But the other thing that I wanted to also bring to light is final balances. Once a customer has called in and terminated services, no balances on their account are eligible for late fees or any type of interest. So at any point that a late fee or interest is a part of bad debt, that means that that was existing on the account before the customer terminated their services. However, for the last year, late fees and interest account for 3% overall of what is attributed to bad debt. And it averages $8.75 on the average $278.25 bill. And then 35% of our accounts included some part of late fees or interest. Another piece of information that we needed to share was related to the late fee amount and the behavior of payments. In order to encourage delinquent customers to alter their payment behavior, we increased our penalty fee from $10 to $20 in February of 2011. What we saw was that the $10 fee was not significant enough to alter payment behaviors, but as soon as that changed to that $20 payment fee, we saw an immediate 29% month over month decrease in the number of delinquent accounts. And over the time period since that has happened, we've seen a steady decrease in delinquent accounts to 42.5% fewer delinquencies. That is 42.5% of our customers, fewer customers who are receiving additional deposits or any type of interruptions of service. We were also asked some information regarding deposits and transfer of service. Currently the City of Denton, when we close an account, we refund the existing deposit to the account that is being closed, and then we reassess the customer at the new location to see if a deposit is required, if that deposit would be lower or higher, and assess that on the new account. Part of the reason that we do this is it is nice and clean and easy for the customer to understand. Additionally, it allows most customers extra flexibility and access to liquid assets during their move, because we refund the deposit to their existing account. Most customers bring a credit balance to their new account so they don't have an immediate bill due, and if they're charged a new deposit, we'll work with them on payment arrangements so they can pay that out over a period of time, so they have greater access to their funds during the time that they're moving. Now we did review 17 different municipalities, including CoServe, as was requested, so that we could look at what is their process for deposits. And we are the outlier. The most common practice is to transfer both the deposit and the outstanding account balance to the new location when the final bill is produced. What I also discovered is when we transfer the deposit to the new location, they also would require a second deposit if there was an overlap in service of about more than a week, and the final balance transferred to the new location, which made their new location subject to late fees and interruptions much sooner than what occurs when we do a deposit refund and then wait a period of time before we transfer any balances. In looking at our statistics, you'll see the pie chart off to the right. Of the customers that we had dealt with in transfers over the last 12 months, only 8% of them saw a new deposit assessed at their new location at all. And of that 8%, 118 of them saw a decrease in the amount of deposit that we assessed. Only 3% of overall customers experienced any form of increase. And even with those customers, the majority brought a credit balance from their previous account that applied toward that new deposit. For us, the next steps that we have is that we'd like to be able to continue to monitor uncollectible debt over the next quarter, that if we continue to see debt growing in that 40% area, that we will be returning in December, looking for some containment strategies before the amount climbs in excess of the $500,000 or $600,000 a year mark. We would ask to postpone or avoid any policy and procedure updates, which will contribute to the current growth of bad debt until we can better understand what's going on with that. We'd like to maintain our existing fee structure since it has been a very effective measure to contain and control account delinquency, which has worked in the best interest of those customers by not putting themselves in jeopardy of a greater number of deposits required. We'd like to continue our current deposit process. We actually did some surveying of all the customers who had transferred during the month of June. Of all the customers that we reached, we had one customer who understood the process but would like to have seen it differently, but by and large, the customers said they liked the process because they didn't have to mess with a bill at their previous address, and it was very easy to understand what that process entailed. And then the final thing is that we would like to continue to monitor and grow our pay-as-you-go prepaid metering program for its effectiveness in reducing customer burden without a negative impact on our uncollectible debt. As of this morning, we have 483 pay-as-you-go customers. We have placed almost $90,000 into debt recovery for those customers so they can have greater periods of time to pay it out and recovered $52,000 of that. The average customer is completely debt-free in less than 60 days. That is at 77% of all pay-as-you-go customers. And the average number of days to become debt-free is about 44 days. So this has been very good with the results we're seeing from customers. Just this year, we have been able to either refund or avoid charging customers' deposit in excess of $188,000 that we've been able to save those customers. So we're very proud of that. And with that, I'll be happy to answer questions. >> I see customer barometer, then customer measure, yes. So first, thank you for the presentation and thank you for your work and Tiffany's oversight. Seeing and hearing anecdotally more positive responses about just conversations being had between customers and customer service, I remain frustrated with the deposit system, and I'm also aware of that and interested in the data you've provided that's showing our debt situation. My questions are kind of about factoring all of these things in together. So first of all, so as I understand it, going back to 2010 when the new system began, it was very effective, the deposits, and as I understand it, the vast majority of the bad debt that was paid off was from commercial accounts. >> I don't believe that's the case. Commercial accounts as of this year make up about 29%. >> Now it's the reverse, now it's the reverse, but back then, back when we first started seeing results. >> I can look that up if we need to. >> Yeah, that would be great, and obviously, don't take my word for it, but this is information that I had requested in the passing and had gotten from Tiffany and company about that data. But now it's reversed, now our commercial accounts hold the least bad debt, so we're seeing a reverse. Now most of the bad debt is from our multifamily and residential accounts. I believe multifamily, is that correct? >> Multifamily and residential combined. >> Yeah, combined, and so as I see it, in my interpretation of that data, it continues to be, until proven otherwise, that the deposits proved very effective in helping to pay off that bad commercial debt, but less so for the residential and multifamily. However, what we've seen is that as we have, as you've shown, as we've eased up a little bit, the debt has gone up a little bit, right? So I'm glad that we've eased up on people, because it makes people's lives easier. You know, there have been at least one, I think two, you know, debt record chronicle stories about how hard deposits are on people, and we hear it. I understand that, as you mentioned in the slide, I didn't write down the number of the slide, but that the, that deposits aren't counted towards bad debt, and so that was interesting to know. I hadn't realized that, however, obviously, if an individual has a deposit to pay and a bill, you know, they're paying it all together, and so it's, and the deposit adds more to their bill, which, if they don't have the money, it means that's less money that they're going to be able to pay. >> Sure, and that is correct. If the account is that short-term an account, meaning they've only had it, they only have it for that two or three months, any funds that they've already applied for that deposit will automatically go to cover parts of that, so that, again, it is an increased burden, and we do offer a number of waivers and things that we do actively educate customers on. >> Yes, yes, absolutely, and I hear firsthand about that, so thank you so much, and I'm always so happy to refer people. I always say, talk to customer service and, you know, let me know if you have any problems, and I'm hearing less back from people that they're having problems, which is good, which means it went well, that's what I assume. But anyway, but I know that deposits are hard on individuals' ability to pay their own debt, which has an impact on the total debt. I wanted to also thank you for providing that comparison to co-serve, you know, mentioning where the outlier when it comes to putting down a new deposit, if you're assessed for it at the new location, I would encourage a couple things that we, this is just my own personal insight on this, that we do like co-serve does, because people are comparing us to them, and not charge a new deposit when you move to another location, the people who move the most are the multi-family accounts, or people who live in apartments move more than people in houses, and that's our biggest debt, and so again, even though I understand it doesn't count towards debt, it has an impact on the debt. We would be happy to follow council direction on that if it was so desired, but I would say that right now, because of the way we give back that deposit before they move, 20% of our customers who transferred service got a deposit refund and were never reassessed, so if we were just transferring those funds over, then they would still remain on file, where this gives them better access to that money. Oh yeah, and I appreciated that, and what did you say, was it 8% or 11%? Only 8% that had any new, and three that were slightly higher. And three that were higher, so, and I'm just looking at people who are still paying deposits, right? Sure, sure. You know, for those 8%, it's hard, it adds to the impact of moving, so I would love to see that go away, but then there's the question, obviously, and I'm getting to the end of what to do with this, the uncollected debt issue, and I absolutely agree we shouldn't introduce new policies that could risk increasing our debt, uncollected debt, so I would recommend, and this is more to my, you know, mentioning to my colleagues, because this is not so much a customer service issue, but it has to do with DME, which is most people's, the majority of most people's bills, and that is that, you know, I would encourage my colleagues to keep their minds open to having our DME rate policy and service adjustment fees be more in line with our water department, where the more you use, the more you pay. I feel that if we did that, if we put this debt on the backs of people, entities, really, we're really looking at these large accounts that have the $25,000 or more, maybe $24,000 or more monthly accounts, if we left it to them to pay, instead of right now where we're having higher rates, not bigger bills, but higher rates proportionally, or -- >> Councilmember, I think we're getting close to -- >> Just about done. >> No, it's not that. I think we're bearing off top -- >> Okay, okay. >> -- of the posting. So, yeah, that's the reason I bring that up. >> But thank you. But that's my -- the reason why I wanted to mention that is because there are ways that we can balance, you know, balance it out if we continue to make things easier for our multifamily and residential accounts. We can, particularly through our electric billing policies, increase our ability to pay off our debt, so I just wanted to encourage my colleagues to think about that, but thank you for your patience and -- >> Sure. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Councilmember Meltzer. >> Yes. Thank you. I want to ask for that alternate slide on the slide three, because, yeah, just because it's sort of difficult to see trend if you're comparing the quarter to full years. >> Sure. >> And, you know, it kind of raised the question for me, rather than answering it, I see that, you know, we're -- the trend is up, we're still down significantly from where we were. >> Correct. >> So the question that leads me to is where are the swim lanes? I mean, there probably is -- such a thing as too low of an uncollectible debt level where it means people aren't taking your service because it's too draconian, but, you know, is this a tolerable level for us, or what's the sort of -- I'm kind of asking the city manager this. You know, what's the financial model? Are we in yellow zone, red zone? >> I think that we probably need another quarter or two to make that recommendation to you. We were asked to come back and just give you an update on how things were trending. It's very possible that the policies might need to be rationed back a little bit. We're not sure right now. We're not willing to make that recommendation until we have a couple more quarters of data. But once that happens, we'd like to provide a little bit bigger picture of you -- or larger picture to you as far as some changes that we might recommend making based on the behaviors that we're seeing and how that's driving bad residential debt in particular. >> Okay. So this is a heads up at this point. >> It's a heads up. And we're not planning on making any recommendations to you for at least another quarter or two. >> And, you know, it also made me -- actually just now as you presented kind of weigh, well, what is the benefit of a looser policy, what's the measurable benefit? And I'm kind of thinking out loud here a little bit, but I think it might be a reduction in interruption of service events, right, because when you have interruption of service, that's kind of the bad scenario because we're a service organization, so you're not providing service and you're not getting paid. So you know, can we see a correlation between changes in number of interruption of service events over time related to these policies so we know, like, what are we buying with this policy? >> Sure. No, sure. I would like to go ahead and return with -- or get a Friday report. >> I don't mean off the top of your head. >> Yeah. So I don't want to misspeak on it, but I will get that information. >> Thank you. >> Mm-hmm. >> Councilmember Davis. >> I appreciate bringing this information to us and giving us the heads up now so that we're not kind of catching it cold in December or January when we're having to look at potentially some important policy changes. One note I'll make from the presentation. The number of delinquent accounts is down, but the amount of bad debt is still up. And so far, I agree with the city manager, it's too early to call it a trend, but you look at some of the precipitating events and we have the policy changes in February of 2018. So I just kind of want to caution my colleagues not to be looking for too rosy a picture when we get down to what policies have to be changed, that we kind of look at the reality of the data in front of us when we get there, that -- can you go back to slide number two? >> I can. Where is my -- I'm going to end up just going the cheat way. >> So that when we're kind of reexamining some of the things we did in 2018, that we remember the lessons of the subprime lending crisis and that when you make a service available to more people, that not all those people have the wherewithal to pay for that service in the end, no matter how -- remember that crisis was precipitated on subprime lending built on the back of the dream of everybody gets a home, right? Well, not everyone can afford to pay an electric bill in their own name, and so we have to kind of confront that reality when we come down to making some of these policy decisions. So it's a balance, I understand that, it's a balance between providing the service to our community and making it available to folks who want it to be available for, I just want my colleagues to be aware of what I think the data is going to show us in December and some of the hard choices we might have to make. >> Okay. Anyone else? Comments? Appreciate the information. Thank you so much. I think the -- I don't want to say the jury, we still need more information to determine, but I will say that I don't know if I would say the least amount of bad debt means we have draconian policies. I think we do have to find a place that feels good to the policymakers on -- because bad debt is paid by everybody. I mean, it's -- that is spread out through the rate structure of the enterprise fund. So I mean, to say that is half a million -- bad debt okay, is a million-dollar bad debt okay, that's just something we'll have to decide, but I think we need more information to do that. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Agenda item C is receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the FY 2019/20 city manager's proposed budget capital improvement program and FY and five-year financial forecast. >> Good afternoon, mayor and city council, David Gaines, director of finance. We are almost at the finish line of the budget process, budget approval hopefully next week, and so the intent of this item is just to set back with council and go through at a high level what the budget looks like considering all the decisions that have been made over the summer and up to -- so I'll start it off here, the schedule of the dates that we've hit so far in the budget process up to today, and then today you can see we have this work session to go through the budget at a high level and then we have our public hearings on the tax rate and the budget this evening. I will say I'm going to do this exact same presentation in advance of those public hearings, so you'll hear a lot of this again and you've obviously heard a lot of this same information up to this point, but in advance of the public hearing just to give everyone the context as they -- if they so desire. So here are some of the changes from the proposed budget that was delivered to council on August 1st at our budget workshop and delivered to council at that time. The most notable ones are the ones that we went through the last time we had the budget presentation to council were those changes to the development fees, fee revenue and the methodology behind the fee recovery and then the offshoot impacts those had to the proposed budget. So we had the increase in $2.8 million in expected revenue associated with those revenue -- those rate changes, and then we were able to reduce that -- the property tax rate down to the effective rate when we had the initial proposed budget, we were one and a half cents over the effective rate, the budget as it stands today is at the effective tax rate. Some of the other changes that were really a result of those first two bullet points were adding $150,000 for assistance to go with development fees, grant assistance, which will have further conversations with council as we start the fiscal year, decrease in the engineering services transfer, which is again a result of that -- of the engineering fees that -- development review fees. We have in our meet and confer negotiations up to this point added an additional allocation for a $510,000 in total for public safety meet and confer agreements. We as discussed increased the contingency budgets. We increased the election expense and anticipation of the elections and the bond election, and the last bullet point is really one of the final decision points for council and something we wanted to bring back. At our budget workshop, council directed us to go to the downtown TURS board and talk with them about the power washing expense in downtown, $35,000 for power washing which had been funded from the hot funds, did not get recommended at this time to come from the hot funds. City council asked us to go to the TURS board and see if they would be -- if they would recommend paying for that expense from the TURS fund, the TURS board did not recommend paying for that expense from the TURS fund. They wanted to come back to council and I believe their intent was for council to consider it from the general fund. >> So I know part of our new process is to wait until the end of the presentation for questions, but is this a good -- >> I think this is the perfect time to talk about this item. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> It's for that specific item. I do recall a couple of consent agenda items for downtown which included what I thought was pressure washing. So is this something separate and is it a different consultant or is this just part of that contract pulled out? I mean, I'm just confused because I thought that we had a presentation on a contract recently for pressure washing and we talked about where they would move -- I think it may have been solid waste. I'm not sure where they moved the trash cans and spray and then come back and so I'm -- how much pressure washing? >> Right. So that is another piece as we head into the new fiscal year and we have obviously staff can talk about it in more detail but a high level. The $35,000 has been what's been allocated to the parks department for the washing but as we implement the valet service we may not need that entire $35,000. We just don't know right now how much that might decrease with the valet service. As far as the contract, I think Gary Packin or maybe I want to speak to what the contract was. >> Before we dive into this detail, basically, though, the question is, this was an amount that used to be funded out of hot funds. Whether it's parks assessing it, whether it's part of the solid waste, this is what used to be allocated out of hot funds. The hot funds committee did not recommend that but I believe if I remember the conversation correctly it's something that we believe is necessary for the downtown area but didn't believe that because we do have an account, we have a turz set for the downtown area specifically for the turz, is that something that we took to the turz board to see if they would be willing to do it. They didn't recommend that we do it but that doesn't stop this body from doing that, I guess is what I'm saying. >> I would only clarify, they did not want to do away with the service, they just didn't want to pay for it. >> That's what I mean. >> If this body could still say, well, we still want to pay it out of the turz, we still had that option. So did you have a follow-up? >> No, I was just trying to get together all the different contracts, I didn't know if that was something completely separate or if it was already integrated in something we've already approved for payment. >> And then we'll hear from Mr. Packen after, Councilmember Meltzer. >> I was present for the discussion, this was Mayor Pro Tem. The tenor of it was that, the feeling was that the turz fund should be used for things that are incremental, that enhance downtown, and as this was something that's sort of been an ongoing activity for years, that it wouldn't be like an incremental improvement to downtown. So the feeling was that the desire was to see it covered out of some kind of maintenance monitor. Some other money. >> Okay, sure. Councilmember Molter. >> Well, I had two questions that were answered by your comment and your comment having been present at the turz board meeting, so I appreciate that. Could the turz, downtown turz money be used for ADA accessibility downtown? I know we've got a number of issues. I will say, with regards to the turz fund itself, we are getting with the consultant to come in and take a comprehensive look at the turz fund and how the dollars can be spent, what the impact of those dollars are, what a long-term strategy would be, a five, ten-year forecast of what the most effective way to use those dollars and work with the turz board on how to implement that. So that's something we talked about at a great deal with the turz board at their last meeting. So I think we really want to step back and take that comprehensive look at how all those dollars were spent. >> Okay, but is that correct, that council can -- that it really does fall to council? >> Yes. Absolutely. >> Thank you. That's good to know. >> Any other questions on this? Thank you. Appreciate you allowing us to deviate from our process. >> No problem. I would like, at some point, just do we want to put this in the general fund or some recommendation before we approve the budget next week, this 35? >> Let's talk about that at the end of the presentation. >> That sounds good. >> Okay. Perfect. So a few of the revenue assumptions, which, again, a lot of -- we've seen all of these bullet points before, but to set the stage for what the budget looks like, we do have that over 11% increase in our assessed values heading into next year, which, obviously, as we're going through the summer phase until we get the certified values, we're looking at a lower number that changed the tenor of some of the conversation that we've had. And we are now at the effective tax rate, as we mentioned, at 59 cents, which is a three cent decrease over where we were last year. And if you look at the past three years, close to a ten cent decrease in total. So we'll show a more long-term picture of that here in a graph following this slide. Sales tax, we have that 3.5% increase, and then, obviously, we've had plenty of discussion on the franchise fees at $650,000 revenue decrease we're anticipating as a result of the legislation, and then those increases in the development fees. So here it is broken out again, our current tax rate of 62 cents, the proposed tax rate, which is equal to the effective rate of 59 cents, and then we have shown what our current rollback rate is at 63 cents, and then, for reference, shown what that rollback rate would be next year if we were under the new legislation. Obviously, that rollback rate and effective rate are going to have different names then as well. So we can say goodbye to those names on the 17th. Here's a breakdown of the past ten years of our rate, both debt rate, operations rate, and total rate, along with our taxable value. So you can see what the average tax bill is, and that, again, every time I look at that, there's plenty of ways to look at it. This is simply looking at taking that average taxable value after any exemptions and then what the bill is with our new rate. So you can see at the effective rate. This year, last year, we were one cent over our city-calculated effective rate in 2018. We're also at the effective rate, so we haven't had too much change to the overall tax bill. Here's a tax rate history. We focused on the past ten years and the presentations thus far, but as we're now down to the 59 cents with the effective tax rate, just wanted to point out, and obviously assessed values have a piece in this, a large piece in this, but that we are now at a rate we were 15 years ago, so the last time we were at 59 cents was 15 years ago, back in 2004, 2005. We also wanted to do a comparison to other cities in the area of what they're looking at as far as their proposed tax rate in comparison to the effective rate, but also what they're doing on their utility side, looking at water and wastewater specifically, as most of these cities don't have electric and solid waste can be handled differently. I will say, obviously, each of these cities have different circumstances. Their increase could be related to the debt service side or other considerations, but we are the only city in this group that are at the effective tax rate and also keeping our utility rates at no increase, Plano being the other city at the effective tax rate, but they are having some slight increases in their water and wastewater. David, if I could just jump in, I'd ask David to put this together, because several of us had received information that Dallas and Denton were significantly increasing or exceeding the effective rates and trying to get right up into the rollback rate, so I thought this was important that we're obviously trying to keep the impact on all our residents and our rate payers as low as possible, but just wanted this as part of the public record to make sure that there was accurate information out there as I saw that comparison hitting several of our email boxes. So moving with your presentation, we've got a bunch of graphs and things such as that, so I think I want to allow, if there's questions from councilmembers up to this point on these slides, let's go ahead and try to keep them contained to these slides and then we'll move forward. Brief questions if we could. Yes, Councilmember Nelson. Yeah, real small. I thought I heard you say that we're going to say goodbye to certain names of rates. Oh, yeah. Is effective rate one of those names, because the name has nothing to do with what it is. So the new name will be the no new taxes tax rate. That's coming from the state definition? Right. And then the rollback rate will be called the voter approved tax rate, voter approval tax rate. Okay, score one for Austin. Yeah. Councilmember Briggs, did you have a question coming? A couple here, which, that's interesting, no new tax rate or no new, what was it called? No new taxes. No new taxes. Yeah, anyway. I think our chart sort of belies that. I mean, it belays it, hey, if you look at, but on here, I just want to make sure because Mesquite and McKinney are showing an average taxable value of 134,000. Now I don't know Mesquite that well, but I know McKinney. So just maybe I'd like to verify that that just seems low to me on both of those. I couldn't imagine anybody being under it. So if we could go back, that's definitely low. That's definitely wrong on McKinney. Yeah, if we could go back a couple slides, okay, right here. Like we see from 2019 to '20, there are going to be additional taxes, even though our tax rate is the same, but it's because the assessed value has increased on the home. Right. It's just, it's two different calculations. The average, yes. No, and that's why when they say no new taxes, you'd have to, your assessed value would have to stay the same or decrease if the tax rate stayed the same for your taxes to be almost equal or less than. Right. Right. Council Member Ryan. Well, on that, the average taxable value also increases year over year because we had new housing stock that's coming in, the average new home is 310, so it brings up the average of the others. Right. And that's kind of why you see that difference there, even though we're at the effective rate. Sure. And then any other questions, let me look to see if I had just some real quick sort of clarifying questions on, let's see, the slides. Oh, yes. On the, if you go to revenue assumptions. Yes. On the last one, the increase in development services fees, that's the one, that's the additional revenue from cost recovery. Right. Right. That allows us to go to the effective rate. In other words, we'd have been, I think, what, one and a half cents higher than our current rate? Yeah, we're one and a half cents higher. So it allows us to go down the effective rate, but we also, so that doesn't make up the entire 2.8. We also added some of the, as we were going through the supplemental process, what we had is tier four supplementals, about half of those tier fours, we were able to move into the proposed budget. So what's the contingency, as we saw with our sales tax last year, where we took a two or three or four million dollar hit, I think it was, in our sales tax? Yes. So this number, this 2.8 million increase, we've had to had some assumptions about how much development is coming into town and how much we're going to receive and additional development fees from that development. What's the contingency if this doesn't materialize because that's sort of would be the same as the sales tax issue? So I would say that the difference is, the volume assumptions we had are the same, whether it was before the change in the fees or after the change in fees. The only things that has changed here is the actual fee itself. So we haven't said we're going to increase in volume, we've just said the fee is the same and we have the increase. And also point out, the actual revenue when we went through the process was like 3.2 million, so we've knocked that down by 500,000 for that exact reason. It's a big change and we don't know exactly what the ramifications will be so we did come down on that. But development fees, just like sales tax, are a volatile revenue source so it will be one that we monitor every quarter and if we see that they're turning down we will come back to counsel with a plan to record. So it would be similar, we just might have to rely upon the general fund reserve fund, the fund balance, if somehow it dips below our projections and therefore we wind up at the end with, like we had to do with some of the issues on this last budget. Yes and I think the other thing I'd add in there is there's going to be a revised contract coming to you from HR Green here in the next meeting or two and that is one that is completely scalable based upon the amount of activity there. So what we've made estimates on the engineering side of the house, development review side of the house, we're really only paying for what we use. So if we end up with $2 million in revenue and we need to reduce that contract $800,000, we've built that insurance policy into the budget. And then if you could go back to the city comparison just as a note. When you show cents over effective rate, and let's just take Mesquite, that's 3.92 cents, that's not percent, is that correct? That's about a 5% if you look at their proposed tax rate, I don't know what their one before, but if you look at the proposed, it's 5%, so that means if it was lower, then it might even be higher. So I think some of this information that was out was indicating that Dallas and Denton were raising their rates in lieu of or in the reason being the legislative cap, hey, can we capture some additional revenue before this cap goes in place so you could raise it all the way up to 7.9% of your last -- but here we are doing zero. >> We had that discussion as we were talking about some of these services are going to need to be fee based if we're going to live within the intent law, but there's a lot of concern out there about cities going right up to the 8% rollback rates before that law kicks in. You can clearly see that's occurring. If we were in Mesquite's position, that would be another $4 or $5 million we'd be adding the property tax levy this year as a base. It's just important when we see information out there, it's clearly wrong, and it's possible somebody saw the publication, which we always give you flexibility, if something changes out there, something happens that we hadn't contemplated, you have the flexibility to make a change to the property tax rate. So it's possible somebody misunderstood that in the publication and the notice we put out. But we just want to make sure that we are crystal clear that we're trying to have as little to -- as near to zero of an impact on residents as we can. >> Thank you. >> So we'll go through the next few slides pretty quickly. First our revenue, a picture of what our revenue looks like. Obviously property tax being the largest percentage, 35% of our revenue sells tax at about 29% of our revenues all within the general fund. Obviously our license and permits and fines and fees and service fees, which make up -- development fees hit those categories have increased over where they were last year as a total percentage of our revenue. And then you can see the return on investment and other transfers from our other funds for administrative costs also make up the rest of that pie. Here's our general fund expenses by category, biggest thing to point out, personnel services as we see every year make up about 70% of our total cost in the general fund. And then on the -- just breaking the same numbers down by department, you can see fire and police making up about half of our total cost within the general fund. So here's the overall five-year forecast after all the changes that we've made thus far. Just to go straight to the bottom, our target range for our fund balance is 20 to 25%. So we stay within that. Throughout the forecast, obviously there at the end of the forecast right at about 20%. But obviously that being the last year of the forecast, things will change quite a bit as we move forward. And you can see those recurring and one-time expenses from the supplemental increases and some of the other increases that we had associated with Fire Station 8. And then you can see in FY 2021, we have already built in those costs directly related to Fire Station 8 that we anticipate for staffing for that -- for the fire station. And then you can see how the rest of the increases shook out in total with a drawdown of 125,000 to our fund balance next year. What we tried to do as we got into the budget over the past number of years is any drawdown that we have in fund balance, that would be at least less than our one-time expenses. So we have called out our new one-time expenses of about $500,000. And so we're well under that with our drawdown so that we're not obligating ourselves in the future for future recurring expenses with fund balance. So we've stayed consistent with that practice. >> Because this is a slide with a lot of numbers, just wanted to pause and if there's any question on this for clarification before we move forward. Okay. >> So we have all of our supplemental items listed here. And we've obviously gone through this at a high level with council and you've got all the departments talk to you on each of their supplementals. Up to this point we've been looking at these supplementals from a tiered structure of how we're able to fit those in the process. So all the supplementals you see here were in those discussions of the first three tiers and about half of the fourth tier for this purpose. Now if they're included in the budget, we've shown them