Oct 08, 2019 City Council on 2019-10-08 12:00 PM

Thank you. Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Tuesday October the 8th 2019. It is 1201 p.m. We're going to move through our work session agenda items. Before we do that we have some housekeeping measures to try to I don't know if we're going to be able to take care of them but we'll at least want to announce them. I understand that we might need to cut the meeting short I think this evening because of some absences is that correct? Okay two that need to lead by six and I understand Councilmember Briggs you'll need to leave about 515 I believe it was and Councilmember Davis is not here. So we're just going to move forward and see how far we get and so some of the items we've certainly got to get through the closed sessions which are personnel reviews and the work sessions so we'll see how far we get with the personnel that we have here. Councilmember Husbeth will be here shortly I'm not sure about Councilmember Armitage. Okay so we'll move through our work session reports citizen comments on consent agenda items I believe we have two. Let's see Mr. Dalton Gregory if you'll come up state your name and address your time will begin and you're speaking on a consent agenda item is it in? Yes sir. Okay Dalton Gregory 2408 Emerson someone asked me do I miss being there I don't miss the extravagant pay I don't miss the lavish meals but I do miss working with the staff and with the council members. Thank you for your service thank you for these great opportunities that you give citizens to speak opportunities that you give without having to wait for the Texas legislature to mandate them rules that they mandate for you but that they don't require of themselves so thank you for that. I'm here to speak on item N it's important to I understand the importance of setting fees for facility rentals in a way that covers cost that's prudent and that's good for our taxpayers but it's also important to give special consideration through co-sponsorships for non-profit organizations that provide free or low-cost programming for the citizens of Denton and that's what the Denton community band does these kinds of programs provide the kind of culture and the kind of opportunities for both those that participate and those that attend as audience members and it's good for our city. I'd encourage you to keep doing that for things like the Denton community band for the Texas Storytelling Festival for any of those other non-profit organizations that brings these good programs and contributes to the culture of Denton so thank you very much I hope that you leave it on the consent agenda and vote yes. All right thank you. Next speaker is Carol Mizel if you'll come forward state your name and address your time will begin. Good morning I'm Carolyn Mizel 2722 Crestwood Place. Since 1978 and if you do the math yes that's 41 years it's been my privilege to be the conductor of the Denton community band and throughout that time we've performed in the Civic Center for so many concerts free concerts family-friendly concerts on the one that comes up in October we will have everything from a Disneyland celebration to the music from Downton Abbey and so we hope that you and your families will take advantage of that. Throughout the years we've enjoyed some of the co-sponsorship of the Parks and Recreation Department for our concerts usually our concert at the end of October and the one in June and we are delighted that you are considering granting us this co-sponsorship again and we consider it a privilege to live in Denton and have this opportunity to provide this through our non-profit organization wonderful concerts family-friendly free and open to the public. There are several members of the Denton community band that are in attendance would you just rise and you'll see Dalton is even in the trombone section and so now you know what we're dealing with you all. Yes we do. We thank you for this opportunity to come before you we thank you for all you do in every area for our citizens and your tireless efforts in researching all the good things that make life in Denton as wonderful as it is thank you. Well and thank you for 41 years. Well I hope to do 41 more and Dalton says I'll probably have to build a ramp that's that's compliant so that my wheelchair can go up to the podium to conduct in 41 years but we'll see we'll hope for 41 more thank you. Thank you that's your uh that's your send-off yes I'm not sure what that I'm not sure what that is but uh I couldn't quite make out the the no no uh okay I don't see any more blue cards for uh individuals wishing to speak on the consent agenda item so we'll move on to our work session item. Our request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda any yes council member Riggs. So to um item G um I'm my question is is this the same comprehensive long-range plan that was proposed in the Friday report um under the section when we were discussing food diversion or is this something different because in the backup it didn't say anything about food diversion in the plan. Anybody from solid waste here or would it be solid waste? Okay sure yeah all right and so I'll just move on to item J um about the grant here the national sexual assault kit initiative and I'm glad to see that we are applying and have been approved. I'm just curious because I remember when the chief was here there were about 60 that were untested I'm just curious what the number is now if we have that updated number untested the original number was close to 100 right and I think I don't have the exact number but I think we've tested somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 so but I can get you an exact number okay so I can get that back and so that this grant will go towards those um and anyone's coming forward or yes ma'am yes okay that's what's going to be used for yes okay thank you very much I believe council member Armitra has a follow-up or yes and are you able to speak to a planned timeline for that this grant the duration of the grant is three years so I would imagine that we will be caught up completely within that time frame I would think okay great any any way that council can help to to expedite that process by all means let us let us know well I think this grant is a huge step towards getting this uh getting this what we need and I want to pay uh special thanks to detective Alisa Howe for this she worked hard on getting this grant and in fact out of the entire country there's only four it was only four awarded and we were one of them so she's pretty amazing yeah any other questions for the assistant chief thank you very much I believe we have the solid waste personnel here that if you could maybe repeat your question so item g is um it's a an RFP I believe uh for professional service for solid waste and it lists a whole um scheme of things that that it can be for but then in our Friday and September 27th I think um we received a little blurb that said um food diversion could be incorporated into a comprehensive plan um for a consultant and I didn't know if that was this plan or not or if that's something different under this contract uh again what we're trying to do is do the pre-work so that as we have uh technical and specific planning items for solid waste to come forward we don't lose 90 to 120 days in the RFP process we're doing that en masse right now so to answer your question I mean one of these uh planning is a portion uh that is a a uh that is included in this the suite of items so as we get ready to move forward one of these uh consultants could be uh earmarked to do that work can I just follow up because I I looked at the list and I didn't see anything about and so if I'm missing it and if we need to add it let me know I didn't see anything about um commercial food diversion or anything it would fall under comprehensive solid waste man uh planning services so that is a piece of comprehensive solid waste management just like zero waste multifamily it's all incorporated into the comprehensive plan okay because I saw those listed individually I just didn't know um if we needed to make sure that that was included that will be included thank you so much just to clarify this is very similar what engineering department did last year when they pre-qualified uh experts in several engineering fields so as long as they're qualified we can go through a rotational list to provide work but we haven't actually started the the comprehensive plan that you're asking about that that will certainly be one of the um items that we look at as Brian and his staff move forward to being that plan but this is simply to pre-qualify contractors so they can perform the work when we're ready to put it out to a proposal thank you thank you very much any other request for clarification I've got one but wanted to make sure my colleagues got their questions answered yes council member Messer if it was there and I missed it I apologize but uh for items a and b I was just curious to know if these are already budgeted uh and we're just formalizing it through the yes this process that's correct all right and on item n uh yeah it's been only 41 years so I consider it kind of a test program but I'm willing to you know go forward for another year see how it turns out oh okay I see what you're saying I'm like what are you talking about okay all right all right I got you um any other questions clarification so on a couple that I have on consent agenda item b now my understanding is that that was a budget allocation in conjunction with a a match program for the community in other words the city would be willing to put up to $40,000 if we could get those matches from the community is that is that my understanding on that is I read the back that is how the program has been set up I think so far today they've raised about $7,500 to towards these $40,000 goals so that is the goal okay and I don't think it's been I mean we're just now rolling it out I mean it would get into the process okay that's right I think that'll I think that'll accelerate and the other one uh want to just ask my colleagues we're looking at agenda item 3f number one I'm not sure who all is going to be here by the time we get to that but it's my understanding that the last time we had the conversation uh where we gave staff direction or staff was given direction about the setback that it's come to my attention through the legal department that whatever happens the ordinance still needs to go through planning and zoning commission and so to me I think this is one of those situations where we've had in the past where the council was going to deliberate on something before sending it to the appropriate board or commission who's supposed to make recommendations I think a couple of them are the tiff boards so I would I would propose that we toll this particular item and send it to planning and zoning for recommendation because I think for us to to deliberate and then send them a pre-pre-packaged ordinance seems to be backwards I think that planning zoning has the opportunity to do whatever they want now whatever we send them they could still make changes but that's really outside the normal process of how we how we do these things and it wasn't really decided until our after our last meeting I believe is that correct Mr. City Attorney that once we had that discussion we realized we needed to take this back to planning and zoning because it's a ddc change is that correct that is correct okay um so that's that's my thought because we're going to discuss it here pnz is going to we're going to have another discussion I would just assume be efficient with the time and we've given pretty much good general direction and just let planning and zoning take a look at it and then their recommendations will come to us yes do you need a motion on that or no no I think I just need just if people are okay with that um yes Council Member Armitage oh yeah just um just to make sure that you know that'll be able to happen relatively soon well I think it's already based upon our backup there's already a timeline for planning and zoning to to hear it and then for the council to hear it so I don't see any deviation from that time line it's just skipping this particular step in order to try to stay true to the process I see I see okay thanks yeah all right so everybody okay with that okay all right okay thank you very much so we'll be postponing agenda item f until it comes back to us from pnz recommendations yeah Richard's getting ready to advertise that okay all right fantastic okay wonderful all right we'll move on then through our work session reports 3a receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the 2019-20 audit plan y'all have a good day they're not interested take it away good afternoon good afternoon city auditor the city auditor is responsible for providing assurance to the city council of accountability over the city's operations and resources efficiency of use of resources effective and equitable service delivery and compliance with laws regulations and policies I have qualified staff small but qualified staff annually city auditor comes to the city council and presents audit plan for city council approval and once it is approved all the changes made to the audit plan must be approved by the city council the in 2018 I presented risk analysis identifying more than 200 opportunities for audit the objective was to manage risk faced by the city and keep them within the tolerance limit and so far we have completed nine audits of those 200 opportunities and we have used the same list to prepare the current plan we calculate the available hours I mean we got basically small staff and we calculate available hour with total hours for the year less holiday sake vacation time administrative time and in my case I mean I had to devote significant amount of time for ethics board and we found that available hours for this year is going to be about 4200 hours basically next couple slide delineates my audit plan now payroll represents major expenditure for the city and controls over payroll expenditures are critical elsewhere abuses in this area have been noticed and this audit will provide assurance if adequate controls exist and operating effectively DME is a significant operation where management have may have certain concerns we will use internal control standards adopted by general accounting office to conduct detailed internal control assessment of DME operation this is more comprehensive internal control assessment it will look at the governance process adequacy of the organization structure delegation of authorities and responsibilities recruitment and retention of competent staff their processes for risk tolerance and risk determination again this is a very significant very significant public service so this is very critical in that area we'll also look at whether they have policies and procedures and whether they are working so I mean this is basically more than a more than a regular evaluation of internal control now originally I had proposed that we do this kind of assessment throughout the city it would have taken a significant amount of time but then we have a discussion with the city manager and we have reached an understanding that we will start with DME and then we'll roll it out to other departments in the future because he saw operational value for our work conducted during the audits so and we agreed with that and so that's what we have accounted for now when we did the audit of customer service we identified that most of the adjustments were made because of the meter reading errors and therefore we wanted to wanted to look at the meter reading operations and this is going to be a performance audit and we will evaluate the efficiencies and effectiveness in this operation health insurance fund is again a large expenditure your city paid 23 million dollars during 17 and 18 fi 17 18 the audit will evaluate the controls over these expenditures facilities is an internal service department basically the facility is supporting all of the other departments so their operation uh performance of duty duties effectively and efficiently is critical for the entire city fleet is a very similar operation as far as grant revenue is concerned we are receiving about 100 million dollars every year and this revenue is contingent upon us complying with the grant condition so if we don't comply we may risk losing this money we will follow up our previous audit recommendations this year as we have some audits conducted and we are going to evaluate if uh i'm sorry so we're going to evaluate if i'll wait for the water thanks okay so we will evaluate if the recommendations are implemented and achieving its purpose as you recall we have begun capital project audit and this is a large audit so it's going to spill over to next fiscal year so we're going to spend some time on that when an audit is requested by the city council member we are required to bring it back to the city council and city council as a whole is going to determine whether we need to conduct an audit or defer it uh accordingly uh we have a request for utility easement audit if we conduct this audit then we will do compliance audit compliance with the regulations just to verify or confirm the the um okay never mind i'll i'll speak after your i'm sorry go ahead now it is possible that city council may uh may want to prioritize some of the other audits over the audits that we have included in the audit plan so again i'm presenting three options uh hr compliance hr's compliance with laws we'll look at the compliance with law such as ada flsa and so and so forth risk assessment division now this division provides make sure that that the liability risk are covered and properly adequately supported so we will determine the effectiveness of the operation if we conduct that audit and water production and distribution will include the compliance and efficiency uh of the of the operation you had a question yeah i was just trying to clarify on the uh so the list that you presented in your two slides back that's what your recommendations are that's the audit plan that is being recommended by you the internal auditor that is and then the other one was just someone had requested it and so you're bringing that to council that is correct and then these are if we want to either substitute or prioritize or something like that that is correct okay now i'm asking for approval of the audit plan okay uh yes councilmember armature so a question and i will out myself as the council member who requested the the easement and it's not just any utility easements but uh dme easements uh as a a past liability concern and i was wondering about or past liability issue um and wondering about continued and future liability can you speak to why that's uh not included in the the broad dme assessment that you're recommending considering how comprehensive it already is uh sure uh when the city council had approved our policies and procedure uh there was a specific mandate in that that if an audit is requested or if a project is requested by a council person then uh and it would take more than uh minimal amount of time than we are supposed to bring it back to the city council that's why that audit is segregated like that oh i see so not because not necessarily because it's not relevant to a comprehensive dme audit but because it came it came from a council member yes ma'am i see i see so uh would you would you be willing to or would you prefer for me to to you know to speak to just summarize that issue in case people were wondering what that what the concern was what that means yeah so it's my understanding you requested the audit is that correct yeah i think i'd i'd like to hear your uh reasoning for that yeah yeah so you know so my reasoning was so it had been you know called to my attention um that in the past uh you know there had been liability you know legal action surrounding non-compliant easements for high voltage power lines being too close to residential and other kinds of buildings and it was was pointed out to me that based on the measurements of the distance between certain high voltage poles and existing buildings that this might be a continued concern and again because there had been passed uh liability legal action as i understand it on this issue are you referring to the bonnie bray project i believe so uh but you know i was but i mean i believe so does that mean yes you are referring to it okay yeah i'm trying to be i'm trying to be careful and uh uh so yes so it was called to my attention it was it's a um and as soon as it was called to my attention my i i mentioned it to the to the city auditor and and requested it and and i would request of my colleagues to uh look look into that that issue and see i mean i would think if there was something where that was a liability issue in the past that was continuing where we're continued or the practice continued instead of corrected and in other words these are um high voltage power lines that were had been too close to homes and if we're continuing to do that or even if we've stopped but if that still exists then that's then that's a seems to me a pretty black and white liability that i would hope would be if with my council members fellow council members approval i can't see if any why anyone would want to include that in a dme uh audit considering that uh the the auditor has already prioritized if with our approval a dme audit i'm gonna i'm gonna be hesitant to uh unless i know the the scope of that uh to to agree to that based upon putting it above all these other things because that's one isolated incident and at the time there were some questions so there's a lot of litigation settlement around that so um i i'm going to be hesitant to do that based upon what i know about that particular situation and can i respond without going into too much detail um that you know i i sent photographs of a couple examples and the locations of a couple examples i'm really reluctant to mention anything specifically publicly because it's really just a question about is this compliant but um there are these were just several of a number of um uh possibly you know liable easements if you drive along around kind of university of north texas area um extending i mean it's not quite all over town but where these particular high voltage lines were put in you can see there are a number of cases if you it's one of these things if you've got your eye for it if you look to for high voltage lines that look a lot closer to uh these buildings and they're supposed to be and again the the reasoning for this law is because of safety risk but regardless of the reasoning it's it's the law well but i just want to be sure we're compliant and again it's it's really a physical kind of objective fact about distance that we you can well it's not measured it's not that clear because you have different distances for different energized voltage on a line so and i'm talking exclusively about the high voltage but but again there's 69 kv there's 138 kv and there's distance requirements uh policies and procedures for safety the distance between those are different so it depends on how that line is energized so i'm not trying to debate you i'm just saying they're these are very factually specific and so based upon what you're reporting it it prompts me to be more um in line to not necessarily order an easement if you have specific audit if you have specific questions those certainly can be submitted i think to the proper staff department to determine hey what's this and maybe they can present some facts that just because it looks a certain distance doesn't mean that it's required to be more than that so there's a lot of nuances to this and before i send off the auditor to to go do an audit of those easements that you're referring to those and i appreciate you narrowing it down because i had no idea what this was referring to i need to have a greater understanding of what it is that's being asked for and is there another less intrusive a more efficient way to deal with that but that's just me council member melzer you've been patiently waiting well yeah i just wanted to ask if it because of all the sort of uh delicacy in the discussion because you know we're talking about issues of liability would it be helpful to go into executive session briefly just so we can kind of have a uh just a clear conversation about uh scope that is certainly the council's prerogative but what i do offer for the council we can put together a report to the council as to the history of that litigation how what the arguments were the outcomes uh and that just gives you some background as to what the issues were back then and if they are repetitive i mean they would at least give you some background to be able to make a decision uh when the auditor brings forward an ordinance to approve his audit plan i'll be happy to do that if you all prefer i think that'd be helpful not uh totally clear on the whether we'd have an opportunity to act on it then you know before like if there is a reason to believe that uh well for all for all these items we don't assume if there's anything necessarily wrong with it's a check uh so you know it's hard for me to gauge from the conversation what the scope of possible you know value would be of knowing it uh so would we have an opportunity to if it turns out to be persuasive would we have an opportunity to act and adjust the plan based upon his his data oh of course i mean i think what i heard was that that data would be forthcoming prior to official action being taken yeah because this requires an ordinance so we can't we can't approve it today so i think his data would be forthcoming prior to that and then we could we could make a change either at the time it's approved or at any other time we could say hey let's let's change this for this yeah well i'd certainly be interested in just just getting a better understanding of what the uh potential value of the information would be you know uh or sort of the risk of the size risk dollar risk in comparison to the other kinds of risks that we're trying to hedge against with these sure yes councilmember and i think i heard uh councilmember mature also mentioned that it wasn't just that specific issue or area so if we could ask her to send that to the city manager as well i mean to review to add into that report just to help get a complete picture of what area besides the one that's sensitive is okay but you're not saying under discussion the issue is are there high voltage lines too close