Oct 15, 2019 City Council on 2019-10-15 2:00 PM

Welcome, everybody, to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, October 15, 2019. It is 2.02 p.m. We're moving through our work session report. Our first meeting -- our first agenda item is citizen comments on consent agenda items. Do we have any citizen comments? Okay. Our next is request for clarifications on agenda items listed on this agenda. Yes, Councilmember Meltzer. Another shout-out to Mary Ann, and I'd like to pull F so that I can recuse. F. Okay. All right. Any other clarifications on agenda items? Anybody? Let me just look through here, make sure I didn't mark anything. Okay. All right. We'll move on to then our work session reports, work session 3A. Leave a report and hold discussion. Give staff direction on council members serving on internal, external, and local community boards and committees. And I believe this is one of the requests from off of the matrix, is that correct? Yes. Yes. All right. Local community boards, so the origin of the item was that at first on June 11th, during the work session where City Council was discussing interest and proposed membership to City Council committees and other groups, Mayor Pro Tem Hudspeth introduced his request that he was interested in looking at other local community boards where the City Council served as members and then also that the board made recommendations to the City Council, and then in turn the City Council was making a decision based on those recommendations. So on June 18th, the City Council was finalizing the City Council appointment process as well as continuing to discuss membership on other subcommittees and other groups. Mayor Pro Tem Hudspeth again identified his request to discuss City Council's dual role as a council member while also serving on local community boards and primarily on the Economic Development Partnership Board. So the next step after that was that after the City Council adopted its council request process under ordinance 19-20-26 was to present his request at the work session of September 17th, and during the discussions, the consensus of the City Council was to go ahead and schedule a work session to discuss his request as well as possibly look at other local community boards and committees to determine what role change, if any, was desired. So we have here, went ahead and listed the City Council committees. We considered those internal, just a key point that on the Hotel Occupancy Tax and Sponsorship Committee, those members are required to also be members of the Convention and Visitors Bureau Advisory Board. So then we have what we call your external boards, and you can see here what those are, who the membership is, how those were established, as well as what the membership is required under that legislation. And they're further outlined, the responsibilities are outlined in greater detail under Appendices B. So we have your City Council committees, what we consider local community boards. You have the Economic Development Partnership Board, whose members are Council Member Briggs and Council Member Davis. Those two members must also be a member of the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone Number 2 Board. And that board was set up under a city ordinance. And there were several changes throughout the years, but you can see here what the ultimate responsibilities are, and those responsibilities do provide that the board make recommendations to the City Council. The next one is the Downtown Denton Tif Reinvestment Zone Number 1 Board, whose members are Mayor Pro Tem Hutspeth and Council Member Meltzer. The legislation that established that, it's established under Tax Increment Financing Act Section 311.009, and of course, a city ordinance. And you can see here what those recommendations are, and they do in fact make recommendations to the City Council. Your next local community board is the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone Number 2 Board, which we call the TERS 2, whose members comprise of Mayor Pro Tem Hutspeth and Council Member Briggs. These members must also serve concurrently on the Economic Development Partnership Board. And we're in the process of changing Mayor Pro Tem's Hutspeth membership on that to Council Member Davis, again, because the same membership must be included in both the TERS 2 and the EDPB. And you can see here on the recommendations, they do make recommendations to the City Council. So points of interest to consider while you're discussing the issue is for the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone Number 1 Board, the City Council does appoint the seven directors to the Board. It is governed under Tax Code 311, but that law does not require that Council Members be the ones that are appointed to the Board. The Board's creation is under ordinance, and the bylaws do require that the two members appointed be City Council Members, so that requirement is local, and they have to be, again, two City Council Members. For the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone Number 2 Board, City Council appointed all the EDPB members to the Board, meaning you have that dual role by having to serve on the EDPB and the TERS 2. And of course, the County appoints one member to the Board, and one