by department and with this council initiative items which were in tier one separated out as well as we went through the process again that the first tier was to get those council initiatives included which really hit on homelessness and the pest management, the second tier was really focused on public safety and you can see those here on the next slide and then there's a lot of animal service positions for the need there as well. We have included the planning software maintenance which was again an offshoot of the development service fee discussion. We also have that comprehensive plan update included as well. So you can see police, the additional positions for the police department and those could meet conferred costs. Did you have a question? These are pretty detailed slides. Do you have a couple just for the specific funding slides and then we'll go ahead and stop and take questions on the specific funding. Okay, that was it. Okay, yes. Go ahead. Did you have a question? Yeah, two questions. One that I've asked before in a slightly in a different form so I'm not sure what the answer would be this time. The 461,000 for the top dressing, is that how much of that is our own dino dirt versus other forms of top dressing? All the dirt that we will be putting in the parks for that application will all be dino dirt. Thank you for answering that, I mean that's an area where I see if there are other needs and there's one that I wanted to mention that could be kind of drawn from reduced since we're spending it on our own dino dirt and anyway I can address that later but thank you for answering that question. The other comment I wanted to make is that it was recently called by, this is not a parks issue but thank you Gary, and that is that at the last or maybe the meeting before that of the persons with disabilities committee meeting where they had their ADA training, it was asked, I think Ryan was not here now, but it had asked about the closed captioning question because that had been an item that was on our supplemental budget, sorry on one of the unfunded supplementals and had asked is closed captioning required for ADA access and I heard I'm hearing this secondhand from people who were there, I was not at that training, that the trainer said yes, it is required which makes sense to me but I was wondering that in light of that, if that is what the answer was, which makes sense to me, if we could include that in our funded supplementals now that that's been discussed by the, to some extent by the disabilities committee, is this more of a city manager question or? Well I think it's one that we can discuss at the end of the presentation but also I think it's going to be needing verification of that fact, if that is a requirement so I think the legal department would have to take a look at that and see how that works but we can discuss that at the end as we move through this because we've got the other, the parks, the power washing on the square to talk about as well. Any other questions on the supplemental items? Sure. Councilmember Briggs? So I had questions about the street outreach team expansion and there were certain things that I wanted to know more specifically because it is a reoccurring cost and every time I ask nobody really knows where they're going to be housed, who's going to, if anyone's going to share the expense with us, what exactly their job is going to be or do and that's quite a big commitment every year without knowing any more specific details on that. So I'm just looking for more information, who they're going to, is it going to be an actual City of Denton employee, are they going to be, or, you know, I just would like to know a bit more information before I feel comfortable with that. If possible, could we maybe get some, some of these questions, if available, or if we're able to obtain the answer before the meeting tonight, get some verification on some of the questions that are coming up. Absolutely. Sure. I'd like to understand the question on the, I'm sorry, on the IPM, again, I mean, I'm sitting here reading the report from May 7th and trying to understand what that concern is in terms of the 461. So is there a desire to downsize that program or do it differently or are you asking that wastewater not be paid back for the dine order? I'm trying to understand what we're talking about here. So that's, should I answer that? Oh, sure. So, you know, that's just, I'm thinking about, again, because the money is finite, that if you have less top dressing, you've got more weeds, right? So, you know, a number of these other items are more essential than weed prevention. So I see this, you know, especially since literally, I mean, the dino dirt is, it's our own solid waste, you know, we're buying our own poo back and, you know, freeze dried, whatever they do to it form, that just feels like an area where, that we could draw from if there are other needs, I feel there are other needs, it's just a matter of, you know, how council feels, you know, two that I would mention are the closed captioning and the pay parental leave, you know, leveling up our seasonal employees from making under 15, I mean, but, you know, and there are, those are just a few examples, but kind of that's one area that I'm looking at, and I also agree with council member Briggs about the, I think those questions about the street outreach team expense. I think, I mean, we've had several presentations on this, and of course, council, you know, that's a question, council member Briggs is a question, but for the most part, I think the consensus has been as it's presented outside of some legal requirements that we're unaware of, and/or some information that's needed to help us understand a certain cost and what it's going to be used for. We can always change this up to the very end, but if this council as a whole or consensus doesn't want to spend another 30 or 45 minutes or an hour, and I'm not talking about today, I'm just talking about in general, to go through items that maybe one or two council members want to discuss when we've given pretty solid direction as we move forward, even though there has been some dissent, but we'll have an opportunity to respond to that here at the end of the presentation because we do have a couple of issues outstanding there. So here's the capital program. There were two changes since we, from the proposed budget in our planned issuance next year, so you can see in total what we're planning for new funding, including the utilities of $133 million, including revenue funded and debt funded from all the funds, and then you can see just the general fund proposed debt broken out there, the remaining over $14 million from our 2014 bond program that we'll issue next year, our vehicle replacements and facility improvements, which are annual costs that we put in the budget, and then the bottom two here are the ones that have been added to the budget since our proposed budget, Fire Station 8, which obviously we had that discussion as we went through some of the bond discussions and other budget discussions, adding the $5 million in CO issuance to get started on that project as soon as possible, and we've also added $10 million for some of the conversations we've had regarding municipal facilities. So next, just at a very high level, again, this is similar to what you saw there in the budget workshop, our special revenue funds, obviously we can answer specific questions on these, and these were detailed in the proposed budget book that was sent out, but I think overall kind of a big picture, one of the priorities as we went into the budget year was to draw down the fund balance in a lot of these special revenue funds that had some dollars just sitting there that didn't really have an intended purpose, so we were able to draw that down with expenses or looking at some of the transfers within those funds. If there are any questions on any of these funds, if you all have any, but we have discussed them previously. Yeah, we'll go through a few slides and then we'll stop the questions. And then you can see the remainder of those funds broken out there. Similar story with the internal service funds, obviously you can see tech services broken out all the way down to customer service there, and again, another emphasis on drawing down the fund balance in each of those funds. So our enterprise funds, I'll go through these very quickly as we've had a lot of discussions on each of these five-year forecasts separately and all the detail within the '19-'20 budget, but obviously the big picture on each of our utility funds is that there's no rate changes. So a water fund, no rate changes, and we maintain a balance as within our policies, same is true with wastewater, electric, and solid waste. So then you can see our drainage broken out there as well. No increases to our drainage feed. Electric fund, only point I'll make on electric fund, obviously during the conversations we had, we said we'd be coming back to you. Our plan is to come back to council in November with a new picture of what the electric fund looks like. Obviously just the changes in the past month or so have had quite an impact on the fund, so that'll be a good discussion that we have in November about where the fund sits and what some of those considerations might be. In solid waste fund, no rate changes. Here are the supplemental items, just kind of looked at things differently this year with the utility funds, we really called out those supplemental items, any of the increases to the budget so that they were transparently seen there, you can see five positions added to the water fund and those associated costs. Wastewater, eight total positions for those positions for drainage were really offset by some decreases in expenses to make up for that while keeping the fees the same. And then you can see those additions to the solid waste fund as well. So that's it for the presentation, obviously tonight we'll have those two public hearings and then next week we'll have budget adoption, if there's a need for a workshop next week we can have one, if there's no need then we can just have the item for adoption. With that I'll take any questions, we have some staff here to follow up with some of the questions that have been raised. Questions? Yes, Councilmember Briggs. In the attachment for the water and wastewater rate comparisons where they were broken out into the individual cities, I appreciate that, but then we just saw a chart where there's proposed increases, do these charts take into account the proposed increase or? These are the current rates. Currents, okay, because some of ours are staying and some of the cities on this list are actually increasing so it would be a little bit different. Correct. Okay, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem? Thank you. David, could you give me a feel, or I guess my request is to get a sense from your department on the effects of the proposed gas well ordinance change when you're talking about revenue assumptions. So if I follow your pie chart, there's the property taxes makes up for 35.7% of the budget and development fees combined 7.5%, so round numbers 43.2% generally. Not all homes would be affected, but that's just kind of generally the scope. But if we're talking about expanding that range, then that may potentially change development practices or evaluations if someone were to go in and argue their taxes differently, that sort of thing. I don't say that to say that it's definitively going to change anything. I just want to have kind of your assessment of that to understand, I guess to kind of just support the projections or at least understand the projections with that wrinkle maybe coming online. So I'm not trying to guide the answer, I just want to have something that says staff understands we're two presentations in, looks like there's consensus, if so, here's what it does, our projections, and the answer could be nothing, I just want to understand that. Are you asking about the potential changes to the policy and the setback, or what exactly are they? Yes, sir. So the policy change on the setback would then affect undeveloped land and properties that then would be, that were not in that range now become in play, and these projections were done before that was looming. Okay. And again, it may not affect it at all, but I just want to at least ask that question in advance. I would say at this point that that has not been contemplated. We don't anticipate it to have a major impact on the next few years' budget. We start seeing the number of plats significantly slowing down, that sort of thing, we will be back to talk to you, but that's how we're going to have to answer that until we understand, A, you haven't adopted the policy yet, but once it is adopted, is it affecting behavior? So it's just way too early for us to tell. We tend to try to budget off of what is in the pipeline though already, and kind of rolling averages of what we're seeing on basic growth over the last four or five years. Okay. Thank you. Okay. The power washing for the square, any thoughts about that, Councilmember Armitage? Yeah. You know, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on TIRS versus TIFF, and I rely on our staff expertise for that, but I do know that the downtown area has gotten a number of improvements over the years, improved in a number of ways. I like the idea of using a fund that we already have in place, unless there's something really important that it should be spent on instead, to use it at a time where we've got revenue caps and all these other things, to meet a need like keeping downtown clean, which is not very sexy, but once we've done these improvements that we've already done, it seems to me like a great idea to use it for this kind of maintenance, which, and again, as unsexy as power washing might sound, it'd be pretty bad not having it, and now I know that's not what they're proposing. They're saying go to the general fund, but again, that would be my feeling on this issue. Mayor Portia? Regarding power washing, yes, I would agree with the TIRS board that it come and ask that it come out of the budget, especially understanding that that money may roll back into the budget anyway because we potentially could use less funds with the valet trash service program. It may not even have an effect, it may be a net neutral, but that's to be seen, but ultimately I think that I would tend to agree with the board, the business owners, et cetera, that sit on that board and their perspective. For me it's a philosophical question, I'm the only one here sitting at this table that has been around since this thing was originated, and the reason why I think this TIRS should pay for it, because number one, the incremental approach, as you described, I wasn't at the meeting so I'm just basing on what you reported, if you look at it, and I haven't seen them, I know in the presentation at one point in the budget presentation we had a breakdown of the downtown TIRS and that is what's the new construction value, what is the -- there it is, right there, lo and behold, it's like when Laura Barron showed up at the door when we were talking about parks, gosh, are we at Star Trek or what, beaming people around? Because if you look at this, when you look at new value, the new value is what -- and if you look at 2016-17, and if you look at the financing report that was originated when the TIRS was created, most of the incremental tax was to be assumed to be gained from catalyst projects. It wasn't -- they only forecasted a 2% increase in existing assessed values, but if you -- all you have to do is look up here, 2010 the base was 79 million, today it's -- 2018 it's 167 million. So that's the value that has grown on existing buildings, maybe taking out some of the new values that have been rolled up into that, I don't know how that exactly has been calculated, but it would be minor compared to that increase, that's almost a $100 million a year increase. So most of those tax dollars received off of those increases have nothing to do with the TIRS fund per se, that's just the market, that's the market value. That's because of some of the new construction down there, but it's because of the commitment by this council and previous council to say we're committed to the downtown, so the primary purpose of the TIRS, the TIF, and we had this conversation I guess three or four years ago, I think it was before you were here, about what are we doing and is this working, whereas the new construction was supposed to be the lion's share of that increase in the valuations for the downtown TIRS boundary area. So I don't care whether it comes out of the general fund or the TIRS, I think there's another conversation, an updated version of the conversation we had three or four years ago that we need to have to talk about this and to talk about its performance to pull out historically how it's performed based upon its financing report, the assumptions and things such as that, because I think it's important when you put these things in place to go back and compare them historically to here's what we were thinking was the intent of this when we first created it. How is it done? How is it performed based upon that intent? So I would prefer to have it come out of the TIRS just because of a philosophical issue of we created that fund to do a lot of different things and when you look at what it was supposed to do, it hasn't performed in that regard in the sense of encouraging new values, redevelopment of entire areas and things such as that. Most of the increase in the TIRS fund as you can see here has come from the increased in the assessed values of already existing properties. Now granted some of those properties have been really remodeled and that's not necessarily I don't believe included in new values so that would be some part of that data that would be looked at. So that would be my preference but I'm not going to -- I mean it's $35,000 and I agree with you, Mayor Pro Tem, that there may be -- even though the $35,000 will come out of either the parks budget, it's not going to necessarily go out of the solid waste budget. I mean we can ask -- management can try to figure that out but I don't have any preference but I think philosophically we need to really take another look at this just to get an update on it. Is it doing what we thought it was going to do or are there projects in the future that will accomplish that goal and if so, what does it look like? Really given that we do have this cap now, if you all of a sudden start getting a lot of money in this account solely based upon increased assessed values of existing properties, is the rest of the community not getting certain services or certain budgetary items that are needed because we have -- it's a conversation that's worth having. So as far as General Fund or TURS, Councilmember Davis -- oh, Councilmember Briggs, I'm sorry, yes, you're right. Well, I'm still confused and I want to understand a little bit more because I specifically remember talking about a contract and asking about power washing downtown and specifically even asking about timing of when that's going to happen and we changed the timing and everything for power washing and so I don't know if there's already a contract that has been paid for where this is lumped in and I understand that $35,000 was paid for by something but I'm just trying to get this settled. In May of 2019, we entered into a five-year agreement for the litter pickup and power washing. The litter pickup is done three times a week and that's around the square and some of the offside streets and then the power washing is done quarterly, immediately on the square and that is done -- if you remember, I think we did that on a Sunday morning and we had some complaints and we changed it and I think we did it Labor Day weekend last year. So we've made those adjustments and that's just power washing around the square itself. That does not include any dumpsters or anything on the new streets or anything of that nature. So we do have a contract that was approved. It's roughly $35,000, $37,000 a year, depending on how much ancillary things we want to add to that, some additional litter pickups if we want to do that, but in theory, its base is three days a week for litter, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then power washing for the street. We -- the staff -- picks up the trash in the cans and power washes the garbage cans and then we'll repair and do some of the cigarette collectors that KDB puts together. Is this $35,000 we're talking about, the contract you're talking about? Yes. Okay. That's the one we approved in May of 2019. Okay. So that money is to go and pay for this contract that we talked about. Even though it was a five-year contract, it has to be appropriated every year. So that's maybe some of the confusion and it's just simply where it's coming from. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I understand. But thank you for that question. That's helpful. Council Member Davis. So I agree. I think that the TURS should pick up this cost and I'll kind of lay it out. We've been paying for this power washing for some time now. It's an ongoing contract, kind of what Council Member Briggs was talking with Gary about a moment ago. We've been paying for it out of hot funds and the purpose of hot funds is to increase tourism in our downtown and the rest of the city altogether and we decided as a hot funds committee to make the recommendation to the Council that that money could be better used in other ways. And then here through our budgeting process, we have decided that we have a parks budget that we have gone through the whole process of having presented and discussing and here's where the dollars are going to go in the parks budget. The TURS has not been through that process. There's money sitting in the TURS that is not spoken for. Every dollar we've already talked about in the parks budget is spoken for. So I absolutely understand the sentiment and kind of where some of the folks on the TURS Board are coming from. They like the mayor has a philosophical position about how the TURS ought to be used. They have their philosophical position that it ought to be used for these incremental projects like the lighting project and like some of the other things that have been talked about. But at the same time, there is money sitting in the TURS account. The TURS exists for the purpose of downtown improvement and we have already identified and been in this contract for a service that we know is an improvement to the downtown. And the very first folks who are going to ask you for this power washing, if it goes away, no one's really proposing it go away. It's a question of how we pay for it. But if it were to disappear tomorrow, the very first people you're going to hear from are the business owners downtown and they're going to tell you somebody ought to be power washing these streets or these sidewalks. So I think that every dollar has been very carefully managed and carefully budgeted in the general fund. I think it's time to look to the TURS to do this piece of the downtown improvement. It's exactly what it's there for. Yes, customer. First, let me say there may be less here than meets the eye. Because of the event of the valet service, we're going to have folks who are employed all the time and maybe picking this up. So in the discussion, the question was raised, like how many cycles are we likely to need to fund before that would pick up anyway? And we don't know for sure that that will happen, but kind of all signs point to yes, but it might be six months. Maybe it will be more than that, but it might be six months before that would transition. So you could be looking at 17,005. So we're spending a lot of council time on -- it might be not a big item compared to many other things. I'm following you. Okay. When you say -- you're talking about there's people out there doing it. We have a contract right now that's in place that there's a schedule where they clean -- they pick up the litter and they power wash just the direct streets and sidewalks on the square park. So I'm not understanding what this transition of six months -- I'm not following you. That function of power washing may well come inside and be done by the people who do the valet service. Well, but that's not what's before us, and that's the first time I've heard of that. And we have a contract, I believe, that's in place. So -- It was said, but it was said quickly. But maybe you can -- David, if you want to expand on that. I do think as the valet service gets implemented, it could be possible that maybe even though we have the existing contract, maybe it rolls into the valet service in some manner, but that's just going to be an assessment that we make in six months as it gets implemented. We're not going to stop power washing. People are going to still need to be power washing under the contract. So I don't know if it's going to be a savings of 17.5. It might be a savings on the back end, but we don't know if it's going to be or not. It certainly won't be a savings on the front end because it still has to be done. I don't think there's anybody in any part of this that is favored not doing it. Oh, I understand. I agree. One of the things that was expressed in the meeting that we had was that we might not do that. You know, we might back out of that contract and change -- I'm just repeating myself. Sure. That's the way it was presented. Well, that's a whole -- that's a policy discussion for the council that we've not even broached yet. So before us right now is how do we fund the $35,000 for power washing that we are contractually obligated -- I mean, we have a contract, a current contract with a company to do that. It's just where are we going to pay it from is no longer the hot funds, it's either the TURS or the general funds. Okay. Well, I'm trying to make the point that it may not be $35,000, and I don't know to what degree it's back-outable. I'm just saying the way it was expressed to us was that we might be able to not do that. But that's just one point. The other is what else might the fund do? What has it done? I'm not going into great detail. It's done sidewalks and lighting projects on the north and west side of the square. And something that I know is at least being thought about and assessed, you know, we've heard a lot in the past about the PEC4 project that would take a big portion of downtown out of the flood zone and enable greater development. And you may notice it's not in anything you've seen that we've been asked to vote on so far. It's not in the bond package. So how's that going to happen? Well, the benefit of that, if it were to happen, would likely accrue to the TURS. It would increase value substantially in the TURS. So a possible execution of that plan, you know, to be determined, this hasn't been presented to us, would be possibly even to debt fund by collateralizing the TURS to do that project. So that's a huge deal. But what I'm trying to indicate is that there are substantial, very incremental kinds of things that, you know, that this kind of money might be used to fund as opposed to maintenance activities. That said, I think the amount of money we're talking about is small. I don't care deeply about it either way. And I think I can't imagine this council not wanting to fund it in some way. I don't think I've heard anybody say that. And I think your last point is exactly the reason why we need to come back and revisit the TURS fund. Because the TURS fund, if it's going to be used for a project of that magnitude, it's going to basically -- that's going to be it. There's not going to be hardly anything left of it. And that's assuming that there's going to be enough incremental value increase to where it can fund those bond payments. So that's way on down the road, maybe not too far, but, I mean, we're asked right now, do we want to fund this out of the TURS or do we want to fund it out of the general fund? So I'm hearing the two of you want to go with the TURS recommendation and just fund it out of the general fund. Is that correct? >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Yeah. I wasn't sure. I was trying to -- I was tracking along. But, yes, so if he's in, there's two of us. >> Okay. All right. >> It's two to three. >> Okay. All right. Councilmember, I'm okay. >> So, okay. Well, actually, I thought I heard -- I guess I was -- selective hearing, I thought I heard that it -- when I heard it, it doesn't matter either way. Obviously, Councilmember Mills knows best what he meant when he said that. But I was counting, well, we've got two, Councilmember Davis and myself, who would prefer for the TURS. And then I thought two who said it doesn't matter any -- either way. So I thought maybe we had a four for the TURS. >> Well, we hadn't heard from Councilmember Ryan yet, or definitively, as far as direction. This isn't a polling. This isn't a vote. It's just simply giving staff direction on where to fund this. So we want to make sure that we stay within those parameters. >> Yes. And I see the TURS as being capital improvement type funds, not O&M funds. So in my opinion, it should be out of the general fund, or potentially, as we're evaluating cost of service, it could go under solid waste, as we're doing the valet, that maybe it's an extra $2.50 a month on their bill, that it then is done by a solid -- or the contract would then fall under solid waste instead of under parks, potentially. >> Well, I appreciate that. The only thing that I would -- that my response to that would be, we provide additional police coverage. I believe some of it's paid out of the TURS. Am I correct on that? >> No. >> No? We don't? Okay. I know we provide economic development incentives from the TURS, with the STOKE and things such as that. >> Right. >> I think we do other things besides capital improvement, I guess, is basically what I'm trying to say, other than just capital improvement. >> And I realize that, and what I'm saying is how I philosophically look at that is I don't believe that any O&M should be coming out of the TURS. It should be for the -- for improvements, capital improvements. >> Yeah. Well, it's going to be a great conversation we're going to have in a couple of weeks or a couple of months when I put on my request for my one-minute pitch. That's going to be a wonderful, wonderful time. >> Councilmember Briggs, so my understanding is Councilmember Davis, his direction would be pay it out of the TURS. Councilmember Armitage, your direction would be pay it out of the TURS. If it comes down to I'm the person that says it's going to be paid out of the TURS or out of the general fund, I would certainly prefer it be paid out of the TURS. So Councilmember Briggs, you're sort of left to give your direction if you want to give direction at all. >> Well, I'll just go back to originally when I approved the contract, I assumed it was coming out of the general fund or the park's budget. I wasn't taking out 35,000 of the complete contract when we approved it for so many years. It doesn't really matter to me. It's just I'm okay with it going into the O&M to the general fund. I would prefer that it not stay there and that we can have this conversation about the TURS and a deeper meaning of it and then eventually talk about it. But for right now I'm okay going with it into the general fund until we have that conversation because I feel like it can be really productive eventually. And honestly, I mean, I'm okay stopping it. We kept saying, you know, there's nobody that wants to stop it, but I mean, we can stop it until we can figure out how we're going to pay for it. I'm okay with that. >> All right. So it seems like the direction is to come from the general fund is what I'm hearing. So that's we'll move forward. And then if there's any adjustments we need to make in the budget, just be sure and let us know that as far as where that's going to come from. Some people say find it in the couch cushions and so forth and so on. >> I'd say we're just going to add 35,000 to that expense line and it will increase that drawdown to fund balance incrementally. It won't be a big impact. >> So whose budget will that come out of? >> Well, it will be in the park's budget, but it will just when you look at the total picture. >> It will be a further drawdown on general fund balance. >> Okay. All right. All right. Any other questions on the agenda item for the budget because we're going to take a break after this. Yes. Councilmember Armitage. >> There was mention about that possibly we might have a work session if they're yeah. I would love to see an opportunity to consider the closed captioning and pay and paid parental leave and you know to see if either of those would have any impact you know on the budget and the effective tax rate. If we say I mean my suggestion was taking out of the top dressing because again that's just about a few more weeds but that was just one suggestion but I don't know if discussion of the TERS would be included in that we're linking it to the budget here but that's separate discussion it sounds like but if others have other issues they would specifically like to bring to the table I would certainly love to have that opportunity. >> So my understanding is what you're asking for is just during the next budget work session just to bring back up because I think we've all discussed all the supplemental items before but to bring back up to see if there's any appetite for this Council to include closed caption unless it's a legal requirement in the budget and/or the family leave as it was presented in the supplemental is that my understanding? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> I would only add you would be approving the budget that evening after the work session. >> And I do want to say that I hear you say I understand what you're saying about it's only weeds but I think this Council has responded to a lot of community feedback in the parks and community feedback on how we're trying to find the best way to maintain our parks and additionally with the lack of going to a more organic approach to weed control and things such as that so but this budget is not finalized so there's certainly still opportunity for discussion. In contemplation, yes, Council Member Nelson. >> I don't want to sort of leave it unresponded to but first I have a question. I have a perception or a recall and I'm not sure that I'm right that this approach to IPM is intended to ultimately lead to cost reductions in the future, that it helps us get to a state where it won't cost us as much in the future. Is that accurate? >> Good afternoon, Council Members, Laura Barons, Parks and Recreation. So yes, ultimately it is designed to do that. The top dressing was included to help parks really implement the methodology of IPM which asks that we consider biological and cultural methods prior to the use of chemical products in our parks. So what that does would then improve the soil and the turf which would ultimately and we're looking at, you know, from the research that we've done and the groups and organizations that we've been asked to contact, we've gotten a timeline of anywhere from 18 to three years, 18 months to three years that overall turf and soil health could be improved and that could lead to some reduction in costs, primarily on product use and watering. >> Thank you. So you know, that's part of what informs my feeling, you know, these are all good things we're trying to balance. You know, I haven't seen anybody put up any bad proposals, including not increasing taxes. That's a good thing too. So it's tough and we have to kind of prioritize it, but I'm not putting weeds over people, but I am in favor of taking a kind of long-term view that will ultimately reduce costs, prevent us from, you know, using poisonous substances and ultimately, you know, ultimately create more resources longer term. So I think the balance is about right. >> Let's take a quick five-minute break. I know we've got a secretary here to address the street outreach team, but we're going to be coming back to the discussion. >> Welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, September the 10th, 2019. It is 2.57 p.m. We're moving through our work session agenda item. We're on work session agenda item 3C, which is our budget. And I spoke with the city manager during the break, and we're going to just go ahead and try to -- there are several questions that were raised, and the budget approval is next week. So we want to get those -- we want to -- I'd like for this council to give direction to staff so that they can have some predictability so that also the public will know what this body is considering for its budget. So we're going to go ahead and take up those questions of the outreach increase and then the other questions that were raised. So in the beginning, if there's a request for additional funding, I want that request to be very short because then I'm going to ask this council, is that something you want to move forward with or not, because I just don't want to go into a long, drawn-out discussion because we've had two or three meetings on this, and we've talked about this interchangeability of these items quite a bit. And I think last time we had this work session, there was some give and take, and there was -- it seemed a consensus on the direction of the budget, so I just don't feel that we're going to have to spend a whole lot of time if some -- like, Councilmember Armitage, obviously you've advocated every time for a couple of these issues. So this is -- you're going to get to do it again, but we're going to make it very quick and to get council direction because I don't think there's really any new arguments that could be provided during this time. So on the street outreach, the questions were where's it sitting, who's funding it, what's the increase supposed to help us do, I believe. Sure, Sarah Keickler, Director of Public Affairs. So we did send out an informal staff report on August 16th with some more details regarding the street outreach team and the proposed new position which this funding would provide for, and that's to get a dedicated position for the street outreach team that goes out with our public safety departments to try to connect those that are experiencing chronic homelessness. It does take many attempts to build that trust and relationships and then get them connected to the services they need and that's been identified as a need as part of our overall countywide housing crisis response system. Right now what we're proposing to do is if this is funded, we would go through a grant application process. So we would put out a grant that says here's our scope of work, here's our objectives, the metrics, and then have the nonprofit agencies or others propose and submit a grant application from them we could choose from. That's just to maintain some flexibility to hear what are the innovative models from those who specialize in doing this work and some of them are doing this currently with our teams. I appreciate that. I had to read the staff report and I know I've been out on street outreach. I know what they do and I've also had conversations with people that are on the street outreach team who think that there's some other things that are lacking. If they have more information or they're skilled with substance abuse, things like that that are specific that are actually non-existent or there's MHMR that goes out on the team as well. But it's just a reoccurring cost and I like that there's a grant out there but what happens if the grant doesn't get filled and as is the 64,000, I just want to know is it going to be a contract employee, is it going to be a nonprofit employee, a city employee who's going to be housed in public safety. I mean it's just kind of that that question wasn't really. Yeah, so it would be a grant to a nonprofit agency to fund a position for this work and then would work closely with the United Way of Denton County and our housing crisis response team and the goal is to have that person have a mental health case management background to also fulfill that need. And so just to clarify a little bit more. So it's a grant from the city that we would pay the nonprofit to house that person and then that person, okay. Okay, thank you. So I have a question. I mean we're talking in the context of an employee, an additional person, but if someone submitted a grant application that had some other innovative ideas and things such as that that we could make the decision on whether to fund those or not so I don't know if it's necessarily limited to they're just going to add another person. I think we're asking for how can we improve street outreach if we have this kind of funding available and put it out there to the nonprofit to say give us some ideas, some proposals for grants that we can use this money to fund based upon our criteria. Is that? Yes, we could broaden the grant application and let it be a little bit more broad for those innovative ideas. So if there is a different model where a nonprofit agency thinks maybe they could take some of that work that they're immediately doing now maybe and may have it be some funding going towards staffing and some funding going towards a service provision. We would definitely like to hear those ideas as well. It could be a broader grant application to see what comes back with the different ideas. And council would be the ones approving those grant funding. Is that correct? Correct. That agreement would come back before council. So we'll see those opportunities and council will be making a decision on that funding process. Okay. That's better. Is that helpful? That's better. Just an outright 64,000 a year on and on and on without any kind of oversight or another conversation about it was where my hesitation was. Okay. Appreciate that input. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. Okay. So if I remember correctly, it seems the outstanding items as presented by Councilmember Barmiter and Councilmember Barmiter Craig, if I get this wrong, there was a question about the top coding. Is that something that we want to alter to use that funding for something else? There was a question on is closed caption a legal requirement for I guess municipalities? And then the other one was to reconsider the paid parental leave. Is that correct? Okay. Okay. All right. So we've got our budget that we not adopted, but we talked about at the last work session. That's what this presentation is based upon. The only outstanding question that we had to answer was the TURS funding that came up in the TURS board meeting. Because I think the question of parental leave has come up in the past during these work sessions. And I believe closed caption has come up as well. However, it has not come up in the context of it being a legal requirement. So that's a different twist to that question. So is there any -- does Council want to give direction on the top coding issue to do anything different than what we've sort of been working through over the last few months on the budget regarding that particular issue? Council Member Ryan. I'd say keep it the same. Okay. All right. Council Member Davis. I'd also say keep it the same. If we're going to have a discussion, I have a couple questions that may be helpful for the public in understanding the amount of money that we're spending and some of the things that were said earlier during this meeting, but I'm in favor of keeping the plan the same. We've heard the plan. We've seen the plan. And I think that's what we're voting to move forward. Okay. All right. I mean, I'm in favor of just keeping it as we've discussed over the work sessions. Council Member Briggs. So I hesitate bringing it up, and I -- just, Mayor, in the past in any budget conversations we've had, it's always been open to the very end and very approval to talk about supplementals as things change. And I'm not shutting -- I'm not saying that. I'm just saying we -- questions are on the table. Right. And I think putting them off, that's -- I mean, because the public is going to -- we're going to have public hearings on this. So we need to make sure that they understand where we're moving as well. So I said that just to preface my talk now. Right. So I, too, am in favor of paid parental leave. It was something that when I first got on council, it was a work -- a staff report that I requested a long time ago, which was very appreciated, by the way, and not ignored. And it's something I'm extremely in favor of. But the reason I have not continued to bring it up is because we have talked about it on this council, and there's not four people here that are in favor of that. And so that is why I've been silent, because in the beginning when it was discussed, it was not -- it was not a consensus. So that is why I've continued to not talk about it, but want to say that it is something that for me, I am in favor of, but realize that it's not something this council as of now is in favor of. And as far as the top dressing goes, I'm still learning about that. But what I will say is that I am very happy that this council decided to stop using chemicals. And if this is the solution that we have for that, then I want to continue down that road. And next year, maybe that process will change. And I don't want to change it, because I'm afraid that if we make any changes going back into where we were, the dangerous part of using chemicals will pop back up. So that's where I am right now on those items. >> Okay. All right. Councilmember Ombudsman and Councilmember Meltzer. >> I'll just say briefly, because I've already made the case a bit -- or gesture towards it anyway, and don't have the numbers. What I was suggesting right now for the top dressing was not so much a radical change, just kind of seeing it as, you know, a place to take away from without increasing the budget. Because it's not -- you know, it's not that there's this magic amount of, you know, dino dirt that you need to achieve perfection in the city. I know it wasn't arbitrary either, but, you know, when we have the discussion about glyphosate on council, I was pleased to hear that people didn't, you know, really consider the weed so much of an issue. Now, the dino dirt, it is -- it's organic in the sense that it's human feces product that has been, you know, cleaned out and preserved in these various ways. There are questions about not just with dino dirt, but any kind of product like this, you know, is it helpful for the soil? And then there's also the question about is it safe for kids to play in -- or, you know, people to grow vegetation and et cetera. But those are not the questions to -- you know, that I'm raising right now. Those would be for a larger discussion about a reconsideration of the -- of the pest management process. So I'm just simply looking at it as we've got just a big pile of mulch, right, essential -- or that's what I'm calling it, stuff that we put on to keep the weeds down that we're buying from ourselves that we could take away from. Another area I see that we could take away from to fund other things that are meaningful to people, and this Councilmember Meltzer had mentioned before, is something that recently moved up, the funding for the 2030 tweaking plan, forgetting what it was called, but the $95,000. It was in a previous slide, it's not called the 2030 plan, the comprehensive, right, that's what that is. You know, there's the question of -- I mean, yes, it definitely needs editing. Do we really need a consultant who doesn't live here to really help fine tune this, or do we have between staff and residents fine tune this together? Anyway, just mention that. I wanted to thank Councilmember Briggs for having brought the paid print to leave forward when she did. I remember when that happened, and it was long before I got on council, I felt really well represented by her, and, you know, I would encourage others, you know, to think about that cost and the impact it would have for men, women, people of any gender who want to be parents and take the time off. >> Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Meltzer. >> Yeah, just briefly, I hope I'm not being too repetitive, but I'm not against any of the things that we're not funding. I think I'm for all those things, and for not raising taxes. Unfortunately, you can't do all those things at the same time. And so I'm not opposed to paid print to leave, and I expect that we'll get to it. I'm prioritizing right now not increasing taxes on all residents of Denton, not just city employees. So that's the priority I'm placing. >> All right, councilmember Davis. >> So I've known since the beginning of this process that the top dressing is a big ticket item. It was right up there in tier number one as a council initiative. From the very beginning, it's been something that if we chose to, we could go after and choose not to fund or to do differently, but it's a step in the right direction as far as how we manage how we do this integrated pest management. I think the question that's prompting some of the conversation today is we hear from members of the public who aren't content with the use of biosolids, that biosolids are not to them organic enough, and that we use the word organic, so there may be a better terminology in the parks department. If there's not a consensus that our biosolids are in fact an organic substance, then maybe we don't use the word organic so much. But also the question that also came up councilmember Armentor was we're buying it from ourselves. Every cubic yard of dino dirt we don't buy from ourselves is a yard that we could sell to someone else. So just to say it's something that we don't have to pay for if we use it, we need to pay for it. So the assumption I'm also building into this, and I think it's a very safe one, is that by using our own dino dirt we are saving significantly over going to a commercial producer of compost, and so that number, that 461 that we have right now could be exponentially more depending on what kind of commercial source we found for compost. So I think we're saving quite a bit by buying from ourselves, buying dino dirt from ourselves as opposed to one of the commercially available. Nobody else who's going to have that kind of compost and that kind of volume at our needs is going to be very expensive. You just want to go ahead and we do have, I think, some clarification on the closed caption. Correct. The city, because the pay channel doesn't create $3 million in revenue or more, we do not have to provide closed caption in coordination with the FCC. Okay. And just the address of the -- we don't -- because it's our own dino dirt, why are we having to pay for it? But that's the whole structure of the budget. Because you could say that about if we're buying land for parks or if the electric company has land that they don't need and parks wants it, we don't just give that to parks. Because of the integrity of the budgeting process and the enterprise funds and the different departments, that's why it's -- and that keeps it very transparent and keeps it very clean quite frankly from a budgetary perspective. So I'm -- and I agree with Councilmember Meltzer, just because something's not in this budget doesn't mean that it's in opposition to that item. So I'm comfortable with the budget as it's been presented with the changes that have been made here today so far with the power washing and then those changes that were made last time with the living wage discussion and such. So is there anybody outside of -- I'm not going to make any assumption -- who is opposed to those three items or is there anybody that is opposed to those so that we can figure out do we need to make some corrections as far as direction and consensus on direction? Let's just take them one at a time. The paid parental leave. I mean, I'm okay with moving as the city manager's recommended budget, which at least at this point that was recommended not to be funded at this particular budget cycle. What's the consensus of the rest of the council on that? I mean, because we've got to figure it out, folks. I mean -- I mean, if -- yes, Councilmember Meltzer? >> I'm fine with the recommended budget, the inclusion of the power washing. >> Okay. All right. Councilmember Ryan? >> Same here. >> Okay. Councilmember Davis? I mean, you're shaking your head. I just want to make sure -- >> Same. Yes. >> Okay. Excluding the issues that you described, obviously, you would rather those be different, it's my understanding. >> Yeah. Yeah. Are we going to have -- are you going to go around on the closed captioning issue now that we've had the legal opinion? >> Well, I think that's part of it. I don't think that was -- yeah, I think that's part of the discussion because it was not included in the recommended -- the city manager recommended budget nor at any of the Council workshops. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> So yeah. So I'll just comment on that. Since the first opportunity to comment, having gotten that legal opinion, you know, I would still recommend it even though it might not be a requirement. ADA is the bare minimum for access and another advantage of closed captioning, you know, in addition to enabling people to be able to follow -- people with disabilities to be able to follow our meetings, they also produce transcripts that people can read, members of the public can read, and that's something that was covered when we discussed the closed captioning issue. They make transcripts of our meetings, and that also explains a good part of the cost, which is useful not only in the present moment or the next day -- actually, not in the present moment, but after -- you know, once they're done, put on videotape the next day, the week after that, but also for archival purposes, so, you know, we could look back and see transcripts. I believe this is going to happen someday. I know that nobody has come out against it, you know, ditto for paid parental leave, but I would argue for putting it in here now, and I will say that the reason why I'm picking on these, you know, trying to take some of that dino dirt out of the parks budget, looking at the comprehensive plan update, is precisely because -- no, I just want to respond to something else, something that -- >> Okay, just real quickly, because we're basically all repeating ourselves. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> I, too, do not want to see the costs go up. I don't want to see the taxes go up, and so when I'm proposing putting something in, I'm going -- I'm going to look and see, well, what can we take from? And I think we should all be doing that, so. >> Thank you. I think we had -- I mean, there were some that didn't express an opinion either way, but I figured, Mayor Pro Tem, you're looking at me. >> Yeah, no, no, I'm good. I agree, we've discussed these, there's absolutely things I'd rather have, you know, I would like to add in, but we don't have money for it, right? I think there -- I don't think the not willing to raise the taxes on everyone, again, is a sign that we don't support objectives, it's just we have to prioritize, and I think city manager and this healthy discussion has got us a lot down the way. And I'll just tell you, I did some quick math, just in my mind, just to validate that, I mean, so if you take pay per annum leave at $280,000 and you take $21,000 for the closed caption, that puts you at $305,000 plus, you subtract that from the $461,000 that you would have for the -- what has been proposed to take it from, that leaves you with $155,000 round numbers, which doesn't get you anywhere, that's a whole bunch of weeds, it's not some weeds. The absolute, you know, decrease of that budget, it decimates it, you know, and so then you get back and let's use chemicals because they're cheaper, you know, so I think there is just a hard math, right? You have to make hard decisions and what's proposed leaves $155,000 whole numbers for what we've all considered a priority, so I think that, again, you have to work with consensus and we'll get there, I do believe, the city manager and staff are doing great things, you've pointed out a lot of highlights that this city offers that other jobs don't, and so I think we're getting there, so. Yeah, and look, this is just direction, I mean, we're going to take a vote on this budget and everybody will have an opportunity to vote to their conscience in that regard, so in no way is there an implication here by me or anybody on this staff or anybody at this table that this is the way it is and there's no other way, so. Did you have some comments, Mr. City Manager, you'd? Well, I guess, I just wanted to clarify a couple things, the, you know, I agree with Councilmember Meltzer just because you don't see something fun that doesn't mean folks are against it, if pay per hour leave right now was something that was keeping us from recruiting and retaining employees sort of thing, we would have certainly recommended it, it is something that our fellow competitors are not offering at this point, it's not become an issue at all in the organization, trying to keep people's insurance contributions and funding the wage plan is what 99.9% of the people care about, and we're trying to honor that and keep them happy, so I just want to, you know, I want to make sure that you understand that line of thinking, the comp plan is really not the one to shoot at in terms of a one-time cost versus trying to fund ongoing projects, you know, and the reason that was moved up is you're already, you're continuing and you're going to be receiving very, very soon new development requests to assess that the current comp plan didn't even contemplate those areas of the city developing, so, you know, it's pretty irresponsible on our part not to come in and update the comp plan, let you think about things, let the plan commission weigh in as you're trying to weigh a new subdivision request that's coming in that they really hadn't thought about us developing that rapidly and that far when the 2030 plan was initially set up, so this is the mindset behind it, it's, you know, it's very, there's very, you know, a lot of internal debates and discussions and pros and cons and heated arguments that go on, we're making this final recommendation to you, but ultimately at the end of the day, this is a budget proposal that we believe strongly in, we believe that we've got to give you the tools to get these, for your policy to be facilitated and effective on the council initiatives with the accept, you know, we take very seriously the feedback you give us during the workshop requests that we have and when we lay out budgets to you and we get, you know, a majority, if not all of you saying go ahead and fund this, we want this included in the budget, that absolutely sets everything for us, so once those parameters are set, you know, this is how we think our way through the budget, but I just wanted you to kind of, to add a little bit of perspective because I think things are being thrown out there and we haven't had a chance to provide that full context, I'm hoping that helps. I appreciate that. And I will say, having been involved in, I don't know what, 11 budgets, the budget, construction, presentation, development over the last, how long have you been here? Three years. Three years, has been light years ahead of where we were and I think it gives council, this council, and subsequent councils under this same process, a tremendous amount of opportunity to have input into the budget and to really craft it in a way that seems to meet as many needs as possible within our community. Okay, any other questions on this? Comments? All right. Thank you. Let's move on to the next agenda item, which is, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction. This is 3D. Give staff direction regarding the nomination of members to the board of directors of the Denton Central Appraisal District. Mayor, city council, Tony Puente, chief financial officer. I'm just glad I'm not talking about budget. So I already answered a couple of your questions earlier, so I'm gonna try to go through this pretty quickly. Every two years, the board of directors for the Central Appraisal District comes up for renomination or re-election, not election, but renomination, so they have two-year terms. There's no term limits for individual members. Their current term expires on December 31st, 2019. And to correct something I said earlier, the council could nominate up to five nominees, not the two that I previously stated. Here you have in front of you some of the kind of basic eligibility for these nominees or eventually the actual board members. So they must reside within the appraisal district within the last two years immediately preceding the date that they took office. Individuals that are associated with the city, county, or school district elected officials are eligible to be nominated and serve on the board. Employees of taxing units are not eligible, so anyone like myself could not be nominated. And persons not eligible are closely related, so there's certainly some nepotism type of requirements that we have to be cognizant of with these nominees. So currently these are the members that comprise the board of directors, Charles Stafford, David Turay, Mike Hassett. I will mention that Mr. Hassett has stated that he does not wish to serve another term. Roy Atwood and Mr. George Pryor are the current members of that board. And also one other correction that I'm from earlier. So in 2017, the council made no nominees. In 2015, the council nominated Mr. Stafford and Mr. Turay. So I had that backwards earlier, so I apologize for that. So the nomination process is prior to October 15th. The nominations must be submitted to DCAD. Prior to October 30th, DCAD will then compile the list of nominees from all the taxing entities. Send those back out to the tax entities for final votes. And then the actual vote by the council has to be done before December 15th and submitted back to DCAD. They'll compile all the votes and then the candidates with the highest votes are the ones that serve on the board. So currently next steps, September 24th is what we have scheduled for the council to consider a nomination resolution. Certainly if the council opts not to have any nominees, then there won't be a need to have that on your agenda. And then December 3rd would be the date that we have scheduled for vote and just a little bit of information for you. There's a total of 5,000 votes. Those votes are allocated out based on the tax levy. Ours is about 3.5% of the total tax levy of all of the taxing entities in DCAD. So the city gets 174 votes. Those votes could be allocated to one individual candidate or multiple candidates. In 2017, all votes were cast for Mr. George Pryor. In 2015, all the votes were cast for Mr. Charles Stafford and then just one other quick point. In 2017, there was a total of seven candidates that were submitted to the council for consideration for the final votes. And of course, the council elected to provide all those to Mr. George Pryor. That concludes my presentation. I'll be happy to answer any questions you have. >> So basically two-step process. One is we have the opportunity to nominate someone. >> So if we don't nominate someone, we still have to allocate our votes to those members who are nominated, the slate that's nominated, is that correct? >> That's correct, or the council would just choose not to give votes to anybody. >> Anybody, okay, all right. Councilmember Armitage. >> Yeah, I'm with Councilmember Ryan, correct me if I'm wrong. I recall at one point we discussed something like this. I believe that members of a taxing entity, and I mentioned taxing unit, so I guess you're part of a taxing unit. >> Correct. >> I consider the city council a taxing unit. We impose taxes, so is the county, and there are other taxing entities. So I don't think that any taxing entity, so anyone who's a member of it, should be in the position of deciding on taxes. I don't think that looks good. I'm not sure if I represented that well, please correct. But I would love if other members of council felt that way, if maybe we could come out with a statement to that effect, or a policy, or maybe just leave it at individual view on that. I realize that's not what you're asking for, but I think it could be really effective for us to actually make that statement instead of just having our opinions on that issue guide each decision we make each time this comes before us. >> So Councilmember, what I would point out is that this nomination is for the board of directors, it's the governing body of the appraisal district. These are not the members of the ARB or any of that other process, so, yeah. >> All right, so Mr. City Attorney, at this point, if there's someone who has a nomination, is this the point that that would occur, or is there another point in time where those nominations would come forward? >> They can make the nominees now, if they're already, which happens two weeks from now. >> All right, and so if we take nominees today, unless this is posted in subsequent council meetings, then we're not able to make any nominees until this, additional nominees until there's an actual posting for it. All right, okay, Councilmember Ryan? >> Yeah, I'd like to nominate Rick Wolfolk. >> Okay, So Mr. City Attorney, we have a nomination. Does that require a second? And if not, does that mean it just automatically gets on the slate of candidates, of nominees? >> It'll roll over to the slate for the 24th. >> Okay, all right, so no seconds required, no official vote, it's just a nomination put forward. Okay, any other nominations from council members? Councilmember Armitage? >> I don't have one, but are we going to see, for those of us who make nominations, are we going to see information about, get information about those individuals, or I was just about to start Googling and- >> No, sure, are they required to fill out some type of application, or how do we obtain information, sort of some background information, biographical information on the nominees? >> In the past, what the council has done is submitted to staff names of individuals that you would like to be included in that slate of nominees. And then we then put that into the resolution, and the council then votes up or down on the entire resolution. Or you could certainly do individual votes on nominees if you'd like. But that's, again, that's just for the nominees to be on the slate of candidates to be voted on down the road. >> Okay, all right, so I think to answer your question, I don't think we have a process now or in the past where there's an application process like for a city board or commission. I don't know if there's that type of process for the Board of Directors for the Denton Central Appraisal District. Yes, Council Member Melcer. >> I don't know if this is doable or not, but I had nominated Mr. Wolfe previously for DCTA board back two cycles ago. And we had a submission from him, so it's within the city. And I wonder if it would be appropriate to just re-share that? >> If it's public information, if it's already public information, yes. >> Well, we'll let the city attorneys, I mean, Council Member Davis. >> Just a suggestion, what it appears some of these other folks have done in the past is used. The county has a form similar to ours for their boards and commissions. And then there's also a nominee information form that presumably they'd fill out after they actually become a nominee. It's possible just to ask Mr. Wolfe to fill out even our own board and commission application for just something very, very simple that gives the same information that we already have on the currently serving members of that board. That appears to be what they've done, is used another form. >> We can certainly get that application from DCAT and send it to Mr. Wolfe or any other nominees that you may have. >> Okay, all right. Council Member Melcer, Armitage, I'm sorry, I'm looking at Melcer. >> And I would like to nominate John Baines. >> So I want to ask the question, the nominees that have been put forward, had there been discussion with them to gauge their level of interest in serving on that board? I mean, I'm not saying that hurts, it doesn't defeat the nomination. I just want to make sure that if there hasn't been conversation that there certainly will be in the very, very near future. Yes. >> Not yet, but I'm just about to. >> Okay, all right. >> Yes. >> Okay, all right. Okay. Okay, so we have two nominees, Mr. Rick Wolfolk and Mr. John Baines. Are there any more nominees put forward? Seeing none, okay. >> All right. >> It'll be those two, unless something changes on the next posting. Our next agenda item is 2E, receive a report and hold discussion and give staff direction on confidentiality agreements and non-disclosure agreements. >> All right, so again, Tony Puente, the Chief Financial Officer, no budget discussion here either. So I wanted to give you a little bit of background on non-disclosure agreements and confidentiality agreements. Those two are kind of interlinked at times. But again, these agreements come to the city in various forms, certainly impacting economic development, but also from time to time are utilities. Some common examples of these NDAs or CAs are prospective companies that are looking to relocate to the city of Denton. They at times will require non-disclosure agreements as they're providing to us proprietary information related to their sales or potential land acquisition, a number of other proprietary data that they may share with us. Some of these leads on these companies originate from the governor's office, but certainly from other regional chambers and development agencies as well. These economic development related NDAs and CAs as we're working with these companies could eventually result in some type of economic development incentive, like a chapter 380 or a tax abatement. And we tend to have discussions with the ADPB board and also the council as those arrive. Those NDAs are generally in the upfront process as we're being notified and having conversations with companies again, their interest is to protect their proprietary information. As it relates to our utility operations, specifically DME, but certainly Solid Waste has seen some of those as well as we're having discussions with prospective vendors regarding new technology. Certainly PPAs, as you're familiar when we're negotiating with solar and wind PPAs. Again, the other item here that we've included is energy trading and risk management. So as you know, we operate our own energy management organization. There are a number of counterparties. There's certainly federal agencies that we deal with as well that require NDAs and also confidentiality agreements as we're working with them and negotiating with them on their perspective service to the city or interest in coming to the city of Denton. So most NDAs and CAs across the metroplex, really across the state, the execution of those NDAs are generally delegated to the city manager or their designee. I mean, in some cases down to the director level individuals of their respective department, the economic development director or the general manager of the electric utility or whatever utility may be out there. In the past, the city of Denton has allowed various staff members to execute these agreements. There's been no formal authorization process. In 2017, you may recall staff made a decision through a number of various issues that had arisen to no longer execute those at the staff level. And we started to formally bring those to the city council for execution. Certainly that's been the process that we have followed to date. Timing is certainly an issue from time to time. Certainly as we're dealing with prospective companies that are wanting to relocate to the city. If there is no immediate council meeting, we at times may have to notify them that we're not going to be able to execute an NDA or a CA. And therefore, we are disinvited or not invited to attend those conversations at wherever they may be happening for that particular reason. So it certainly hampers our ability in the economic development process. What staff is proposing to the council is to implement a formal process where that authority to execute NDAs and CAs would be granted to the city manager or the designee. One of the steps that we would follow is to consult with the city attorney to ensure that the NDAs do not include information that would be releasable under the Public Information Act. And then once the city attorney has reviewed those and given us their approval, then staff would then execute either by the city manager or their respective NDA. What staff is also proposing is that upon execution of one of these NDAs or CAs that we would immediately, in the following Friday, legal status report is to provide that information directly to the city council so that they're aware of the NDAs and CAs that may have been executed on a timely basis. Some of the elements of some of these agreements certainly apply to the city or other officers and employees and agents of the city. They're authorized to release to our officers and employees on a need to know basis. Identify the categories of information we would agree to receive and not disclose. Require the city notify the other party of any unauthorized use or dissemination of that information that would be covered in the NDA. And require the city to legally resist disclosure or notify the other party in that event. Certainly, our city attorney or the city attorney's office can expand on these further if the council would like. So some of the options that we've listed out here for the council consideration. Again, I just want to reiterate that our current process is to bring those to the council. But under option one would be to approve an ordinance granting and delegating the authority of the city manager or the designee to execute these agreements as appropriate. As I have indicated with review from the city attorney's office. Option two would be to modify the proposed ordinance to provide some additional clarity that the council would like regarding these NDAs. Option three would be to not allow staff to execute those NDAs or CAs. Or four would be any other recommendations of the council or direction the council would like to provide the staff. With that, that concludes my presentation, I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. >> Yeah, Councilmember Riggs, what I was asking the city manager was if he had any comments prior to council discussion. And so he'll talk about it in the end, so yes, go ahead. >> Well, yeah, because some of my questions are to him, really. Because we had a process and it didn't work, right? There was a lot of negative or things that happened that shouldn't have happened in the past. And we've had a process that we've changed or that he changed and it seems to be working. So my question is really why now, why are we going back or given that power back to something from the past? >> I wouldn't say we ever had a process or that anyone had been given any power. That's just the reason that I basically put that memo across to the organization. The only reason we're allowed to sign it is after talking to the city attorney, we have no policy on it. And it had become standard in some parts of the organization just to go ahead and sign these, which of course got the city into some issues in terms of competitive bidding, that sort of thing. So until we actually had a council policy on it and I'd had the chance to talk to council about it, we just weren't signing anything more. There are times when it's not a huge deal, when we're going through a RFP process, something like that. Typically, we can build in the time, however, when it comes time for clarification questions on an NDA that might be needed in a bidding process, and that would particularly be with DME, or in an economic development situation, there are times when we're making people wait a couple of weeks just to sit down and have a conversation with them. And it just doesn't make a lot of sense if we're going to take economic development seriously and we're committed to trying to negotiate these deals, for instance, on the wind and solar power to make somebody hold off two and three weeks to meet with us to get to council. So it's become an issue recently, most recently on an economic development deal, wanted to have a conversation with council. I feel like the