to structures in violation of some national safety process or standard is that the scope of what we're talking about is that the scope of what we're talking about yes it's a look at all of so there are a few that were called to my attention and i will send management and dme right the those photographs and the measurements but uh it was those were examples uh that were measured and photographed and then it was pointed out to me you know a number of others that just within with at glance you can see is less than the 70 odd whatever is required are you saying you measured it or somebody else measured it i went with the person who called to my attention and we measured together but you know i'm not an auditor i'm not i'm not furke i'm not no no i'm just curious how the data i'm just curious how the data and then these others and then we we drove around and he took me on a tour and he said here i'm concerned about this you can see here it's a kind of thing you know once you once you've got your eye tuned to it uh you can you can see because it's about a physical objective measurement of distance and we can't tell you know if you're talking about 70 feet versus 75 you can't tell just with the naked eye but if something's right next to a up against a house uh you know around even within uh you know 10 to 30 feet you can tell with your naked eye that it's not 70 okay all right so sounds like we have a couple things the city attorney will send out some data to all of us reporting some of the history and the facts regarding a particular litigation and then councilmember armater is going to provide to the city attorney and the daughter or whoever else a sample or a list of these particular issues that she observed based upon this person who she was with yes councilman uh mayor pro tem in line with what uh staff does for uh corporations i in your email erin i would ask that those uh who whoever went on the tour site tour those names be incorporated uh into that record please thanks okay okay anything else council member oh just on the um the other options if you could go back to that i have a question for city management on the water production and distribution i remember a long time ago another water um presentation was said to they were going to come to us on water loss loss of water and that hasn't reached us and i don't know if that has anything to do with that or not is that the same thing uh no i mean we are going to be looking at that water loss during the meter reading audit okay which is already on our plan which is right now on the plan okay okay i'm good i'm good thank you yes councilman mouser yeah the uh the one that uh strikes me is potentially worth talking about a little bit on the option list is risk management just because it's so you know closely allied with the audit function and strikes me as you know broad broad end scope like the dollar the potential dollar value you know uh might be valuable uh you know to make sure that we're addressing correctly uh and i i wonder how you would you know what if we were interested in that what you'd be tempted to swap it out for the i i wonder like uh for instance about that the sort of dollar value of looking at risk management versus the dollar value of looking at fleet services just because risk management so broad it seems like there might be you know a lot of value being uh being you know audited in case of risk risk management the value of the operation meaning that the expenditure on operation itself will not be that high but what they produce uh making sure that city's liabilities are are managed or properly insured uh that is the value that it contributes so fleet services for example we might be spending three million dollars on that operation but risk management we might be spending maybe 200 000 dollars but it's just because that is such a critical function that's why it's on the list if if i may yeah please so in an audit for risk management what exactly are would you be looking at i mean so it's not so much you're not looking for this 200 000 to be misappropriate i mean i guess you can be looking for misappropriate but you're looking what exactly are you are you looking for function itself okay is conducted effectively so that making sure that our liabilities are properly managed okay so you're looking for processes for insurance that is adequate enough to cover the potential risks right particularly subject matter things such as that such as that okay yes go ahead well yeah i guess uh um you obviously didn't prioritize it higher than some other things um is there one that it's what do you consider it sort of closest to in terms of if you were to make a swap uh if you were asked to make a swap what would you recommend swapping it for not that yeah we could say no but i mean just as a way to weigh it well we can swap it with health insurance fund but health insurance fund again is very important that's a lot of money a lot of money that's like what 20 million or 25 million dollars how many 23 million dollars so that might be your way of saying i would rather not know i mean i mean for example grants is 100 million dollars i mean everything on this list has got implications so it's your choice just pressure testing to put it up as an option wanted to weigh it as a member armature yeah i was wondering if if you could uh narrate you know what your what what uh called the the two other issues to your attention that are on that that list uh the hr compliance and water production and and distribution i know so obviously they didn't come from didn't come from council and i don't think you picked him out of a hat so if you could just speak to you know why why are these the ones and that would help us okay let me go back to the those 200 items that i had identified if you recall in that 200 items i had listed some audits as high risk audits so far we have not exhausted that high risk audit list and these are all high risk audits but there's only so many we can do okay all right so and could um you know could you get a little more specific so these three are also high risk audits yes they are um you know do you feel comfortable speaking to even the kind of general categories of risk that are there are involved so that we could have a better understanding in other words i want i mean if if one of these is i feel is riskier is is more high risk than certain other high risk uh i i would like that to be an audit but if it's not then i want i want the highest risk things to come first does that make sense okay let me i'll walk you through the how we do the risk assessment basically we are based on interviews and other examination we are determining whether a particular risk is likely to precipitate and if it precipitates what is going to be the impact so high likelihood and high uh prob uh impact would be classified as a high risk audit and uh for example hr compliance with law i mean we need to comply with flsa and ada and so on and so forth if we don't and the state government comes in i mean we could be subject to liability and loss of reputation and so on and so forth so that's how we choose the audit yeah and so of all the high risk items uh are these less these three less high risk than the other or is it for other reasons that they didn't make it in there and i again i understand they're all high risk i wouldn't i wouldn't say so i mean if any of these is swapped for any other audit on the on the list it will be okay because uh everything i mean there are only so much we can do with the limited staff that we have so these are not necessarily the second tier within the high audit high risk category is only because you can only do so much that is correct so to that extent would you say it is kind of kind of arbitrary how you know the fact that that these other ones were the ones that were uh are included in the main list and these three are the stragglers uh basically i mean we had to look at you made a decision i'm just trying to figure out i mean i'm just asking the reasons behind the decision that'll help me decide whether i want any of those to go in if so whether i want one of those to go in or not i mean i'm concerned about uh you know you mentioned ADA compliance i'm really concerned about that but there are other things that you've seen uh i know you haven't done an audit in any one of these that i don't know about right so i want to make sure we're putting the highest risk things first if these ones on this list are the highest risk then i say go with it with those in my opinion they are very high risk higher than or you want to do these first these ones first yeah i want to do this first based on artist's judgment okay and okay so it's not it's not arbitrary in other words no no it is not yeah yeah so okay thank you i would i would definitely not use the word arbitrary i mean amesh has a good way of sitting down with us um getting our read on where we're most concerned the high dollar amounts some of the things that he's observing and these are really rank or the the one with the hr is probably the least uh of our concerns right now it's still high risk but we've had a very solid team a lot of these other areas quite frankly the other issues other than the budget amount there's been some transition we've recognized there's a lack of policy and we want him weighing in as we're fixing these operations so he's very collaborative in terms of how we identify these items there and i want to be sure that the word arbitrary isn't really easy because he's he's put a lot of thought into this based on the dollar amounts of these programs and what's at risk so um and we're in complete agreement that these need to be looked at in this order and and thank you and the reason i used that word was because i i was waiting for the explanation i i knew it wasn't arbitrary i wanted to hear exactly you know how the exactly how the decision was made uh so that these are so again they all rank high risk but these are the ones that are prioritized for very specific reasons having to do with the risk risk to the city so in a way that's kind of like saying you decided that of all the high risk these are the ones that risk wise it's most uh prudent that we do these first for that reason i'm fine with it yeah i'll assure you that uh before we present this res i mean this list both my staff and i spend uh considerable resources amount of time uh deliberating on this i know i know yeah and that was what i was hoping you'd give us insight into i know but you know the pub the public might not know but thank you thank you any other questions yes council member melzer yeah sorry not to you know drag this out too far but i noticed that uh you say that net of vacations and all that sort of thing you got a budget of 4,250 hours and this list totals 3,900 so you've got you know 350 is your intention to leave yourself some room for something else that might pop up or you know or would you be entertaining adding one more item to fill that well there is a if city council approves is is mid-audit utility is mid-audit that is 350 hours or we can swap it up with other options so you're saying you left a pad of 350 hours you got you got your list and i think council member melzer said it only added up to what you say 3,900 and so you're saying that you've got one more audit of 350 hours that you can put in that list yes if the city council understand yeah okay but it could be this or it could be one yes that's correct yes that's correct yep and and so and and you're not it this is a question you're not advising us to leave the pad in there you're saying we may add one within your capacity yeah that's right okay great all right question council member yeah i yeah i'm just hoping that um we don't make that decision today and then we hear the report from city management so that that stays open okay i'm not prepared to make that decision okay thank you i don't think we have to um any questions comments okay thank you thank you before we take a quick break uh mayor pro tem we are agenda item f which is the gas well discussion we've decided because it's going to have to go to pnz anyway to just go ahead and move it there first instead of giving them sort of a already baked ordinance and get them to have recommendations so we won't be considering that item let's take a quick five minute break then we'll come back welcome back to this meeting of the dent city council on tuesday october the eighth 2019 we're moving through our work session reports we're on a work session report three b which is received report hold discussion give staff direction regarding an internal audit of roadway quality management hello i'm madison rocha the staff auditor presenting our audit of roadway quality management so to begin this audit evaluated the city's ability to safeguard and improve the city's roadway network as you know the city spends millions of dollars annually just to maintain this network and has issued about 44 million dollars in general obligation bonds to rehabilitate existing roadways since 2012 so the roadway quality management process can be simplified into three areas one planning of roadway maintenance and improvement activities two construction and maintenance of roadways and three monitoring of roadway condition the streets division must manage all three of these areas simultaneously to be able to effectively manage roadway quality so now i'll discuss our findings within each area beginning with planning so planning processes are we found that they were generally effective based on our research we found that the city's transportation design criteria manual addresses all critical design parameters of roadway quality in addition project coordination between streets and utilities appears to be improving with the implementation of a project clearance process coordination meanings and integrated long-term project schedules and finally the selection of streets for maintenance and improvement seemingly provides for the equitable use of resources through a structured selection process for example in the bond process only street segments with a very low quality were targeted for reconstruction and budgeted as part of the program program while this is appropriate criteria the process did not account for connectors or those street segments in between the ones targeted as part of the bond program this requires the city to spend operational funds budgeted for something else or to complete to complete the project or to spend geo bond money on fewer targeted lane miles so we recommended that the division consider the impacts of including these connector segments in the bond program in upcoming elections and they appear to have done that in the 2019 one so next i'll talk about construction activities to test construction effectiveness we selected nine million overlay projects and 15 reconstruction projects for targeted review we only selected projects that appeared to have too high of a quality to receive the construction activity that occurred so this is not a representative sample in general we found that the projects were missing key quality documentation including reports of construction quality based on inspections performed by streets personnel and materials testing and design documentation based on a third-party geotechnical engineer review in addition we identified about 1.63 lane miles of road that were overlaid by the streets division instead of being reconstruction which was suggested by the geotechnical engineer while these construction activities may have been appropriate the responsibility for these changes should be placed with upper level streets management not field services supervisors and this approval should be documented without adequate construction documentation roadway quality cannot be assured according to management's response recommended documentation improvements will be in effect by the first quarter of 2020 so any questions any questions yeah do you want me just wait till the end or yeah because you got three slides left yeah yeah we'll just yeah sounds good yeah okay so finally uh roadway quality monitoring to monitor pavement quality the city hires a consultant every five to six years to visually inspect the entire roadway network and they assign each street segment an overall condition index or oci this oci is then maintained in a database which is used to plan maintenance and construction activities we found several issues with this oci database one the install date or in service date of each street was not up to date limiting the city's ability to analyze a road's performance over time two we found that some work order types were not properly updating the streets oci due to a formula issue this has been corrected which has increased the roadway network's average oci by about half a point in addition we found that an overlay work order increased the oci to an 85 which may be inappropriate if a street had a lower oci before the construction as the true condition of the street may not be known and three work order data was not entered consistently while this appears to have improved over time we recommended designing and implementing training for crew leaders to facilitate cost analysis finally we found that the city is appropriately accounting for and reporting bond program progress to the bond oversight committee however we recommended accounting for each bond series in a separate fund and clearly describing the street segments included in a project in documentation to further improve transparency so in summary we issued a total of 12 12 recommendations including three aimed at streets purchasing and administrative processes the division fully concurred with nine of these recommendations and partially concurred with the remaining three as shown on the slide and after reviewing the responses as you can see here we believe management will address the underlying issues that we identified in these areas however we'll verify in future follow-up audits so now questions thank you this was a pretty interesting audit the streets are pretty popular here there's a lot to do and i i guess my questions are mostly for either the city management or the the streets operations um on some of the findings that i just i'm curious about um on the maintaining the wrong roads almost two miles so they were supposed to be reconstructed instead of overlaid can you speak to how that happened or if if that's sufficient for an overlay instead of the reconstruction daniel kramer deputy director of operations city so our basic process as we go through is we'll pick a road based on the oci um we'll go through we'll do we'll do um a survey of it to look at ourselves and we'll do geotechnical testing along the road which what that does is it takes individual samples throughout and then you know based on that the oci score based on our geotechnical then we'll go back and we'll figure out you know what is best for the road based on the information that we have a lot of them will come up because we'll test on some of the worst areas when we see them if there's uh certain failures that we see or certain things that's where we'll get the information because that's usually you want to plan for the worst when we go through so the problem is we don't really know everything until we pull up the entire road so as we go through and we'll remove the top layer of the road and we'll be able to look at the base the areas that we pulled the testing from could have just been a base failure and we can do the work on that and fix that area and then do an actual overlay for that so in the processes that auditors did fine yes we are lacking in our documentation on verifying where it's at i can tell you that all the issues that we have were brought up to management but there's no documentation confirming that which is what we are working on sops to make sure that if the issue is found depending on the size and the issue it is it will go off to sign up so farther up the line so that everybody understands and why we did what we did and it's fully documented in the process but when you take off that top layer you really get to see what all the structure is and everything else under the road so repairs were made and we do stand behind the repairs that we did it just wasn't properly documented to be able to put in the system sure okay good so that's okay i have a can i just make a follow-up comment to that i appreciate that explanation because i think it just goes to how much stock we can put in an oci rating but then once we get on site once we begin to do the construction it doesn't mean that that's an absolute science that there may be some things that once you get into it like you said you take the top layer off it may look you're looking at the base you guys do this all the time hey it looks like in our professional judgment we can do this so oci gives us a good uh first step but once we get into it but i appreciate uh i appreciate that question number one and number two just your explanation that you're working on making sure the documentation is in line thank you i'm sorry go ahead yes on that so that that's great i'm just making sure that it wasn't something where the geotech said one thing and then one other thing was done and we were going to have to be making up for it later on so i appreciate the clarification and the explanation for that um and so on the so most of it just seemed like it was communication and data and um documentation correct in this report and so all of that has been handled or we are in the process we we've fixed a lot implemented a lot and we're still ongoing with all the updates and everything else and getting everything in place so that we can we can track everything appropriately and make sure that we are not already but just internally too that we can make sure that we know where everything is and have everything easily available so anybody can get it and see it when needed yeah i appreciate that and this is very good for people to see that we are on top in doing the things we need to do especially since there's another bond coming up so we'll be prepared for that um last question um do we need another inspector so there's different ways that we've that we look at this option you know um and we're going through with the inspector's engineering and management and trying to uh put in place the proper procedure for this so we do this every day we go through and do this and you always need an exterior um auditor or somebody from a somebody from a different department that doesn't have the stake in it to verify and check so we're looking at different options of either you know um an extra inspector inspecting every single road or we're looking at quality spot checks as we go through um you know our supervisors are very good and they know what they're doing and then our manager comes out and verifies it we're working on the sign-off sheets as they come through and they say okay we've we've got to this point here it is we'll sign off on it as we go and then implementing spot checks on how we go through or we're still looking at whether or not we want to go the full depth and get all the inspections in but we were in those in those talks right now in line with what daniel was just mentioning uh we've also changed our uh in the process of changing how much workload our right away inspectors actually have so we had increased the total number of right away inspectors which is where the vast majority of this inspections would come from we had three total uh they were also trying to do a vast majority of intake so actually physical paperwork instead of being an inspector that is being shifted over development services so all permits go through one desk it's still a process we're working through that as well but that'll free up more time so as opposed to going and hiring another inspector we anticipate being able to have three fully engaged right away inspectors instead of two and really one part-time okay thank you thank you mayor that's all oh you bet yes councilmember barbara i actually want to ask about right of way and i'd be happy to get your opinion but it might also be you might feel more whoever feels more appropriate answering it y'all decide um so the right of way inspection you know that involves making sure that there's compliance with the current right of way laws but was you know to your knowledge and maybe you prefer for the auditors to talk about it uh you know was there uh did the audit also look at i can't remember seeing anything i was just trying to skim and to look for a right of words right away that any consideration was given to where our current right of way law law might be hold us open to certain kinds of risk you know was that considered or is that a separate issue we we did an audit of utility street cuts that i believe we already presented to you i would have to go back and okay so that was that was with yeah okay and that makes sense because yeah yeah as part of that we looked at um the city's compliance with our right of way standards and the right of way inspectors and their process and how are they how they're handling paperwork and so it was again compliance with our existing with the city's existing right of way standards yes and we did look a little bit at the uh the the the standards that exist and if they how do they compare to best practices but we're non-engineers so we don't have the complete expertise on that okay thanks and it's my understanding that this issue is going to be coming before us at some point the right of way i'm looking now at todd the right of way ordinance excellent yeah so i look forward to that thanks any other questions mayor i would just like to it's fine i just like to thank madison for this report but i think it's important for council member briggs to point it out to remember that todd daniel and ethan have been on this project for less than two years now reaching back catching up the 2012 24 bond packages you know putting bundles together getting accounting reporting um systems in place as well as setting up procedures and standard operating procedures and documentation procedures that didn't exist so i think it's important that while we're finding ways that we can continue improving this they have basically built this from the ground up in less than two years and and have got us in a position where we could even talk about adding more projects to a future bond program so i don't want that to escape when we kind of find some process improvements what they've done in the last two years is pretty impressive and i just didn't want that to escape and i i'm really happy to see that they've already