developer appoints one member to that Board. It is governed by Tax Code 311, but that does not require the City Council Members be the ones appointed to that Board. Then for the Economic Development Partnership Board, the City Council does appoint the members under our current ordinance, and it does require that they be two City Council Members. And of course, any legislative changes to the membership for either the TERS 2 or the EDPB would result in needed changes to the other, both not only in ordinance form, but also to their bylaws. So the next step is for City Council to discuss any potential legislation or membership changes to the Boards, and of course, provide direction on how you want us to proceed. If any, I will let you know that if you do want to make any changes, we'll have to consult with the City Attorney just to make sure that we're complying with state law to the extent that it's applicable. And you can see here Appendices A, that kind of notes the responsibilities and additional information on what we call our internal committees, and Appendices B is for those external committees, and Appendices C is a local community, and you can see outlined in greater detail what those responsibilities are, and are there any questions? So I think I've modified the request, and I think it's something that Council Member Meltzer pointed out. I think, I'm hoping that we can gain traction on understanding the weight that a Council Member has on a particular Board, either intended or unintended, that I think that's a fact. And so what I really, I think I've boiled it down to across the Board, I think when it's a Council and a Citizen-appointed Board, my generic ask across all those spectrums would be that the Council Members remain but don't have voting authority, because, and I'll give you an example that resonates with me, the Tyson opportunity that came across to the City passed with one no vote, and that no vote was a Council Member, which then could vote on it later, but it just makes it look like, to me it looks different, and I think we've all been there where a, kind of you look and say, "Well, Council's got a vote on it. What do you think?" Or, often times you'll be put in a position to almost get a read of this room. And so I think removing that voting capability gives it, and adding, so I think the, to supplement that voting, you add two Citizens, so if it's economic development, we add two more small business owners, whatever that is, that are now voting, so same vote total, just different makeup so that the Council Members are present, just not voting twice on a similar issue. And when you have a joint meeting, it's not, you're not representing two roles. So we had a joint meeting with EDP, and there's two, in essence, two voices not being heard, because it's, the Council Members are in a different capacity. So that, I think across the board, that I think is most efficient, is that if we keep it as is, allow legal to look it over, but then at the end of the day, take the opportunity to add more Citizens to those boards, that could then evaluate without that kind of weighted input. For these members that have, for these committees that have Council Members on them, to allow them to be a member but a non-voting member, would they still also have the opportunity for just discussion slash deliberation? Yes. Okay. All right. All right. Yes. Council Member Armitage. Well, so I have an objection to that. I was looking around to see if anybody else would state an objection. As I see it, when Council is represented on a committee, the public who voted for them is represented. And it's true about any Council Member. And when we take a Council Member's vote out of the picture, even in a committee that's obviously filled with members of the public, but the Council Member is the one who is, who was elected, so I consider it essential. I guess it's a matter of opinion, you know, but for me, for me, if you take a Council Member, just give them the power to deliberate not to vote, you know, you take out all the people who voted for them who were otherwise brought to the table by having them on there. Council Member Nelson. Yeah, I'm comfortable with the proposal because these are all advisory bodies that deliver opinions to Council to vote on, and none of them have the ability to independently take any action. So, you know, the public, by way of having their elected representatives vote, you know, gets their full representation before the action is taken. So, you know, I'm supportive. Okay. All right. Council Member Briggs and then Council Member Ryan. So I am not supportive of this. My experience has been that my voice or my vote, because I serve on that board, is not, it doesn't weigh heavy on the board. Every one of those individuals have their own ideas and their own beliefs on an issue and they vote how they do. They're not looking for how Council Members vote first to see if that's one of the concerns. I have not seen that, so, and I, would the Council Members count towards a quorum if they're not voting or would they just be there? If they're not voting members, what we typically do is they're not part of the quorum. Council Member Ryan. Thank you. As opposed to the thought or the idea of making them non-voting members, I think