point is we needed a policy in place, it has become an issue in a few cases. And I think the bigger issue, as I saw, was there have been some trust lost in the organization that I'm hoping has been restored. And I think that also through the reporting mechanism, through the legal update, to where the council would immediately know if one of these got signed, that that would kind of solve that issue. But my issue initially was accountability and the lack of a policy. And so that's the purpose in the discussion today. >> Yes. >> My direction would, I generally am leaning towards option three, but in the instance that we, there are certain situations where, say economic development or something, where option two may be something that I'm okay with or comfortable with. But the non-disclosure, if they're in, then all of council, whether they signed it or not in the beginning, are liable for that, correct? And so once it's done, it's done, and if we get it after the fact and are comfortable with it, then that's where my hesitation comes from. It, at this point, doesn't have to do with trust. It would have to do with the specific topic. >> Mayor Pro Tem. >> Okay, I'm going to go with option one, and it's for exactly what the city manager expressed. And I can't say it wholeheartedly enough. The issues of the previous city manager led to he being a previous city manager, right? And I think even in that good decision, it cost the city taxpayers $600,000. And so I think you can make good decisions that are costly. And I think there's no insulation from litigation. There's no insulation from those things and you just make wise decisions. And nothing about this administration has shown me that they're not fully capable to make those decisions. And so I think it's just imperative that we respond to the growth cycle we're on, to just the situations have changed. The rules of the game has changed such that it necessitates this decision. And there's nothing, I've heard nothing, and I look forward to this conversation. And I've heard nothing from this administration that would lead me to believe that he's not and his staff and his designees aren't capable of making that decision responsibly and representing us well. And I think it also takes away that political football, if you will, to have someone that's running the city. We're not looking to comb over documents, right? We're not saying, hey, let us in on the documents. We're not saying, let us review everything that you do because that's not our role, right? We set policy, and I think this gives a policy directive. It brings us in the loop early enough to respond if need be. But it also takes the training wheels off the bicycle so that we can be a city that responds to requests and is able to at least have high level discussions and then bring that back. And so I don't see where it's punitive to not have to go check back with us. What if it's a schedule issue, right? If it's during the holidays, if there's just times, it just makes no sense to wait for notice requirements, that sort of thing, for us to be able to move forward and at least, my saying, understand what we're saying no to, right? I mean, that's really what it is, is exploratory. So that's why I'm okay with it. >> One thing I want to bring up to help, I think, further clarify the discussion is, there's a couple of different things that these type of agreements achieve. One of the big issues in the past has been, what did they call them, code names? >> Project names. >> Project names. So that's one element, in other words, there's a project name that doesn't necessarily identify the company. And then there's actually specific proprietary information, whether it's a project name or it could be the actual company name, that needs to be held in confidence based upon that. Some companies ask that we don't want our names to be put out there in the beginning because of the sensitivities of ongoing discussions, possibly with other cities or things such as that. So I think that's really where a lot of these issues stemmed from, was the project names. So I just bring that up sort of for some historical context. Well, I mean, you can shake your head, but I mean, that's all right, we'll get back to you. Yeah, Councilmember Armitage. >> So I am definitely for option number three. If there's ever a situation where an emergency meeting would have to be called, then we could do that. And if there wasn't, then I would be okay losing an opportunity because, and to go back to the issue of trust, yes, there have been a number of trust issues under the previous management. But as I understand it, and from having been a member of the public at the time in which these, some of those more controversial code named projects were coming forward. The problem that the public had was not so much that it was council keeping this secret versus the city management. It was that one or the other, in that case both, were keeping it from the public. So as long as we're keeping these decisions from the public and if it's not members of council who are elected by the public to make these decisions, then there's that much more of a remove from the public. And I'm not thinking of who our city manager is now, who our staff is now. I'm thinking about this from a governmental point of view and who should be the people who are making these decisions. It should be the elected leaders, democratically elected to represent who are accountable, who are directly accountable to the public, so that's why I feel so strongly. And that's why the public really doesn't like this confidentiality stuff. At least if it's made, if decisions like this are made, they want to be able to tell the person who made that decision, hey, I don't like that you agreed on that confidentiality agreement. >> Okay. >> Yeah, I'd like to draw a distinction here because this is absolutely not a way to get into using code names again. There's many times on the economic development side we're asked to sign NDA just to sit down with a company. They'll come in and say, well, what kind of incentives do you have? What are we eligible for? What kind of a deal are you willing to recommend to the council? And they won't even give us basic information to respond to them without signing the NDA. That doesn't stop us from developing a policy as a council that you don't want to use code names. But there's got to be some way, initially, for us to at least gather the data that they're concerned about coming out. So I just want to be sure we're bifurcating that conversation because we've been pretty clear. In fact, I can't remember more than once in the time I've been here where we've let anybody come in here with a code name. So I just want to be sure I don't like that categorization. It's not intellectually honest with what we're trying to do here. We can bifurcate the conversation and develop a whole different policy. Basically saying once this gets to a point where you want the council to weigh in, there's no code name. You can do that. But it's that initial information gathering when we're trying to decide what to even recommend and how to assess something that it's oftentimes very early in the process. We don't want that splashed all over the paper for fear of scaring their employees, usually. >> I understand. I didn't mean to conflate that with code names. It's just that's what had been done in the past. >> Okay. >> Councilman, did you have a question? >> Yeah, well. >> Yeah, well, is it okay to, okay, go ahead. >> Yeah, just I wanted to explain why I shook my head. And for me, I shook it because it's not really about code names. The economic development aspect of it is why I was considering the modifying it. Because for that, the initial conversation, fine. Because any other incentive, any other talk that's going to come back, we can talk about that after the fact. Mine, per se, my issues had to do with the buyout, the payoffs, the employee signatures. There were some situations where that happened. And then we were held liable for those things. And I'm not saying that that would happen, but it could, if this was in a policy. There were purchase power agreements that were signed that we were held to and released and had no idea what they were. I mean, and I understand we can have a legal update after. But there are some situations that happened that I think were, whether you want to say power or not. I mean, it was, they were over the line a little bit. And so that's why I was more in favor of the modification, saying, well, these things would not be allowed. >> And I appreciate you bringing up that, because you are absolutely correct. And I think the council at the time, after the fact of the agreement that you're discussing, talking about an employee confidentiality agreement, gave very clear direction. No more of those. So I think, and I think you bring up a really good point, and that is, we can tailor, if you're going with option two, we can tailor it however this council deems in the best interest of the city and the citizens to tailor it. I mean, you can say, well, if it's economic development, the first initial information gathering processes, but when you start talking about incentives and those kind of things. So I think that's a good point, that there are some things that would absolutely just be prohibited. And I think it was, at that time, it was severance agreements, that those could not be signed on as confidential agreements. >> Yeah, and I want to jump on that. That's a good point and something that's not addressed, something we weren't even thinking about, to be honest, and I don't really care about that. These are more, I'm fine with the policy of we'll come in and discuss with you. This is just more about doing business in a upfront and very responsive manner and then making sure that you know what's going on. But I don't think there's been one of those either since I've been here where there's been an employee deal. So I get where you're at, and that wasn't on our radar screen. We would be willing to limit this to more to the power supply issues and the initial economic development discussions. That was what we were most concerned about, so. >> Councilmember Meltzer and then Councilmember Davis. >> Yeah, I would say the current administration, if that was all we were ever dealing with I'd be fine with option one. But Todd's eventually going to get recruited to become Supreme Commander of NATO or something. So looking forward, I'd be more inclined to go with the idea of thresholds and categories, which I guess is number two. I'd be interested in, first of all, lower dollar amounts, where it's just procedurally cumbersome to have to wait for a council meeting to just get business done and the risk is low. I think that's a concept that I'd be open to. And I think there's something percolating here with the idea of an initial meeting for economic development. That if you're going to go further, you want to come to council. But before that got floated, what I was thinking was, don't we or can't we put together sort of everything we can send the prospect. Look, we have to get to council to do a non-disclosure. But here's our history, here's the kinds of things we've done, and it seems to me like there's a lot that can be said. >> But I'm still open to the idea that if a first conversation would be helpful to be able to do without waiting for a council meeting, I think that's a possibility. >> And then, I didn't see your hand up. Council Member Davis and then Council Member Ryan. >> I appreciate and don't want to repeat too much the conversation that's been had already. I lean towards option two. I'm very interested in kind of defining where that threshold is. I understand the need for some of these agreements in a number of different scenarios, especially. We've kind of moved already past competitive bidding and some proprietary vendor information, especially in the power setting. And I understand the need for them in economic development. I think we need to do a little bit more to kind of define where that threshold is and what we're comfortable with. For me, that is at those very initial stages. And I appreciate the solution you brought forward for the legal status update that we would find out that we've been bound by this agreement. But that's exactly the problem is that we'd find out after the fact that we are now bound to not talk about the fact that the city's been in some discussion. So the lower the stakes of that discussion, we can make it the more comfortable I am with being bound by that not disclosure after the fact. And frankly, as an expression of the trust I think we have in this administration, the city manager, I would be more comfortable with this being the city manager full stop. If the designee is absolutely necessary for flexibility, there's a time obviously where the city manager is going to be on vacation with the family or something like that. Then maybe we go one more step down to the organizational chart. But I think these are, because they're binding agreements, I think they're very top level. And I think it's important that when you report back to the council that you are now bound legally not to talk about the activities the city's been up to at whatever level. That the highest levels of management have approved that. >> Councilmember Ryan. >> I'm with Councilmember Davis on option two. And I think as I saw it in here, all these agreements will go through the city attorney's office, is that correct? >> Yes. >> So that gives me a level of comfort as well that I do have some issue on the, or designee is to when, if you designate them to sign an agreement with this company, then you know about it. And that I feel comfortable with, but for them to be able to, for you to be able to say okay, this department head is allowed to go sign it with whoever they want to. Now, with it going through legal, you will be informed about it before it's ever signed as well, so I'm happy with that. >> I think we can agree to all those issues. The legal side of it is, I'm sorry, the electric side of it's a little more prevalent where you probably see it during a process. There's oftentimes companies will come in and we're going to want to see their confidential information before we recommend anything to you to take any legislative action. And so it's just one of those industries where people are obviously super paranoid about letting you see anything of theirs. And that's typically where you're going to see those. There's also some times where we're going to want to see personal financials if they're pledging assets during our trading side of the house. So that's likely we're going to see 90% of something with the electric utility, the NDAs. >> I think having been in this game a long time, the issue with signing something initially is yeah, oftentimes a company will say, well, we can tell them what we've got for incentives. But if we know it's a very competitive situation and they're asking for us, they're always asking us to exceed the policy. And the question is, well, what do you bring to the table in terms of council goals? Jobs, pay, what kind of financial shape are you in? We've walked away from deals since I've been here because we thought the company wasn't sound enough structure financially. And there's no way for us to get that information without signing this upfront. So we don't even sometimes know whether to respond to them when they take that position. And I just haven't done it, pending this discussion. So that would probably be the only, it's really more of a tool that before we even decide to move something to you, is this even worth your time? And is it a deal that is bringing enough to the city that we can even have a recommendation for you? So those are really the scenarios we see this being used at. We totally agree with the personnel issue, we've already got that off the table, but that's typically how those deals work up front. >> Councilman Meltzer. >> Would it be more useful to have approval for quote unquote an initial meeting or to have it be just a short time frame, right, because you're going to want to exchange some documents. Maybe it's, you know, I mean, obviously, you're bound continuously by confidentiality on stuff you receive during that time frame. >> I would be comfortable with, just in terms of helping us assess whether to even put something together. >> Yeah. >> I mean, that's the only reason you'd sign it. >> But how do you define, how do you bound that? >> Well, and I think- >> I don't know if you can. >> And I think what I'm hearing, so correct me if I'm wrong, is that it seems like there's been enough discussion to have a discussion on option two. In other words, let staff come back, let legal come back with some options and some alternatives, and then we can begin to brainstorm within ourselves. And of course, I would certainly encourage you, if you have some of those ideas that have been proffered here today, to go ahead and get those to staff. But I think we can have a much more comprehensive conversation, we're not going to figure it out today. It's almost like, can we agree to just continue the conversation with option two? It doesn't bind us to option two, it's just saying, hey, let's explore to see what are some of the boundaries, some of the criteria. And then if we want to go to a different option, we always have that choice. Because I know that Mayor Pro Tem, you had expressed a desire for option one, but would you be opposed to a conversation like that with option two? >> No, no, I think it'll be good, it'll help me to understand what I'm not, whatever I'm missing. >> What the nuances are and so forth, yeah. >> Sure. >> And there's so many different, once you start peeling back the onion as far as personnel agreements, power agreements, economic development agreements, people who don't even want, because we're going to have to deal with people who don't want their names out there, even in the initial conversation, how do we deal with that? So I think it would be a very comprehensive conversation about, and if we can't get there, we can't get there. But at least we'll have the conversation, vet out all the issues. >> Yeah, the only thing that I'll point out to you, Mayor, kind of address Councilmember Davis' question or his remark, is at times these NDAs, the person that needs to execute them is the person that's actually going to be in attendance at the meeting. And so if it's the economic development director or myself, and so those, the city manager would not necessarily be able to execute. So we'll try to work with the city attorney's office on the language on that and kind of detail that out for you. >> And that's part of that conversation, that comprehensive conversation, to address that and flush out those issues. All right, fantastic, thank you very much. All right, we'll move on then to agenda item 3F, receive report and hold discussion, give staff direction on pending city council requests for information. We're going to have sort of a tutorial on how this process outside of the specific information is going to go. Because I know we've got a new clock up here, and I think the city attorney's or city secretary is going to be operating the clock. Is that some of what you're going to go through? >> We're going to quickly go through kind of what the process is, how we got here, and we're going to find out how it goes. >> Okay, all right. >> All right, good afternoon. >> Good afternoon. >> I'm Stuart Birdseye, the assistant to the city manager. As the mayor just said, this is kind of our first go around at the pending council request and working through that. And so, just a reminder of how we got here. At the retreat, there was robust discussion about council requests. And so we settled on this process, which is that once that request comes in, we're going to estimate the amount of time, or if it's a policy decision, or if it's a request for ordinance or a work session, we're going to bring that back to you to get consensus of council. What we're doing for this first go round is there were a number of outstanding requests that were still on the list. And so we've kind of backtracked to the oldest, and we're going to go through that for the first few meetings. And then if there's new ones that come in, we will work those in. And this is a standing work session each meeting. And so anything that's expected to take greater than two hours, it'll be reviewed here. So staff will introduce each request. And then the elected official that made that request will have up to one minute to describe and justify and clarify what they're asking. After that, the remaining elected officials will have up to one minute. That's the timer up here on the wall, and our city secretary's office somebody from there is going to be kind of controlling that clock. It counts up to one minute, and so that's where we'll try to do that this time. That clock is not just for this process. If somebody wanted to comment on the consent agenda or something like that where it's a public comment period with specific amount of time, that clock will be used for that too. So we have that, and then where there's consensus reached, that's kind of the direction of staff, and so that's the idea here. >> So before you get started, I want to make sure that we have clarity on because what your slide says there that council gives feedback and indicate their support. So if you're silent, because we've got to get at some kind of idea of what does silence represent. If you're silent, you don't say a word, I'm going to presume, and I think we need to have as sort of a rule that means you're not in support of whatever, not in support of, but you're not in support of what it is, staff using the time to research that. Is that really what we're deciding here with this? >> Correct, so there's kind of a mix here. There's work session requests, there's policy direction, and then in the future, we have five today. Those each have associated informal staff reports that have already been created, those are in your backup. So these are kind of policy decisions or work session requests. In the future, it'll also include the informal staff report requests that are going to take greater than the two hours. And so that would just be saying, not that you support necessarily this idea or don't support that idea. It's just the investment of X amount of staff hours to develop that report. >> Okay, Council Member Milser. >> Yeah, this is sort of the opposite of what was said. It's not that, let's say, it may well be that we want to have one minute to indicate support. But at least what I had teed up was one minute to express opposition. So how about, it's one minute to respond. >> Either yes or- >> Did you mean only support or? >> No, no, no, that- >> But what I'm saying is if you're silent, if you're silent, that has to count as something. And I'm saying if you're silent, I think I said if you're silent, then that's going to be construed as not supporting. Because we've got to come up with some rule or this process isn't going to even get off the ground. Yeah. >> Yes, that's absolutely correct. Anybody else have any questions? Like I said, we have five of them today. We've sent these out in the Friday report and through email. Each week, the previous Friday report, we're going to list out the ones for the next meeting so that you will all be aware of what's going to be discussed. And then everything's going to be in the backup documentation as well. >> So I would just encourage my colleagues, we've got the clock in front of us. Self-regulation, I think, is the best form here. I don't think anybody wants to be calling time and doing all those things. No, the city secretary doesn't want to. We don't have any horns. We don't have any bells. We don't have any whistles. So your cooperation in that would be very helpful. >> All right. So the first item today is develop a statement on the Confederate monument in the courthouse square and issue a resolution in support of a lynching memorial to be located in the courthouse square. This was requested by council member Armator last September and the lynching memorial was this past August. We have produced an informal staff report about the Denton County Courthouse Confederate monument. In that ISR, we had a brief history of the statue. The statue's designation as a Texas historical landmark and state antiquities landmark and the approval process for any changes or alterations to that. An overview of the advisory committee that was established in November 2017 to give the county direction on that. And then an overview of the county's recommendations. >> Okay, before we get started, and I want to, this is something for discussion later on. But I know when we talked about this, we didn't necessarily talk about staff presentation. And so I want to make sure that we don't all of a sudden start having five and ten minutes of staff presentation. And so not saying we're going to do anything different than what's been planned here today, but that's something we might need to tweak a little bit. Yeah, okay, I'm sorry to interrupt you, I just wanted to make that comment. >> So that's what I was going to say about this, we'll turn the floor over to council member Armator. >> Okay, the Confederate monument is racist. It should be moved, it belongs to the county, it doesn't belong to us. But it's in our central downtown square, it attracts white supremacists. The public is looking to us to come up with a statement on it. It's not just a memorial to slavery, it's also a memorial to lynching and Jim Crow. And the public is looking to us to come out and say whether we want to see it moved or to keep it. I want to see it moved, it's in our city and it is dangerous, they're going down all over the country. Okay, do you still have a little bit of time? >> It's racist, it's racist, it's racist, it's racist. >> No, no, there were two items up here, so you really only talked about one of them. >> Well, yeah, and the lynching memorial is much more appropriate. >> Okay, all right, thank you. So I wasn't trying to, you don't have to fill the time, I just wanted to hear, there were two requests up there, so I just wanted to point that out. All right, so comments, and then I guess as you start speaking is when the time will begin, so you don't have to, yes, Council Member Briggs. >> I would be interested in having a discussion about both of those. >> Okay, anyone, Council Member Meltzer. >> I spoke on this matter as a citizen before Commissioner's Court and served on that county committee that was in our materials. The result is widely misreported, there were five votes to move it. It was only after that vote that the current concept being proposed was even shown to the committee in the last ten minutes of several months of meetings. It was that or nothing, and even then I voted against the current plan unless it would address both slavery and segregation, which apparently is not the plan. So it wasn't unanimous, and I'm sorry to say it was, in my view, a very flawed process. That said, I see it as a county issue, not city, and lean when possible to using council's time on real changes we can make on our own. What I had proposed back on that committee was moving it to the county historic park, and on the current site to erect a statue honoring the women's interracial fellowship. Denton's unique contribution to the history of civil rights, I would happily instead take up the issue of doing that at a suitable location for the lynching memorial without reference to location. >> Okay, just as a process, yeah, when they speak, we'll need to reset the timer each time, new council members don't talk, yeah. >> Okay, I practiced it down to like 58 seconds. >> No, I understand, you got it, I saw you had it written, absolutely, that's good. Okay, all right, anybody else? Councilmember Davis. >> I could be in support of discussing locating the lynching memorial somewhere in the city of Denton. We have no control, absolutely none, over what happens within the sidewalks of the square, what happens on the courthouse grounds. I've said before, I'm not in favor of making gestures from this council on things that we can't control, adopting political agendas simply for the purpose of making the gesture, adopting the position when there's no change to be had, when the change is out of our hands and relies on someone else. However, we could have something to do with the location of a lynching memorial somewhere in the city of Denton, should the county decline to place on the courthouse square. All right, anybody else? I think I will echo the sentiment of Councilmember Davis. I don't know enough about the lynching memorial to even understand what it is and what it represents and what it would look like. I'm certainly amenable to a conversation or an ISR about that. It's my understanding that that's really what we're talking about now is an ISR that may take additional time. I believe that the Confederate monument, the county appointed a commission, notwithstanding Councilmember Meltzer's report of things that happened within that committee internally. I believe that they are moving forward on what the recommendations were. So I'm okay with that process. I just don't think that's something that a city, for me personally, I'm not going to say the city, for me. I'm okay with that moving forward. And if something changes, then that's certainly something that we could look at. No rebuttals, I don't think. Yeah. Yeah. OK, anybody else? So I want to make sure that I understand the tally and it's not a vote. It's not a poll. It's more direction. So we just make sure I want to stay in the rails within that. I did not hear a consensus for a statement on the Confederate monument at the courthouse on the square from four people or a consensus of council. I did hear not specifically, so I only heard specifically, I think, unless Councilmember Meltzer, I missed your at the very end. OK, without specific reference to location. OK, all right. So I think there's probably a consensus of council to issue a first and informal staff report on that. And then if there's further discussion, if I understand this process. So y'all will have to bear with me as well. Give me a little grace in this process as well, because sometimes this is going to be scar tissue. Yes. So my understanding is that there has been an ISR, just kind of an update. So is it my understanding that you're asking us to monitor where the county is heading with the Lynch Memorial? And if it's not on the courthouse square, then to bring it back for further discussion, is that the direction? Or did I misunderstand something? I'm not even quite sure exactly where it is. I mean, this is the first I've really heard about it at anything in depth. I mean, I've heard it mentioned. I've heard it. I've seen some some publication or some information put out on it. I think if that's the case, I don't think there's an IR. Was there an ISR issued on the lynching memorial? None of the lynching memorial. So are you wanting us to put an ISR together in the lynching memorial where they are at this point and then just monitor it? Or do you want us to monitor the issue? Yeah. And what is it? I mean, you know, what? You got it. Yes. All right. Yeah. Okay. All right. All right. Second item was requested by Councilmember Ryan. It was to develop an ordinance to allow horse drawn carriage carriages and horseback riding in the city rights of way. That was requested back in November of last year. There was an ISR that was provided. They outlined other area cities that are doing the same thing and staff provided the city of Arlington's code as an example. We'll turn it over to Councilmember Ryan. Well, as was outlined in the staff report, there are a number of cities. And many of you may recall that a couple of years ago, we were ranked number two for best destination to go to in the state of Texas because we don't have a river walk. We ended up in number two. There was a 12 page article in the Texas Monthly magazine about the fact that we are a equine destination of about the area and all the horse country that is around here. At one time, horse drawn carriages were regularly on the square. That's been at least a dozen years ago. So all I'm asking is that we look we have staff and public safety in particular look at the Arlington ordinance was in our backup. Today, look at that move forward on on something like that to bring that part of it back any get tired of having to go down to the West End if I want to take a carriage ride. OK, Councilmember Briggs. So I would be willing to have a discussion on this and a presentation and talk more about it. I would just also like to make sure that the treatment of horses is included and that we were able to put something into the ordinance that verifies that can guarantee that they wouldn't be mistreated. Councilmember Amater. I support it, including with the provision that Councilmember Briggs mentioned. Councilmember Nelson, then we'll go to Councilmember Davis. Yeah, I'm open to discussing it if the report includes a point of view from authoritative animal welfare advocates. OK, Councilmember Davis, I'm very supportive of the idea. And I think in addition to we've talked about kind of the regulatory scheme, there are also some cities out there who have some good best practices on animal welfare. That information's available and I'd like to hear on that also, but I think I'm in support of it. Yeah, since I said silence is non-support, I'm certainly open to having the discussion and looking at all the different options that are available. Mayor Pro Tem. Likewise. OK, fantastic. The third request today is from Mayor Pro Tem. Hudspeth. It's a request for public safety use of doorbell monitoring technology work session. We have produced an ISR about this previously. It contained information about the current doorbell monitoring technology, what the police can and cannot currently do, and information on the Ring Neighbors mobile app. So I will turn it over to Mayor Pro Tem. Hudspeth. Thank you. Thank you. So really, I'm advocating for the Washington Post last month called it the New Neighborhood Watch Program. It's granting police potential access to homeowners' camera footage. And in this instance, if you opt into the program, you would then allow that by proxy. There would be a formal written request for a succinct amount of time. And then I figure it to be a tiered approach. So generally, the entry level cost for a ring doorbell is, let's say, $100. I would say the lowest tier in a particular area that doesn't have a lot of crime, maybe it's $50, the city can rebate that amount. And then if it's a high crime area, the city would rebate up to a larger amount, maybe $150 for the more sophisticated systems to allow us access to that. And you need look no further than the news. In Fort Worth, the camera captured a child being abducted. It's just a vital tool that's available. Okay. Yeah, let's give her a chance to reset the clock before we -- there you go. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't call it. Councilmember Briggs. So I would be in favor of having a work session on this as well. I mean, there's already on our neighborhood page people post videos. And if it's an opt-in type thing for someone to share their video camera footage, I mean, I don't see an issue with it. And it has helped or can help the more cameras that are out there. Councilmember Arbiter. I'm against the subsidy aspect of it. So I don't -- wouldn't want us to have that discussion. But if we have it, I'll participate in it. But I guess I have to say no. Okay. Councilmember Davis. If the question is a conversation about our police department participating in the Ring law enforcement portal, I'm very open to that conversation. It's 100% opt-in. Nobody's controlling your camera or taking your information without your permission. If it's a question about subsidies, if that's the work session, I don't -- I'm not interested in having a work session about city funds being spent to put a Ring doorbell system on a private home. Okay. I'm going to go with Councilmember Ryan. And I agree with Councilmember Davis that I'm not interested in subsidies. I think there's a lot of other places we can use city funds beyond that. But as far as an opt-in that would benefit our police, I'm all for having a work session on that. Councilmember Meltzer. Happy to hear more about it in the work session. All right. So it seems like we've got a bifurcated kind of direction here. And I'm certainly okay with a work session on the law enforcement portal aspect. I think -- and you mentioned the subsidy. I don't know if that was something that you'd been thinking about all along or if it was just something that you were thinking about recently. But it seems like there's some -- I don't know if I counted -- I don't know if I counted -- I guess there was over four that did not necessarily want to discuss the subsidy. The subsidy aspect of it. So I just put that -- I don't know if we can -- I don't know if we can rebut. So -- well, I know we can't rebut. So I think the direction is move forward with the law enforcement portal. If the other comes up in the course of that discussion, outside of staff presentation, I think it's obviously something that's appropriate. And again, let's have a little grace with this process because it'll take us a while to move through it and find the best practices. Okay. Item number four is going to be executive residency information. This was asked for by Councilmember Briggs. We produced the ISR 2019-140 about executive residency information and included information about what requirements are allowed or not allowed through the Texas government code. The Denton Charter only requires residency for the city manager and included information about relocation assistance and residency comparisons to other local cities. Councilmember Briggs. So this actually, in following up with Stuart, is not just about executive residency for the work session. And there would not be any demand for requirement. I basically just want a work session that would look at police and fire percentages as well and explore incentives for all of those that work here to live here. All kinds of incentives can be used and just explore what those could be. I would also like to, before the work session, have an anonymous survey as well to find out the reasons why people work in Denton but choose not to live here. That may help us with certain policies going forward. And I look at this as an economic development opportunity as well. Possible millions of taxes paid in for salaries that actually can return back to the community if the incentives are successful. And this is the only request I have. I took off about 14 others. All right. Okay. Councilmember Melcher. It's an easy issue to highlight. People have spouses with jobs elsewhere, all kinds of reasons for living where they do. But I agree, it's a huge plus to have our team members live here and am interested in hearing about incentives for doing so. But by far the overriding concern in my eyes is getting the best possible people for the jobs and retaining them. Councilmember Davis. I'm interested in the information. Definitely why, if our folks live other places, are there things that we can affect that cause them to live other places? But I'm a little doubtful that any of the reasons they live other places or the things we can do to attract them back to Denton aren't the things we do to attract anybody to Denton, to make anybody want to live in Denton. But I'm definitely interested in the information. I think the thing that's told me was the survey ahead of time. Where do you live and why do you live there? If there's a way to do that anonymously and we have enough participants to make it meaningful, I think that would be very good information to have. >> I support having this discussion. There was a recent Denton Record Chronicle article about how we're a government town and the city is one of the big government employers. And I think along the lines of what Councilmember Davis said, when we figure out what are the reasons why staff members who choose to live elsewhere live elsewhere, that also taps into why anybody who would work in Denton would not want to live here and what the barriers are. So I'm interested also in just looking at what the barriers are, how we can remove them. I think it's a great discussion to have. >> Mayor Pro Tem? >> Yeah, I'd support the conversation. My concern would be, and maybe when we get to it, it'll be broadening the scope enough to where we're not almost incentivizing people from out of town that have to move to Denton. So if you've been a lifelong resident of Louisville and you want to come work for the city of Denton, you may not move that short distance. But now we're saying we're incentivizing people to move to Denton. So hiring practices may say, I live in Delaware and it's no big deal to move to Denton. So I just want to understand, it'll be a good conversation to have to kind of understand unintended consequences better. >> Councilmember Ryan. >> I support the discussion and kind of on the lines of what Councilmember Armator mentioned, I think I'd like to expand a little bit to see what we can do as a city to have more people who live in Denton that already work in Denton. We've got two hospitals, and most of the employees of those two huge hospitals live outside of our city limits. >> Yeah, I don't mind having the conversation. I think we have to be very careful about the conversation. Because in no way do we want to send a message, indirectly or directly, that to come to work for the city of Denton, if you don't live here, you're not wanted. And I don't think that's what you're saying, but I'm saying that I think it's very easy for that to be interpreted that way. You know, we want to hire the best people, did you reset mine to a minute? Good man, a minute's a long time, because our charter only gives us the requirement on one person. So I think we need to start with an anonymous survey first, because I don't want to just have this conversation where it's all open ended. I think we should start with anonymous survey first, and then build the discussion around that information. Because I'm not open to trying to find a way to send a message that you need to live here. Because people live away from Denton for a lot of different reasons that have nothing to do with anything we can do. And we've got four seconds left. We do provide incentives to people to move here in relocation packages, et cetera. Sorry, I broke my own rule. All right, thank you. Okay, next one. All right, so our last item today is going to be green buildings and impact fees. It was requested by Councilmember Melter in March. There was an ISR that was provided following that. It outlined the EPA goals for what a green building should include, common features of green buildings, information about sustainability goals that are included in the current Denton 2030 plan. It included information about the Green Sense Rebate and other local communities who offer building incentives for sustainable building practices. Okay, so impact fees are meant to cover the impact of new construction on our water and wastewater infrastructure needs. But as the report indicates, some practices such as gray water recycling reduce the impact on our infrastructure needs. If we can estimate the expected reduced impact on our infrastructure needs, then we can responsibly create a grant to offset some of those impact fees on the developer and still in net net cover our true costs. Now, this correctly places the economic incentive back with the builder to do construction practices that enhance our sustainability. Anticipating some objections, yes, we don't know the individual usage behavior of any particular family, and that can vary. But that's already true with respect to calculating our overall impact fees today. So let's look at the beneficial impact of evaluating this one factor, all else equal, and let's let the true underlying economics help incentivize sustainable practices. >> Councilmember Briggs, wait till she resets it. Did you go over Mr. Meltzer? I looked up his 107, I'm kidding you, I'm teasing you, I'm kidding. Reset it for her, yeah, go ahead. >> Am I good? >> Yes. >> Okay, so yeah, I'm in favor of listening to this and I'm in favor of pretty much everybody's because it means something to you. So I would like to hear it, but as far as the gray water, it's my understanding that the gray water use actually is not allowed in that type of capacity. So that would be a great conversation to have as well to go along with this because it's hand in hand. So I'm open to it, anything to enhance sustainability and green communities. >> Okay, Councilmember [INAUDIBLE] >> I support having this discussion and would look forward to it. >> Yeah, no, so I support the conversation and I have a preference in order because I want this to go before mine in that conversation because I heard a lot about subsidies, right? And then maybe I should couch it as green scent rebate or grant that then it circumvents the subsidy word. But really, I think the net is the same and so I'm going to piggyback on this. If this is approved and everyone's okay with subsidies, then I'll come right behind it with my doorbells and ask for help. Thank you. >> Customer Davis. >> I very much support having this conversation. Incentives in general for green building are important. We have lots of plans, lots of goals, but we don't have a lot of ways to get there quite yet. If we have room in the conversation, we're already kind of discussing some of our, I guess, our code restrictions that keep us from doing some of the things like gray water reuse. I'd also like to talk about utility rates if we have room in that conversation. If we're going to talk about incentives, I think it's a soup to nuts conversation. From building all the way through, paying a little bit less for your electricity because you're so darn efficient. >> Councilmember Ryan. >> Yeah, I support the conversation on this. I'm not sure that impact fees are really the direction, but some type of incentive in some way to incentivize them would be good. And I believe it also ties in with something the Mayor Pro Tem had requested that was a individual company that did green building. >> Yeah, I'm okay with the conversation. I don't really understand the request, quite frankly. I mean, you mentioned gray water, which is a whole conversation in and of itself. But I also think that this could be in combination with our sustainability plan conversation because that fits right into there. So I think it's just a normal course of a conversation that we're constantly having anyway. So I would be in favor of sort of merging it into that as well, because I think they all sort of fit together in that regard as far as impact fees. We certainly already have a tremendous amount of code on the books. Your energy code for building sustainability, and how that code mandates certain types of energy efficiencies in your windows, in your insulation, and things such as that. So yeah, I'm good with the conversation. I think having it in a vacuum outside of our sustainability plan in general I think would be not an efficient use of time, but I certainly think it's worthy of having. Great. Okay. I believe that concludes. Do we have any more? That's all right. Fantastic. We can't add them here because it's not posted. Right. I can't add one. I didn't have one. So. All right. Okay. All right. I believe that brings us to the conclusion of our public work session. We will now convene in closed session to discuss matters under the Texas government code section five five one point oh seven two Texas government code section five five one point oh seven one. And I don't I think those are the only two. Oh, okay. All right. So we're only going to be using closed session item a because there are no questions for the confidentiality agreements to be discussed in closed session. So we'll only do deliberations regarding real property matters under Texas government code section five five one point oh seven two in consultation with attorneys under Texas government code section five five one point oh seven one. This meeting of the Denton City Council on September the 10th, 2019, it's about six thirty three p.m. If you would stand with me if you're able to pledge allegiance to the U.S. and Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I pledge allegiance to the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. It's on. Can y'all hear me out there? Is the mic working? OK, good. All right. The first proclamation, we got some good proclamations tonight. The first one is the fiftieth anniversary year of the Denton Community Theatre. So whoever wants to come down, come down. Yeah, whoever wants to come down. So I'm going to let you introduce yourself and then whoever is going to be the spokesperson can share with us a little bit about the celebration. I am Mike Barrow, I'm the managing director for the Denton Community Theatre. I'm Donna Trammell, I'm the chairman of the board. Nancy Kimme, I am on governing board. Danny Armitage, governing board. Kate Armitage, member. Rudy Mann, treasurer. Joanne Moses, governing board. Angie Matthews, governing board. Jeff Springer, governing board. I don't recognize that name. Did you get that, Billy? Anyway, tell us a little bit about what we're celebrating. Well, we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Denton Community Theatre. We held our first show in nineteen sixty nine, which was part of the Denton Festival for the Arts. The original Festival for the Arts, which later turned into the Spring Fling, which later turned into the Arts and Jazz Fest. But that all started with the production of Our Town. So we are so proud that 50 years later, we're still here. We still enjoy a wonderful partnership with our city. We have the beautiful campus theater as our home and we continue to grow. We started out years ago with 20 people in a cast and we now have thousands of volunteers. So we could not be more proud to be here tonight. Thank you. Well, when I think about that time frame, think about the number of people that you've involved as volunteers over those 50 years in the community and then all the people who've come to see all your performances. That's just it's just astronomical. So thank you so much. And it's with great pleasure that we're able to deliver this proclamation. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Texas, whereas Denton Community Theatre, Inc., DCT, a community nonprofit, is celebrating 50 years of service in 2019. And whereas the organization began as part of Denton County Fine Arts Festival in nineteen sixty nine and was tasked with producing the performing arts portion of the festival. And whereas DCT has evolved over the years into a thriving organization supported by thousands of volunteers and patrons annually and a thirty five member volunteer board of directors. And whereas the city of Denton has provided tremendous support for the Denton Community Theatre over 50 years to help achieve its mission of contributing to the cultural life of the community, promoting education, interest and appreciation in the performing arts by providing opportunities for participation and patronage and managing and operating the Texas Historical Landmark Campus Theatre. And whereas DCT will be celebrating its 50th anniversary with events and activities throughout their 2019 through 2020 season to share the unique legacy of the organization and its role in the Denton community. Whereas now, therefore, I, Chris Watts, mayor of the city of Denton, Texas, do hereby proclaim 2019 as the 50th anniversary year of Denton Community Theater and in the city of Denton and asked the citizens to recognize the long running positive impact DCT and its volunteers provide to improve the quality of life for our community. So thank y'all so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, I need to. Yeah, this one. Yes, it does. Absolutely. Okay, live United Month. Each other. Introduce yourselves and share with us a little bit about live United Month. Gary Henderson, president and CEO of United Way of Denton County. Laura Barron's board member. Caroline Simmons, board member. Mary Curtis, co-treasurer. Keely Briggs, Denton County homeless leadership team. And Teddy Ann on staff. Share with us a little about this month. Well, we're celebrating across Denton County live United Month, but really, it needs to all start right here, Mayor, because the city of Denton, the council, city manager, how many your staff, you really are leading the way as a municipality that is stepping out, living United and taking care of our citizens, taking care of our whole community, homelessness leadership team, behavioral health leadership team. Now the workforce success leadership team. You've done it with policies. You've done it with funding and you've done it with your own time, Mayor, council member, in long, long meetings, wrestling hard issues to the ground. So this is just a way for us to celebrate all of this great work that's happening across the county and to say thank you. Thank you. Well, this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton. Whereas since 1953, United Way of Denton County has empowered donors, volunteers, businesses, governments, nonprofits, and community groups to invest in the neighbors, to invest, excuse me, in neighbors for a better Denton County community. And whereas United Way of Denton County lives united for Denton County to help children and families succeed, to guide and serve veterans and their families, to advocate for overall mental health, and to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring. And whereas United Way of Denton County works with a network of nonprofits across Denton County to improve the quality of life for the most vulnerable among us. And whereas United Way of Denton County seeks to increase efficiencies and eliminate redundancies to better meet people's needs through collaborative programs to solve complex socioeconomic problems. And whereas the United Way of Denton County continues to improve and transform lives across Denton County. Now, therefore, I, Chris Watts, mayor of the city of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim the month of September 2019 as Live United Month and ask you to join United Way of Denton County board, donors, volunteers, and partners in calling on and calling on all residents of the city of Denton to live united. Thank you all so much for what you do in our community and our county. Our next one is a celebration of our daily bread's one millionth meal, one millionth meal. Let y'all introduce yourselves and then tell us a little bit about the significance of this one millionth meal. I'm Wendy McGee, executive director at our daily bread. I'm chef Liz Whitaker of our daily bread. I'm Emily Taylor, the president of the board of directors. I'm Angela Grubke, vice president, board of directors. Kit McCray, board member. And I'm Dale Tampke and I'm on the staff. So if I may, I'm going to say a word or two and then I'm going to turn it over to our superstar, if that's okay. Okay, perfect. I'd just like to say that, well, thank you, Mayor Watts. Thank you to the council and the city of Denton for recognizing us for this remarkable achievement of serving one million meals. It really is a representation of our community. I think the work that we are doing at our daily bread, delivering one million meals and delivering hundreds of thousands of wraparound supportive services. It's a representation of the growing need in the areas of hunger, poverty and homelessness that we are experiencing in our community. But it's also a representation of a very responsible and a compassionate response to facing these issues head on, and that is supported by this community. So we are just happy to be a part of a wonderful community that is being very responsible in how we are approaching those issues. But also what I'd like to say is none of this work would be possible without a collaboration, a team, so to speak, of volunteers, of staff members and of supporters. And while everybody plays a very vital and important role, if I had to name our MVP, that would be Chef Liz. So our one and only magician in the kitchen who has been with us for almost all of those 19 years and has served almost all of those million meals, subtract maybe 10 to 20 so we can go ahead and round up and say she served all the one million meals. So I just want to give her a minute to speak about that and the significance of it. Thank you. I've got a cold. So bear with me. When I started with the soup kitchen 18 plus years ago, it was just run by one person, all volunteers. And my husband talked me into taking this job and I came out saying, I don't think so. I really don't think so. It's a small kitchen. And then I said, they're going to do big things. And so I started and I am so pleased to work with these fine people and this fine organization to fix a million meals. And I told them it had to be mom's cooking. We wouldn't do it any other way but mom's cooking. So my philosophy is if you wouldn't eat it, we don't serve it. I've seen this grow from very small to an absolutely outstanding organization and it's my pleasure to be affiliated with. And I look forward to the next 20 plus years. So thank you. Well, I just want to take just a couple of moments because first of all, I want to encourage anyone who's not been there to see what happens during lunch and to see the people that are ministered to and to just see the love and compassion of the volunteers there meeting their needs. I would encourage you to find a way to get involved. So I'm I'm going to say to you, Liz, when I when you and I talked last time, I was so moved by just your story and your compassionate heart. You won't say it, but I'm going to say it. One thing about being mayor, what you get to see is the best of Denton and the people in this room is proclamations tonight. And you also in particular, the best of Denton because your heart and your love for people. So thank you so much for that. No, but but it's people like you who really do the work that really have that heart of compassion that really changed people's lives. And all of you here working together over these last 19 years and one million meals. I mean, that is phenomenal. I mean, think about that. That is just unbelievable. So thank you all so much for that and for giving back to the community. And thank you so much for what you do. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton, whereas beginning as a collaboration of approximately 20 churches in the community. Our daily bread opened its doors at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church on June 5th, 2000. And whereas on its first day of operations, ODB, our daily bread served first day of operation, served 12 meals. All right, let's think about that. By the end of its first full year of operations, the organization was serving about 73 meals a day. This year, in its 19th year, ODB serves on an average over 400 meals a day. And whereas this year, ODB celebrates the service of its one millionth meal, delivery of 40,000 social services and facilitation of over 14,000 client referrals to external agencies. And that's really one of the great things about the organization. You're just not giving them a lunch or a breakfast or a meal, but you're also giving them the opportunity to go get help in the areas that they need. Since inception, ODB has served 5,000 guests. And whereas to meet this need, ODB requires volunteer support of more than 35 volunteers per day, 35 volunteers per day, with volunteers selflessly giving over 30,000 volunteer hours annually. Chef Liz Whitaker has generously served as the head chef to prepare healthy, nutritious meals for thousands of individuals for the last 19 years. Has generously served. That really doesn't do it justice. Again, thank you so much for that. Thank you so much for that. Whereas in addition to the meals ODB serves at St. Andrews, they recognize the need for collaboration across agencies, providing meal service to other agencies, providing supportive services to guests and hosting other community organizations to provide referrals and meet the needs of their guests. Now, therefore, Chris, excuse me. Now, therefore, I, Chris Watts, mayor of the city of Denton, do hereby proclaim September the 10th, 2019, as celebration of our daily bread's one millionth meal in the city of Denton. And ask the citizens of Denton to join me in recognizing this significant contribution our daily bread has made to our community and thanking all of those who serve. Donate and volunteer their time. Thank you all. Thank you. One, two, three, four, fantastic. Thank you. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We can do that. Okay. Our next agenda item is a presentation from members of the public. If we could review the procedures for addressing the city council. The Denton city council has adopted rules of procedure, including a code of conduct that applies to citizens as well as council members. These rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum. Here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizen reports. Citizens will have four minutes to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes to give an open mic report. There will be an electronic bell when time has expired. If the remarks are not concluded by that time, the citizen will be asked to stop speaking. If the citizen does not cease and a second request is made, the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chamber. Citizens are asked not to approach the dais. If a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council, please let the city secretary know in advance for scheduled citizen reports. The council may initiate discussion or questions following each citizen report for non scheduled open mic citizen reports. The council may listen to citizens speak. However, because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance, the Texas Open Meetings Act limits any deliberation or decision by the council to a proposal to place the item on a future agenda, a statement of factual policy or a recitation of existing policy. Citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member. Please refrain from making abusive, personal, impertinent, profane or slanderous remarks. Anyone who violates this council rule of procedure may be immediately removed from the council chamber. Thank you in advance. Copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary. We do not have any scheduled citizen reports at this time, but we do have some additional citizen reports that we commonly refer to as open mic. And we do have two of those cards. The first speaker is Eva Greco. If you'll come down, state your name and address. Your time will begin. Eva Greco, 802 West Oak Street in Denton. I was here last month speaking about the DCTA, the bus transportation. I have spoken with Mr. Suarez extensively, but nothing has been resolved, not even a hint of anything. Answers to my questions and concerns about passengers, evasive, no response, you know, it's getting nowhere. It's created a huge financial burden on myself. For the month of August, I spent close to $200 having to take Uber because the number seven bus, they've changed the time schedules. And again, it's, I have to prepare two hours in advance to go to work now if I want to catch the bus to get to work. 45 minutes early, you know, I can't do that every day. Okay. There's no bus on Sundays. This is supposed to be public transportation for us, the people. Okay. More and more is being taken away from us, the passengers, the citizens that are here all year round. The bus lines are very much catered to UNT, which when there is no school, it's a ghost town driving through campus. Okay. But it's, we're not getting anything. We're getting less and less. I understand Mr. Suarez is a new CEO. Um, the old one is not there. He came in at a salary of 45, approximately $45,000 more than the previous CEO. But we, the passengers have gotten less and I'm just asking the council, the city to do something to help us. Okay. It's not just myself. I'm speaking on behalf of a lot of other commuters. Okay. Mr. Suarez at the mobility meeting stated about how by Presbyterian, there is an access van for, and there's a lot of people, some wheelchair bound who have medical appointments. I clearly said, I know through experience, there is none. After that mobility meeting, Mr. Suarez, and I took a ride. I showed him the way the number seven bus is going. And I said right there, there is no designated shuttle to shuttle the individuals to the medical building that they need to go to. Um, again, great hazard individuals have to get off behind Waffle House and walk underneath 35. It is a danger, danger to the safety of the citizens and the passengers of DCTA. So on a quick note, I want to thank Mr. Canizares immensely. He returned my phone calls. We spoke about these things. Um, and, and I just want to thank him about, thank everybody, you know. Um, so I'm just asking if we could do something because another month has gone by and it's only gotten worse. And quickly, see my time's almost up. I noticed the number eight bus, which goes to Discovery Park, goes on Carroll Boulevard now. And then to university to get to Discovery Park comes back, goes up Hickory. I mean, West Oak, excuse me, to accommodate the UNT and then comes back down. So I'm like, wow, number eight, I can take that bus and get off by Bonnie Bray University and go right to work. Nope, there's no bus stops, even a temporary bus stop. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next speaker for open mic is Brian Webb. Mayor, council, Brian Webb, 4112 High Road and Flower Mound. I thank you for your time and I thank you for your service. I'm here tonight to ask for your nomination to the Denton County Central Appraisal District's board of directors. I believe I'm uniquely qualified for this role. And I'd like to share with you just a little bit about my background. For 15, 16 years, I served on boards and commissions in city of Louisville and Flower Mound. I chaired a blue ribbon bond committee. I've served six years on Flower Mound's town council, stepping off in 2018 with term limitations. I understand municipal side of the role. Professionally, I recently retired from Nissan Motor Acceptance Corporation, the finance arm for Nissan here in North America. I managed the credit risk management team and I managed a strategy and planning team in the remarketing department. Now, what does that mean to somebody who doesn't know auto finance? Means 100,000 credit applications each month went through our algorithms for decisioning and automated decisioning. That told about a billion dollars each month. On the remarketing side, we do 29,000 off lease cars each month had to be sold or disposed of. And our team managed the strategies and made sure that things were done properly and hit targets. I'm used to working with complex issues and concepts. And then in terms of serving the community, I'm a longtime member of Flower Mound Summit Club. In Flower Mound, we're known as the hot dog boys, but we do a whole lot more. We're partnering with the local YMCA tomorrow for a blood drive for a veteran who was severely injured, not an auto accident. And it's now an annual item for us. We serve 5,400 hot dogs at a Louisville ISD back to school event in August. I give back to the communities to which I live. I understand this role. And as I said, I think I'm uniquely qualified. And when you folks bring this up for discussion at a future meeting, I would appreciate your nomination to serve. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Webb. Okay, that concludes our agenda item three, which is presentation from members of the public. Our next item are items on the consent agenda. Council member Briggs. I move to approve the consent agenda except for items A, B, C, E, and K, which will be pulled for separate votes. Council member Ryan. Second. So we have a motion to approve the consent agenda except for items A, B, C, E, and K, which will be taken up as items for individual consideration. Is that correct? Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. Before we move into the items for individual consideration, just so that I understand and confirm that nobody was really requesting a staff presentation from any of the items that were removed for individual consideration. If you did, then now is the time to speak up. All right. Don't see anything. Thank you very much. And we will be taking items, agenda items A and C in successive order just to facilitate a more efficient process of our meeting. So agenda item A, which is considered adoption of an ordinance of the Texas Home Real Municipal Corporation, authorizing the city manager to execute a services agreement related to public education government grant with the University of North Texas for its Dent Community Television PEG channel, authorizing the expenditure of funds thereof and declaring an effective date. We have no presentation. Council member Ryan. I move approval of item A. Council member Davis. I second. We have a motion to second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 5-0. We'll now take up agenda item C, which is considered adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, a Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation, authorizing the city manager to execute a service agreement related to a public education and government in parentheses PEG grant with the University of North Texas for its NTTV PEG channel, authorizing the expenditure of funds thereof and declaring an effective date. Council member Briggs. I move to approve. We have a motion. Council member Davis. I second the motion. I'm not sure it's the one on the board. Yeah, see. Yes, item C. I think that's item C on individual consideration. Oh, okay. Yeah, we'll need to get the consent agenda item C. There we go. There we go. There it is. Okay. Yeah. All right. So we have a motion and then a second by council member Davis. Is that correct? That's correct. All right. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 5-0. If we could go ahead and ask the council members who recuse to come back in council members, Meltzer and council members are to recuse for agenda items A and C. So we'll move on to agenda item B, which I believe council member Davis has recused himself. No, no, you're good. So agenda item B is considered option of an ordinance of the city of Denton, a Texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a service agreement related to a public education and government grant with the Denton Independent School District for its PEG channel, which is public education and government authorizing the expenditure of funds there for and declaring an effective date. Council member Ryan. Move approval of item 4B. Council member Briggs. Second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 4B. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-0. Agenda item 4E, consider adoption of an ordinance of the city council of the city of Denton, a Texas municipal home rule corporation, approving a negotiated settlement between the Atmos City Steering Committee, ACSC, and Atmos Energy Corp Mid-Tex Division regarding the company's 2019 rate review mechanism filing. Council member Ryan. Move approval of item 4E. Council member Davis. Second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 4E. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-1. Agenda item 4K, consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, a Texas home rule municipal corporation, authorizing the approval of change order number one to the contract between the city of Denton and the DDM Construction Corporation for the Bonnie Bray roundabout. Council member Ryan. Move approval of item 4K. Mayor Potem. Second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-1. We'll now move on to our items for individual consideration. Agenda item 5A, and as a reminder on 5A, there's no action on this item. This is the first reading of this item. Is that correct, Mr. City Attorney? That's correct. Okay. All right, so I'll call agenda item 5A, receive a presentation for an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, which would amend the city of Denton code of ordinances, section 2-29, to add that members of the public addressing the body through a translator will be given at least twice the amount of time as members of the public not requiring a translator. Good morning or evening. I'm Rosa Rios and I am your city secretary. I'm here to present the item. On June 10, 2019, the Texas legislature passed HB 2840, which would require that a member of the public requiring, desiring to address the body through translation be allowed twice the amount of time as a speaker that did not require such assistance. As a result of that, a modification to the rules of procedure are required and we are required to present the item prior to the formal adoption of the recommended change. So this item accomplishes that. The background is that, of course, we are recommending that section 2-29 subsection 4 of the code specific to the rules of procedure be modified to add section H, which would read use of a translator. Any member of the public addressing the city council through a translator will be given twice the amount of time to present to the council as a member of the public who does not require the assistance of a translator. This item is scheduled for formal consideration as part of the consent agenda of September 17th, barring no objection. Any questions? Same net. Okay, thank you. Moving on to agenda item 5B consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas amending ordinance 2015-17 to revise the overlay conditions on approximately 30.7 acres of land zone neighborhood residential in our three district as a reminder, if you want to speak on this item, you'll need to fill out a blue card because this is not a public hearing just to put that reminder out there. All right, ready for staff presentation. Good evening, I'm Julie Wyatt, senior planner with the city of Denton and I'm presenting Z1960 this evening fireside park. You may recall this came before you last month, August 20th. There were some additional clarifications that the council wanted, so we're back here tonight to go over those items that were requested. The request before you is to consider amending ordinance 2015-217 to revise overlay conditions on a 30 acre parcel. The subject property is located at the corner of Windsor and Hinkle. This property has been the subject of two previous rezoning requests. Both of those requests had very specific concept plans associated with them and so hence those overlay design guidelines that were put on the property. Those projects did not move forward and the current developer approached the city in 2017 to develop the property as a single family development. He has since plotted the property and is now under construction. So essentially the request before you centers on two elements associated with those overlay conditions. The materials for the perimeter fence and then also rear setback. The request would not change the underlying zoning, increase the density or add additional uses. So specifically the applicant is requesting to modify the perimeter fence to construct an opaque fence, six foot tall board on board cedar fence with the top rail and cap. This would have, if approved, stone columns every 100 linear feet along the perimeter and at any corners and any terminus. In order to address some of the surrounding neighborhoods concerns regarding visual impacts with the proposal, staff recommended adding additional vertical landscape element along that perimeter fence and also street trees along Windsor and Hinkle. And those would be, if approved, planted every 20 linear feet and it would be alternating shade and ornamental trees. He's also requesting to reduce that rear setback from the 50 feet that is currently in place to 40 feet from the existing curb on Hinkle and Windsor drives. The other overlay conditions regarding three car garages or the bike lane on Hinkle would not be affected. So as part of the, going back and doing some additional analysis on the project, we have an exhibit here showing what those rear setbacks would look like. So this orange here, that represents that 40 foot setback, so you can see that along Hinkle drive. The 50 foot setback is shown here in yellow and that shows 50 feet from that curb on Hinkle. This is an exhibit that you saw in the previous presentation, it shows what he is proposing for that fencing along Windsor and Hinkle. I just wanted to add, because it did come up in the last public, in the public hearing, whether that fencing would be on the ground, those fence panels would be on the ground, if approved, or if they would be elevated. And per both the 2002 Denton Development Code and the 2019 code, those fence panels would need to be elevated in order to allow that proper drainage underneath. We did talk at, on the August 20th meeting about those street trees, there are DME electric lines along Hinkle, DME has published a tree list for trees that are appropriate near power lines. So I've included that tree list in your backup and it's shown here, so there's a menu of trees that they could select from that would be near those, that would be appropriate near those power lines. The applicant has also provided a plan view of what that right of way would look like along Windsor and Hinkle, and in particular Hinkle. And it shows, this diagram here shows the fencing in this general location with the columns in red, and then that vertical landscape element in the green yellow. They are proposing, or they're required to put in a five foot sidewalk along Hinkle. It does connect to the property just south of this development, however that sidewalk doesn't continue down south on Hinkle toward University, it stops at that adjacent property. It also doesn't extend further than the property line on Windsor, that was one question that we got. We also, in response to some of the concerns about the street trees and the power lines on Hinkle, staff worked with the applicant and engineering to actually relocate the sidewalk on Hinkle, to move it a little closer to the street as you can see here. To allow that planting area to go between the sidewalk and the perimeter fence to give a little additional separation between those trees and those power lines. You can see it meanders just a little bit because there are those power poles there, we want to make sure that there is an adequate pedestrian facility in that location. I have one question, if you could back up to that slide. The red dots are the poles, is that what you said, for the fence? Those are masonry posts? Yes, according to their proposal. And is that the same distance measurement as if the wrought iron fence was required, are they in the same position or are there less posts required or more posts required for a wooden fence? The wrought iron fence was not prescriptive on how many columns there were, it was just required to have taller posts topped with a decorative finial. I'm sorry, I misspoke. It would be required at the corner of each lot. So in this plan, the lots are about 50 to 60 feet wide, so it would be every 50 to 60 feet. So then here, at least on this diagram, if this is the wood fence proposal, then there are less of those decorative posts in this configuration than if it would have been the wrought iron. One other thing I wanted to add to this slide, because it was something that was discussed at the last meeting, was whether those power lines should be buried along Hinkle. That is not something that the debt and development code requires of developers when they come in and develop. So those existing power lines on adjacent rights of way is not something we require that they bury. So we did talk to DME about what that would take and their cost estimate would be about $855,000. So we also put together this exhibit to show kind of what is currently proposed, or what is in place today, and then what is proposed. So the diagram on the top shows the current setback of 50 feet. This would be the fireside park development, the blue house, and this is a 50 foot setback from that curb. This dash line is a representation of that wrought iron fence, and then the sidewalk, and then that light is actually a representation of those electric lines. This is what Hinkle will look like when it's completed. There's actually parking on the west side. There will be a bike lane going both north and south, and then two travel lanes. And then we've got the existing development across the street. As proposed, this shows a reduced rear setback of 40 feet. Here's the representation of that opaque cedar fence with the landscape element, the street tree adjacent to that pedestrian facility, and then the rest remains the same. So we also wanted to show some photos of some existing perimeter fences within the city of Denton. Here we have some wooden fences, and then here is a combination wood and masonry fence. These are a couple that show fences that are a combination of wood and masonry, kind of what's being proposed tonight. This is along Teasley. It's got the masonry columns with the wood. And then here's along Wind River. I believe we looked at this example at the last meeting. And then finally, here's a couple more examples. This is one of our newer subdivisions within the city. They've got a masonry wall, and then here is along Pokrus Page. This is the villages of Carmel. They have a masonry wall, as well as the street trees. So we talked about my next slides in the last meeting. So I'll go over, just briefly, the criteria for approval of any rezonings in subchapter three of the Denton Development Code. The first thing we always look at is, does it meet the future land use? In this case, the zoning district, the existing zoning of NR3, is consistent with the future land use of low residential, as well as the perimeter fencing and street trees proposed are consistent with the urban design principles in element four of the Denton plan. There are adequate public improvements, not only within the development, they are putting in the public improvements within the neighborhood, but then also the sidewalk along Windsor and Hinkle. And then, of course, I'm sure you're aware of the Capital Project along Hinkle Drive. It's the Magnolia Drive Drainage Project. And then we talked about it in the last meeting about the stop signs added to Windsor to calm that traffic on Windsor, to provide some refuge for pedestrians trying to get north to the park, and also to provide motorists' ability to turn left or right from Hinkle onto Windsor. This is the schematic of what Hinkle is going to look like when it's complete. Here is the intersection of Windsor. You've got a dedicated left turn and right turn, and then one lane going south. We've got the bike lanes, and then that parking along the west side. Impact fees will be paid with building permits for each residential lot. Water and wastewater is being installed. And there is adequate public facilities, both with schools and with fire. Staff did send out public notification for the project. We received four in opposition, one within the 200 foot boundary. And so the Planning and Zoning Commission did recommend approval of the request, six to one. And staff recommends approval of the request. And with the modified overlay conditions, the six foot tall board on board cedar fence with the masonry columns, the vertical landscape element, the street trees along Hinkle and Windsor, that 40 foot setback along Windsor and Hinkle, and then the maintaining the three car garages and the bike lane on Hinkle. The applicant is here, and I will stand for any questions. Council Member Menzner. Of course. We have a couple of questions. Would you mind, could you remind me and the general public, is the 40 foot setback standard, like what there would have been had there been no overlay, and is the 50 foot unusual was created in order to permit the pedestrian path that is no longer part of that project? The 40 feet is actually exceeds our code requirements. The 2019 Denton Development Code for R3 permits a rear setback from the property line of 10 feet. So this would exceed that by about 20 feet. Okay, thank you. I forgot my other question. Maybe it'll come back to me. Okay. Council Member Briggs. In regards to Hinkle with the parking, was that, is that a city initiated request, or was that something requested from the developer to allow street parking? That wasn't requested by the developer. It was designed by the city. Hinkle does allow on-street parking. It's a collector. It's not on our mobility plan an arterial, so it does allow that on-street parking, but just on the west side. So there's enough right of way to have the parking, the bike lanes, and those travel lanes. Council Member Ryan. In regards to the alternating of ornamental and shade trees on Hinkle, a shade tree is going to still be large. I mean, you've still got the power lines there, and none of what's listed there that's acceptable by DME is what I would consider to be a shade tree. Do we have a definition of a shade tree? Well, we, and what we were looking at was what we consider our large canopy trees, and Chinese pistache is one of our large canopy trees, and it is on the DME list, so we felt like that wouldn't, you know, on that road, that might be a good selection for them. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Can you describe the nature of the opposition of the four neighbors who did respond to the notice? You know, I think that a lot of the opposition we have heard has been about, you know, impacts with additional residents in that area, you know, traffic impacts. Those aren't really necessarily related to this project. There were also, because this wasn't increasing the zoning, this wasn't changing that underlying zoning, there were also concerns about visual impacts of potentially two-story homes along Hinkle, and because primarily those homes in that area are single-family homes. And then, and then some of it was that visibility along Windsor and Hinkle, and so that was why it was really important for us to move forward and get that stop sign there. Thank you. Mayor Potem? Thank you. Julia, did you say the sidewalk ends at this property, right, the property line, I guess, to the south? It actually extends to the adjacent development. I believe that's an elderly housing use, so it does extend to their, south to their property boundary, but then it doesn't go beyond that. And do we have plans just as an aside to, as we're working on the road to, are there any plans pending to extend the sidewalk any further than that? I have not seen any plans to extend that sidewalk. I believe those, the improvements were really for that drainage, and they were going to stay within that, that existing curb, or the existing right-of-way width. Thank you. Councilmember Davis? Can you go to slide seven, please? So, is this note, am I not understanding this note as saying that the fence as proposed or as requested is in compliance, would be in compliance with the 2019 code? Yes. We have not, we've not done a full review of the fence. They haven't come in for that fence permit, but we would require that any fence meet all minimum code requirements, and that would be the elevation to allow that drainage. To make sure it didn't meet that, didn't exceed the maximum height, which is eight feet, and to make sure it would be on the property line. When you say all applicable code requirements, are you talking 2002 code or 2019 code, or does it make a difference in this case? Well, they're fairly similar in terms of the building heights and then allowing that drainage underneath. So, you know, this project was actually developed under the 2002 Denton Development Code. You know, as it moves forward, I suspect it would remain under those, because it is invested under those old requirements, but the requirements are fairly similar for both fencing. Thank you, Council Member Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. And I might be mistaken on, well, we spent numerous hours talking about perimeter fences as we were going through the new DDC, and by elevated, we meant elevated on a masonry structure. We asked that pictures be included, and evidently, they did not get included. But it was specifically, we used the example of Ryan Ranch along Riverside as what was meant to be an acceptable wood fence. That may be something that we'll need to go back and revisit with any changes to that. The Denton Development Code, as it's written. And one other question, and this might be more for the developer, is the perimeter fence on the open space property, or is it on the lot itself? It will be on the property line, so directly on the property line between the right of way. Is the HOA then responsible for the upkeep of that? Yes, per the overlay, the HOA, not only the 2015 overlay, but also the revised would be, the HOA would be responsible for not only the fencing, but any landscaping in that right of way, any trees. So section 7.7.8(c)(1)(a) in the 2019 Denton Development Code, it says, "For new development, allowable perimeter materials fronting the public right of way include only masonry, wrought iron, elevated and sealed wood, or a combination of masonry, wrought iron, and elevated sealed wood." So my reading of it is that it, that requirement to have that masonry along the base doesn't seem to be in the code. Yeah, we'll probably want to bring that before the code committee. Yes, sir. I've got a couple of questions. At the intersection of Hinkle and, is that Windsor? So that's a, that's a three-way stop? Yes, sir. There's no roundabout there, and that's a three-way stop? Correct. Okay. And this really doesn't have to do with the development. I guess I'd like to have some conversation about parking on the west side of Hinkle, because if those properties faced the street where parking would, I don't need to have that conversation. Now, but I mean, later on, because that's really the city of Denton issue. But yeah, I wasn't aware of that. So I'd like to somewhere in the future, have some conversation about that before we actually pull that trigger. All right. Any other questions for staff? We do have one comment of the public wishing to speak, and we'll hear that, those comments before we deliberate and ask questions of the developer if we have any. Any other questions for staff? Oh, Mayor Pro Tem, I'm sorry. No, just one note. Mr. City Manager, could we look at Meadow, corner of Meadow Ridge and Hinkle? There's one stretch, basically it's one home, that wouldn't have, that prevents the sidewalk from extending from Windsor all the way to Meadow Ridge. Could we take a look at that to see if that's something, just as a logical stop, versus stopping at that one before the corner. So thank you. Okay. Seeing no more questions. Our speaker is Mr. Jack Frisbee. If you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. I can't remember, is it three or four minutes? Three minutes? Okay. And I believe we've got a timer back behind us. Yep. My name is Jack Frisbee, and I live at 405 Magnolia, and I'm totally against the wood fence. It's been wrought iron. It's been that way forever. We've already gone from NR2 to NR3 years ago, and I was told at one of the last meetings by one of the city people, we're fixed to spend a half a million dollars on a roundabout at Mimosa and Hinkle. We're doing all this for the development, and then he's cutting back on a cheaper fence. I send each one of y'all an email asking you to go look at Teasley in Pennsylvania and go north and look how cruddy the fences look. 80% of them are pitiful. And I also had a fence north of town. The wood fences deteriorate. And I know he says the home, they'll watch over it, but let me tell you, the wrought iron fence, there'll be no problem ever. Anybody who wants privacy can go to a local nursery and buy about 12 bushes, fertilize them, water them. They'll have all the privacy they want. Right now, the city, we want excellent fire departments, police departments, school districts, and yet we're letting them get away with cheaper construction. And right now, I know I've got an article here in the Denton Rec Chronic on August 28th. 46% of the Denton ISD kids free reduced lunch. It's because we keep making higher density neighborhoods and cheaper construction. Denton needs to go for quality. We don't need quantity. Growth's coming. This don't run toward cheap growth. Let's make him stick to the wrought iron fence. And when I'm fixed to say, I hope it doesn't sound crude, but I hope you vote for the neighborhood and what we want and quality fence. And I've told all my friends and neighbors, if for some reason y'all go with a developer, we need to get out and vote your bond down this fall. If you're not going to back us up, the neighborhood, why should we back your bond? In the next April, people running for mayor, reelect, vote you out. Find somebody that'll vote for Denton, not for developers. I read the paper the other day where the new development razor wrench told you he wasn't going to do what he's supposed to do. Seems like developers are running the city now. It's time for the city to take Denton back. Make it job one, quality one. Do it for the people of Denton, not for out of town developers. And if he doesn't like that or send a message developers, if I don't like the way we do business here, let him go somewhere else. Thank you, Mr. Frisbee. I believe we got a question from Mayor Pro Tem. Yes, sir. One quick question. Because I thought about what you proposed. But here's my question to you. So understanding if we put the wrought iron fence there, that doesn't prevent someone from putting a wooden fence on their own property. And there's nothing we can do about it. So but then if that one becomes. Mr. Frisbee, would you mind? They can't hear you just behind the mic so you can hear behind the mic. So let me make sure. So you're okay with the wrought iron fence with a wooden fence behind it that could be varying sizes, varying looks all up and down the road. That's okay. Yeah, I don't think that many new homeowners get that extra money to spend. Okay. And my question is, if he wants privacy, like he said, put the brick fence. I believe the lady showed the new development. If you go out to C. H. Collins, go the technology building along road head west, there's a new development brick wall. Go drive by the stadium. Go watch a football game Friday and drive with beautiful brick fence. We don't need a wood fence that rots, deteriorates. And I'm gonna tell you, the homeowners, they'll thank me because they won't be replacing the fence every eight or 10 years. They put bushes up for $200 or $300. If they want privacy, but hopefully, we'll get a brick fence or wrought iron fence and not just cheaper version of a fence. Any other questions for the speaker? So I take by your comments that a brick fence would be okay for you. Yes, but I've read in the planning and zoning meeting, he brought it up and he wasn't far that. Okay, probably because it costs more than a wood fence. All right, I appreciate it. Any more questions for the speaker? Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right, I'd see no, we have no more blue cards. So council's open for discussion. Councilmember Briggs. So I'll start. I'm still in the same place I was last time before we voted to postpone this. I'm not in favor of changing what they've agreed to and making it weaker. If they, and I was the one who requested they put the picture of the masonry fence in the presentation because it is higher quality and it would be a better fit for this area than say the wood fence. So if they don't want to stick to what they agreed in the original agreement or what the original agreement was, not necessarily these developers because it's different. They can upgrade, but I am not inclined to allow them to downgrade. And also the developer applicant is here. So any questions? Certainly they'll have an opportunity to come speak. Let's get some some discussion first so that you'll have something to be able to respond to Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, well when they come up that's that's going to be my question because my concern is this. And I think Councilmember Ryan had brought it up as well. You have, that is not a good look to me. The varying fences, you would have a wrought iron fence that's succinct and then a wooden fence behind it. I would rather make a decision one way or another and I'll just wait and see what the developer adds to the conversation right now. But that's that's going to be a hanging point. I'm okay with the sidewalk and it kind of meanders around the polls. That all makes sense. Thank you staff for clarifying a lot of those questions with the trees, et cetera. Very helpful. So I mean really I'm hanging on the fence setback. I'll just listen kind of to the conversation, but I looking at what we require, what they're where they are currently exceeding that I'm okay with that. It just the aesthetics of it I think are valid. Councilmember Davis. So I I understand why the developer brought this request forward and I really don't don't fault them for it. I understand they've got a bottom line to deal with and we've got to make a project pencil. But typically in this situation where we're dealing with overlays, there's a little there's a little bit more opportunity for back and forth. You know the city puts an overlay condition out there because we want something in particular on the property or something to happen with the project and the developer kind of meets us in the middle with what they think they can make happen. Well we went through that process years ago and this was the result and I understand the project has changed but the developer unfortunately has not brought something back to the table that is amenable to the city's interest. It's very very amenable to his interest and I understand them very well. However we're talking about a fence that is not in compliance with what we intended our development code to be in our 2019 development code. We're talking about a fence that is not in compliance with the original overlay. I think I agree with the developer that an opaque fence of some type is the better option there. I don't know that a fence you can see through and poke your hands through and all that are really a good look for that neighborhood but neither is a board on board cedar fence. So I think you know I think we're getting somewhere maybe with those 40 foot setbacks when we now have room to do more landscaping. We have room for a good sidewalk like that's something for the city's interest. That's something I can get behind what we get out of those 40 foot setbacks. What we get out of the fence as far as I can tell from the city side is nothing better than what we started with. Councilmember Meltzer. I agree with the sentiment about opaque being better. I don't personally have a problem with the look of a wood fence but if it's I've looked at some of my colleagues here. If it really is the sentiment of the neighbor that wood is lousy I'd be very interested in hearing from the developer if there are other opaque and uniform forms of fencing that he would be open to considering. Anyone else? I think I stated this last time I'm okay with the setback. I appreciate everybody working together to find a way to deal with the street trees because that was I mean we battle that all the time now as far as it never made sense to me why we plant street trees under power lines. And still in this case it still doesn't make sense because you moved them back maybe a few feet but my biggest concern or challenge is the fence. It's going to be very difficult for me to support a wooden fence. When you look at our right of ways, ones that have wooden fences along a large stretch of frontage, they don't age the same, they don't necessarily or not maintain the same. If you don't seal those things periodically they're going to age different levels and then you're going to start having people replacing panels and so forth at different times. Whereas I think either a wrought iron fence or a masonry fence provides a little bit more consistency, provides a little bit more durability, and certainly I think aesthetically on that kind of roadway, it's a collector I believe is what it was, then I think that's probably the more appropriate there as far as I'm concerned. So it will be interesting to hear how the discussion continues to move forward. So there's been several comments made and questions asked so I want to invite the applicant, whoever the applicant is going to speak for the applicant to come on up. And this isn't necessarily a presentation per se but you certainly have an opportunity to share your thoughts on what you've heard because I think we're really down to, it sounds like one primary issue. I mean I haven't heard a lot of concern with the setbacks, it seems like the street trees, there's been some concern about what kind of tree is it, is it a shade tree and is it on the list, but the primary issue seems to be the fence and the type of fence. Good evening, my name is Casey McGinnis, I'm from Frisco, Texas, I'm the owner and developer of the property. One of the things that the mayor brought up earlier, I want to make sure that we were comparing apples to apples was the post requirement in the current overlay. The current overlay does not require any columns at all, so on our 100 foot spacing of the stone and masonry, that's extra. It does require a taller post and I just want to make sure that we're comparing apples to apples, a post is more of a 4x4 steel post that's going to stick up, there are no column requirements whatsoever, so that is something I wanted to clarify. You know when we purchased the property and went through and we do this on everything that we do, we go through and analyze the code and what does that mean, because that's our playing field, that's what we have to go off of. And the current wrought iron fence that was in place was from a different developer at a different time for a different product. And we looked at the cost associated with the wrought iron and actually it's much less than what we're proposing today, once you take into account all of the columns, the fencing, the landscaping, the trees, again we're adding over 160 trees to the right of way, another 215 trees in the interior. And so we felt like from a financial standpoint to get to that opaque level to prevent just the situation that Councilman Hudspeth was talking about, about having this checkerboard, potentially this checkerboard issue, and if not just having to rely on individual homeowners to keep their backyards in good and working conditions, something that we want to look at on a daily basis from a major thoroughfare. These will be backyards and that's the major significant difference is what we're going to see day in and day out driving up and down the street. And that was my feeling when we came back in with this was this just made sense to me from the city standpoint, it will certainly make sense from the homeowner standpoint for that privacy issue. So I just I wanted to clarify that the time for us to consider a masonry wall would have been when we were purchasing the property and you know that's something that we would negotiate on that purchasing price. Since we went in and knew that the wrought iron fence was you know that's what was in place now, we can live with it financially, we decided to add some upgrades because we thought it would be a better look for both the city and the community. We've done that up at this point but the just the masonry is just not financially viable for us and so I want to make that distinction kind of let you know from the planning process that's where we came from to get to this point today. So is it my understanding I think what I heard you say was that a masonry fence from your perspective that if this council had support for masonry fence that that's not something that would be acceptable to you. That's right, if we can't move forward with the board on board I think we'll go forward with the wrought iron, if we can't go under you know if we can't get some kind of approval from the way the application was written today or some minor adjustments then I think I'll withdraw the application. Okay, all right, any other questions for the applicant? Councilmember Davis. So you said if we don't move forward with the application as presented you'll withdraw the application. Is there some other combination of fencing materials you've heard us talk a few different times on different public hearings about elevation of wood fence with some masonry element to it and the intention behind the 2019 code is any element of masonry beyond what's in our application today acceptable to you at all. Well I believe that's what we've done with the stone and brick columns, that masonry element. I'm not really aware of another option. Where the expense comes in when you do the masonry wall is in the footing. Once you've got to put that footing it doesn't matter whether it's six inches or six feet, that's where the cost is associated with that. So the other types of fencing, the wrought iron, the wood, we're just concreting those posts in every eight feet. It's that major footing to hold up a complete masonry wall, that's where the expense is occurring. Can I ask a follow up? Oh of course. And as you understand it, your obligation as far as street trees along Hankel, is that dependent upon the project as presented in this application or is that an existing obligation you already have under the current overlays? As you understand it. My understanding is there is no requirement for street trees. That was a recommendation by staff to meet some of the concerns that the adjacent community had about two story houses. And I was happy to address that with their recommendation. I believe currently we don't have a landscaping requirement or a stone and brick column requirement. Those are all upgrades. Council Member Meltzer. It might be obvious that the outset to you is cost prohibitive, but let's just ask anyway, could you achieve the opacity and privacy that you would have achieved with a wood fence with the wrought iron and the plantings like the neighbor recommended? Well, I think that's certainly where we'll head. Just because I want to put my name on a product that I can turn around and look at and say I'm proud we did that, I'm going to do something. I just can't leave those backyards just wide open for those situations for the checkerboard fencing. That's going to be an awful look. It's going to be a saleability issue too, I imagine. Right. So I think the alternative for us is to stay with the wrought iron fence and then we'll go through and put some type of landscaping perimeter around and hope that provides the privacy that the homeowners want. Thank you. I guess, because I know I've seen other types of fencing that weren't masonry, they were the concrete panels or something, but I don't remember those having to sit on footings. But what you're saying is that the cost prohibition with the brick fence is that footing to support the whole structure of the brick wall, is that correct? That's correct. Okay. Any other questions for the applicant? Seeing none. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to move approval with the caveat. So staff's recommendations, but for removing the wood fence, accepting the developer's offer to go back to the wrought iron fence, accepting the neighborhood's acceptance of the wrought iron fence. I think we have mutual agreement there, everything else. I think the setbacks being 40 foot and the street trees, the sidewalk, I think line up. And if I may just extend a bit, I am concerned about the wood fence inside the wrought iron fence, but I respect the initial overlay and I'll leave this here for those listening. I think you're on to something, Mayor Watts, and this was done behind buckies there. They have the cement columns poured, but then you slide the fence down on it and it buckles in that way. So it's not as cost prohibitive and it is easier on the eyes and it is not see-through. So I think maybe not that I'll tie that to the motion, but just to put that out there so that if as the project develops, if it trends that way, maybe they can come back. So let me make sure I understand your motion because I'm going to have a question for the developer if that's the case. Yes, sir. My understanding is you're approving staff's recommendations with the sidewalk, the setbacks, the trees, street trees, things such as that, but that it needs to be a wrought iron fence. Correct. So I guess I need to ask the developer, is that acceptable? Yes, thank you, Mr. McGinnis. I think that to answer your question, and it doesn't sound like the shade trees are real popular anyway. Like I say, that was kind of an add-on at staff recommendation that let's look at this for a screening of two-story homes, which I know you have two-story homes all over Denton. And it being under the power poles, I certainly understand the consideration there. My thought process was that if we withdraw the application and just go forward with the wrought iron fence, we would take the dollars that we were going to use on the 160-some odd trees and do some type of landscape barrier in front of the wrought iron fence. That's where we would switch the dollars involved. Okay. So in essence, you wouldn't be accepting of a proposal or a motion that includes those street trees with the wrought iron fence and all the other accommodations or agreements that are pursuant to staff's recommendations. In other words, you would just say, okay, I'm just going to withdraw the application and move forward as is. Correct. All right. I guess the question I have is if you didn't have the street tree requirement, would those dollars be appropriate or would it be sufficient that if you were to do some type of either masonry fence or stone brick column concrete panel or whatever, would that be sufficient to make up that cost differential between a wrought iron fence and what the delta may be between a fence that is different than that? I'd have to go back, and I assume we're talking more like a hardy plank type material, a cementuous type material. Yeah, I don't know about that. I'm just trying to find some options that I certainly can respect your report that a masonry fence is expensive. You know, the maintenance of them is not as easy as people think because if you get shifting soil, the footing shift, they're on, I don't know what the width is, either eight inches or a foot footing, and if they start shifting. The biggest complaint I see from the HOA is they stop manufacturing the same type of brick, and so you'll see a car drives through one, they go out and it's a checkerboard of different types of brick because the HOA just didn't have the funds to replace the whole thing because the fence is so expensive. Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you for that clarification. Sure, and again, on the hardy plank, the cementuous board, we haven't, I haven't built one like that. I'd have to do some more exploring and looking into that on what that really means and make sure that it's not only, I just wanted to make it look like a quality project. Sure, all right. So, just, I mean, I hate to ask this question, but if you were to have more time to look at and bring back some proposals for things other than a wood fence, is that something you'd be worth exploring or are you pretty much, hey, let's get this done tonight and if we can't get there, I'll just go back to what's there and we'll build it and I'll figure it out. I think we're at that point. I think we're at that point that the, we're at the point now where we're trying to schedule the final walk. This is the last component that we've got on there. Again, I will commit to the council that whatever we do, we're going to try to do the best of our ability. Even if we go into the existing requirement, we're going to do something about trying to screen that in. All right. So, I have a question for the city attorney. Given what we've just heard, if a motion is passed or if a motion is made and passed that the applicant doesn't agree with, if it's approved, then the application, is it, does it have the capability of being withdrawn or is it a done deal? I'm trying to, I'm just trying not to put the applicant in a difficult position and that's why I wanted to ask that question. Probably the best thing for him to do would be withdraw the application now. If that's what you're wanting, what I'm hearing you wanting to do is to go forward on the wrought iron fence. Is that correct? I'm sorry? You're wanting to go forward on the wrought iron fence. Well, or get approval with the current application. That's correct. Correct. And the motion before you all now is with the wrought iron fence. Is that correct, Mayor Pro Tem? Yes, sir. But it's also with the additional staff requirements, or not requirements, recommendations, which the developer, if he's going to have to put in the wrought iron fence, then he will find a different way to do that screening other than what has been decided upon on this application. So what I want to make sure I understand from the Mayor Pro Tem, your motion was staff's recommendation with the exception of the type of fence. Yes, sir. Please remain everything else, and what we're hearing the developers say is you'd prefer not to have to do the trees and just do the wrought iron fence and do some other type of landscaping in lieu of that. That's correct. Okay. It just doesn't take care of that opaque scenario that you described earlier, and so I'd rather take those dollars away from shade trees that it sounds like most of the council was concerned about anyway under the power lines and put that into line. That's correct. Okay. I just want to make sure that we have the right type of landscaping to provide some type of barrier. Okay. So we've got several people wishing to speak. I appreciate that. I appreciate the clarification. Let me get some comments from other council members. I appreciate you sharing your sort of position and your interest in that regard, and so we'll see how it ferrets out and make sure that we respect what you've just said. Okay. If we can't get it approved within the application as has been submitted, I'd like to withdraw clearly the application. I understand. Okay. Thank you. All right. So the Mayor Pro Tem has a motion on the table, and we've got some requests. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. So then obviously I would draw this motion because I misunderstood where the agreement was, and then I'll let the conversation -- well, can staff come back up and give us -- is there a slide that captures recommendations that you can put up there just so I can have a cheat sheet to look at? Thank you. This is the fence recommendation, and then -- Okay. Thank you. And then the setback is on the second. Thank you. Okay. So Mayor Pro Tem, you have withdrawn your previous motion? Yes. Okay. And then I will look at the recommendations minus what the developer said and come back and make a new motion. Okay. All right. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, it's just -- I'm not sure who this question is for, but I think it was originally for Mayor Pro Tem. If there's a way to allow in the motion for the possibility that the applicant might be able to come up with something in the cementious, you know, hardy board-type approach that didn't require footing along the length of it, whereas if we go with strictly saying it's got to be wrought iron, that forecloses that option. So I wonder if there's a way to leave that door open. Well, I'll let the city attorney address that. I guess for me, what my concern would be is whatever is decided or proposed, that that would need to come back. I would want that to come back to the council. We just couldn't say, hey, whatever you might want that's opaque, and that would be my only concern with that. Yeah. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, so I'm surprised that it's been taking, you know, so long to come to a resolution about the fence issue. It seems to me that, you know, what I've been hearing from the neighborhood is there would be fine with wrought iron fence unless anybody has heard anything differently, and the developer is fine with wrought iron fence. You don't have, you know, the neighborhood's not saying no apartments there at all. It's just about the fence. So the issue of the trees, it seems workable, and as long as we get, you know, the neighborhood, at least as I understand it, is not all that as particular about the street tree, and I might be wrong about this and misunderstanding, so anybody really correct me from council if I'm wrong, but the neighborhood is not all that particular about the street trees have to be this and this and that, but I think my sense is it would be nice to them if the trees could help provide more opacity for the fences instead of just decorating the street. So, you know, why don't we do that? I mean, I'd be happy to make a motion for that. I'm not quite sure how to word that. I was kind of waiting for someone else to do that, or I was going to maybe make a friendly amendment to the motion that just got pulled. So, first of all, I just want to say that you stated, you started out saying I don't know why it's taken so long to come to this decision about the fence. Tonight is probably the most productive conversation at least this council has had on that issue, and tonight is the first time we've heard I think specifically directly from the applicant that, no, if I can't get the wood fence that I've agreed to put in the street trees, which is with his current application, these are all staff recommendations, those street trees are not requirements. What we heard the applicant say was that if I can't get my fence, my wood fence, then I will simply withdraw the application, which means there will be a wrought iron fence, there won't be any street trees, and then he'll, in his private development, determine how to do the screening for those houses in the back. So, correct me if I'm wrong, staff. Let's say this thing dies tonight, or the applicant withdraws. Basically, the code is very clear what's required, a wrought iron fence. It will be the same setbacks that is currently in place, not the ones being asked for from the applicant. No street, any of these staff recommendations will not have to be done. It will just simply be whatever that overlay is that's been there for three or four or five years, or however long it's been there, that's what will be done, and then it's up to the developer's discretion on what kind of screening, if any, to use on the backyards of those homes that are facing Hinkle Drive. Is that correct? That is correct. Street trees are not required along Windsor or Hinkle, and the screening wouldn't be required. It would just be the wrought iron fence. Okay. All right. Councilmember Ryan. I've got a question for legal. If we were to make a motion to table this item and it was not pulled back off of the table by the end of the night, would it be considered a denial or would it just be considered this is to give the applicant an opportunity to formally withdraw his request or to think about whether he wants to come back with another option other than the wood fence? It would be considered a denial, and you also have the option to just move to deny it outright, which will put him back in the same place that he's wanting to be. Okay. Would it be considered a major change as long as he came back with something other than a wood fence, just so that he wouldn't have to wait the six-month period? We would have to look at that. I think probably with what is going on, a motion to postpone to a date really indefinitely. I don't think it would take that long. I don't know how long staff would need to look at this, if it would be another week or two weeks to get with this. I don't think it would take that long. Regarding alternative fence materials? I'm hearing that, but also just to sort out what the developer is wanting to do with the fence. What I'm hearing is, I'm not hearing anything from council wanting to. You have recommendations one through four, two, three, and four appear to still be in play, and the only thing left is the fence. I may be wrong, but I thought I heard the developer stand here. That sounded like Christmas music. I heard the developer say that they would like to get some kind of resolution tonight, and if the resolution does not include a wood fence, that none of these suggestions or recommendations, as you just enumerated, that they're not going to want to do any of those. They're just going to go with the original application and figure it out as an internal process within the development. Is that a wrong assessment on my part? That was my understanding. Is that what you heard? All right. I think we owe it to the developer to give them some indication at some point, whether that be a vote or a discussion to where it seems that a wood fence is not going to be possible. Anyway, go ahead, Mayor. Just to continue on, in that case, and I don't want to shut down the discussion if we have further discussion by putting the motion out there yet, but I think making a motion to postpone for probably two weeks out, that would give him the opportunity to pull it formally, because I believe our code actually requires a 24-hour written notice that would give him that opportunity to pull it, in which case it wouldn't come back to us in two weeks. Sure. I believe the applicant has some, and then we'll get you to Councilmember Davis. Yes, sir. Yes, I'm sorry. I think I would be in favor of postponing it indefinitely to explore this one other opportunity. We've never built one out of that type of material. I don't have any idea what it will take. I'd have to go out. I certainly want to see examples and just make sure it's going to be a quality product for both of us. And the way I understand this, if we postpone it indefinitely, then I just have to give notification if I want to withdraw within 24 hours. Is that what I heard correctly? We would need to review that, but I think that's probably what you can do. But postponing it indefinitely will give us the opportunity to see what you need to do, notify you, talk to you about your options at that point. Okay. Because I certainly want to do something that works for everybody, and we can all walk away with and say that was a good compromise. We're getting a quality project and product for both of us. Okay. So whatever, if anything else different would be decided on, of course we'd come back and have this sort of similar conversation on whatever options you might proffer besides the wood fence. I wasn't necessarily suggesting a hardy board fence. I'm just exploring the opportunity. So without seeing it, I don't know if I can say, hey, that's no problem. Me either. All right, fantastic. Me either. To Councilman Davis' point, I'd have to go do some investigating and see what that looks like and even see if that's a viable option for either of us. Okay, fantastic. Councilmember Davis, let me get the discussion before I recognize your motion. Yeah, I'm sorry. I think we've somehow confused ourselves with the idea -- I'm not really sure how the idea of a cementious or hardy board fence got injected into the conversation. There is no such creature. If you build -- there is just not a perimeter fence that is built out of hardy board. You're not going to find one in any development that you go and look for. We were having a conversation about cement panels and that turned into a conversation about a cementious material, which is hardy board. I just don't see any purpose in postponing this item anymore. We've established that the fence is the crux of the issue. We didn't have street trees in here, except as an enticement to get us to come alongside with the fence. We didn't have the landscape elements and the additional landscaping except to kind of bring us along to the idea of the fence. So unless there's a substantial change in what the fence is going to look like, I don't think we have anything further to talk about with this application and the developers made clear that the crux of their application is the fence. If they don't get the fence that they're looking for or something very, very similar to it, that they have no purpose for this application, at this time I move denial of the application. Okay. So point of order on that. We do have -- so help me with this. Yeah, she had been signed up as a motion that I didn't recognize. So does that mean with his pronouncement that, therefore, he has stepped into those shoes? [inaudible] Right. Right, yeah. Okay. Well, she hadn't made the motion. I haven't made the motion. Yeah. So Councilmember Davis, if you'll allow me some -- I just need to understand the parliamentary rules here. If you'll withdraw that she gave the word on that, I'm not sure what her motion was. With respect, point of order, I had the floor and I had the opportunity to make the motion. Pushing the button with absolute respect due to my colleague at the other end there, pushing the button doesn't give you the floor and doesn't make the motion. So I made my motion. Okay. He's correct on parliamentary procedure. Okay. I must make a point of order. I think that's kind of outrageous in terms of our accepted way of conducting ourselves. I think we all see the buttons. Okay. A motion has been made. I want to hear the other comments. Now, there has been no second on the motion that was on the floor, so I'm going to take some time to think about understanding the -- following the rules to the T on the parliamentary procedure. Does the chair have any latitude in that respect based upon Robert's rule of order? No, not on that. Okay. I mean, if we want to just follow the absolute letter of the law, if he wanted to withdraw and let her go forward, he has that option. Okay. All right. I'm going to hear discussion and then I've got some comments. Councilmember Meltzer, you've got a request to speak. Everything seems to have changed. Yeah, I withdraw. Okay. All right. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm starting to doubt my own memory now. Fortunately, we have all these meetings videotaped, but not what we see on our screen as far as how motions happen, but it's my memory that just by pressing a motion button, that counts both as a request to speak and a request to make the motion, which is a speech act. And that is not so much a Robert's rules thing as far as a city council button pressing thing. You all can't see out here, but we have these little computer screens and they say who's made the motion. So I've had a motion which is going to be different from that other motion. So unless I'm misremembering how things go, that's the way that has generally worked for us. I didn't realize I had to make a request to speak. My motion had been not recognized, and that's when I decided I'll get in line and line up to speak when I wasn't being recognized. Okay. Councilmember Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. Well, with regards to the type of panels that we're talking about, if you believe it's on the corner of Brinker and Spencer, there was a gas pipeline that they put up these types of panels around. They're also very similar to what they use for sound walls along 2499. They can be in different sizes. Knowing what the actual cost difference is between that and what's proposed, I'm going to make a motion to postpone indefinitely, which would, as I believe, would override or... It'll take precedence over a motion for denial. All right. So we have a motion to postpone indefinitely. Do we have a second? Councilmember Armitage. So my motion is not... which was neither of those things? It doesn't count? I'm not clear. Let me take a stab at it. So I'm just going to clear the board. So this is what we've got. I think Councilmember Ryan made the motion to postpone in order to try to take precedence over the motion to deny to avoid this kind of procedural issue that we have right now. All right. So if I had my druthers as the chair, what I would like... And Councilmember Davis, you're absolutely right. According to Robert's Rules of Order, you had the floor. You can make a motion. And that is what I believe our Council Rules of Procedure indicate that we are following Robert's Rules of Order. If Robert's Rules of Order does not address a certain issue, then therefore the chair has latitude in that regard. Is that correct? That is correct. So you are correct. That is not something that we have done in practice in the past. My fear is if we move in that direction, that the whole asking for moving in seconder, which we learn now that it's really immaterial, it's just more common courtesy that we follow that procedure, I think that would create a different path for the meeting. So you still want to... I'm just going to ask you, you're still standing by your motion instead of maybe withdrawing out of a courtesy, understanding you have every right to have your motion there. I'm not going to say I'm not going to recognize your motion because I don't have the authority to do that, quite frankly. And I did not recognize her. I don't have the authority to have. And so next time I will certainly begin to recognize people the minute they push the button, because I would not want us to be in this situation again in that sense. So just your thoughts on that. I'm doing my best to express as much possible respect as I can for the congeniality between the members of the Council on this day as here. The motion button is not the same as the speaker button. In my opinion, I recognize I'm the newer person on the dais. You should first be recognized by the Chair at which time you can make a motion, requesting for exactly this kind of situation. If you would like to be heard, you press the speak button. If you'd like to make a motion, you could even press that motion button while you were speaking after you have been recognized. So at this time, however, my motion has not received a second. There is now a superior motion on the table. I think the proper procedure at this point is to take up the motion that's been offered by Councilmember Ryan, because I think that's what's in order. Okay. Yeah. Okay, so if we're going to do this by these rules, understand that. So there was no second to your underlying motion as of yet. Now, Councilmember Ryan, your motion superseded that. Correct. So if you withdrew your motion, then we would see if there's a second. If there's not a second, his motion dies. And then we move forward with Councilmember Armitage's motion, and I will certainly take note of this procedure and we'll do it differently as far as recognizing people who have asked to move given the circumstances. Well, as I understand it, though, even if his motion had a second, because my motion supersedes it, there's no reason for me to have to withdraw it. No, I understand that. I was just going to see if he got a motion on his second. Okay, so we've got a motion to postpone indefinitely. We have a second, Councilmember Pro Tem, I see. You're under seconder, but I don't know if that's for Councilmember Armitage. Either way it goes. I cornered the market. I'm next to speak, and I have the second button. Okay. I'm a fast learner. And I'm going to second John's motion. And all apologies to the developer. I appreciate you and to the neighborhood. Thank you very much. We'll get it done. We'll have an outstanding project. We may or may not have parking on the street. We'll see. But other than that, y'all will both be happy with it. Again, we'll do better working hard, working out some kinks, you know, families fight sometimes. But I appreciate your patience and appreciate you bringing your project here, trusting us with it, and we'll get it done. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage. Oh, sorry. I just realized I'm still in line to speak. That was an accident. So because the motion to postpone takes precedence, then I don't have the -- well, I guess I could -- I'll say what my motion was going to be, what it was going to be. It was going to be that a move to approve with a wrought iron fence and instead of those street trees have the landscaping -- but I would like to see something, you know, written in there to make clear that the developer would cover landscaping for those fences, for the wrought iron fence in a way that would make the neighborhood happy. To me, that seemed to solve the problem. Okay. Councilmember Briggs. So I'm not going to be voting in favor of the postponement. We had postponement last time so that we could come back and discuss. I know that this time we had a full discussion on the fence, which I appreciate, and I'm a little sad that there wasn't an agreement on the way that -- on the masonry wall, but I don't know about the options that can bring back that will suffice to make me okay with this. So I was originally going to second, but there wasn't a place to, and my name was really far down. So that procedure is -- I don't really like it so much. What procedure are you talking about? Just announcing your motion, because there's really not a way to make a second if they're already filled and your name isn't next in line to speak. I understand. So that's where I would have been, but so that this one supersedes, that's where I'm going to be. Okay. Councilmember Davis? Yes? Yep, that's real. I pushed the speaker button and asked to speak. Again, what we just talked about is that you can't tell in what order someone pushed the move button or the speaker button. Again, my preference for you, push the speaker button, you're recognized, and during the time you've been recognized, you can speak and make your motion. Councilmember Armitage's motion, I think, is very well intentioned. However, it's clear at this point in our discussion with the developer, it is not within our power to ask for those things. He has said it is all or nothing. It's the fence that I'm asking for, and then you can have your street trees, and then you can have all of these other things that we're asking for and are very good. There is no option that includes wrought iron and street trees together. We don't have the power to ask for that. I'm fine with a motion that postpones indefinitely. If the intention is truly to table this and postpone it indefinitely and to let it move forward with the overlay that exists, I think we've negotiated-- Councilmember Briggs and I-- Councilmember Briggs has attended more neighborhood meetings going back to the life of this project than I have. I've attended the neighborhood meetings since I've been in this office. We've been now through planning and zoning. We've been through multiple City Council hearings. If we do not allow the developer to build the fence he's asking for, we get nothing else that is in these staff recommendations. That's simply the fact. So either we reach a compromise tonight, which it does not sound like we will, or we all move forward and let the development go forward under the existing overlays. So I'm fine with the motion to postpone. If that's going to put this conversation to bed and be done so the neighborhood can move on, otherwise then I'll be voting for my original motion to deny the application. Okay, Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, I'm not really for crafting new ways of procedure on the fly nor for framing the arguments in ways that haven't been presented to us. The pairings you've just heard are not a requirement. I will not be supporting the motion to postpone because I feel we can nail this tonight very much along the lines that Councilmember Armentor described. I would include staff recommendations two, three, and four. I'd remove the street tree requirement to include the wrought iron fence. Okay, Councilmember Armentor, you have a request to speak? Yeah, I just wanted to clarify because it seemed there was a misinterpretation my colleague did. Just to clarify that what I was proposing was not to include the street trees in this proposal and instead to have them provide the landscaping, which is what the neighborhood is more concerned about very much along the lines of what Councilmember Meltzer just mentioned. So I will also be voting against the motion to postpone because to me there's a clear agreement and I'm perplexed as to why we're not settling on this clear agreement. Of course people can vote how they want. I do want to address as a point of procedure this procedural dilemma that's come up impromptu. I understand that when you press the button to speak there's a clear sequence, however also when you press the motion button everybody knows that there's a motion can see that there's a motion everybody up here rather, you all can't see the screen, but everybody up here can see that there's a motion that has not been recognized. So if there's a motion, if somebody is up and has their name up with a motion attached to it and they haven't yet expressed that motion, then that takes precedence. That is the equivalent of having your name in the queue and so because it takes precedence over just any other request to speak that's not a motion. That is my memory as to how we've kind of done this procedurally so far and that didn't seem to be problematic. So anyway, I just wanted to mention that it's kind of a non-issue as I see it about the sequence of the motion versus the queue of the speakers. Mayor Pro Tem. I want, Mayor, if you want, I want you to have an opportunity to surmise things but I'm going to call the question because we have people here, other items we need to get to, we're saying the same thing, this is a second round, I get it but I'm ready to vote to get on to the next item. So it's my understanding from the last time this happened that a call to question requires, I believe, does it require a second or it requires a vote? It requires, and I think it requires a three-quarter vote if I'm not mistaken. I tell you what, we've been going for a couple of hours, let's take a five-minute break and we'll research the call to question and then we'll come back and pick this item up. Yep. Welcome back to this meeting of the Dent City Council at 8.28 p.m. on September the 10th, 2019. We're back from our break on agenda item 5B of our items for individual consideration. Mayor Pro Tem, a quick question for you. You called the question. During the break, there has been some additional information regarding the current overlay that is not part of the applicant's request that may be problematic and so I cannot ask for clarification of this kind of new information without you at least temporarily postponing your call to question because I think I would have to recognize a second and then there's a vote and if the call to question is approved, it cuts off all debate and we move down the line. So just wanted to share that information with you and ask if you could give us maybe five minutes to do that. Yeah, happy to do so. I just ask for you to keep us on to new topics and not, you know-- Yes, I will. Yeah, thank you. Absolutely. All right, so if we could have someone from staff give us some information about these caps in the overlay and keep it restricted to just that new information and if there's any questions from counsel, we're going to make sure that they're only directed towards that new information on the current overlay outside of the current application. So the current overlay does require a cast stone cap on top of the posts of the wrought iron fence. That is a difficult material to find and so he feels like that won't be something that could be sourced. Easily. Okay, so I'm just going to be truthful. I mean, the information that I was given during the break was it's not even made anymore. So being difficult to find and not being manufactured any longer are two different factual situations. So I need to understand which one that is because if it can be found, it's just difficult, that's one thing, but if it can't be found, that's another. He has not been able to find it. Okay, all right. Okay, Council Member Armitage, did you have a request to speak on that issue? Yes, yeah. Okay. I mean, so if we have a requirement that the posts be capped with the material that's impossible to find, then that should make it a moot point. I would think that it would be, and maybe that's already law, but if not, then I think it should be. That's like saying it should be capped with unicorn tears or something like that. I guess the only reason I wanted that to come forward was because we've got a call to the question for a motion to postpone indefinitely. A motion to postpone indefinitely would allow some time to do an exploration of if that actually can be found or to bring back something that can work. That's the only reason I allowed it, and so I don't see anybody else wishing to speak. We've been given the information about it either can't be found or is difficult to find, and the current overlay, not the one the application has made, but the current one that is on the books right now for the property. All right, so Council Member or Mayor Pro Tem, you had, I believe, a call to question. Is that correct? Do you re-institute that? No, I think I have a question for staff. So if we're reverting back to something that does not exist, what do we do? What's the default answer to if we say, so the default is you have to do this. This does not exist. What is this version 2.0? Richard's coming. And that's just so we all know what we're agreeing to. Again, it is a requirement. They would have to either find and have those specially made. Just one thing to kind of visualize this, it's a wrought iron fence, so every 24 feet you would have some cement cap as opposed to the typical black rounded or whatever design that's typically used with the wrought iron every 24 feet. And so whether that stone material is a tan color or a red color, just a plain white stone, it may not look as great as we think a wrought iron fence would look. Another option could be once that is installed, they could, if it is postponed, they could come back at a later date for an alternate to that. Okay. I'm going to take a real big deep breath. Because what you said, it wouldn't look as good as a wrought iron fence. So this is my understanding of what I've been told. So correct me if I'm wrong. And the current overlay is a requirement for a wrought iron fence. The posts being on each corner of each property line, the corner of the property line. You said 24 feet, but that's not 24 feet. So I want to make sure that... Okay, so that's the original order. 24 feet will be installed along the perimeter of the site. A perimeter fence with a wrought iron appearance with taller posts topped by cast stone column cap every 24 feet will be installed along the perimeter fence. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay, all right. Okay. And folks, let's make sure... I mean, this is why it's always important to read the overlay and the law. A perimeter fence with a, in quotation marks, wrought iron appearance. So it doesn't have to be wrought iron. I mean, it could be aluminum. All right. Okay. So, Mayor Pro Tem, I don't think you got your question answered or at least the answer was probably they're going to have to... If they can't find it, they would have to come back to get approval of whatever would be the substitute. Yes. No, then I'll give my colleagues a time to kind of get their questions, but I think we move forward with the motion and postpone. And definitely that gives them time to do their due diligence and whatever time they need to come back down the road, they can. Council Member Meltzer. Is there anything that would prevent us, if we don't postpone, you know, from having a motion along the lines I described earlier, prescribing a wrought iron fence without referencing non-existent stone materials? Well, that's if it got passed, if we got past the motion to postpone and also the motion to deny it. And then I don't know how, you know, that would have to be a whole nother discussion. Okay. There's nothing preventing us from doing that. Once we get past those. So it's my understanding that the applicant's desire is to have it postponed and definitely to get some time to bring back another proposal, is that correct? Okay. Staff, could you just reiterate, if somebody on staff could just say, yes, that's the applicant's understanding, because it's not on, it can't be heard and I just want it on the record. The applicant has indicated that they would like the item to be postponed. Indefinitely. Indefinitely and then come back with some alternatives. Okay. So we have a motion. Okay, so Mayor Pro Tem is withdrawing his call to the question, is that correct? That is correct. All right. And we have a motion to postpone indefinitely by Council Member Ryan. There has not been a second yet for that. Mayor Pro Tem. No, I seconded. Okay, you seconded? Yes. All right. Council Member Melser, you... So we have a motion to postpone indefinitely and all the things that that means. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 5-2. All right, moving on to agenda item 5C. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, Texas, a homeroom municipal corporation, authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with Archer Western Construction, LLC, for the construction of Lake Louisville water treatment plant, LLWTP, filter backwash and sediment basin, wash down residuals. Well, that's a mouthful. Good evening, Mayor, Council. The item before you is for the award of the contract for the construction of the Lake Louisville water treatment plant residuals dewatering facility. That is another word for sludge dewatering facility. Presently, we are discharging the treatment residuals to the on-site lagoon. Prior to that, we were discharging them to the sanitary sewer where they were handled at the wastewater treatment plant. That process began interfering with the enhanced phosphorus removal that's required there. So we've ceased that operation and then putting it in the lagoon. So this project will install belt filter press and other equipment to dewater the sludge so that we can haul it in a roll-off dumpster-type container for disposal at a landfill and also allow us to recover and recycle additional quantities of water that was previously wasted to the sewer so we can not waste as much and recycle that through the head of the plant. And our recommendation is to award the contract in the amount of $8,124,640 or $8,124,640 to Archer Western Construction. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem? Is that it? May I conclude the presentation? Yes, sir. I want to just, yes, I'll move approval. Okay, all right. Council Member Ryan? I second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 5C. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. Agenda item 5D. Consider nominations appointments to the downtown tax increment financing reinvestment zone number one board. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members Jessica Rogers, Economic Development. Tonight you'll be considering nominations appointments to the downtown tax increment financing reinvestment zone number one. The board is structured as followed. Two members are city council members. Two members are property owners or residents from within the zone. Two members are business owners or members of the Chamber of Commerce and one member has no specific category but must be a qualified voter in the city. This board is slightly different than the normal board, so I just wanted to reiterate why you have both appointments and then consideration of a chair. That is because section 9F of chapter 311 of the Tax Increment Financing Act states that the governing body of the municipality has to appoint the chair from the membership of the board as well as ordinance 2010-316 which is the authorizing ordinance for the TURS board requires that city council appoint the chair from the membership of the board. So tonight you'll be considering appointments to the board as well as the appointment of a chairperson. This is the current makeup of the board along with their present term and which category of membership they make up. Highlighted in yellow for you are the members that are up for appointment tonight. Staff has verified with each of the members that they are eligible and would like to continue to serve. If it pleases the city council as well as we have discussed with the current chair, Melissa Lineberg, if she would like to continue to serve as chair and she indicated she would be happy to do so and that's it. Okay, so I want to also say that it was a teachable moment a couple of agenda items ago and so I'm going to implement starting right now what we talked about in the retreat and that is if there's a movement and a second before we start discussion, I'm going to recognize the movement and the second before debate or discussion and if there's not then once one appears I will let the current speaker at that time finish their comments and then I will recognize whoever is on the movement or second request. So lesson learned. So we will now recognize Mayor Pro Tem. So I'm going to move approval of staff's recommendations for the board. Councilmember Davis. Second the motion. Alright, so now that we've had a motion and a second we'll have discussion. Councilmember Mayor Pro Tem you are requested to speak. Was that just to cover yourself for your making the motion? Absolutely. Alright, alright. I headed you off at the pass. Okay, so anybody else wishing to speak on this item? Was there a nomination for chair? Okay, so that's staff's recommendation. Okay, alright. I didn't know if that was through the current chair proposed state. Got you. Okay. Fantastic. Alright, so we have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board please. Motion carries 7-0. Agenda item E. Consider nominations appointments to the city boards commissions and committees airport advisory board. Are there any nominations pursuant to the backup? Alright, chair would entertain action on this agenda item. Councilmember Meltzer? I'll move approval. Councilmember Davis? I'll second. We have a motion to second. Any discussion? Seeing no request to speak. Let's vote on the board please. Motion carries 7-0. Agenda item 5F. Consider adoption of the city of Denton, Texas authorizing the expenditure of funds for the payment of wholesale transmission charges and the total amount of $1,884,599.05. Do we have a reservation on that? This particular item is simply to ask the council's permission to make these payments for these wholesale transmission charges in the following amounts. The total $1,884,599. It's basically been placed up here. It's an obligation of ours but placed up here for transparency purposes. Okay. Councilmember Briggs? I move to approve. Councilmember Davis? I'll second. We have a motion to second. Any other discussion? Seeing none. Let's vote on the board please. Motion carries 7-0. Agenda item 5G. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton. A Texas Home Rural Municipal Corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with Suncoast Resources for the supply of corrosion, excuse me, inhibitor and glycol cooling. I'm not sure what that other word is. Water additives for the Denton Energy Center. Monopropylene, I guess. Good evening, Mayor, Council, Jason Brown, Plant Manager, Denton Energy Center. Thank you for allowing me time this evening to discuss with you our cooling water system, our corrosion inhibitor, glycol, monopropylene glycol, and the procurement request that we are making to you. So I've prepared for you a presentation this evening to discuss our cooling water system, corrosion inhibitor, monopropylene glycol, the safety measures that we take while handling these chemicals, the purchasing method, bid summary, and time to answer any questions that you may have. So the Denton Energy Center cooling water system is comprised of coolant, piping, valves, radiators, everything exactly like what is in your car's cooling water system. The Denton Energy Center's total volume is about 43,000 gallons of coolant mixture. The coolant mixture that we use is city water, monopropylene glycol, and corrosion inhibitor. This is a vital system for the cooling water system, for the engines. It is basically to cool the engines. We also use it to heat the engines. We use it to heat the engines. That way we maintain a constant temperature, allowing us to quick start the units and be online and fully loaded within five minutes. So even though our city water is very good and a good product for the engines and the cooling water system, we still need to protect it from corrosion. We do this by adding corrosion inhibitor to the system itself. The corrosion inhibitor protects the piping valves, engine block, anything and everything that the cooling water touches by coating it and keeping it from corrosion. There are three validated corrosion inhibitors that is good for our system. Why only three? Because there is different metals within the engine that doesn't react with these three negatively. We use sodium nitrite, sodium nitrite and boride, or organic acid technology. The Dent Energy Center is using the organic acid technology currently. We monitor and dose the system on an hourly basis. This is an hour-based interval. Every 500 hours we pull a sample, send it out to a third-party lab, get the results, and then make adjustments to the system as needed. In addition to our corrosion inhibitor, we add glycol to our system. We all know it gets pretty cold around here, just like your car. The car that you drive, that cooling water system needs an antifreeze. Monopropylene glycol is antifreeze. We add small dosages of antifreeze or propylene glycol to our system to keep it from freezing. Currently we're down to about 19 degrees that we're good to during the wintertime. And there's two types of glycol available that we can use, propylene glycol and ethylene glycol. We use propylene glycol because it's safer for our personnel and the environment. Just like the corrosion inhibitor, we pull samples on this quarterly and check the percentages and dose from there. So I mentioned dosing, dosing of the system. Safety is priority for us. Our employees go through vast training covering selective personal protective equipment, using personal protective equipment, proper care and handling of chemicals, chemical spill prevention and counter measures and emergency response plan training. In addition to the training, we have on-site physically and electronically in train on the safety data sheets that are on-site prior to use before any kind of handling happens with the propylene or any chemical on-site. In addition to the everyday wear attire of safety gear, personal protective equipment or PPE, sites rules and policy is that we don or put on face shields that way we're covered for splashing goggles, nitrochemical gloves and aprons to add to the safety factor while handling these. So earlier in the year we went out and figured how much corrosion inhibitor and glycol that we needed for the facility throughout a year. We need 1,100 gallons of propylene glycol and 2,000 gallons of corrosion inhibitor for one year. So we got with purchasing. We put out an IFB for the specific type of corrosion inhibitor because we cannot fix the corrosion inhibitors or else we would have to flush the entire system. And we went out for the 1,100 gallons of glycol, any brand, any type, just any propylene glycol. It was sent to 355 bidders and we had two that met specifications. The two bidders ranged from roughly $29,000 to $34,000 a year and the low bid was sun coast resources. The monopropylene glycol for 1,100 gallons was $6,215 and the corrosion inhibitor for 2,000 gallons was $22,800. So to summarize, the coolant additives are needed to protect the asset. 1,100 gallons of monopropylene glycol is what we need. It's going to cost $6,215. 2,000 gallons of corrosion inhibitor are needed and it's going to cost us $22,800. And we're requesting approval to enter into a three-year not to exceed contract amount of $87,045 with sun coast electric -- or not sun coast electric -- sorry. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. >> Councilmember Ryan, you -- >> You can recognize councilmember Briggs first. >> Okay. All right. So I will always check in with the motioner to do that. Yes. Councilmember Briggs. >> So I just have a few questions and a comment really. So I guess I assume that the $29,000 a year probably is going to be a lot less expensive than if something were to happen to the parts that we're trying to fix, right? Yeah. So this is -- it's a good prevention. I am glad to see the slide on safety and your mention of the environmental care when you're thinking of these products as well. So my questions are, one, is this part of the normal maintenance that we were prepared for in the -- when we were thinking about the cost, the yearly cost of the deck? Is that included in what we thought it was going to be or is it a little bit more expensive as we're -- you know, as we have this -- as we have it and it comes on -- it's online for a longer period of time? Are we learning more than we thought? >> I think prior to me coming here, I don't think it was recognized that we did need corrosion inhibitor and glycol for the cooling water system. I may be wrong. It was not in budget when I first arrived here. Since coming, I did readjust the budget very early on and then moving forward, it has been in the budget for the last year. It is budgeted for this year and as well in next year. This is the first time that I have used the organic-based corrosion inhibitor and what I am used to the sodium nitrite and the sodium nitrite and boride is less expensive, but it is very corrosive and hard to handle. It's a bad product for personnel and environment. So the cost is a little bit more than what I am used to with the -- >> But it's better for our people and our planet. >> Definitely. >> That's good. Can I follow up with another question? Is there two questions of disposal when we are done with it? I know when you take care of your car, there is a special disposal of that fluid. What happens if we hit below 19 degrees? >> Currently, I'm going to go with the 19 degrees first because it is easier to answer. The current percentage of glycol that is in the system will cover us down to 19 degrees. We have more or less a safe range of temperature. 32, of course, will start freezing down to 19. We are covered. Once it hits 19, we are going to be running. So the unit is going to get hot and it will maintain itself. If we are not called by ERCOT to operate, the operation site that is there at the plant will take measures to make sure that we are covered down to whatever temperature we are at. >> So you just cover it with blankets? >> No. We will actually operate valves. You can operate valves within the cooling water system or within the engine. So there is cooling water pumps that are going all the time. They are actually not cooling water. I'm sorry. Heating pumps. They are heating pumps sitting there recirculating the water all the time just through the engine. So if we got to the 19, which we did a bunch last year way below, our operators go out, change valves around to where that water is going out to the radiators and going through the whole system. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> All right. Councilmember Ryan? >> I move approval of Item 5G. >> Councilmember Briggs? >> I'll second. >> We have a motion and a second for 5G. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. 5H, consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas Municipal Home Road Corporation, approving an agreement between DB Denton 2, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, excuse me, Allegiance Hillview LP, a New York limited partnership, and the city regarding the funding construction of sanitary sewer improvements which are adjacent to and will serve portions of the raised ranch development. Excuse me. >> Good evening, mayor and council. Kenny Banks, general manager of utilities. Bringing this project to before you today. It's been a long time coming. It is related to the scripture road to I-35 wastewater line. Very exciting topic. And this particular line has been in place for quite some time in this area of the city. It was there before raised a ranch and was sized toward the residential development that was planned for the city at the time. It is a 10-inch sewer line that runs all the way from scripture to I-35. The analyses that were done as part of the general development plan that was put together for raised ranch back in around 2007 were completed by Kim Lee horn and the general development plan specified that this particular line as build out occurred would have to be upsized from 10 inches to 12 inches to a possibly 15-inch component line depending on the overall amount of sewage coming into this area. The existing sewer line that is there right now, as I stated, is a 10-inch and it's currently at capacity. A portion of that line actually had -- was designed to carry waste from the convention center that has been routed to the north temporarily to complete this upsizing of the line and will be so until we can get it completed. This is a very unusual area of the city because it basically has three points of gravity that run different directions so it's quite complicated from a sewage standpoint. This particular project is being paid for by the developer. The developer did approach the city and asked the city if they would be willing to manage that -- the project and that management included the pipe bursting component of the project that's going to be done on the bulk of the line extension running north-south and then the installation of a portion of the line near I-35 to hook it up to a larger 15-inch line that is near the tech stop property at I-35. So that will involve the installation of that particular component with Denton construction crews and also the use of a boring contractor to bore the hole necessary for the line. The city of Denton's engineering department completed some additional analyses and determined that the installation of a 12-inch component of the line would be acceptable on the northern portion and that the southern portion of the line would have to be upsized to 15 inches. It's actually 16 inches because you can't get 15-inch HDPE pipe and that HDPE pipe is what's needed for the pipe bursting project. The developer's funds as specified in the agreement that's incorporated into the ordinance will be used solely for the design permitting construction management and installation of the project. The anticipated total cost of the project is $907,980. As specified by the agreement, the developer is paying 110% of the amount, which equates to $998,778. If the total project cost end up being less than this amount, the city will return the unused funds. If the cost is more specified in the agreement, the developer will be responsible for the additional cost. So that is I guess the only other aspect of this that I need to state very briefly is this was presented to the public utility board last night, and the public utility board did recommend approval 7-0. So staff's recommendation is for approval of the ordinance in the associated agreement, and I'll be happy to answer any questions anyone might have. >> Councilmember Meltzer? >> I didn't push the request to speak button, but I'm going to move approval. >> Do what? >> I didn't push the request to speak. >> No, whoever's moving. We're going with them first, man. >> Just want to be sure. >> I'll learn fast. >> Okay. >> All right. >> I'll answer. >> I'll move approval. >> Councilmember Briggs? >> I'll second. >> We have a motion to second any discussion. Let's vote on the board, please, for agenda item 5-H. Motion carries 7-0. Moving on to our public hearing portion of our agenda. 6-A is hold a public hearing on proposal to adopt a tax rate of .590454 with a maximum allowable rate of .628202 cents per $100 value. It will exceed the lower of the effective or rollback rate. >> Good evening, mayor and members of council. I have one presentation in advance of the public hearings. We have our second public hearing on the tax rate and our first and only public hearing on the budget. This is the same presentation I gave earlier today during the work session, so I'll go through the presentation fairly briefly at a high level, but that can definitely answer any questions from council or if there are any questions during the public hearing itself. >> And there's no action required. This is just simply public hearing. >> Correct. >> Right. >> Correct. Here are the dates so far. I'll just highlight today is, as I mentioned, the second public hearing on the tax rate and the public hearing on the budget, and then next week on Tuesday, the 17th, council would adopt the budget. The changes from the proposed budget, as we detailed earlier today, really hinge largely on the change to development fees as we've changed our cost recovery model with our development fees. And you can see a lot of the impacts of that change, and the change to the property tax rate, which we'll touch on multiple times through the presentation, is that we are now at the effective tax rate with the proposed budget, and that would be the tax rate ultimately voted on next week would be the effective tax rate. I will note the final bullet there, based on the discussion earlier, we have added the downtown pressure washing to the general fund, and you'll see that in the financial summary. So here are the revenue assumptions we've seen. In total, about 11% increase in our assessed values this fiscal year from last fiscal year, which is obviously a trend that we've seen over the past few years, and a 3-cent decrease now at the effective tax rate from our current tax rate, and that's close to a 10-cent decrease over the past three years, and we'll see a history of that change in the next slide. You can see our debt service and M&O rates separated there, and our sales tax and franchise fees assumptions. So here is a breakdown of our tax rates. You can see our current tax rate at 62 cents, and our proposed tax rate at 59 cents, which is equivalent to the effective tax rate, and well below the current rollback tax rate of over 63 cents. Here's a table that we follow throughout this budget year and last budget year where we show the impact of a tax bill to a home that is at the average taxable value, so you can see that impact there at the effective tax rate at $1,470 for an average taxable value home, and you can see the past few years as we've either stayed at the effective tax rate or gone into the budget process with the effective tax rate as a goal, how that's leveled off over the past few years. Here's our tax rate history. As mentioned, the proposed tax rate is 59 cents. The last time we had a rate that was at 59 cents was 15 years ago, 2004-2005 budget. Had this presentation earlier as well, just showing a comparison to other cities. One of the few cities in the area that is at the effective tax rate and the only one that we surveyed that is not only at the effective tax rate but also has no change to our utility rates in the next fiscal year. So I'll go through these next few slides briefly as well. These are big picture views of our revenues and expenditures in the general fund. Obviously property tax is the largest revenue source we have, making up about 35% of our revenues, sales tax coming in. Second, a little less than 30% now projected in the next fiscal year, and then you can see transfers, return on investment from those other funds that we have within the city making up a large portion and then those development fees are really seen in those license and permit category and service fees categories next year. On the expense side, as we see each year, personnel expenses make up the vast majority of our budget in the general fund. About 70% of our total budget is for personnel. From a department perspective, fire and police public safety make up about half of our total general fund budget with the remainder kind of dispersed throughout those other general fund functioning departments, parks and rec being the third largest in a lot of our administrative departments and development services making up the remainder. So here's a picture of our five year forecast at a very high level. A goal from the city is to keep a fund balance in our general fund between 20 and 25%. That's consistent with what we're proposing in the 19-20 budget and also what we project out in future years. You can see we have a slight drawdown in fund balance of $160,000, but that is less than our one-time expenses, our new one-time expenses in the next fiscal year, which is always a goal that we have going into the budget year. And those recurring and one of those new expenses are largely made up of the supplemental requests, which we'll detail here on the following two slides. I won't go into detail on each of these supplementals as we talked about them with council throughout the summer and the departments have given their detailed presentation and we've provided the backup on all of these, but definitely can answer any questions from council or from the public on these supplemental requests. These are essentially those items that are added to the budget, either new services for the budget or expenses related to increased costs that will be realized in the budget. As we went into the budget year, we had a focus first on getting some of the council initiatives in the budget, what we call our tier one budget supplementals, which were really focused on homelessness, largely some pest management and some other initiatives, and then the second tier of items that we insured were in the proposed budget were really focused on public safety. And as we went through the process, you can see the remainder of those items that were added to the budget. In total, a little over $5 million in those supplemental requests. As far as our capital program, in total, we have $133 million of new funding for our capital program for most revenue and debt-funded projects. That's not only general fund, but that also includes our utilities, which makes up the largest portion of that $133 million. You can see there $72 million in COs for the utilities and then $25 million in revenue funded. For general fund debt that we're proposing in the 19-20 budget, the largest portion being the last debt issuance for our 2014 bond program, over $14 million to close out the streets proposition and the parks proposition. We also have our vehicle replacements and facility improvements included on short term five-year debt, five- and 10-year debt in the next year's budget, which has been a common practice over the past few years. And then we've added funds for fire station eight and then for municipal facilities. So we also -- obviously our budget encompasses more than just a general fund, so I'll touch at a high level on all those special revenue funds and then touch on our utility funds after these slides. We have a number of special revenue funds, and one of those essentially are funds that have a dedicated revenue source with a dedicated purpose. And so you can see each of those listed there. One of the goals as we head into the budget process this year was to try to draw down some of the fund balance that we had sitting in those funds as they didn't do much, as some of these have reliable revenue sources and that the fund balance wasn't necessary. So that was a priority as we went into the budget year, so you can see that fund balance dropping. And you can see the remainder of those special revenue funds listed there. Internal service funds are funds that have dedicated revenue sources that are transfers from other funds that provide some kind of administrative service that is used throughout the city, so you can see prime examples of those listed there with technology services, materials management and fleet management, which are the revenue sources for these obviously come from departments and the costs associated with those, went into a lot of these with the same approach of trying to use the fund balance as we could going into the budget year. So I'll touch briefly on our utility funds. I think that the main point on each of our utility funds, as we've talked to the detail with council in our five-year forecast, is that we've maintained a strong reserve in each of our funds while having no rate changes in each of our utility funds. So go through the next slide, just showing the five-year forecast, but again, the main pointer with our water, wastewater, obviously drainage included in wastewater, our electric fund, again, having no rate changes, electric fund, as we noted throughout the process, we're going to come back and talk about the electric fund in the first quarter of the next fiscal year. In November, we should be back in front of council to give an update of where we are on the electric fund. And no rate change with our solid waste fund as well. Here are some of those supplemental items that were added to the utility funds in the same manner that we did with the general fund. And again, no rate changes to add these supplemental items. Five FTEs in water and the associated cost. Eight FTEs in wastewater. You can see the additions in the solid waste fund of a little over $3 million. And that is a very high-level view of our total budget. Next steps will be budget and tax rate adoption next Tuesday. This presentation would cover both public hearings and that I have nothing else unless council has any questions. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> I probably could have asked this last time when we had our conversation on solid waste. And I see that there's not going to be any increase. But we've had a discussion about adding certain services which would cost a minimal amount, monthly amount on demand when you need it. But for those who do not opt in, will their rates go down to adjust for the service they don't want? Someone messaged me about that and wondered if it's built in now and then they do not opt in, will it -- I just -- will it go down a little bit or not? >> Well, at this time, the residential -- all the residential rates are the same. So I think as we have those discussions of kind of piece-milling some of the items out, we would come with a more comprehensive look at what the total picture would be. But at this time going into the budget year, we have them all flat. >> Thank you. >> On the commercial side of things, I'm not sure if there's a service that is required that there be some service there at some point. So I'm not sure if the question is more from a residential or commercial side. But we are asking our staff to go out and try to help people right-size their service provision on the commercial side as well so we can adjust the rates accordingly. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. Any other questions for staff? This is not an action item, but it is a public hearing. So I will open the public hearing. Please come down and state your name and address. Your time will begin. You do not need a blue card. Anybody wishing to speak? State your name and address and your time will begin. >> Hi. Eric Pruitt, 2111 Westwood Drive. Thank you for the time this evening. Just a couple of points. One, I don't have a finance degree, so maybe I crunched the numbers wrong. But when you look at the past three years when you take inflation into account, my salary, back of the napkin calculation says we basically reduced taxes, property taxes from a given property, an average property that was in the city three years ago by about 15%. So that is interesting to me. The other thing I would like to say is just that by setting a tax rate, you don't actually determine what our long-term liabilities are. You also don't determine what the tax base is as far as how much developed value there is in the city. And so I think that as much as it's nice to say here's our tax rate. We're lowering taxes. We're lowering taxes. You know, when I do my budget for my family, I have to think about the future. And so I would just encourage you to think through those issues. Say, you know, as I look at it, the times when you actually determine what the tax liability will be for citizens now in 10 and 20 years in the future are what the development priorities are, what the processes are, you know, what type of development patterns you encourage through zoning, through infrastructure, how much infrastructure money is spent on, you know, what the usage of that infrastructure is, et cetera. And the -- sorry. So, you know, just remember that the budget process as far as formulating the budget, I understand, is almost year round. You'll probably start discussions here in a couple of months. But I think that the policy implications of decisions that you make that are not necessarily tied to budget discussions have long-term implications to what tax rates you're able to afford and set in the future. Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember Ryan. >> This was more a question for you. I pushed the button before the speaker came up. Since the presentation was on both public hearings A and B, if we want to open, call item B. >> Well, I would, but I'm going to go ahead and just leave it the same sequence. Yeah, I'm just going to -- I'm just going to leave it -- this is the public hearing for agenda. And we've got some requests to speak, so your question wasn't for the speaker? >> Correct. >> Okay. All right. Yeah, I'm just going to -- we're just going to follow the normal process and we'll have item -- when item B comes up, if there's no presentation, we'll just open the public hearing at that time. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Councilmember Briggs, I believe you had a question for the speaker. >> Yeah, I did. So I was just trying to get clarification on your -- if you're comfortable with the tax rate that's been set or if you were speaking in favor or in opposition of that. >> Yeah, so I think in general, I would prefer a trajectory toward long-term fiscal strength. So I would not be opposed to a higher tax rate since I think that our current obligations are higher than what we are actually spending on them. >> Yeah. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. >> Councilmember Meltzer. >> Yeah, more of a response, I don't know if it's permitted in the public hearing, rather than a question. >> I mean, is it directly to the speaker or is it just in general? >> Yeah, kind of a clarification done. Because the speaker characterized what the recent history has been, and I wanted to provide a corrective picture of that. >> Yeah, if we could maybe hold that, unless you have a question for the speaker for clarification, just so that -- and after we allow everybody else to speak in the public hearing. >> That's fine. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Marmotter. >> Oh, sorry. Yeah, just -- so I found what you had to say really interesting, and I agreed with a lot of it. I wanted to make sure -- see if my agreement was just mere projection on my part and just to ask for you to just say a little bit about -- a little more about the role that you think either -- I'll let you choose -- either zoning or the kind of 2030 plan, you know, plays a role in these kind of economic impacts that you're talking about down the line that we don't vote on as budget items, but that impact our budget and predetermine. >> Yeah. As a citizen, I think they're very important. I mean, my understanding is that you set value per acre -- or you don't set it, but you have a certain value per acre in different regions of the city, and your city -- your cost to serve those regions is not directly related to that value, right? It's really more directed toward the land area, because you have to have a certain number of fire stations, a certain number of lift stations, a certain number of roads per area, as opposed to per value. So policies that you can do to increase value per acre give you more latitude to reduce the tax burden on citizens. >> All right. Thank you. Seeing no more questions for the speaker, this is a public hearing. Anybody wishing to speak, please. State your name and address, and your time will begin. >> Okay. My name is Liam Gohm Wakefield. I live at 414 Boxwood Drive. It's like I noticed that you did the average -- like it was the average cost of -- on the average value of a house, but I'm going through school, and I've learned that the average doesn't exist because it can be highly skewed towards higher or lower values, depending on, like, what the values actually are. Like compared -- like $100,000 house to a $2 million house. Not to disparage any of the work done by the staff of it, but it's like -- I was wondering why you did the average instead of the median, which is where the median would be closer to the true cost and value of houses in Denton City. >> We certainly can have staff at some point. Well, let's go ahead and get through the public hearing, and then we'll address that. Do you still have some time, if you have any more comments, or if that -- yeah, sure. >> Any comments like the projection on the five-year plan, it's like you were saying, like, what we choose, nonbudgetary items that we choose, like, affect, like, how we zone. It's like how much do we want, like, to put in -- like, how much do we want to shape our city, like, do we want to have more bike lanes, do we want to invest more in mass transit so we can attract more people, or do we want to focus on keeping single-family homes or that sort of focus, because we should be asking those questions now. It's like whether or not you are for more dense development or not, we should be asking what do we want our city to look like in the next 30, 50 years, because that's how we decide now. You know? It's like whether or not you fall -- where you fall on it, it doesn't matter. It's like we should be planning it now. It's like -- yeah. >> Councilmember Mouser, do you have a question for the speaker? >> No. >> Okay. Any questions for the speaker? Any -- Councilmember Armitter? >> Yes. Do you find it cold in here? >> Yes. I've noticed you've been shivering. I just wanted to comment on that. >> That's better than the alternative. >> Yeah. >> I think that's out of posting, so I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. >> I was responding to his body language. >> I'm teasing. Yes. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you for your comments. This is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak on agenda item 6A? Please come down and state your name and address. Your time will begin. Anybody else wishing to speak? We'll close the public hearing. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember Melser, you had a couple of comments, and then staff, I think, has an answer for that. And then Councilmember Armitter, you have a request to speak. Is that still -- okay. All right. Councilmember Melser. >> Yeah. A few comments. First of all, I completely agree with the last speaker that median would be a better measure. I think I've asked for the past, but I've just assumed if you could have done it easily, you would have, and I've accepted mean as, you know, reasonable approximation. I don't have a response yet. I have a few things to say. To that point, just using -- well, actually, you could help me out on this, David. To that point, using mean, if you can accept that average -- >> I'm sorry. It's been a long day. >> Yeah, no, no, no. I was agreeing with you. Would you mind -- did you happen to have that chart? I didn't notice. The one that shows the average tax bill over the last -- I think it's 10 years. It's ready to go on the screen. >> Got you. Yeah. So I just wanted to correct the misperception. I'd love to sort of take credit if you wanted to view it that way with the idea that taxes have gone down on the average. That is not really a true picture. What's been targeted over the last couple of cycles have been to come in -- the tax rates have gone down, but the tax bill, the amount that people pay over the projected cycle and the last cycle have been to target somewhere close to staying about the same. As I recall, the average was targeted to go up by $80 last cycle. And now when we say we're targeting the effective rate, it's an incredibly confusing term, but what it means is the rate at which all else equal, if your home appreciates at the average rate, your tax bill would be expected to be about the same. And I just wanted to make one additional point. A couple, if you'll give me a little latitude. The idea of raising the rate certainly has come up, and we've been in different places over the course of the discussion, but it's with the awareness that we've got a list of truly good things, I mean, that I suspect you would support, that we would like to fund. And are restraining ourselves from funding all of. It's not -- I haven't heard anybody propose raising the rate and having it go to reserves, you know, to sort of strengthen our financial picture. It would be -- any discussion so far has been if there were more, it would be to be spent on something, just to give you that picture. And just lastly, I want to assure the last speaker that the look out to policy, and actually to both of you, to policy, to long-range vision is something that takes place year-round at council. We spent I don't know how many weeks on development code. Really boring sounding, but all the details of that are what do we want Denton to look like and where. You'll hear discussion of 2030 plan backwards and people wanting to relook at it that's all about what are our values, what are our vision going forward. So this is just the discussion of the net output of that look for this year's budget, because that's sort of how we run. But your charge is well taken and heard. >> Okay. Brief comment about the mean versus median. >> Sure. I would only say the average taxable value, and I think we always try to get the caveats when we show this, it's not necessarily the best way to look at this, it's just the only number we have from the appraisal district. We don't get any other number outside of the average. But to that point, if you're below that average, your tax bill may not be increasing. It could be going lower with the tax rate. It all depends on what individual homeowner or property owner's average value does. >> All right. Thank you. All right. So there's no action on that item. No action on this item. And we close the public hearing, so we'll move to agenda item 6B, hold a public hearing, receive citizen input on the FY2019-2020 proposed budget. We're not going through that presentation again. >> Effectively want me to. >> No. I think we'll pass on that. All right. So I will now open the public hearing for 6B. Anybody wishing to speak on the proposed budget, please come down and state your name and address. Your time will begin. Anybody wishing to speak? Sort of -- I think it sort of caught both of those actually. Anybody else wishing to speak? Anybody wishing to speak? All right. I will close the public hearing on agenda item 6B. We'll move on to concluding items. Concluding items, council members, council member Briggs. >> I just want to bring back up from the discussion earlier about no parking on Hinkle. I don't know if that needs to -- if I need to do a -- I don't really want a staff report on it. I just want us to talk about it maybe a mobility item request and I'm just still learning about the new process. So I guess I will close the public hearing. So I guess I will send a message and ask where that needs to go. But it's something that caught me a little tonight and I want to continue talking about it. >> Great. Anyone else? Council member Davis. >> I just want to let folks know that this Saturday, 8 a.m. at American Legion post 71 that's on Spencer Road, there's a big cleanup project. They had quite a large encampment on the back part of their property. They're a small nonprofit and they need every bit of help they can. They can't afford to pay someone to move all that stuff off their property. So we'll be there with gloves, long sleeve pants, close toed shoes, 8 a.m. on Saturday morning. >> All right. Council member Armitter. >> Okay. Several things I wanted to mention. The Blues Fest this weekend, Black Chamber of Commerce sponsored. Encourage people to come to that. There's also -- wait. Oh, did I -- sorry. Anyway. Maybe I have it wrong on my calendar. But anyway, to see when the Blues Fest is, I just got a notice about it. But also in this weekend, there's a Rocky Erickson tribute that benefits Denton County MHMR Crisis Research Center. So encourage people to go to that. And thirdly, I wanted to ask that we have a look at our food truck ordinance. It's been -- it hasn't been since 2012. That's been updated just to make sure that we're doing what we can to make things easy for people who want to have food trucks to do business in the city. Denton loves food trucks. And we want it to be safe and healthy. But we want to make sure that we don't have anything in there that may be setting up barriers that need and exist. So I just wanted to ask for that to come to us. Anyone else? I've got just a couple. First of all, Councilmember Armitage, I take full responsibility for your agenda item. I just -- I should have called you first. So we're going to move that procedure forward as we talked about in the retreat. So I certainly wanted to share that with you. And I wanted to say that the community lost a great citizen last week in Bill Geese. And his contributions to this community spanned it over nine decades. I mean, he spent a lot of time loving this community, involved, spending time on all different types of projects, all different types of committees and boards. I couldn't even go into all of them. So I certainly want to send out my condolences to his family and just really thankful for people such as himself who really give of their heart and their time and their lives to their community. I had a third one, but I'm not seeing it. So -- oh, yeah. That's right. Yes. Thank you. I got word tonight that the Monsignor King Outreach Center Board approved the contracts between the city -- the city has not approved them yet, but they approved at least the contracts that would be presented to the city. To move forward with the enhanced shelter that we've been talking about throughout the budget program. So I certainly want to appreciate them and thank them for that and look forward to working with them together as that comes before us for approval in the next week or so, I believe. Any other concluding items? Yes. So Blues Fest, yes, it is the 21st and the 22nd. All right. Fantastic. So you can go to both of those events I mentioned. Councilmember Meltzer? Yeah, just in closing, shout out to Mary Ann, faithful viewer. All right. Thank you. All right. All right. We will adjourn. Council meeting at 930. Thank you all.