addressed so many of her concerns so thank you for that next item will be agenda agenda item 3c receive report hold discussion give extra staff direction regarding an internal audit of the accounts payable division hello i'm madison rocha i'll be presenting um the our audit of accounts payable um so this audit evaluated the city's ability to ensure payments to suppliers are made appropriately by evaluating the vendor payment process which is primarily the responsibility of the accounts payable function almost all purchases made by the city are validated through this process before being dispersed so most simply the vendor payment process can be divided into two steps the verification of the obligation to pay and disbursement of payments generally accounts payable staff are responsible for verifying the city's obligation to pay by verifying that the price and quantity on the purchase approval purchase receipt and invoice match the verification procedures vary by payment type though generally all three components of the obligation to pay should exist and this control is generally called a three-way match each week ap staff then prepare the payments which are reviewed by accounting before being dispersed through one of three methods check ach or wire transfer we found that controls over the verification of payments ensured compliance with the city's policies and disbursement controls were generally adequate however we did identify some areas where strengthening controls could further mitigate risk so to begin the city has established established a contract with staples for almost all of its office supply needs through this contract employees are allowed to go online and purchase items directly from staples without documenting approval in addition those staples typically provides a receipt these are not always stored and do not always indicate who received the goods these issues are compounded because access to the staples website is not closely monitored or managed finally because staples purchases do not go through the po process ap staff must manually input each invoice into the city's financial system this is particularly difficult because the city receives a staples invoice each time goods are delivered even if they are from the same order without documentation of purchase approvals or receipt it is very difficult for ap staff to verify the city's obligation to pay staples purchases any attempt to verify this obligation is complicated by the time it takes to process staples invoices combined these control weaknesses greatly increase the risk that an employee may order something from staples for personal use or that the city may spend more money than necessary on office supplies according to management's response ap and procurement staff are currently working together to tighten this process and future staples purchases will include a purchase order number so next we found that the city's purchase order three-way match verification could be improved typically this control requires that the quantity and price agreed upon through the purchase order matched the quantity received on the receiving document and the amount charged on the invoice as shown in the table however we found that the city's system requires the employee creating the receiving document to enter price instead of quantity this requirement potentially forces the employee to wait until they receive the invoice to document the receipt bypassing the three-way match control in addition centralizing the receiving document entry increases the chance that goods or services that have not been received will be paid these weaknesses are particularly relevant since the purchase order verification process is considered to be automated meaning that ap staff perform limited review of uploaded supporting documentation such as the purchase order packing slip if they even receive it according to management's response the new ap policies and procedures manual will require department personnel to upload an image of the receiving document as reference for staff when processing payments finally we found that controls over check requisitions and distributions were weaker than best practices suggest particularly any employee could request a check under five thousand dollars without additional approval while ap staff typically require an invoice for these types of payments this control does not provide adequate evidence of the obligation to pay in addition ap practices allowed employees and suppliers to collect checks directly from ap including allowing employees to collect checks for suppliers ap staff did require identification before releasing a check however this this is a relatively weak control considering the ease of requesting a check together these two control weaknesses made it relatively easy for an employee to fraudulently request and collect a payment staff expects to correct these issues by the beginning of the fiscal year in addition to the three areas discussed previously we identified several administrative issues as shown on the screen as you can see the department has already begun addressing these issues with the exception of duplicate payment controls regarding this issue ap staff must rely on employees or suppliers to notify them if an invoice was already paid via p card this is because p card purchases are not recorded in jd edwards and thus data integration in comparison is difficult staff are aware of this issue and are working to develop a viable process for checking that a received invoice has not been paid via p card in summary we issued a total of 13 recommendations the division concurred with 12 of these and partially concurred with the remaining one as shown on the slide and after reviewing their written response we believe management will underlie or address the underlying issues in these areas however we'll verify in a follow-up audit in the future and now i'll open the floor i just have one um do you believe in the rfp process some of that data entry could be managed so when it goes out to a request for bidders for office supplies could could that be tailored such that we could capture what we need to make it more easy to to process in does that make sense so if we in in rfp if we said we want receipts that have order numbers that have you know tracking numbers that are in a digital format you know those type prerequisites that would then easily fall into this problem is there a way to for office supplies in particular um we so we did discuss with we did talk to staples and they told us that we could work out some of the billing issues if we if we just talk to them basically um and i believe that staff is working on that i'm not sure um so i don't know that we'd have to do it through the rfp process in particular um do you want to speak on this cassie hello i'm cassie ogden director of procurement and compliance and we did talk to staples about the way that they bill us and they have agreed to change their billing method and then as well as adding the step to have the supervisor approve the purchase before it's actually um approved through staples so we've we've adjusted both of those items that were brought up in the audit okay thank you thanks yeah just an appreciative comment i remember when we reviewed this in audit committee there was sort of a question about whether you could really get staples big staples to do something different for just city of denton and apparently we were able to get them to do it so great thank you very much appreciate it thank you we'll move on to our next agenda item which is 3d receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the potential restriction of on street parking along the west side of hinkle drive between winsor drive and university drive just a moment good afternoon brian yon city traffic engineer i'm here to talk today about hinkle and the blank canvas that we're about to have in approximately four months and how we want to paint that canvas so whenever we reconstruct or repay the street traffic engineers have the that's the fun part of their job one of the fun parts of our job is we get to review what that street was and what we want it to be so we can review what we old practices and we can implement new policies and objectives that might have evolved since the last time that street was paved in this particular instance we're looking at the cross section the the street is going to be about the same as it was before but how do we want to paint that street and what is the best and highest use for that pavement so the project extends from windsor to university primarily land uses are include residential and some small amounts of commercial as you get closer to university the last couple hundred feet have has commercial on both sides the existing this probably should say the previous roadway because right now it's kind of torn up but we've had about 40 to 42 feet of pavement face to face we had an on street parking lane on the west side the entire length of the roadway we had six foot bike lanes on both sides without protection they were just a painted bike lane on the east side and the painted bike lane adjacent to the parking lane on the west side and in that parking the primary observed accumulation of curve toward the south end of the project where the residential land uses actually have driveways that access hinkle so the future roadway when this is when this project is done again we're going to have about 40 to 42 feet of pavement we're introducing what we call a mini roundabout at mimosa there's a new residential development that's going to go in kind of the north excuse me northwest portion of hinkle just south of hens or windsor that that roundabout is it impacts what we can do because we've got a different kind of circulation it's not an all-way stop it's not an uncontrolled we've got a rotary circulation pattern in there that we've got to accommodate so that's going to temper some of the options that we have for bike lanes and parking just a little bit of background we took this item to a public meeting with the neighborhood homeowners and businesses impacted last december 50 to 60 attendees out of that very strong overwhelm i would say over a very strong response in favor of the bike lanes and some four to five homeowners that were fairly adamant about wanting to retain that parking immediately after that public meeting we took this to the transportation safety commission and after the staff presentation of its two options one is exactly what it was the parking lane and two bike lanes and then a an option that had two protected bike lanes so in enhancing the bike safety the commission chose to take no action so we basically sent staff back to gain gather a little bit more information and provide some alternatives that possibly combined the retention of the parking if not all of it at least where the observed parking occurred and the retention of the bike lanes so staffs come today with three options option one is the previous marking so we retain the parking lane on the west side the entire length of the way and we retain the six foot bike lanes um on both sides of oh no go ahead of hinkle from winter to university before we get into options i just want to see if there are any questions before we get into this phase because it's sort of pretty well delineated council member briggs my question was didn't the traffic safety commission see this again recently yes and i'll get that as soon as i prevent go through the options we'll um we did we took it to him last night okay we're not asking for a recommendation but we did solicit an opinion basically and we do have some response information from the commission okay thank you i just clarify thank you we'll also uh further in the presentation address any options for sidewalks on either side of hinkle if not might want to bring that right bring that so it's a question but yeah if it's later on the presentation i don't want to well i'll go ahead and we'll answer that now because we did not look at the extension of sidewalks this what we focused on was just between the curb and how we utilize that payment and the markings that are associated with okay so some of the elements of the project we took as a given we can certainly go back and revisit those um the sidewalk is not continuous between university and and winzer and we also took the roundabout as a given that design is complete and they're under construction so again if we want to revisit some of these issues uh now's the time now's the time okay all right all right sorry okay no problem so option one again putting back what was there option two and this is the these two options were what was presented in december you get much wider bike lanes we do away with the parking completely so there's no on street parking on hinkle but you've got two protected or buffered bike lanes the entire length of the project so we enhance we go from a six foot bike lane to about a 10 foot bike lane with a and we are incorporating a protective device an actual physical vertical visual barrier between the travel lane and the bike lane and then this is the option this option three where it's kind of a hybrid so again we we observe the parking primarily on the south end of the project greenbrier to amherst and that in that area where those homes that have those driveways utilize that for on street parking this option includes the protected bike lanes from winzer to green bar and then we transition from greenbrier either to amherst or all the way to university with a hybrid where we put the parking on the west side we narrow the bike lanes to accommodate that but we still provide a buffer now we looked at two options and you'll see on the the bottom half of this slide the parking is next to the travel lane and the bike lane is next to the curb lane there's we looked at swapping those we chose this as a as the item to consider because it offers the greatest protection to the cyclist so you have and i'll go through some pros and cons on the next slide but we did look at both of those options and we prefer to move forward with this if we're going to provide parking and a bike lane this is the one to look at so here's kind of a comparison option one the pros we retain the bike lane and we retain the parking lane now some people may think one or both of those is a con but if we look at holistically for our streets to serve all users we're going to list them as a as a pro the cons here are the bike lanes are unprotected they're still six foot wide and there's nothing between the travel lane and the bike lane and then on on the southbound bike lane you still have this door swing hazard if a park if a car parks bicycles coming in the bike lane and the driver opens the door we've got a conflict between the open door and the cyclist so option two and this is staff's recommendation is the protected bike lanes where we have no parking we don't have that door swing conflict we've got wider bike lanes we've got a buffered and a protected device separating the travel lane and the bike lane the only con again we lose the parking so somebody who's that is sensitive to that parking this will be negative for them and then option three is that hybrid the the pros there we've got the bike lane the bike lanes are protected albeit on the southbound southwest side they're protected by a parked car and we do retain parking where we think it's needed the cons are that the southbound bike lane is unprotected in a sense that you still have an opportunity for a door swing but from a passenger side so you know always going to have a driver in the car but we don't well we're not always going to have a passenger so that's it's kind of a trade-off it's it's better but it's still not good and then the real negative in this is that the bike lanes go from nine to about six feet so and that includes the buffer area in the protected device so those are the three options again staff is in favor of option two the traffic safety commission last night voiced a general consensus for option two as well we did have a commissioner that was interested in pursuing option three but the general consensus was option two is the preferred option and with that i'll take any questions mayor pro tem we'll start on this side mayor pro tem thank you so quickly um who is the who's the benefactor of the parking who is that designed to help oh strictly the homeowners so the homeowners on that corner of hinkle like so maybe round numbers 10 houses yes okay got it and then um do you know how much space is needed if you're turning out so you're going to turn a car into your own lane do you know how much space the reason i ask is because you have a few driveway segments there along the way i don't i don't know how many account just a handful but i'm thinking maybe in those instances if we could maybe design something where it narrows one just to raise awareness so the cyclist knows hey there's a driveway coming up visually and then to the driver is forced to kind of know hey i got to turn into my own lane and be careful of cyclists that type thing so it gives kind of some visual cues for both entities right and there are i don't i don't know if that's enough space to i don't know how much space is needed for a car to turn out but that's that's a concern of mine but the answer to my my my suggestion is option two i just think i don't i don't know that there's enough houses to warrant parking on the street so let me voice one more concern that we had when you have the parking one of the reasons we didn't like the parking against the curb is that and whether you have it against the curb or adjacent to the part of the travel lane when you're backing out of a driveway it creates a sight distance issue and so even though we've moved it away from the curb the the person backing out can see the cyclist coming you still have this parked car potentially between you and the oncoming traffic so with the narrow lanes and i'll say they're narrow 11-foot lanes backing a car out into an 11-foot lane with a car parked close to your driveway becomes much more of a challenge as well that's another reason why we prefer option two thank you councillor melzer on the whole i support the recommendation with a couple of comments one is this is just anecdotally from talking to to people who live in the area and you've talked to more of them than i have i hear people don't generally park there anyway um uh however because the sidewalk only goes up to good sam you know that that parking lane it becomes like a de facto safe walking area for families and kids going up to the park so i think it's it's kind of essential that as we go to to that we also extend the sidewalk the rest of the way down down hinkle um uh thirdly i would just say probably worth giving a heads up or having a conversation maybe it's already happened to good sam my understanding is that kind of the only time people do see parking along there is when on the rare occasions when there's a special event at good sam's then there's overflow so but i imagine if they you know if they know this is coming yeah they might have ways to address it so uh that's just a suggestion and lastly i uh i want to express first appreciation for the fact that there is such a thing as this interactive construction map it saved me asking all questions many times uh but it's it seems to suggest this project will be done october 12th which i don't think is correct so heads up i've heard otherwise i've heard we've got about close to three to four months of construction so so uh you know i've had to defend your honor i'd say i'm sure it's going to be done but anyway just just you know so so uh two with sidewalk councilmember any questions come councilmember i was just going around the horn so i didn't see your and now oh yeah no sure yeah um yeah i i support uh number two you know i would like uh so i've heard that there are some members of the public you know who who came here uh think wanting to speak on this this issue is this the issue i've already i've already spoken to them about that yeah okay okay it was yeah um and there was because there's been um you know some people including myself are not sure to what extent the new law allows people to speak at work sessions or not so anyway i would like to know know more about that i'm i always try to read minds of people and they're sitting there i'm not a very good mind reader unfortunately so um but option two sounds sounds good to me you know my concern would be you know just the question of where people who want the parking where they where they live and seeing that um that their needs are met councilman ryan thank you mayor um i can be supportive of option two uh the one question i do kind of wonder about if we're up to nine to ten foot lanes on both sides for bikes have we looked at or is this just unfeasible to do a bike road on one side of the road by traveling both directions and then the other side of the road is is the driving because to me that gives you it's going to lower your long-term maintenance when you've got that divider in there you know when those get knocked down you only have one side of the road that you're putting those up so yes yes we did and this is the nuance when i talked about the uh the roundabout that's going in so the way the roundabout is designed is the bike lanes and it was designed with the concept of a bike lane on each side so they designed this roundabout so that the bike lanes exit the bike lane they get up onto a sidewalk they cross the side street basically a little bit away from the roundabout and then they come back when you're talking about a recreational user sending them through a mini roundabout is probably not what you want to do so we actually take the bikes off of the roadway put them on a sidewalk and then bring them back to do that for a two-way cycle track or a two-way bike path is much more difficult the other issue we've got if is that those two-way cycle paths are much more challenging when you come to a driveway to a public street because you've got two-way traffic and two-way traffic versus one-way traffic it's just most cyclists prefer one way we i've pitched a two-way cycle track and cycle path a number of times and the cyclists almost always well every every time i've pitched it they wanted two one-way roadways and that's what we heard last night we had a couple of people speak relative to this topic and they wanted they wanted option two as well and we talked about the two-way the possibility or that we did in fact consider a two-way on one side yes so i appreciate this item coming back i know that when we were discussing the new development the parking was a kind of a shock to all of us that it was going to be included and so i appreciate staff getting the options and getting it back to us very quickly part of my concern then was that if parking was allowed especially up towards the development with the recent approval of the dog park and the tennis park all of that parking since there's not a new parking lot would just flow into hinkle and and into the neighborhood and so i appreciate option two is the one that i'm i'm in favor of i do not um i have seen though the the parking lane and the drive as a road so in the past when those lines were kind of messed up i've seen somebody use that parking lane as another driving lane and so that's another reason why i was concerned because it was very dangerous to people who were on bicycles or or walking there to have a car and that think that it was an extra driving lane um let's see and as far as the the parking goes any of the houses that have there's only one house that front face is um hinkle as far as i know the rest of them are our side and back which have regular roads that front their houses so that if they need that extra area to park they have that so i'm not that concerned about removing parking down in the the residential area but council member mayor pritcham hudspeth does bring up a point about driveways and that was a another question i had about the driveway concern about you know people pulling out or backing out and i guess i heard you say that you've already considered that um for cyclists that are driving or riding their bikes right so there are pavement marking treatments and signage that we that are standard for bike lanes and in the driveway issue public streets and driveways so those will all be part of this is the renderings i have here are just some typical cross sections it's not not intended to show you everything that we'll have to put out there um but having having removed the parking a lot of the obstructions or the conflict between the cyclists and the people backing out of their driveway or turning into their driveway is eliminated so that's that was the reason why we looked at the again how what do we do with the parking and and because either you have it against the curb or you have it against the travel lane it causes a sight distance for somebody so the bicycles on the inside if the parked cars by the travel lane and that means that somebody turning into their driveway can't see the cyclist so just one more comment and actually an asked staff i think i've heard other people talk about sidewalks but if we look at it um the road with the roundabout and the the protected bike lanes and um you know the nice new road it's almost a really nice complete street i mean it's it's a road that that you can see that's being designed for um in the future basically it's really great with a stop sign there and if we had a sidewalk it would be a great connection um for all of the people that live down towards university to you know walk up straight to enjoy our new facilities so i'm gonna i think i have somebody who wants to talk to sidewalks but if the sidewalks are not an issue if we're talking about we've got a 10 foot space for a dedicated bike lane we can narrow that buffer which is in option two is shown as a 10 as a four-foot buffer we can narrow that and you can consider an on-street shared ped bike i've done this before as well or if you don't have if sidewalks aren't feasible we can because we've got a protective device and not just a painted stripe we can actually mingle the peds and the cyclist that's just another option well yeah and i want to put a plug in i mean we're going to spend how much money on this project between the utility cost relocation or the utility upgrade the street i mean we're spending millions of dollars on this project is that close yes i believe it was somewhere in excess of eight or nine million dollars eight or nine million dollars so i would really encourage staff to figure