it's a good way to run it right now. If you look at any of our subcommittees that are made up of just us, we vote at that level and then we vote again. I serve on the Serve Denton Board and I also serve as Chair of the Property Committee on that. I vote twice on things. I vote at the property level, I vote again at the board level. So it's not unusual for someone to be in both positions to vote on something twice. It's just a transfer of knowledge because quite often on these boards you have a Chair who has been around a lot longer than what the Council Member has that can bring up knowledge to that Council Member or there might be budgetary issues that the Council Member can bring back to the board. So I don't see any difference on whether they were voting or not and therefore I think partially to make sure we keep the quorum, partially so that we kind of get their opinion at both levels. I mean normally when there's nay votes on these we ask who voted no. It'll come out along the way so to me it's important that we do keep that vote at that level. Any other comments? Yes. >> With the construction where Council Members would still be present like they are today although not voting, I think the virtue of that is that it preserves the knowledge transfer function which I think is important and helpful. So just on that one point that makes a difference to you. >> Yeah. I mean I don't know if I feel strongly either way. I mean I'm okay with keeping it the way it is. I will say though that the Council Member who are in these meetings, they're voting their particular belief system on these particular issues. They're not voting for this Council. They're not representing this Council and I really don't see them as representing their constituents that are elected because if that's the case then we've got seven or five members who quote unquote don't have people represented though. So I really don't put it in that paradigm. I know when I've served on boards where I had two votes there's been times where I voted for something in one of those committees and found out additional information and had to vote against it when it came before the Council. So I understand the concern and sometimes the struggle but I'm okay with it the way it is until we get a little bit more indication that it may not be working. But again I think we're so diverse on this Council from a philosophical perspective that you could substitute in some Council Members for others and you will have potentially a different vote in those particular subcommittees or those other citizen quote committees. I think some of these are prescribed by law anyway and by our ordinance. So I'm okay with keeping it the way it is for now. It seems like that's the primary direction here. Appreciate you bringing it up. Yes Mayor Pro Tem. And I will say the slides were very helpful so whoever played a role in putting that together very helpful. So thank you. Fantastic. All right. Well thank you. Our next item is item 3B which is receive a report and hold a discussion and provide staff direction on requests from Council Members. Good afternoon. I'm Stuart Birdseye, Assistant to the City Manager. I'm here for our pending Council request for information work session. Just a reminder for anybody who's watching, the elected official who made the request will have one minute to present their idea, their request and the remaining elected officials will have one minute to respond to those and indicate support and staff will respond to anything where consensus of Council was established. Today we have one request. It was requested by Council Member Armator. It's a work session on a city-wide moratorium for small marijuana possession arrests. Thank you. I'll try to be brief. The county has stopped prosecuting for small marijuana arrests. So why are we still arresting people for it? It seems to me to be something that takes a lot of money from our budget and a lot of time that our police could be spending enforcing laws that really do uphold the public safety and pose a threat to people. Marijuana does not. The idea of decriminalization, which was once maybe considered pretty far-fetched, is now so mainstream as even part of one of the major Texas party platforms, Republican party platform, decriminalization that is. So to me this seems like a no-brainer. Thank you. Okay. Comments? Yes, Council Member Briggs. So I would be in favor of a presentation full of information. I know that there's been a lot of recent legislation and some new rules and the county's doing it one day, one way. I would really like to hear what we do and some more information about that legislation. I think it would be helpful. So I would be in favor of more information. Okay. Anybody else? One more time. Any other comments? Yes, Council Member Mulser. By and large, I trust the chief to prioritize putting police resources where they'll do the most good. I think if it's a very unproductive way for him to dedicate resources, I think he would make those decisions and I don't really want to see us sort of out of our lane in terms of where this legislation is controlled at. So I don't think that's productive to do at the city level. Seeing no more comments, it seems like the direction is to sort of leave it where it is for now. Yes, sir. All