out a way and this is part of it with the bike line but i have to be honest when i'm driving down eagle drive and i see that dedicated pedestrian lane people on bicycles but then people are either jogging or running or walking they are literally in the road i mean they've got a white line and that's it and i know there'll be some barriers so i would really like to look at is there a way that we can get a true sidewalk extension so we are looking at that option so the development to the on the northwest segment they are putting in sidewalks on that side we are trying to figure out how to connect all the remaining right away with the funding that we have left on the project so there's two extents right total cost to get sidewalks up both sides and there's right away questions there's a whole host of items that we'd have to get to but how can we get a sidewalk in with the current right away we are working through that in a change order right now to get that in and provide a pathway all the way north along that street sure and i would say that based upon at least you've got good sam on the east side you've got those large neighborhoods on the east side you got the new one coming in but whatever we do if there's sidewalks on both sides if there's only one sidewalk on the west side we've got to provide some kind of controlled crossing i mean i just think it's really important with this street to go ahead and figure out what we need to do to make it pedestrian friendly as well because this is going to be our our shot at it and i'd hate to spend all this money and then we don't have a connectivity or we're putting people out in the street walking down the street so and i know pre tam's group is working on okay that solution right now when do you think when do you think we would have some kind of idea of the different options for that and maybe funding sources and and things such as that so let me pull up a plan i'll quickly show you what our plans are because i know that the people who are here that's one of their their concerns and their issues is how do you know we get sidewalks that will go up to university drive not necessarily having to cross those people on the east side of hinkle not having to cross that busy road uh that's two lanes and so forth so i i'd like to have some information on that so currently if you see there is a nice sidewalk on the east side that continuously goes all the way to good the entrance and then it turns around and goes to good sam that's okay so what we're proposing and this is a short term as part of this project is extending that sidewalk that ends here we will be extending that as part of this project to this driveway here and then there will be a crossing that connects this piece of sidewalk further down and then this intersection will have a crossing that will allow pedestrians to go over and this sidewalk will continue and tie into the new sidewalk for fireside development that will then connect to this intersection all the way up to the park so but how will the people who live magnolia north ridge all those that want to that want to walk there's not a sidewalk there obviously because right of way issues is that right currently there is no sidewalk on this side and that's a project that we can look at that's a long-term project we do not have we don't know the right of way implications there are a lot of trees and all the other with it's not a project that we've identified so how then once the sidewalk is on the fireside side correct and and if people who are on the east side are walking on the west side how do they get back over to their neighborhood in a safe in a safe way so at mimosa there is a roundabout and there will be a crossing for pedestrians that these sidewalks that will go around will be the bike lanes move into that sidewalk wider path area go around so that area this intersection will be the key to crossover and so then is it my understanding that then going down equal on the east side based upon you're saying it's a nine foot wide bike lane or a ten foot outside stripe being the buffer oh it's microphone yes i'm sorry yeah thank you so so right now the buffers are shown at four we've done a little bit of research we can narrow those to two and still provide adequate safety as long as we've got those protected devices down the middle so that gives us about a about an eight foot bike lane are these protected devices these little plastic things that sort of there's a there's a number of that's okay that's what's shown in this but there's a number of different devices and you have to be careful what you pick because you don't necessarily want to put a curb because then you've got some debris collection issues in the bike lane itself and you don't want to provide something that's going to be a hazard to the cyclists themselves there's little things they call an armadillo you may have seen them cyclists don't like that we're going to put a protective device i don't know that we can say which one right the bollards are certainly an option they're the least of least costly and probably the most resilient whether or not they actually protect is another you know that's an opinion but a lot of places use them so it is a visual barrier versus a physical barrier but they're still considered a protective device if you could go back to the the map the overhead shot the the aerial so uh pretend you're talking about you'll have a roundabout at which one mimosa and then if you'll show where the go back down towards good sam i just want to see what kind of distance we're talking about so you're going to have a crossing there and as that is that going to be one of those crossings with a blinking light or one of those kinds of things okay press the button and people are supposed to stop all right so then when you go up to the roundabout which is right here so they got to cross traffic somewhere how does that is is there a is there a cross is there a signal crossing is it is it just okay there's no cars coming i'm just going to go ahead and go or how's that regulated in a roundabout how's a sidewalk regulated in a roundabout as far as either so for safety it's going to be something very similar to the southern crossing it'll have the led okay lights with push button okay we simply we move those a little bit further good for the roundabout so that as the cars so they're not off there they're not on that they're off the they're on the side correct they're not they're not close up to the circle at least on the departure so that the driver has a chance to get his eye focused back on the lane before the pedestrian steps off the curb so it'll be an active device very much like what you've we talked about on the good sam crossing so at the end of the so between mimosa and winsor the sidewalk that's going down the segment between mimosa and winsor there's not going to be any crosswalk between there so then is the bike lane on the east side of hinkle going to be sufficient to provide some type of pedestrian availability or access to where because if you cross mimosa on the if you cross over hinkle to mimosa on the roundabout and you still want to walk north right you're either walking in somebody's yard or are you are you in the bike lane is that is that you're just trying to explore all the options because we don't want to get it done and then all of a sudden somebody comes and says well why don't y'all do it 80 percent but we yeah the unfortunate piece with hinkle was it wasn't designed with a we have come back around and tried to make it as kind of street as possible yes given the timelines that we had to get it to construction so what we're attempting to do here is kind of it's a two-step right so it's it's how do i provide the maximum amount of pedestrian capability and bicycle capacity it's not where we want it to be long term sure but there's significant challenges from a right away perspective to complete the sidewalk yeah so yes we would anticipate that initially you would utilize the bike lanes for some of that pedestrian capacity along hinkle where we don't have the sidewalks okay but then what what i'm also telling you is we're not stopping there no i understand continuing to go forward more involved the timelines are just not going to match up to get the right away and sidewalks and there's just significant hurdles actually getting it done within the current project but it's it's much improved correct once this is finished i mean you'll only have that one segment from um uh well really you got a sidewalk all the way to winter but getting over you've got that one part at mimosa and then you've got to walk along the the bike path or you can whatever they're doing now i'm not sure what they're doing now but all right well that's helpful and and we'll probably get some feedback uh from from uh people who are listening on that and and hopefully that'll be helpful as well okay thank you yes councilmemorometer can i ask you oh i'm sorry i'm sorry go ahead can i ask what the i think with the current speed limit is now because it's so clogged up with construction and things that i zero right now that's what exactly that's why i'm so so i believe it's 35 35 is yeah 35 is the plan yeah and and are there plans for uh you know speed bumps or you know besides the roundabout i know the roundabout the idea is to slow down traffic as well so the roundabout does provide that traffic calming that helps slow the speeds the roundabouts are designed to keep speeds at around 20 miles an hour or less as you move through it depends on the application some of the roundabouts that go on a larger roadway would be 25 miles an hour or less but in this instance you can be at the 20 mile an hour mile a mile an hour zone and it would it causes you to slow down because there are physical barriers in your way as a driver you must slow down so that you don't end up going over the curb and damaging your own vehicle that helps to break up the speeds now what we will be doing is monitoring speeds throughout the corridor after the roadway is built and we understand what's happening north and south of that roundabout at that point we can look at alternatives but in some of this will shake out in the end when we get done with the road okay thanks and my other question was um you know can you speak to uh because we really we don't have uh much by way of protected protect truly protected bike lanes in this sense here yet in denton um can you but can you speak to how pedestrians and bikes can could use the bike lane at the same time i'm thinking of a street light for instance in on uh noddingham which is kind of a similar just a straight through street come on let brain take this oh excellent uh you know that where you know people people speed on that street um and there's residents there's kids there you know people want to cross to the park it's not a identical situation it's one similar situation i could think of um so you've got a bike lane there that uh people use as this that's not protected that people pedestrians use as a sidewalk when there is no sidewalk but also cars can get in there too but in the protected bike lane cars can't get in there but so what do you do when there's a pedestrian and a bike or bikes together and pedestrians together at the same time so on this project specifically because we've got so much room there's two ways one you can just stripe it as a very wide lane it's basically serves as a shared path but it's on street or if we narrow that buffer to the minimum which is about an 18 inch buffer with those with some kind of a barrier down the center of it we actually have room to stripe if you want to have and some some places do they'll have a they'll have a line and they'll have a bike symbol on one side and a ped symbol on the other so you can actually create dedicated and designated rights of way within that protected bike lane yeah and then it would be a a truly protected pedestrian lane unlike you know on on nodding i mean i don't feel comfortable my kids walking down there because cars use it but this one cars couldn't uh so yeah i'd be curious to know um you know when it comes to that time whenever that time is right because we don't have to decide on the striping issue now i think the discussion here is just whether or not the park exactly exactly exactly so you know it when it comes to that i'd be curious to know what the what the the residents in in the general area uh you know how they would feel about that issue i would want their their input when it when it came to that mayor pro tem thank you um question pre-town uh what are the state or i i forget who manages that the the timing to cross you know like the crosswalk timers there's a state mandate i'm assuming i think 15 seconds is that is there something so it's typically uh mandated for a three uh feet per second walking speed so depending on how much you're walking or what uh if depending on the total distance from curb to curb that's how we determine at each of these locations if if a street is really wider than 50 or 60 feet depending on that we use the speed and just calculate the seconds of that flashing moment so that's what we would do here and do they allow any variables is there any exceptions to that to give more time maybe close to a facility such as good samaritan or so is there other ways to kind of max that out to make sure yes we can do that we can extend the timing so that it matches a slower speed and that way you know senior citizens or people with disabilities can get get across right okay yes thank you just one quick comment so we were talking about speed and then the roundabout was brought up and i just wanted to give staff props here because that came up in the neighborhood meeting when they were concerned the um fireside exit was going to directly line up with mimosa and so that would have cars going directly across back and forth back and forth and so they came up with this idea so that the option to go back and forth really fast over there um would be non-existent and so that was a very clever way to come up with some traffic controls for that new area as well as speed control so i just wanted to go ahead and say that in here so that's sure all right so uh the primary issue here is is the is choosing an option of course we talked about sidewalks and pedestrian and bicycle lanes as part of that discussion to determine the parking requirements trying to get Aaron to realize that we've still been in posting um so what i've heard seems to be option two which was a recommended option a consensus of that and um so i would say that's the direction given also the other comments that you've heard about speed control traffic control pedestrian access and so all that so it's probably a little bit longer than what y'all had anticipated in the meeting but i think it's good to get all this out so that as we move forward we can do the best we can with the resources we have which i know you guys are doing so i really do appreciate that any other questions or comments yes mayor pro tem and then yes will the pedestrian component come back to us i i believe so uh go ahead if you're talking about the expanded sidewalk capacity or i'm just trying to figure out the use of the bike lane it's understanding now that we're going to take away parking have a 10-foot bike lane the use of that we can bring that back in a variety of ways we isr could come back as a work session however you would like to see that yeah no i'll just send an email that says i would prefer uh both uses in one lane without the paint because when we get the sidewalk you have to take the paint up so let's just use both uses and be done with it but i'll send that an email i don't want to talk about it now because we're not posted for it okay all right oh yeah just something to add to add to that you know i think it would be neat when that does happen to have this sidewalk issue be discussed at the same time because there seem to be two different you know so solutions that not necessarily incompatible but two different ways of addressing pedestrian issues so kind of pedestrian issues in this area discussion okay all right thank you appreciate it we're going to move on we're just going to plow through agenda item e uh receive report hold discussion give staff direction on pending city council request for information i apologize billy didn't load this up like i thought he did uh can y'all give me one minute to go grab the presentation oh sure yeah you bet yeah we'll just take a five minute break right quick yeah no no you're good we need to take one anyway welcome back to this meeting of the dent city council on tuesday october the eighth 2019 it is uh 217 we're on our last work session agenda item 2e just as sort of housekeeping for the council uh because we won't have a full contingency of council members here we've moved we're going to move the reviews for the personnel to a meeting when we can have a full contingency and that will be be determined and also what we can do is if y'all want we can go straight into closed session we can go ahead and wrap up the special called session do the closed session items at the end of that and i think there's some real estate that needs to two real estate trans two properties but we'll yes go ahead there's just one real estate the other was a a closed session for the gas wells a placeholder yeah okay all right so that's sort of the plan unless i hear objections so we'll move forward oh yes council member munser yeah i think if there are uh you have people planning to speak uh you know citizens sure be helpful to do the the special session then do the closed session at the end just because otherwise they end up waiting around they don't know when to come back yeah i think that's what i said do the closed session at the end or you're saying yeah yeah yeah yeah okay all right all right okay all right good afternoon mayor and council uh i apologize for uh that delay there but i'm here for your uh pending council request for information work session um we will uh introduce each one and the elected official that made the request will have up to one minute to describe and justify their request and then the remaining elected officials will have up to one minute to provide feedback and indicate support and then staff will respond uh where consensus of council is established today we have three to review uh item number one is a monument to women's interracial fellowship it was uh requested by council member melter on september 11th and i'll let him take over yeah and actually uh fine with me if people want to go straight to a resolution or you know work session whatever they want uh so the women's interracial fellowship and dent is denton's unique contribution to the history of civil rights for those who don't know this was a group of equal numbers of black and white dentin women who met in the mid 1960s initially so their children would be prepared for the integration of the schools they wound up successfully breaking the color barrier in local employment in street paving and at lunch counters through their courage advocacy and moral example it's a positive teachable story that tells about the aspirations of denton and it recognizes our heroic women so rarely represented in public monuments fortunately many are still with us i propose we direct the public art committee to promptly consider a suitable location and concept for a sculpture honoring their role in dent history okay yes because members so i'm in favor of um discussing that i think it would be great we could either discuss the the public art item in a work session or we can i'm definitely in favor of a resolution as well so either one of those or both councilmember obiter um i feel very indebted uh to the women of that fellowship and i think it's important that we we honor them in some way i'm definitely open uh to that discussion either for a monument or a resolution or some something else i appreciate your bringing this to our kitchen anyone else i oh may pretend yeah i'd be interested in reading more about what what the goal is what's to be captured what what is the what are the highlights that that would be kind of one didn't didn't sidricka to look to accomplish yes i uh i'm not opposed to further discussion i'd like to get some type of informal staff report just showing some history you know who was involved those kinds of things and then also some some options on how to engage the public in this as well because i think that's something that we'd certainly would want to engage those that are still here that were part of that and some of the benefits and things so i think it's i think to move directly towards either a work session or or some type of resolution i think i'd like to have it more comprehensive so i don't i don't mind further in discussion i'd like to just have some basis of data that we can then move forward springboard from there on what's the best path forward to to maximize what we're really trying to accomplish so is that okay to move forward with an informal staff report to then get some data and then we can come back and see how we want to engage the public and so forth so i'm okay i'm almost out of time yeah all right okay all right thank you item number two is criminal trespassing on public property requested by council member armator this is an informal staff report request that's going to take uh anticipated over two hours in order to complete this staff will have to go through manually go through about 3000 hard copy records on file and process those find out the information and then kind of analyze that for for a report so it's anticipated that it's going to take between 50 and 60 hours to complete did you say 50 and 60 yes sir okay so thank you um when you talk to people uh who are living on the street people experiencing homelessness about what are you know some of their biggest concerns a number of them will tell you it's getting ct that means getting a criminal trespass um and this term is used broadly to refer to either a warning or an actual citation and there are a certain number of warnings leading up to citations i've asked in the past for uh citations and we've got actually some data on that um but this is something that i think it would benefit the police department to be keeping track of anyway once this research can be done to see the number of warnings that have been issued um and where they get issued then uh we'll be able to continue keeping track of this data it's important data um and i have already requested a moratorium on this practice you know it's been declared unconstitutional by another district scott uh supreme supreme court district so time all right comments council member breaks i'm i'm interested in in seeing the data just to see if it's um significant or not um so i'm okay with the staff report uh data and uh examples from you know 30 sort of salient examples from other cities how it's you know how it's been handled i'm struggling i can't support the request as it's presented on this item because it says criminal trespass on public property it doesn't i don't know what the parameters are i don't know what the years are um i don't know if the 50 or 60 hours is just for one year if it's going back 10 years i need more data on the request in order to formulate an opinion i don't have an issue well i can't say i don't have an issue i don't i don't know exactly what the data is i mean what what the parameters are so if if you could somebody could provide that somewhere but as it's represented here i can't i i can't say i want to have a discussion on something i don't even know what the scope is so i'm not opposed to discussion i just want to understand what are the guard rails that we're looking at as far as i mean 50 or 60 hours that's a lot of time uh you know if it's if that's five years why do we need to go back five years so that's that's my position on it anybody else okay all right um yeah it i may put in a request for that data or for those that those additional clarifications just so that we can try to get those okay thank you and item number three today is a request of a work session to discuss solid waste rates and recent changes in the residential curbside program it was requested by council member briggs and on september 26th i will turn it over so this is a work session request based on feedback received so far from the community and so i'm just going to go through some points here first lawn craft bags are very expensive and they are more expensive than i was aware of and they are i guess they're getting more expensive and for those who have no room to store cart it's their only option and the city used to have rolls of plastic bags for purchase at the fire stations and at solid waste and i'm wondering if we could buy those craft bags in bulk and do the same with craft bags as a to help our residents out or as a benefit and then i also like to discuss other options besides calling in which are more convenient as in a website opt-in or apt especially if they have to call in every time there's brush as well as opt-in so and then also it has been pointed out that they are our residents customers are still experiencing the same rate there's no there's a reduction of service but those who do not opt in are still paying the same rate for less service and so i would just like to discuss that okay council member armature yeah i'm happy to have that discussion i believe that came up when we discussed the issue of providing those craft bags i think that that would be really great that's my mustard um i've certainly uh heard comments uh about the complexity of having to manage calling in each time and you know maybe there's just a moment to just say learning so far and recommendations right that's a continuous process i think you know i'm not sure if we're right at that point but we might be i'm open to hearing what staff thinks we've already learned what we might improve yes mayor pro tem yeah no i'd be i'd be open to a work session uh on this just because i think council member davis made a great point because i heard from some people similarly but you could have that same plastic bag and the cart and use those in conjunction so you bag up what you need and then you fill up the cart regularly and there's no additional cost you don't have to have the craft bag uh and it is a way to navigate that that change so i'd like to have a work session to kind of flesh out what others are doing and kind of see how we're managing that uh but i you know uh and so i'll just the details we can discuss at that point if it if it makes it there thanks council member