right. Thank you. Fantastic. Okay. Well, that's probably one of the quickest work sessions we've had in a long time. I will now convene the closed session at 2 22 p.m. We will consider the following items, consultation with attorneys under Texas Government Code Section 551.071, deliberation regarding personnel matters under Texas Government Code Section 551.074, and deliberations regarding certain public power utilities competitive matters under Texas Government Code Section 551.086. Welcome, everyone, to this meeting of the Denton City Council. I'll call this meeting to order at 633. We do have a quorum. Our first item on the agenda is Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. and Texas Flag. Please stand with me if you're able. I pledge allegiance to the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, for which it stands, if you all want to introduce yourselves and then we'll come back and Jane are you going to be the spokesperson? Yes. Yes. Okay. And is Kathy Sale here? Okay. I'm Jane Piper Lunt with the Denton Basic Services Center. I'm Warren Martin. I'm married to her. I'm Audrey Kalman. My name is Sean Jones. Sam Alphonse. Tim Swanson with the Disability Inclusion Society. Heidi Ambrosio. Troy Manning with Denton County MHMR. So tell us about World Homeless Day. Well, it's a national or international holiday. It's, and you'll see it's proclaimed on all continents of Antarctica. It's an awareness day. It's an opportunity for local communities to have awareness. I don't know if any of y'all saw this, but we were out flying signs out on the street for an hour before council meeting to raise awareness. We got reported to the police because they said we were panhandling, which we weren't, but anyways. And so it's just an opportunity for some of these people are homeless, for homeless and the community to come together as advocates. Thank you. This is a proclamation by the mayor here in Denton, whereas the inaugural World Homeless Day was marked on the 10th of October, 2010. And whereas the concept of World Homeless Day emerged from online discussions between people working to respond to homelessness from various parts of the world. And whereas since its founding, World Homeless Day has been observed on every continent except Antarctica and several dozen countries. And whereas the purpose of World Homeless Day is to draw attention to homeless people's needs locally for dignity, basic human rights, and shelter and provide opportunities for the community to get involved in responding to homelessness while taking advantage of the stage and international day provides. Now, therefore, I, Chris Watts, mayor of the city of Denton, Texas, do here proclaim October the 10th, 2019 as World Homeless Day in the city of Denton and ask the citizens to participate in ending homelessness in the city of Denton through educational awareness and support of local organizations who work towards ending homelessness. Thank you so much for bringing this to our Our next proclamation is the Peterbilt Pride and Class Day. You can introduce yourselves and I'm Callum Fletcher with Peterbilt, Gary Henderson, United Way of Denton County. So who's going to tell us a little bit about Peterbilt Pride and Class Day? I'll brag on Peterbilt. So for 16 years, Peterbilt Motors Company has donated over 6.1 million dollars to charities in Denton County through United Way of Denton County through the workplace campaign and through their charitable giving. Several years ago, one of their loaned executives conceived of an idea to do a truck parade through your square, one lap, just one lap, and we completed our fourth annual Peterbilt Pride and Class truck parade through the square. So we want to join you in thanking them for their corporate philanthropy here in Denton. Who saw that this last week? Come on now. If you haven't seen it, go see it next year. It's quite fascinating to see what they can do with those trucks. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton, whereas Peterbilt Motors Company and its employees have donated over 6.6 million dollars over the last 17 years. And I know that was said before the proclamation, but I just let that sink in. 6.6 million dollars over the last 17 years from Peterbilt employees. Thank you so much for that. And why did they do that? To improve and restore lives of people in Denton County through their annual United Way of Denton County workplace campaign. And whereas Peterbilt Motors Company employees regularly volunteer their time and talent to serve local non-profit organizations as board members and dedicated volunteers. And whereas Peterbilt Motors Company employees host the annual Pride and Class Peterbilt show truck parade, that's a mouthful, around the Denton square to raise awareness and donations for United Way of Denton County and its partners. And whereas 50 Peterbilt show truck operators will donate their time on October 11th to support Peterbilt Motors Company's philanthropic efforts. Whereas Peterbilt Motors Company provides an exemplary example of corporate social responsibility and commitment to giving back to our community. Now, therefore, I, Chris Watts, Mayor of the City of Denton, do hereby declare pro-claim October 11, 2019 in Rears as Peterbilt Pride and Class Day and urge all citizens