ryan yeah i wouldn't mind having the discussion but i'd like i would probably prefer to wait until january or so so we've got one quarter under our belt so we can see more of you know you had that initial shock of oh my god we've changed to this and and let the customers kind of get used to it and iron out what the true problems are throughout it and you're not going to know that data until you go through a couple of months of this type of service i would share that sentiment i don't mind having the conversation we've had a lot of this conversation about rates i mean we voted on the rate i think every one of the the issues that you brought up i think were brought up during those discussions the craft bags the cost of the craft bags weren't because we didn't know that but as far as well there's is a reduction in service for the same rate i mean gosh i don't put my garbage bag i don't put my carts out but once every two weeks but i'm paying for once a once a week pickup so i'd like to get some time under our belt to see because i've had people tell me that uh you know well i'm just not going to do yard waste if i have to get a cart okay well you know we need to take a look at that but we just passed it and we're not even gosh what is it a week a couple weeks so i'd like to give it some time we can decide on that but i don't mind having the conversation i just i don't know if next week or two weeks from now it would give us what we need to know so if we can figure out that time frame okay i believe that's it on um agenda items e well our work session report so i believe we discussed that we would move right into the special call meeting and do our closed sessions at the end of the special call meeting so we will do that now we will move uh into our special call meeting at 230 at 229 p.m to consider our agenda and the first item our our agenda is the consent agenda council member ryan i move approval council member briggs second we have a motion and a second for the consent agenda items a through p i don't believe we pulled any so all in favor please signify by raising your right hand uh passage unanimously moving on to agenda items for interventional consideration 2a consider approval of a resolution of the city of denton adopting the vision value statements goals policy recommendations and the implementation matrix proposed in the dent historic plan prepared by the lakota group good afternoon mayor members of council i'm excited to be here to present to y'all the updated historic preservation plan we have here today our consultant that helped the city in the preparation of this plan i'm just going to do a quick introduction nick calo grises is his last name we'll present the the body of the presentation and now we'll be back up to talk about staff's recommendation as well as the hlc and pz pnz's recommendation so with that i'm gonna have nick come up and make that presentation ron at what point would it be appropriate for if we have questions about specifics in the draft would that be at the end i think probably keep it towards okay and then we can we can take notes and then respond to them fantastic at that time all right fantastic thank you that was about 85 there that was cool uh mayor uh ladies and gentlemen the city council my name is nick calo dresas with the lakota group i'm here to present uh the uh updated draft of the historic preservation plan for the city of denton um i know that many of you you have all seen most of this before so i'm going to do a speed speed version of the presentation just give you the highlights of the preservation plan and uh going forward uh the premise for doing this plan is the last one was done more than 30 years ago back in 1985 so the community was overdue to look at its preservation plan again and to update it uh as i've said before in my prior presentation history does move on and the resources that we've looked at in the past that were significant we now have a new set of resources to look at as time has moved on at the bottom of the slide uh your accomplishments since 1985 your last preservation plan served you well there are four buildings and sites listed in the national register of historic places you have two districts listed in the national register um more importantly 62 local landmarks and three local historic districts you have established um in that time frame uh your latest historic district was the bella avenue which was a conservation district converted to a historic district so a lot of activities happened um you had a very uh energetic group of preservationists back then you still have a energetic group of preservationists today who want to see it become a driving force in maintaining community character and vitality and historic preservation plan what is it encompass uh it really kind of just basically looks at evaluating your historic preservation program from the municipal perspective uh we are looking at future historic districts um in landmarks looking at how do we uh advance preservation based economic development um and last but not least how do we improve the education advocacy how do we promote historic preservation to a new generation of dentin residents and most importantly this uh plan seeks to engage both the public and private sectors in the preservation program and uh to note uh this plan was partially underwritten by a certified local government grant uh through the texas historical commission the insa uh the components of the historic preservation plan uh the historic preservation plan is at the very uh front part of the document um so you don't have to dive deep into the document it's it's the basically the second chapter we do have a chapter on implementation a chapter on historic resources in the city a chapter of how the program's administered here locally um and then we have a chapter on the community engagement that took place during this during this process and then there's a bunch of appendices in the back just some background material this preservation plan uh we basically started a year a year ago today almost we started this process last october uh the first phase of the process was really trying to get an understanding of your current assets uh and we did a lot of community engagement so we had many listening sessions community meetings and in march 2019 we released sort of an existing conditions or state of the city report the second phase of the process started in march this is when we actually drafted the preservation plan uh we did a series of other community meetings and we developed the final draft in july and in august and so since august we've had several meetings with your planning and zoning commission preservation commission and the city council um the basic uh principles of the historic preservation plan it's it's based on three principles that the secretary of interior has uh developed uh several several decades ago basically but it's the standards that we use as preservation planners to uh to prepare the plan and one is as i've mentioned in my previous presentation it's based on historic context uh looking at the forces of history that developed the city of denton and so back in the 80s when your first preservation plan was done we were looking at the 1930s and and beyond that uh to when denton started uh now we're looking at places that developed after world war ii in many communities now are looking at those places neighborhoods buildings that were built during those during that time period and evaluating them for their significance uh today we have basically we have the city of houston city of tyler those places are now nominating neighborhoods that were developed in the 50s and 60s to the national register of historic places so basically the context of the uh the direction in which we go and preparing the preservation plan from those contexts we develop goals and priorities and then the other standard is we want to integrate preservation into the broader planning framework in the community uh in terms of the community engagement we had two community workshops during this process uh we had over 180 people attend those workshops uh we interviewed 45 uh people and we did two online surveys and we had 400 plus responses during that during those surveys and the organization the the plan is organized around four key goals and i'll talk about that in the moment and there are basically 32 recommendations in the plan that revolve around survey education advocacy community development and the program and administration program administration is basically how the city administers the program and we organize our plan this way because uh we believe these are strong components to a community preservation program there are four components and if you have these four components in place and operating and working you have a pretty effective program and so i believe the city has done very well you have all four of these working for you so it's a very complete program in terms of our recommendations uh just some uh probably the big key recommendations in the plan is uh we do recommend seven areas be surveyed in the future we're not saying you do it tomorrow or next week but over time these are areas you may want to look at as i've said these are areas that were developed after world war ii primarily um so these are places that deserve a little bit more closer look uh we believe there's five potential national register historic districts um we also make a recommendation of expanding the oak hickory local historic district by a couple blocks um there are five potential historic conservation districts and eight potential texas recorded landmarks those are recommendations um however when you go forward and doing your survey and documentation the texas historical commission may come back with different findings so just to keep that in mind uh as i mentioned probably the key historic context that we were looking at we we think you've covered a lot of your 1920s and 30s neighborhoods uh before that now it is time to look at post world war ii mid-century buildings styled ranch house types uh your remaining o'neill ford buildings that are there that are not landmarked uh any remaining industrial buildings that are significant such as the morrison milling company building exploring the african-american experience a little bit more closely for potential resources and looking at historic signs in terms of community development we have several recommendations to look at is to explore expanding the tax abatement program to contributing properties in historic districts right now they're only targeted to landmark buildings um targeting additional adaptive use opportunities in the community looking at disaster mitigation planning and then small heritage small-scale heritage tourism activities and so really kind of doing some more targeted marketing and trying to encourage people to come here based on your historic assets and then finally kind of weaving your historic preservation program into your upcoming cultural district district designation in terms of the program administration uh uh the the key recommendations we have here is just looking at sustainable design for historic buildings we do have a chapter in the plan that deals with sustainable design in historic buildings so many communities today are really addressing that how do we encourage people to do the right type of solar panels and where to install them uh energy efficiency things like that so really kind of encouraging your your property owners to undertake some of those things um developing a city-wide design manual updating your historic preservation ordinance with some new tools and then securing a future clg grants for national registered district nominations and last but not least uh our plan does recommend uh building partnerships uh with other entities and organizations such as the denton county office of history and culture to do a variety of different education activities um doing more hands-on preservation workshops and perhaps having a portal on portal on the city's website that allows residents to access information about their homes and last but not least uh there is an implementation chapter uh it kind of spells out where we think the priorities are in terms of survey and documentation so there's a complete implementation chart and uh so it kind of concludes my portion of it i'm going to turn it over to ron so um we can take questions now before we get to the recommendations if you like um sure any national registry districts conservation districts that you were recommending there you go so and this is my understanding so correctly that the oak hickory local district historic district five potential historic conservation district those all have the city of denton county that's uh that's incumbent on the property owner well i'm sorry uh it's incumbent on the property owner to actually pursue those okay all right yeah okay does the city have any involvement in that or is that simply done outside of any city approval process or anything like that the uh the one role the city could take is to probably at least educate the property owner that they're probably eligible for those those designations um actually i think at least one of those potentials is city hall sure in the civic auditorium but the other ones are would be you know if the city wanted to sort of inform those property owners that you're eligible um you could provide some technical assistance if you want to that no that answers my question because my only challenge or observation i don't think it rises to the word concern is the five potential national register historic districts and the only reason is i'm not that i'm opposed to that but those can be created outside any governmental process outside of any situation and those can be created sometimes without full agreement of those within those particular boundaries the eight potential texas recorded landmarks you're saying those individuals are the ones that go and make the choice in other words they're choosing whether to do that or not so the national historic register districts i don't oppose them but being in a city of dentin historic preservation plan when we have no really uh input into that process formally now we can be included voluntarily or things such as that uh that's my only thought about that is it's it's really outside the in fact we just had one i believe that was approved recently two weeks ago yeah two weeks ago and great i mean that's but the city really i mean we knew about it we understood it but as far as having to provide any guidelines having to provide any approval process hlc doesn't see it city council doesn't see it so i struggle with that being in a city of dentin comprehensive plan when we have virtually no say and plus those people who are in it i mean we when we're doing hours with the oak historical local historic district boundary expansion or historic conservation we engage the public and there's some percentage that has to agree to that and so we have a process that provides for that input that is outside of our process so i'm not saying that i'm dead set on that not being there that's my concern with that being there in the city of dentin plan um uh each each texas city is different you know and how they address national registered districts some cities do take active approach to nominate uh areas um as historic districts in fact that's kind of a preferred preservation planning uh procedure mainly because you identify an area one of the first things you do is actually a national registered district first now um and before you do a local district um some texas cities prefer that process each texas city is different uh well i know we haven't in the past are you saying that this is uh this is a change you're recommending a change in our process because i didn't see recommendations of the city going i know you have recommendations on what could be a national uh register historic district but i didn't see that we you're asking us or the recommendation is to become like those other cities where we proactively nominate that is that is that part of this i didn't see i think we left it open-ended because um it would be it could be a choice you the city would want to do i mean it's up to the city or the local community how you want to pursue it and we left it kind of open-ended because in the future you may want to do that take that process or you may rely on other private sector partners to do that for you so my position then would be if we're going to leave the recommendations in there i would like to see that we change the paradigm to where the city is actively involved in that if if there's not uh if the city is not going to be formally active in actively involved in doing that i'm not sure why it would be in our plan so that's just my thought on that council member um yeah i wanted to speak to that a little and ask a question about that and then a question about something else um so uh yeah so it's it's my understanding that you know following up on that that the national has the registered historic districts that we have you know came from you know a grassroots local groups who organize this obviously it does need um some sort of governmental approval but it's not us the local government body but it's the national uh registry and i saw we had uh randy hunt who i want to shout out to who just came in here from his historic denton he probably filled out a card to speak so probably speaking later but has been instrumental in that uh you know for me i want to make sure that that we're not getting in the way of the groups the the or anyone who is already doing this you know because there is governmental body that helps them out right it's not totally unregulated so if we do have a role i want it to be to make sure we're not getting in the way of the um these grassroots efforts um if we're going to help them i want it to be helping in a way that they want to be helped and uh i will say that the something that i've learned about and by no means an expert on um but and i'm still learning is the uh tax uh uh write up write off reduction benefits that come at the federal federal and or state level i'm still learning about the distinctions yeah that come from this so there's a real economic incentive for the city to um not get in you know not get in the way and encourage what's what's happening um but in response to that uh you bring up really good reasons and that's those are the reasons why actually cities pursue them those national registered just because of the tax benefits mainly in commercial areas so that's one reason why cities do pursue it because maybe the private sector is not there to be able to marshal the forces to do a nomination process so and i want to you know a question that i wanted to ask about um about that uh specifically uh is you know i got email that and i think it went to all of council but uh you know somebody had expressed a concern it was a new concern to me that they were concerned that the the national registered district would encourage um you know more of these uh unregulated single residence occupancies uh to come come in and you know fears of over development you know my understanding was that it was kind of the opposite that it's about you know you get that my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong is that you get the tax credit for uh preserving or adding to you know what is considered a you know historical structure within this district that if you just wipe it down what uh just raise it then then you're and build up something else you're not going to get that discount is that the tax incentive is that correct um the the um tax incentives yeah you have to follow what i call the secretary of returners standards for rehabilitation so you have to follow those in order to get the tax credits so um it generally they have to be commercial income producing properties um so you know if it's happening uh if you don't follow the standards you don't get the correct yeah yeah so if yeah so if the thing that i mean if it's a small house and you turn it into a big whatever it's not gonna unless it fits within those guidelines i know it's more complicated than that but it has to it has to be some restored version of the thing that that you're the actual property that's considered a value um and the and uh the question um separate from that that you know that i had was uh about the kind of who it will be uh the the role of the uh historic preservation officer and all this you know i uh i want to make sure and you know protect that um uh the role that the grassroots plays including our you know the citizen committee the historic uh landmark committee or uh that to make sure that uh the the the power to have a say in this is not you know moving from them to you know appointed staff but that if that whatever staff again along the same lines of what i said before that that we are not getting in the way of this stuff that's happening uh at the grassroots level and also in our citizen committee so i could speak to that i don't think there's anything in the preservation plan that prevents the private sector from participating or from community residents from participating in the program um we do have a number of recommendations on um activities joint partnerships that could happen um but someone's got to facilitate it someone's going to be able to sort of encourage that private sector participation so um you know uh the one thing that we've noticed here in denton that that not present in other texas cities is a real strong non-profit preservation partner here that could actually help you know kind of lead that effort here locally engage the local communities to do it to do different activities and so um you have a strong presence with your historic preservation officer here that can help facilitate some things you have the denton county office of history and culture that does a lot of different things too you have your tourism bureau you have your main street program so those are opportunities for citizens to participate in those those activities well and thank you and you know like i said i just want to make sure that we're empowering the grassroots um you know i know that the the county had wanted to what was the one that sent out uh that tried to get the confederate monument protected i have a real problem with that uh myself i don't see that as the same as the city's interest necessarily uh so anyway but can talk about that further further down the line but i i think that you know these these citizens efforts are doing a kind of great job on their own and i feel like they just need us to not not get in their way rather than a facilitator councilmember riggs yeah so um just a couple of questions so on the recommendations there's the historic conservation districts but no new local historic districts can you explain why or help me understand the difference well um the the majority of the recommendations the conservation districts have come out of previous surveys that have already been done so we went out in the field and kind of confirmed those um so a lot of those recommendations exist in prior survey documents we did not make any decisions on local districts because we felt like they'll survey the the future survey areas we felt like though you do those surveys first and then you'll get an understanding whether or not you have a local district first so we we didn't make any hard and fast recommendations on that without knowing the survey information so it's different i'm sorry no sure so that would be different survey information than the um ones that you came up with for the conservation districts or the same they're the same yeah i mean the the surveyors they recommended could be future national registered districts or they could be future conservation districts or they could be future local districts i think our plan makes some suggestions that some of them could be national registrar or local districts but you know we as we couldn't make that judgment without having gone out in the field extensively to make those recommendations i'm just asking because i hear some hesitation about the in our districts and so um i know that we have some really great local districts as well so i wanted to kind of understand the difference between the conservation and then the regular historic so and the last um or one of the other things i have a question about one of the earlier slides you mentioned something about demolition delay and that's pretty important to me because we've had a couple of buildings that were torn down so can you explain that a little bit um sure how you address that demolition delay is uh it's a provision within a historic preservation ordinance that many texas communities have adopted over the years uh dallas um i believe houston has it um but many texas cities have and many cities around the country have it and what it is is it's tied to your survey information so you already have you know his local historic districts but there may be valuable properties or significant properties in other areas of the city that have been surveyed but they're not protected in any way so if by chance there's a demolition threat against a significant property that's not in the local historic district or not designated as a local landmark then if there's a demolition threat that if a permit's been pulled you're able to a demolition delay enables you to delay that demolition for 60 to 90 days or however long you want it to be so that there's time to actually work with the property owner find an alternative solution to demolition that's all it does is it just delays it it allows you that process to to consult with a with a property owner so it's just another tool to think of if you want to be able to extend some protections to properties that are not protected and so would that be um in conjunction with the i'm sorry i can't see your the the conservation districts so those surveys i mean are we are still talking about the same surveys that the city has it would be those homes within a demolition delay i think for for dentin how it would work would probably would apply to areas that have been surveyed primarily um you know that's how most cities tie it if we've surveyed this area but we've not yet taken action on a conservation district or a local historic district this just provides sort of an interim protection measure until you make another decision on that can i ask a question about the city to the city manager sure on that because i i remember there's some policy that we have and it may be hlc or something where there's already there's some sort of demolition um section in there so would that just be uh would that go hand in hand or am am i not would this be our first demolition protection i believe so but i'll defer that to ron he's more knowledgeable than that yeah um the code it's uh current code development code already has um a demolition within any historic district or landmark locally a landmark as the designation is required to obtain a coa certificate appropriateness what i think nick is referring to is the um the delay would apply to those that are surveyed that are not in historic district that are not a locally landmark as a designation that gives you the opportunity as nick mentioned the ability to talk to the property owner engage and find other options to the the demolition of that home but i think what you're asking is there is already demolition requirements for properties within the historic district or to landmark okay so this will just expand on that um and have opportunities to speak to homeowners but it doesn't say this is something that you can do or you don't it doesn't have to go through it just adds that extra layer of conversation okay thank you so a couple more uh to address the tax issue on the national i never can't remember the name national register historic districts the tax credits only apply to commercial property and and or rental property correct a single-family rental home let's say somebody buys a single-family home they want to do some work to it they want to restore it they want to do some work in conjunction with the guidelines of of the uh the secretary of the interior yes that's the only way to get it that's why my concern of these that are recommended in the plan because we've had some great success with the fair haven which was a commercial building that is that vacant forever and someone has bought it and they're they're going to restore it and they're going to take advantage of those historic credits on that commercial facility moving this into the realm of large single-family neighborhood kind of areas causes me some concern that the only way you're and it may not be a concern but you're not going to get that credit if you're a single-family owner occupied homeowner who does uh renovation you're not going to get that credit it has to be a commercial and it has to be either rental so i just want to make sure we don't have an unintended consequence that's why i would rather not have those recommendations for those particular ones in this plan because it's really outside of any approval process for the city and also i would not want to encourage people to go into single-family neighborhoods and begin to uh because those are national guidelines if it's a national uh register historic district the city doesn't necessarily have any guidelines that control that is that correct is that is that correct we don't have any guys so we don't control any guidelines in those renovations so the question is if in a national register historic district single-family neighborhood is there a prohibition a direct prohibition in the secretary of interior guidelines for demolition no there's no prohibition okay and the national register district uh yeah there's no prohibition against demolition or any alterations it's just an honorary designation okay so that's even more reason for me uh so the the tax credits don't apply to that so i have a question because i know that in the partnerships that you've listed we have historic dentonique which they were the ones that really spearheaded the fair haven uh project you really got that going and and worked with the owners and and helped fill in that application and and so forth but when i look at the partners listed most of them are governmental agencies and this is a non-profit here in town so and it's a fairly new non-profit i mean they do they could work here but in the definition and this is probably the thing that concerns me the most just because i think it says something that is not necessarily accurate it says is the local non-profit preservation advocacy organization responsible for several activities including preparing national registry nomination and organizing annual home tours well this is in a city of denton plan well that's done independent of the city of denton i mean those are those are activities that that organization undertakes themselves outside of the city so if they stay in here i certainly would like it to to be more just they are a local advocacy you know preservation ag advocacy group i hesitate because i don't want this to be seen as an endorsement when it's not a governmental entity so i bring that to your attention help me understand about this demolition delay because i've heard the description this is my concern with it you're saying that in a property that's been surveyed which means there's no obligation by the homeowner to do anything different it's purely you know there's no regulations from the city that now all of a sudden we're going to put an overlay of well if you want to do something different with your property you have to first wait 30 60 90 days and then where my question comes and my concern is i don't know really what that waiting period is for because if it's to say you cannot tear this down i can't support that because it's not any it's not in a historic district it's not in a historic conservation district now if it's just to say we'll give you 30 days can we talk about some issues that maybe we can find some alternatives and at the end of that time frame whatever is determined you're back to the status quo and they can do what they want with it okay i might can i might can live with that but to say that we're going to provide a period where for all intents and purposes we're trying to stop a local property owner from doing something with their property that is not under any other regulation for uh historic preservation or conservation under the city and we've already heard the national uh uh register historic district there's not a prohibition against demolition and that just means it's removed from a qualifying property or an identified property so is it is the purpose of that is the intent the interest of that delay period to prohibit that demolition or is it crafted in such a way in the code that it prohibits the demolition well the demolition delay you can structure however you want to locally in most communities like dallas in other texas cities the demolition delay applies to properties that have been considered highly significant they could be properties that are eligible for the national register that could be properties eligible for texas historic recorded landmarks these are the properties are highly significant but they're not protected they may not be sitting landmarks so that could be one layer where the demolition delay applies okay but so my question still applies another number one is there a list of these properties because what if you go buy one of these and you're not aware of this this sort of layer of protection that is if it's not in the list somewhere that somebody can verify and do their due diligence well then you've just done something that may impede your ability to do with that property what you want so all right do so you're saying a city could adopt it to where if it's been surveyed it cannot be torn down if you wanted to make that code no it only if a property wanted to demolish it it would only delay it it would only delay it all right so no city that you're aware of in that demolition delay is an exact prohibition against that no unless you know there's a solution that's worked out sure yeah but if they don't agree and the property owner still wants to do something else with the property then they can do that and one of the reasons why we make a recommendation that your survey data be public is that realtors buyers may want to look at that data to find out yeah if they're significant yeah i mean you know you know understand about real estate laws and due diligence and disclosures and these you know dpta claims and so that's my only hesitancy is that's a lot of data and unless it's somewhere that's easily accessible that would be my concern yeah yeah if i can just real quick just add to that discussion that's this is a recommendation obviously anything that you know comes out of this we bring forward as an ordinance if that is the direction of the council again the intent for the delay is not to prohibit the demolition but rather like we talked earlier is to create that conversation that discussion to help educate inform the property owner of his or her options and that's really what that purpose is or that program is okay all right so just to clarify what we're doing here today is a resolution that does what i said i'm reading the caption says resolution adopting the vision value statements goals policies recommendations and the implementation it's a resolution you're saying that's going to be followed with an ordinance well any any recommendation that comes out of this plan such as say that delay program would have to come through as a an ordinance to the city council what we're considering today or council considering today is a historic preservation plan a guiding document that sets the goals the visions for how we proceed with historic preservation here in the city and it's in the form of a resolution correct okay all right that's my barometer yeah so anyway i just found that whole exchange really helpful it helped to clarify some some of the questions concerns behind the question i already asked i feel based on what i've heard i would like to see the national historic register removed from the plan other than a statement saying we think these are great that they're happening you know i think that sometimes you know sometimes when you when you love something you need to set it free and when your government if you think something is good that then instead of making an ordinance about it sometimes the right thing to do is to just not not make an ordinance about it because could have unintended consequences so i do however i really love the delay uh and you know this can be the the demolition delay i feel that in the case of the um the scripture normal sro and the you know controversies that have come up around that i'm just using that as an example you know that would have been something had there been a delay um that uh would have at the very least you know made people with concerns in in the neighborhood you know feel more empowered to have have a say and you know get get their concerns heard so i would and and as i see it that that that delay could be a part of this be a part of a future ordinance be part of this plan without including the national historic register district if there's that is if there's consensus on on council not to include that is that is that correct that they could be two separate issues counselor i don't know if there's consensus or not uh my point of view is that if this is intended to be a kind of comprehensive view of historic preservation that it would be sort of silly to not mention a whole area of activity um and i think i personally think we're sort of at our best when we're very inclusive of community groups and other voices uh you know not just go well you know if we don't control it then you know we can't talk about it uh i i took that particular line about this organization is responsible for it as as not an assignment of responsibility but just as a description of what they do uh you know could be a word tweet but that that's that's how i took that as far as um uh the concern about the uh actual presence of national register districts sort of not requiring the occupants you know that area to have a say i think it's different than a local district where that puts um requirements on people right that they're going to get approvals and certificates of appropriateness right whereas this other one only uh provides a benefit to those who seek it now that all that having been said i think you make it uh the mayor makes a really interesting point about unintended consequences where you know i guess the extreme case would be would it create a rash of uh people converting single-family homes to rentals in order to get the credit right uh and it kind of raises the question uh of how long do you have to be a rental to do that if people did want to kind of game the system how long do they have to do it to to to game the system uh first of all regarding the credits in single uh in single-family home homes there there are passive rule requirements and uh and uh there are certain there are investment requirements that i doubt most property owners are going to be able to meet uh to be be able to take advantage of those credits so i don't think you're going to see a lot of that happening what are those a lot of those um uh there has to be it has there's adjusted basis requirements you know be able to spend a certain amount above the uh adjusted basis of the value of the property to be able to take advantage of the tax credit so i is that it is that the only one um there are a couple of others i'm not a tax you know specific tax credit expert but i've been working around the country and i just i work in lots of national register districts i just don't see a massive trend of seeing single-family homes being converted around and i understand that you've got some really old neighborhoods around a really big college and when you talk about adjusted basis i mean some of these things could be pretty low if they've been owned for a while as a single-family home so i i hear that but i'm for you to say oh you got to spend a hundred thousand dollars i get it but you do that yeah yeah so i'm sorry council member no no i appreciate the dialogue well i don't know if i have much more to add just just in general yeah maybe a way to kind of uh split the baby is to say that there are these these areas that may be a potential interest for some kind of designation without necessarily landing hard on it's got to be a registered district it's got to be local it's got to be conservation you know um you know that that and we can kind of have that conversation at the time you know once the survey's done you see kind of what's appropriate but but my broader comment is i think you want to kind of be holistic and include council member yeah so just to add to that um or suggestions since there's some um resistance here maybe we could put a map of the five potential and take it out of the recommendations and do it um addendum with the definition of what it is and you know who's in charge maybe just a a sheet kind of so that people are still aware that they're important and then it's possible but it's not necessarily in our recommendations i'm just trying to find a happy medium here where they're out of the recommendations but still information is provided somehow but i well and i don't have an issue with um an educational component of the national registry historic districts in general what they are how they're created what are some of the benefits what are the guidelines i just really feel very strongly about you know i understand about inclusiveness but this is not i mean when you're talking about us recommend this is a this is a document that's going to guide us that is this is a city document and we have no say we have no uh regulatory authority within the national historic somebody can create one and that's great i'm not saying i'm opposed to them being created this is very nuanced for me this is saying but if we had an educational component in it that said here's what they are there's some areas without necessarily because here we're saying here's ones that are being recommended well i mean we've seen the 2030 plan i mean we know how sometimes those recommendations after five or ten years you know so that's my only struggle with this i'm not opposed to them and i certainly don't mind an educational component but i'm really opposed to having something in an official document of the city of denton that's governing uh the city's approach to historical preservation to include something in there that is purely federal that has no local jurisdiction or local control over that whole process so that's that's just where i fall and so i appreciate i think i think yeah i could agree to that without specifying specific areas or neighborhoods um because that could affect people when they're i mean they could look at it and go i don't want to be in a recommended district and it could go the other way well i want to be in one so anyway i'll i've said my piece on that one yes i still have another comment yeah go ahead on that okay so speaking of local control and what we do have power over is our historic landmark commission they have a lot of way in and we we appoint them and rely on them for information can you explain to me how they fit into this plan or if they well um we see them well there's there they're still going to continue their main function as you know a body that does coa design review in your current local historic districts and your historic conservation districts so they'll continue to do that in the future they may there may be additional responsibilities in future districts future landmark districts um they could also have a role in um seeking future clg grants to do um uh surveys um those national registered districts that we've outlined the map our recommendations that came out of prior surveys so the surveys those are the ones that identified these potential areas so so being able to have the commissions you know sponsor and fund those survey initiatives is important that's a continuing requirement of actually of keeping your certified local government status so that that's important so doing those future surveyors and and then uh doing some activities on education and advocacy so there's there's a number of number of activities that they can do and partner with other organizations to do it with yes and just to remind everybody we do have a speaker who signed up to speak so yeah we'll get to them but i just wanted to yeah just as a you know a thought uh maybe the the rub is the idea and i think this might be what you were saying council member priggs that you know that the idea of being a recommendation is maybe the kind of rub but uh maybe the correct at least minimum role about these areas in this document would be descriptive to say these areas are of interest historically and could potentially be any of a number of things and that's like a let's say i'm new to town i'm a developer new to town you know worth knowing right maybe maybe the city's doing something about it or not maybe some independent group is doing something or not but worth knowing that this is an area of interest so like it's important as part of the description of our stock that that you know these areas be acknowledged i think that's a you know at a minimum that you know that belongs in there okay so let me make sure i'm understanding what you're saying are you saying that instead of going through because i think there's recommendations for registry districts there's recommendations for the historic district boundary expansion the five potential historic conservation districts if i remember looking at the map that they're specifically delineated as those specific recommendations are you saying you just sort of have a map and you've got here's what we think each one of these areas potentially could have and you're listing those those five areas why they're significant and what some of the possible outcomes could be yeah i'll have to think about that but i yeah okay all right i just want to make sure i understood it okay any other questions before staff gives recommendations council member ryan well i was also looking at the line i agree with y'all on the on the taking the national registry historic districts and moving them to more of an educational component uh but well reading on page 57 that we're talks about the different partners involved in here on the the historic dentin ink is the only one that uses the word responsible and you know the others say consult with consults or something like that i think it's i've got a little heartburn on that that word in particular because it makes it sound like they're the only ones you can go through to do this and so i think we just changed that wording up a little bit it'd be good well and i think someone sent us a i mean what i had was somebody sent is a local non-profit preservation advocacy organization well i agree with that i mean i agree with that that's exactly yeah what what what they do yeah okay any other comments yes yes i mean i don't i can't see that it would be uh anything but helpful and probably not cause heartburn just said past activities have included you know just just descriptive yeah well that's not what it says now oh i understand that's what i'm proposing i mean i struggle with it being there altogether because i think what you said was most cities and and they're they're up and coming but this is a 20 or 30 year document but if they're going to be included as a partner which i think that has some implications that we have not necessarily we do provide some hot funds funding i think it's a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars or something like that but we can wordsmith it i mean that's fine we can figure out what that we can all sort of agree on but i think the wording there it says something that i don't i don't think is is accurate okay yep yes councilmember so i was wondering you know is the mainstreet association being there too is that a similar issue because that was those two were mentioned one right after the other is that the part that you're talking about in the plan where the two are mentioned on page 57 let me see um it's on oh this is on 42 so yeah main street it's right uh looking at 41 and 42 in the draft of the historic plan mentions the historic maybe because it's part of the city main street association heritage tourism anyway it's you know just as an example of a local sure yeah nonprofit that's mentioned any more questions before we take the staff recommendations that were proposed i think by is it was it pnc both hlc and pnz hlc and pnz any more questions before we move on to there i did just i had just a uh a question about the not to belabor the point too much but just about the questions about uh whether or not the national has uh registers encourage um you know destruction of of homes and or turning them into rentals and commercials you know versus do they preserve you know because these are two opposite things um and you know my understanding is that you know it's through city zoning excuse me that we can decide you know not through a national registry what can go in what kind of neighborhood right that that's not something that the registry could decide but that is something that cities can do but a registry can say for as i understand it and you know correct me if i'm wrong for a neighborhood in which cities do allow um you know mixed use that there uh it would it would provide a carrot rather than a stick to and cities can provide sticks outside of it um saying that you know if you do uh it the right if you do the right way that that doesn't um you know negatively alter the the character of the neighborhood you get this incentive but that doesn't mean the fact that it's offering a carrot to someone to not destroy it doesn't mean that cities can also come in with sticks or you know change zoning whenever we want to is that am i right to kind of see these is that two separate elements in other words we can't expect the national register to come in with the sticks and the zoning as well as the a carrot for someone to preserve well generally the preservation planning practice in communities across the country is what the first that they usually do is designate an area as a national register district um because it has it doesn't have any teeth but if it's in a commercial area it offers those tax credit and incentives but the reason to establish a national register district is it does promote the the the heritage of the area it has a heritage tourism marketing tool it does build civic pride it does bring residents together that they're part of a national register district and then the city a municipality will usually go in in order to protect that national register district is to establish a local historic district and that's when you can add another layer of incentives to property owners like your tax abatement program that you have to offer that incentive and then a local district you'll be able to control what happens in that district more closely than in a national register district but then the question about whether or not a commercial entity could come in that's outside of either designation right that that is well about zoning it's up to the city zoning controls that yes yeah exactly so but i just wanted to make that clear because the fact that you know a commercial entity could come in uh you know an apartment complex whatever that is that's a zoning issue uh that that the stuff we're talking about now can't control that's there whether we do this or not this is saying given that that can already happen in certain neighborhoods this would um encourage them to do uh do it the good way historic way versus the historic districts other way do not control use of a building exactly exactly it's just you know you're just managing what happens physically to exactly exactly yeah i like the way i like the way you put it thanks my concern is every time you've talked about national historic registry districts you've always mentioned commercial that that's primarily what people do is they use commercial now you've talked about residential a little and and i think this is something that's fairly new to this community we've we've got a commercial one that's got it and the square is one but it's it's the residential neighborhoods and so my my fear isn't it's not my fear or my concern isn't people coming in tearing down houses and putting up apartments you're absolutely correct that's decided by zoning i mean that's that's what we control and they're not going to get any credit because they've torn something down but if you've got single-family homes that based upon the guidelines if there's the depreciation if there's these these criteria that they meet then they are eligible for tax credit and we're not talking about a tax abatement people we're talking about a tax credit and a tax credit is a dollar for dollar reduction in whatever income taxes you're paying as an individual or a corporation i don't have an issue with national registry districts being for