to join United Way of Denton County in recognizing Peterbilt Motors Company's and its employees for their continued commitment to our community. Thank you so much. I do have a question. And what was the furthest that can you remember the furthest that someone drove came from to be in the parade? One of the truck drivers. Definitely Canada. So it's Canada. Yeah. They come from all over the country and now from other countries to come join us in celebration and to raise money for United Way. So thank you all so much for that. Okay. Public Power Week. Come on down, Public Power Week. And while they're coming, I think this is very appropriate because if you remember on the news just a few days ago, out in California, one of their major public, one of their major power companies disconnected service to, gosh, it was like a million people or something because of fear of wildfires. So certainly something to be celebrating here in the City of Denton, the great work that our public power employees do for our community. So I want y'all to introduce yourselves. So Tony Puente, City's Chief Financial Officer and currently the Interim General Manager for DME. Terry Nalti, Assistant General Manager. Brian Heath, Executive Manager for Energy Delivery. Elizabeth Ruiz, Customer Programs and Key Accounts Admin. Chuck Sears, Transmission Engineering Manager. Smith Day, Regulatory and Risk Division Manager. So tell us a little bit about Public Power Week and why we are celebrating it. So as some of you may know, since 1905 the City of Denton has been in the public power business providing electricity first in the downtown area and certainly now throughout the City of Denton. We certainly focus in on having reliable and affordable electricity in the community. But even beyond the borders of the City of Denton, our employees routinely respond to hurricanes and other natural disasters. This year we responded to a tornado in the City of Greenville, sent a couple of crews out there and certainly even within our own community we did have a small tornado in the north side of the city and our employees came back in in the middle of the night responding to that and we're also on on on standby for some potential hurricanes in the in the Florida area. And so certainly the City has a long tradition of public power but we're but it's not unique to the City of Denton. There's a number of other municipal utilities across the state in the country and and co-ops as well and so cities like the City of Garland and Greenville and even Bridgeport and Sanger have public power in their communities as well. Thank you and and I can attest as can Council Member Briggs last year when that tornado came through as we toured that area you know we saw the men and women from DME on site attempting as courageously as they could to get power restored to that area and I've also seen them as they went down to Houston during that hurricane and received many letters from other cities around the country mainly in Florida as they saw crews from Denton out there to help them to restore power. Very proud of the men and women who serve us through DME so thank you all so much for that. This is a proclamation by the Mayor of the City of Denton whereas we the citizens of the City of Denton, Texas, place high value on local control over community services and therefore have chosen to operate a community-owned not-for-profit electric utility and as customers and owners of our electric utility have a direct say in utility operations and policies and whereas Denton Municipal Electric provides our homes, businesses, farms, social service, and local government agencies with reliable, efficient, and cost-effective electricity employing sound business practices designed to ensure the best possible service at not-for-profit rates and whereas Denton Municipal Electric is a valuable community asset that contributes to the well-being of local citizens through energy efficiency, customer service, environmental protection, economic development, and safety awareness and whereas Denton Municipal Electric is a dependable and trustworthy institution whose local operations provide many customer protections and continues to make our community a better place to live and work and contributes to protecting the global environment and whereas that Denton Municipal Electric will continue to work to bring low-cost, safe, reliable electricity to community homes and businesses just as it has since 1905, the year when the utility was created to serve all the citizens of the City of Denton and now, therefore, Chris Watts, Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim the week of October the 6th through October the 12th as Public Power Week and recognize Denton Municipal Electric for its contributions to the community and to educating customer owners, policy makers, and employees of the benefits of public power. Thank you all so much for what you do. [Applause] Community Planning Month. Planners. You all look excited. Man. All right. Introduce yourselves and then somebody tell us a little bit about Community Planning Month. Scott McDonald, Director of Development Services. Richard Canone, Deputy Director of Development Services, Planning Director. Haley Zagurski, Senior Planner. Ron Manghetto, Principal Planner. A fan club. Appreciate the work that you all do. I mean, I know we've made a lot of changes in the Planning Department and they're changes for the better and we hear that now from the customer as you heard tonight from the representatives served in that you're here to help business owners, people to get their projects through in the quickest, most efficient way while maintaining and preserving and enforcing the codes or planning codes that provide for public safety and things such as that. So thank you all for what you do because I know it's a hard job and I appreciate that we're recognizing you guys and all the ones behind the scenes. How many do you have in your department? 