neighborhoods my concern is the city putting it in a document saying this is what we're doing and not really going into the pros and the cons of it everybody's pretty clear on our historic preservation codes we know what i mean people know if you're in a historic district guess what you've got a lot of hoops to jump through rightly so national registry historic district that's my only concern because it's being used i think in a way here or being recommended it's not being being recommended in a way that typically it's not done in fact we've had discussions on this whole tax credit thing on something else on another issue that we were talking about and you know the city can't take advantage of tax credits private property owners can if they meet the guidelines so councilmember armatrad i'm not worried about this isn't a national historic registry district i mean park seven issue types issue that's not what i'm concerned about what i'm concerned about is in a in a neighborhood around the university is that you've got a sort of a beat up little old house that somebody's lived in and they're deciding to do something different with it somebody can come in buy it put the put the money into it if it meets the guidelines and then get a tax credit and turn it into rental property that's my only concern is are we providing an incentive already we already got big incentives enough just from the market pressure and i don't mind that existing i just don't know if i want to be recommending it or even talking about it outside of a general educational concept in a city of denton historic preservation plan because the last thing that we would say is if someone came in and bought five houses and turned them all into rentals and got this credit that council chamber would be full and quite frankly and that's one thing and that's one thing i'm getting complete agreement on as i said i don't think it should be uh in here can you tell we're we're making good progress here and i'll repeat that if i need to sure but just want to make sure we address all the questions before yeah any questions before staffs uh report on the recommendations and then mr hunt will get to you i'm sorry uh we'll get to you after he gives his recommendation okay um as nick mentioned this was presented to the historic preservation i'm sorry historic landmark commission earlier this year and they recommended six zero with three conditions the first condition is related to a summary under the under page 25 under african americans and other diverse populations in dent denton the proposed language that you see here underline is what the hlc discussed and what staff has drafted and it meets what their comments were so i'm not going to read it out loud but i just wanted to share that this is the new language that will be part of the plan the other item that the hlc made comments on is related to the implementation matrix on the implementation matrix there's references to hlc and to staff the recommendation or the condition that they discussed and we discussed with them was to remove the word parties and rather make that part nurse and delete hlc and city knowing that the city in in the hpl is for historic preservation offers officer is going to be the facilitator of these recommendations at least take the initiatives in making sure that these recommendations are brought forward and then the partners are listed as we've already mentioned those partners are listed in page 57 and we'll make sure to add the main street association as as a partner as part of that list as well yes councilmember armature yeah and that was what something that i had expressed an objection to a little earlier i guess i jumped the gun on that um i i think it's it's important to me anyway to keep hlc in there um and uh you know that while we uh and and i wasn't recommending to add um to mainstream association i was just mentioning because i saw it there i think it's important that we you know that local groups that are doing what they do um you know we wait for them to come to us to ask um uh you know if we can if we can help them but i worry that something like a partnership could be it lead to a situation where you have a you know a historic preservation a future historic preservation officer might have control over a process that is already you know being taken care of in the grassroots or on the citizen committee so i prefer um that hls hlc and not reducing that power to a single historic preservation officer i'm not against having a historic preservation officer which is for them to have that that kind of power i love this by the way this um the statement on right there uh about quaker town and solomon hill and the history i love that okay and i'll i'll make sure to so is is it is it the council's direction that we keep hlc part of the matrix implementation yeah i would prefer that but i think council member now sir i guess i ought to look again and see like exactly what the matrix is we're talking about i just uh i i went through and had a conversation uh with ronman before he left on on a number of the recommendations and some of them seem to be saying you know hlc will sort of do certain things like execute things uh in just a way that it'd be kind of interesting if they did operate that way but i mean they operate more or less like council does like staff brings them things they deliberate you know they read them they deliberate they vote it's kind of like traffic safety commission doesn't put up street lights you know so if it's sort of they're the approving body but if it if it's saying you know they'll distribute leaflets or you know whatever it's just not what they actually do unless we're really talking about a change in what we have which could be interesting but it's not what we do today all right mayor pro tem just simply i think the historic land commission mark commission had consensus on it so i don't know what the direction is but but i would stand with that with that whatever that committee recommended i trust their analysis and the detail that they uh went into uh so i i would i would trust their recommendations so they were saying take them out of the matrix they had the same concern or question that council melzer had in that you know they're they were they were referenced in the matrix several times and didn't know what their role and i think that they they serve a role as we have discussed already but as staff we serve a we serve that that role of facilitator and making sure these recommendations move forward with obviously their um direction and council's direction and that's how i see and that's how we see it and so um the matrix was just changed just to recognize that they're they're going to be involved we're going to be involved um but the partners are more importantly listed in the matrix they are more important to be listed in the matrix they are they're they're they're there to to reference as partners is as part of the recommendations not more important okay so i guess i'm a little confused i'm looking at the matrix and it says implementation timeline priority scale and parties is that the matrix we're talking that's correct all right and so i see hlc i see city hlc i see other partners i see main street i see dco em dco hc and you're saying that the recommendation is to delete city and hlc from all of these columns to and name the title of the column partners so they are the list that you'll you'll have remaining will be the partners which the staff the city and the hlc be working with i guess i oh it's page uh 76 through 77 i guess when i look at let's just look at a recommendation prepare a set of city-wide design guidelines the parties and you're saying choose partners currently is city hlc other partners well i think it's the city and the hlc that will prepare a set of city design guidelines the staff will actually prepare it type it collate it but the policy determinations and the policy questions and answers and positions will be determined by the policymakers which would be so i guess i'm a little confused because when i look at some of these yeah some of them are more administrative but then some of them are policy and so the recommendations that seem to be more tied to a policy decision i'm not sure why we would want to take away i mean it just didn't it wouldn't the city and the hlc typically are the policymakers for some of these things uh maintain dent and certified local government status that may be i mean staff is going to make sure everybody's in compliance but yet if we're not it's going to have to go to the policy makers to make necessary adjustments so i'm not understand i guess i just don't really know what parties and partners and what that column is supposed to represent that's why it was we we try to make it more clear and i guess in doing so it made it a little bit unclear what we're trying to do is simplify this uh matrix the matrix all together is something that the city and that includes staff council and hlc will be working towards but the partners that are listed here will be uh we will be working with those partners in in in the process so i guess i think i'm more confused now so i'm changing the word parties to partners correct in this matrix correct what i'm hearing seeing here is in this matrix after we change it to part to partners we go through here and we delete the city and hlc out of all of these columns is that what i'm understanding this is saying that's correct the understanding is that obviously you mean it's just because it's by definition right that's inferred then i would just put it somewhere up here partners put an asterisk that says the city and hlc eventually have the decision to govern all of these i mean you're saying that's a given the city and hlc well don't put them in there but somehow show that they're they're there i mean just put an asterisk or something okay yeah we can do that but i think in that column still you would have like further down like uh in 3.2 there's main street and some other stuff right that those would still fall in there is that what you're correct yeah those will be the partners yeah because and that's what i that's what that's the i think okay what you're targeting is accurate because just like today i'm in line with hlc but fast you know back up and you're talking murals i'm not in line with them right and ultimately this body this entity has those decisions and while they play a role in the policy decisions the that buck stops just past them right and so that that's why i i kind of can fall in line with the with the analysis to clear that up because it was confusion to say well this body has made this decision we should stick with it regardless and not add our own analysis so i i'm tracking with you thank you mayor for that that was that's helpful all right okay um the hlc uh also one of the commissioners express a request that uh the city established a program allowing for a partial or full property annexation i'm sorry property taxes exemption from city of den and other applicable taxing authorities for locally designated historic homes that was their recommendation when we presented it as to the planning zoning commission they felt that that was too of a strong of a word as far as established and recommended that we explore that program and research it further so that um we have the ability to to discuss it so rather than use the word establish the planning zoning commission we uh revise the recommendation of hlc and propose explore rather than establish customary so on that it's it's interesting and fascinating um all the talk about the historic register and the the fear of that becoming income properties um but just to keep it to look the way that it is this may be if we could do owner occupied on that it could be a way for us to help incentivize that but keep the owner occupied instead of becoming a rental property um but having some kind of incentive to do that to protect the the home i mean if it's not a part of a of a of a district yeah it could be a local you know local landmark designated right home so i'm i'm okay exploring um a little bit more to find out i mean it could be um a way for us to to do that sure i'm okay with the explorer i mean i wasn't okay with established but i guess i'm a little concerned at what and other applicable taxing authorities means i mean obviously we can't we don't have any say over the county the school or any right any other taxing authority over right it would be something that you would we would explore and discuss with those entities meaning expand okay yeah beyond the cities okay okay all right all right so that was the um the hlc and the planning zoning commission recommendation staff also had some recommended changes for clarification purposes so this is 1.5 and this speaks directly to the historic districts that we just discussed to add this quote from the previous survey that was done regarding the idiot's hill area but again looking at historic i'm sorry looking at recommendation 1.5 and that is on page 34 i believe the direction from council was to remove the national register of historic places as far as recommendations but have more of an educational presentation in the plan is that correct oh so yeah but i'm lost on how that's tied to this this nation one point which one are we on this is 1.5 and this is page 34 this is the idiot's hill correct so this is identifying idiot's hill as one of those national register oh so what i'm saying with this this this was to help clarify give some more additional information on idiot's hill but if we're going to be looking at removing those recommendations for a national register this won't apply this will not be um okay we it wouldn't it'd be mute in this in this regard council member armature your hand up yeah yeah so this is um this point about wording i would hate to and i know this term you know idiot's hill is used to describe the neighborhood and you know i hadn't occurred to me until somebody pointed it out to me a while ago and that it's a we don't think of it that way when people don't realize it when they use it but it's it's an ableist term that implies you know refers to people with disability and so i would rather we come you know there are other terms they there's a facebook group that noddingham woods area you know what something yeah just i thanks yeah absolutely yes the sort of local informal history now with standing uh isn't it a sort of on maps avondale it's avondale park that same area yeah i think you can research what primary and if it's a couple of subdivisions like we do out in owsley addition and and how it used to be commonly referred to you can reflect i think what they're saying is put in more of a the legal descriptive of this is so and so subdivision sure yes council member so i have a question about this because i'm i'm okay with uh removing the national with a discussion we said earlier but bringing this in and realizing that this is an area which is um it's it's wonderful and i the survey has been done um and then the mayor said something about this being a plan for 20 or 30 years when we look at it that way this neighborhood is going to be really significant in 20 years and so my question is if it's not in this plan and it's not something for the city to do is it something that the hlc can initiate um is that is that part of something um they they'll be able to do as a as a committee i mean if i'm correct in saying that you know um the national register of historic places can't be nominated by by anybody and breath forward for uh the thc to consider yeah okay yes okay and in a lot of this work the you know the description here i think we can relocate them in more um um applicable places to talk about so we don't lose that history okay but again the direction i got from council is that the recommendations for nr's national register of historic places we're just going to remove that but replace it with more educational informational um language so that people are aware of what that um national register of historic places are so just to follow up on that because there is a survey would some of these homes especially the ones listed here qualify for that um delay since there's a survey that is a program that the council chooses to pursue yes because they had been surveyed back in 2015 yeah so just like 30 you know days and said okay that would make me feel a little better if we're not going ahead and establishing a district if there was some type of protection at least for a little bit of time and then the home they get to make their choice anyway one way or the other so okay thank you okay um next clarification change that staff is recommending again is just worded here that it's not the city but rather staff will coordinate um again to clarify what we are intending to do what page is that on wrong i'm sorry that one is on page 45 just changing city to staff right the last item um that staff is recommending this is on page 46 is to add the following under policy 2.2 to give a little bit more clarification on conservation districts and again we'll make sure to change that uh that term um into something more of um just research that a little bit further on the neighborhood okay um before we get to the questions again want to restate that we will move the uh remove the national historic historic um historic places that is off of the plan insert more educational and informational information on national register um the other comment that i received was with regards to historic den the description on page 57 in my in my proposal my recommendation is that we just end it after uh organization and just read it back so uh historic den inc um is the local non-profit preservation advocacy organization period is a is a yeah and also i think it'd be a good idea to add uh main street associated as a partner listed in this section those were the discussions i heard uh moving forward that concludes my presentation unless there's any other questions any more questions before we take public comment mayor pro tem not a question but i ask when you come back uh i can i get a i'm gonna call it a design flow chart for the application process my head swims when i mean because those that fill out the application and go through the process regularly have some source some base of knowledge but it's impossible for me to jump around as easy as i'd like to so if i could get just i mean and it could be simple rectangles but if this then that you know just kind of how to you know if it's national if it's texas where those you know city you just i just want to just need to see it right a little better how that flows that mayor pro tem help me understand which which process is it the application for let me let me so this this document is going to be put to use correct in some capacity correct right i don't understand as well as i'd like to how this is used okay and so a graphic that i can refer to so when you talk about national registry and you talk about a a moment in time along that application process i can then have a base of knowledge to understand okay this is after the survey has been done after community meetings before a vote that type thing i mean i don't know if that does that make sense i appreciate that clarification i think that's something that uh we should be able to do fairly quickly thank you that's my problem yeah so and i had a question about the um the recommendation 2.4 in the last slide with the dent main street association not just about the change from you know city to staff but also just about the role of the dent main street association is envisioned here you know i i see it you know even though it's a very different group than something like historic denton uh you know i have a similar concern uh that uh you know if this is a partnership that people consider productive it's one that uh can be had and and and is is happening um but they also do things on their own and uh i you know it things change in the future and who knows you know what maybe their ideas of what they want to do will change in the future so i'm a little wary about uh keep making them such a a crucial part of this but i don't know maybe i can be talked out of it but you know if that makes any sense i would feel more comfortable um again i'm fine mentioning them but kind of more like how historic landmark i mean sorry historic denton is mentioned you know one of the partners that the city has worked with but i would just be wary of um memorializing any kind of relationship beyond what already what what already just exists either organically or on paper council armature you know it's it's my my my experience that we've we work with them on on several projects and you know they're a big part of the downtown so i don't see any issues with listing them as a partner unless there's something else that i'm not oh no no so i i don't have a problem listing but listening them as a partner but my question was like to what extent you know is this changing anything about the relationship or just describing the relationship that already exists we're not changing the relationship we have a really excellent mainstream program we didn't see a need to make any additional recommendations on what they do i mean they're doing just fine in our opinion um but we just we had a couple of recommendations on how they could probably assist on some targeted adaptive use opportunities in the downtown that's about it we feel like they're doing pretty well so as i revisited this it raises maybe not to the level of concern but they do good work absolutely and most members of the main street association are downtown property owners so my concern is i mean the wording is could coordinate and work with to offer conceptual performance analysis through a consultant to test potential reuse concepts i think we can do that anyway but to me how do i put this they have a obviously a vested interest in the downtown and how it's maintained i think we need to balance that carefully with individual property owners ability to do what they want with their property within the guidelines that the city has so i think that wording for me is a little strong could coordinate or i mean you could just say you know as needed or could work with consult work with gather input it it makes it a little bit more formal kind of relationship instead of hey we just want to consult the group that has the most interest vested interest financially uh culturally in the downtown to see what their thoughts are i think that that's my only concern i think as needed it's probably the right word i think that's what we were thinking on an as needed basis does that go ahead no i i agree uh with those concerns and i'll add one that you know it's a there'd be if i would have a fear that um you know maybe unfounded but in changing from the city to staff you know because the city it would include that's like council and staff but staff changing staff would seem to exclude council so i wouldn't want anyone to think that you'd have a situation where you've got staff and you know private you know businesses coming up with some plans outside of council i'm not saying i see that happening but because there's already you know a relationship that involves council and staff and talk to people but everything comes through council it just it uh i worry that we could accidentally change something when we think we're just we're just keeping it the same so you know making that change and then also changing it back the change that the mayor just mentioned and uh changing it back to the city i would prefer the the city which includes staff but not limited to staff um and and then i would i would also add the um the removing it also along the same lines the the home tours that historic denton does and those are wonderful by the way they're they're excellent uh but you know for the same reason right so nobody gets the impression that the city's going to be messing with that in in any way that is just can be listed as you know i don't know an appendix here's some cool things that are going on i think we i think we we changed the wording of that definition and it just says that it's it's a what was it it's a advocacy something yeah yeah the four and that was for historic denton i'm just thinking wasn't there's there's at least one something in there that's separate where the home tours are mentioned it's mentioned in that same line it just truncates that okay got it excellent okay thank you council mayor melzer oh what i was looking for because i saw it but i can't find it the demolition delay what page is that on in here what's the recommendation i couldn't i couldn't remember what how many days it was i'm looking into well you can look it up and and get back with me on that i just want to see because i don't think we're going to approve this whole thing today anyway so so okay so as far as the um what was just discussed so add add excuse me add as needed to that language yeah or clean it up to where it's not so much could but yeah right and then bring back city rather than staff is what i heard okay all right any other questions before public comment seeing none okay we have one card wishing to speak mr randy hunt if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin well i have to thank y'all i'm sorry this is randy hunt i'm at 722 west oak now pull the mic up just thank you appreciate that so i wanted to thank y'all for doing half my work for me that the things i was objecting to you have already addressed so for the sake of time i'll just read some other thoughts there's additional decisions that need to be made before you adopt this plan one of those is to decide what's the role of an hpo and where are they going to report and how do they collaborate because staying in our lanes that's collaboration and that's how we complement each other what was the acronym you said is hp okay okay i'm sorry i didn't okay thank you i appreciate that how are you going to replace roman how's that so i would focus on initiatives and not rules that's what the pushback is of homeowners of what's been experienced for the last 20 years homeowners need property tax incentives and gold con county is a gold standard you have already talked about that you know what we need is to provide incentives and not punitive and that's the advantage of the national registers districts for us we need to i would ask god to seriously consider moving the hpro row the historic preservation officer's role out of development services everything we've done so far that has been very successful has been out of economic development when i did the survey for all the o'neill ford's structures in town for the texas historic commission i did that with carolyn booth and she was part of that and that's where we decided to go back and see if i couldn't hit the owners of fairhaven and i did and that worked out well for us all but didn't cost the city a dime so i would really think about you know this this if you're going to reconsider a bunch of things that's one of those that really needs to be reconsidered because this is a new way of creating incentives for the entire city and it's it's economic development i think the biggest thing for us is that there's an important part of history in our neighborhoods that was founded over 100 years ago and why denton's here and that we need to decide between a sense of place with buildings that can get rehabilitated and density we have developer services but we don't have a neighborhood services group that we can go to and ask for help as neighbors as neighborhoods it's not there so we need people to decide what are we going to do with our history we own the buildings and preservation is grassroots and it always has been historic denton you know did get incorporated in 2014 but it's been there for the last 30 years i think that was your time so if you have some concluding comments yeah feel free to wrap up well i think the biggest thing is i gave you two maps one because everything i've been doing has been things i've shared with planning so the one that's in green and white that's the new national register district has approved by the texas historic commission the other one that's more primitive that is the one that's just got reviewed by the texas historic commission and will become the next national register district the third one is the whole downtown area we actually have six more that have been planned and if it would be helpful i have no problem laying out the outlines of where those national register districts are that we've already been pre-approved with the texas historic commission to provide okay any questions for mr hunn yes mayor pro tem just just one comment again i'm not sure how it flows and things but i just want to give credit where credit is due in the last set in the neighborhood of me meeting he proposed and updated the group on where he's working and the neighborhood toppers on the signs receive rave reviews and and generated a lot of excitement so i've seen firsthand kind of that neighborhood reaction to those components and so for what it's worth i just want to say thank you for for that work and and i look forward to understanding and learning it better not filling out any applications that's right but learning so thank you and thanks and i think they got excited too that they knew that they could be part of a national register district as well council member i'ma turn yeah so i was wondering um if if you could clarify you know on these maps uh just briefly what the differences between a contributing property non-contributing property and i know that anyone watching at home they can't see the map that's probably a blur to them but there are some properties or the contributing ones are marked green non-contributing or yellow and then there are these a few let's see these a white property i guess that means that that's not in the that's not contributing right does that also mean not in the district no it'd be in the district okay white is the same as yellow well like this area right here yeah oh i'm sorry which one are you on yeah hello let's see let me both of them oh yeah so this one doesn't have the legend i'm looking at this one with the legend but sorry if you could just explain so explain the difference between so the green the green one uh that's was more professionally developed um that's a different color coding system than this other one that we have just as we're planning oh okay got it okay so so then just the difference so contributing means part of the district non-contributing not part of the district well it's always part of the district it's just that if you want to be a you know to apply for tax credits you have to be contributing have to be contributing yes thank yes yeah so yeah you're part of the community right and that's a good point you're still getting to take that have a sense of community pride or whatever this whole thing is is that old adage that all ships rise with the incoming tide just because it right now it's maybe not contributing doesn't mean that it has to stay that way okay okay thanks all right thank you very much appreciate it okay so it sounds like we have uh given staff some changes and you'll be bringing these changes back um for the consideration i mean well the plan was for council consider it this afternoon but we can certainly bring it back with the new uh amendments to the draft yeah i would like to see that okay yeah yeah okay all right do we need to make a no i think i think we've given direction is that we'll have it we'll have it back to you in the next meeting or two okay i just put my agenda up sorry y'all want to take a five-minute break yeah let's take a five-minute break welcome back everybody to this meeting of the dent city council october the eighth 2019 it is 10 after four i'm going to go ahead and call uh the next what we're not doing one of these which one is it no we're doing all of these oh i thought we got the agreement signed in return okay so i heard okay all right okay all right so these are um b c d e and f all right so i'm going to call all these so we can just make the presentations just move through them but we'll take a separate vote all right so let me just call them real quick agenda item 2b consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton approving and authorizing city manager execute an interlocal cooperation agreement with wise county agenda 2c consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing city manager execute contract with frontier access llc 2d consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with community wise disposal inc agenda item 2e consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing city manager execute contract with waste connection loan star providing for a guaranteed volume agreement and then 2f consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton a texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing city manager execute contract with allied waste so before you get started if if if we can consolidate the presentations as much because the contracts outside of the numbers i mean the substantive contracts are they pretty much they are they're perfect they're identical except for the names and just the numbers okay that is correct you bet all right mr mayor members of council appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today about the contracted waste contracted rates and waste volumes for third party waste into the city of denton landfill back on october 20th when we presented our rate structure to or proposed our rate structure to the city of denton county denton city council we brought to you some proposals from various companies as a review in 2018 and years prior we've had several private companies and other government entities which actually been bringing waste to us at a preferred rate this rate was equivalent to what we are currently charging ourselves recognizing that we've got this asset we want to use it as wisely as possible we want to recognize that we also have a financial commitment tied to some of the private companies or that allows us to address bond indebtedness that we that we currently have and as such it's important for us to maintain a certain level of third-party financial interest coming into the landfill in 2018 we had about 110 000 tons of waste that that came into the landfill generating about 2.7 million dollars in revenue as a as a reminder currently the landfill operation is under recovering by about 3.8 and again that is due to the bond indebtedness and remember that over the next three years we'll be working our way out of this and once we've finished gotten out of the bonded deadness that we're currently covering then we'll have a different decision to make but currently it is still important for us to bring in third-party waste into the landfill these there's actually six proposals that we will be considering five of them tonight one outlier that we do not have that we'll look at in two weeks is the city of little elm they actually have a city a city council meeting tonight well they'll be considering it and then we'll bring it back for consideration on the 22nd so currently we're looking at four private companies and two government entities that have made proposals to the city of denton to accept about 190 000 tons of waste annually which is about 80 000 more than what we're currently taking now denoting about 5.3 million in annual revenue so almost doubling the revenue that we're currently seeing it reduces the landfill under recovery to about 1.2 million and we're still looking at estimated life in the three to six month range of airspace over the three-year contracted area when we look at the numbers as they're laid out currently the two government entities that were have proposed to us are wise county and the city of little elm and then the uh the four private companies are frontier waste cdbd waste connections and republic waste which uh their corporate name is allied waste llc you'll note that the rates vary from between 27 a ton and 34 a ton what this does is it does guarantee the tonnage and the rates so regardless of how many tons they bring into us until they meet that annual tonnage rate they will still be required to pay us the annual revenue under under this contract it is a three-year contract which includes annual uh inflationary escalators and true ups so again if they bring if they bring below that amount of tonnage of waste they still are required to pay us that amount of annual revenue currently if you want to look at this sort of where we're present where we're where we're getting ahead the first three uh companies on the list wise county frontier waste and cdbd that's roughly comparable to the current tonnage it gives us another 600 000 uh in uh additional revenue but still keeps us at that approximately 110 000 tons of waste taking the last three we see additional 74 000 almost 75 000 tons of waste and and 2.2 million in additional revenue with that uh would answer any questions that you might have regarding these contracts and uh and then go from there all the ones that we call the question that is correct that we call real just real quick question for just uh because i know that i sent in just a contract change so i think we're gonna have to no those have been made and they have been signed and filed with the city secretary so they are good to go but as far as what we'd be approving then the changes have already if we just say we approve the contracts does that mean it's with those changes changes have been made and the other change that has been made is the rate on the bottom one with republic had been 26 and now it's 27 okay all right thank you i'm sorry customer breaks go ahead yeah so i'm just trying to when i saw this i thought well that sure is a lot of um companies and i don't remember that from our last discussion and and they weren't there was one more and um i remember our discussion was that we want to make sure and at least um contract with the same companies that we're doing currently so that we're not harming ourselves in any way but this is going over beyond and so i'm just trying to remember back to that um conversation where we agreed to um not put ourselves in any harm's way but this looks like we're considering more contracts for more tons and then over and above what we need not the the the the persons that we are contracting with today are identical to what we presented we did not show names on october 20th it was just firms a through f the tonnages uh were uh initial proposals and as we've gone back and tightened up the contract and looked at escalators and and and what the market will bear this is the final negotiation that we have come back with uh related to uh the interest and again it goes back and and when you look at at the uh at the august 20th uh presentation we were presenting an increase in tonnage and an increase in dollar uh dollar revenue to the city uh at this point though and and one of the things that we did denote in that last in the october or excuse me the august 20th uh presentation uh there is a line where we break even so to speak and then there was additional funding and at that point it was we recognized that by having this additional funding we reduced the amount of of of um liability not so much liability but the amount of of um sort of looking for here under recovery that we were incurring at the landfill and it did allow us to uh potentially speed up either paying down the debts by buying some rate relief or some other uh programmatic uh changes as a result of of this implementation and i would take this one step further and say that this this pro forma was meant to step in and true up the uh the pro forma that from four or five years ago where the landfill mining had the landfill actually breaking even and right now we're showing you even with the reductions out there it's still losing over three million dollars a year so by doing this deal for at least the next three years you you significantly pare down that that deficit in the fund the 1.2 million and then in three years that debt rolls off that had initially been issued for those programs and we're back to square one so that was the recap of the august 20th meeting um and what is happening as a result of this is our our rates on our residents uh is being used to cover this so if we put our pay agreements it gives us the ability to come back to you in another meeting or two and reduce the rates on the on the residential customers so that was the impetus of the august 20th meeting and kind of a recap of how we got here okay council member armature then council member husband so um you know i've been pretty uh you know public and clear about how i feel about this this practice of um of taking in trash from uh from from other cities and to our landfill um not going to belabor the point right now but i wanted to know you mentioned the debt can you speak to of the debt in solid waste how much of that is for the landfill expand debt due to the you know landfill expansion permits how much to other things what are the um you know roughly you know if you were to summarize that that debt and what it's for uh the debt that we're talking about has nothing to do with the expansion that we has been proposed and is currently in in permit uh process at the tcq what we're looking at uh we looked at potentially mining concrete uh recycling things of that nature we acquired a considerable amount of equipment laid a lot of debt on the line to buy that equipment which first of all we you know we're using what we can but we have an excess and there's some that is just basically single use pieces of equipment that we can't apply to anything else so we're in the process of getting rid of that equipment and that's what we're trying to do is is make amends for those uh false starts yeah yeah so and i'm i'm all for the paying off the debt making amends for those false starts you know just um again we're taking the once we pay off the debt that trash is going to stay with us the you know unrecyclable landfill um material and you know that's that's my concern but i'm all for paying off the debt looking to other other ways to do it mayor protem yeah a couple of comments uh so first i want to thank staff for their research and diligence in this effect i think it's spot on to have a three-year contract to then address a singular issue and kind of let's get to the meat of it and then let's let's look at it uh further i think you're absolutely i couldn't agree more that it's past policies that were evaluated under a different administration and and decisions made that did not pan out they could have but they did not so now it's incumbent upon us to either one raise rates or to find other creative ways to keep the pressure off of of citizens and i think we this is a good path towards that and i echo to the city manager's point uh i'm excited about the rate relief i mean we can't i mean it has to come from someplace right and i'm happy to be able to uh make a motion to approve items uh b c d yeah we got it oh i'm sorry yeah we got a vote i'm looking at the one i'm looking at the wrong part of the agenda well we have to vote on them one at a time so yeah so we'll just i'll just recognize you for each one of these as far as make a motion for each individual is that okay yes so um so i'm approving for item b um all right agenda item 2b yes 2b council member ryan second any discussion council member melser yeah i'll be voting no that i believe that revenue is going to prove very addictive we're selling a finite resource i think we're going to wish we had that airspace in 10 years okay all right all in favor yes go ahead yeah so are are these listed in order of the because i'm inclined to do the first three but not the others so are these listed in order as the ones on top here wise county is the first one on 2b so we'll just take one at a time wise county so it is up there all right so all in favor for agenda item 2b please signify signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign motion carries four to two move approval of item c 2c all right we have a motion for agenda item 2c which is for frontier access all in favor please signify by raising your right hand oh second yeah we got a second sorry pushing pushing the envelope a little bit all in favor please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign motion carries four to two mayor pro tem yes and i'll move approval of item 2d which is i can't see which corporation it is uh community community waste community waste disposal thank you yes thank you which is cwd on this this form thank you i'll second all right we have a second all in favor of agenda item 2d please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign carries four to mayor pro tem and i'll move approval of item 2e which is help me out loan star in second waste connections oh waste connection waste connections loan star waste connections loan star okay and as a reminder little m will be presented on the 22nd so we have a motion and a second for agenda item 2e all in favor please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign it's a three three tie and i believe according to our rules of procedure it'll roll on to the next agenda when we have a full council yes uh mayor pro tem and i move approval of item 2f which is allied waste and allied waste is republic okay thank you all right second we have a motion and a second for agenda item 2f all in favor please signify by raising your right hand all opposed by like sign three three tie so carries on to the next agenda item presented to our council rules of procedure all right i'll call agenda item 2g consider adoption of an ordinance approving an amended agreement by and between the city of denton and the denton community theater mayor city council tony point the chief financial officer uh this is a very short presentation here on the then community theater uh black uh then community theater the black box also known as the black box theater um then community theaters um operates a rehearsal space known as the black box theater they were previously located at what was the drc location which is now the location of the nctc downtown campus they leased uh that space from the dent record chronicle they've now relocated to the golden triangle mall since 2009 the city has supported dct with funding for utilities and janitorial maintenance expenses the most recent agreement was amended was done in september of 2015 it's due to expire at the end of september 2020 so they have funding for this fiscal year it's already included in the general fund in accordance with the agreement if the uh rehearsal studio uh relocates to another another location then it does require the council to approve an amended agreement to continue that funding their previous location was comprised of about 3,800 square feet so they've now relocated to the golden triangle mall to a slightly bigger space about 4,300 square feet here in front of you is kind of a history of of the funding that has been provided as i mentioned 19 fiscal year 1920 will be the final year in this agreement they receive 8100 dollars for utilities those are only city utilities and then also they receive three thousand dollars under this agreement for janitorial and maintenance expenses for a total of 11,100 dollars just quickly so part of our recommendation here includes approval of this ordinance amending the agreement for this new rehearsal space at golden triangle mall and then part of the recommendation too is beginning fiscal year 2021 so for for the next budget process staff will work with dct to take their their request through the hotel occupancy tax and sponsorship committee uh that uh with that that concludes my presentation be happy to answer any questions you may have i would like to move approval and i think i just want to comment that i think it's very creative um well that they moved out to the mall i i hope that it's a win-win for both organizations yes councilmember robert so um so currently that funding has come through general fund yes ma'am be changing it to hot funds uh no it would actually still continue to come from the uh from the general fund it'll just flow through the sponsorship fund that we that we that we created so the funding still comes from general fund okay so can you explain how that would work like what sorry for not understanding what the connection is so so no no hotel occupancy taxes are being used currently so if you recall when we set up the sponsorship fund there was a number of sponsors being done by various funds in the city primarily electric fund and the general fund we aggregated all of those together okay got it guys those are the sponsorships yes ma'am yes okay and so uh and can you speak to you know what will be the difference in the um i mean have we heard from black box about the difference in in the costs and is there there's nobody here from who's gonna from black boxes um yeah there's nobody here uh our communication with them is that the rental space at golden triangle mall and also um at the previous drc location was strictly just the utilities so as long as they paid for the utilities there was no annual rental per square footage and so that that continues at golden triangle mall yeah okay great yes so i approve yes member no sir right um i said right do you have my name right you're sort of fishing for it yeah um yeah hope this leads to a really interesting creative revival in the mall i second the motion any more discussion we have a motion to second for agenda item 2g i believe all in favor please signify by raising your right hand passage unanimously or passage six zero uh we'll go on to agenda item 2h consider nominations and appointments to the city boards commissions and committees board of ethics and zoning board of adjustment councilmember riggs i move approval of the nominations presented councilmember elser second we have a motion to second any discussion for agenda item 2h uh let's vote on the board please not vote on the board anybody yeah anybody who's approved signify by raising your right hand motion carries six zero uh concluding items council mayor pro tem sure i think i got them all jotted down here so uh the 11th is the truck parade downtown so i invite people to to go to that that's always pretty neat and kids have a lot of fun there's well attended also industrial street closes down for the geezer palooza i went for the first time and that's a lot of fun last year so that's on the 12th also on the 12th the gospel airs uh it's a group there in denton southeast denton they have a concert um i forget the location of that so shame on me but then there's uh look you can look at that up online and then ranch hand rescue has a uh their banquet at the embassy suites and that's going to bring mike deucey to town so that's that's pretty neat that'll be at the embassy and then uh there's on the 13th there's a proclamation for those who want to come for a local pastor pastor webb is being sworn in as a pleasant grove uh baptist church uh pastor and that's gonna be more street so that that'll be kind of neat thank you council member armator and um i wanted to note it was called to my attention yesterday somebody sent me an email with some photos showing that a white supremacist group patriot front had put stickers around this area including around the city hall area and at bearded monk which is a bar across the street and so i wanted uh to um to request a uh staff report and i'll be following up with an email on just kind of finding out you know what what our what the policy is you know with uh stickers of this kind and and flyers okay what was that group again a patriot front patriot front okay thank you i'll forward you the email council member so i saw one of those stickers on my way in early this morning and utility um staff um i mean this facilities sorry there i go um went and removed them um so um and i just want to this is just a thank you um to staff and um pd and fire for national night out it was fantastic not only the the preview of it but also there were so many registered and there were staff and pd and fired every one of those parties and i just want to say thank you for your commitment to our um community in that way and then um keep didn't beautiful had their appreciation for their volunteers and that was full and it was really nice to see everyone in the community and then when we're talking about volunteers um i didn't get to do it this year but stream cleaned happen i know that council member davis participated with his family and i just want to say thanks to all staff and community members who took part in that to help keep our waters clean anybody else okay i believe that concludes our agenda for today on our open session so we will adjourn the open session and move into closed session at 4 35 pm we will consider i believe deliberations regarding real property under texas government code section five five point oh seven two are there are there going to be any uh questions for the close for the closed session on the gas well ordinance okay so i'm not going to call uh the other consultation with attorneys All right, so we'll move into closed session then.