60 staff. 60 staff. All right. Fantastic. This is a proclamation by the Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas, whereas change is constant and affects all cities, towns, suburbs, counties, boroughs, townships, rural areas, and other places. And whereas community planning and plans can help manage this change in a way that provides better choices for how people work and live. And whereas community planning provides an opportunity for all residents to be meaningfully involved in making choices that determine the future of their community. And whereas the full benefits of planning requires public officials and citizens who understand, support, and demand excellence in planning and plan implementation. And whereas the month of October is designated as National Community Planning Month throughout the United States of America and its territories. And whereas American Planning Association and its Professional Institute, the American Institute of Certified Planners, endorse National Community Planning Month as an opportunity to highlight the contributions sound planning and plan implementation make to the quality of our settlements and environment. And whereas the celebration of National Community Planning Month gives us the opportunity to publicly recognize the participation and dedication of the members of the Planning Commissions and other citizen planners who have contributed their time and expertise to the improvement of the City of Denton. And whereas we recognize the many valuable contributions made by professional community and regional planners of the City of Denton and extend our heartfelt thanks for the continued commitment to public service by these professionals. Now therefore I, Chris Watts, Mayor of the City of Denton, Texas do hereby declare and proclaim the month of October 2019 is hereby designated as Community Planning Month in the City of Denton in conjunction with the celebration of National Community Planning. Thank you all so much for what you do. We appreciate it. Okay, I think that's all the proclamations. Okay, our next item on the agenda is presentation from members of the public. 3A is Review of Procedures for Addressing the City Council. The Denton City Council has adopted rules of procedure including a code of conduct that applies to citizens as well as council members. These rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum. Here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizen reports. Citizens will have four minutes to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes to give an open mic report. There will be an electronic bell when time has expired. If the remarks are not concluded by that time, the citizen will be asked to stop speaking. If the citizen does not cease and a second request is made, the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chamber. Citizens are asked not to approach the dais. If a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council, please let the city secretary know in advance. For scheduled citizen reports, the council may initiate discussion or questions following each citizen report. For non-scheduled open mic citizen reports, the council may listen to citizens speak. However, because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance, the Texas Open Meetings Act limits any deliberation or decision by the council to a proposal to place the item on a future agenda, a statement of factual policy, or a recitation of existing policy. Citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member. Please refrain from making abusive, personal, impertinent, profane, or slanderous remarks. Anyone who violates this council rule of procedure may be immediately removed from the council chamber. Thank you in advance. Copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary. Okay, we don't have any scheduled citizen reports tonight, but we do have one open mic, which is Diane Leggett. If you'll come down, state your name and address, your time will begin. And just as a reminder, because it's an open mic section of our agenda, that the council is unable to ask questions or respond except for policies of fact, recitation of existing policy. So thank you. Diane Leggett, 1019 Aileen. Next week, council is holding a work session on horse-drawn carriages. I have at your desk packets containing background information on that matter. Allowing the practice of horse-drawn carriages in Denton is simply an impractical idea, no matter how charming the fantasy. Our square has a constant flow of traffic that is dangerous, congested, and impossible for a horse and carriage to negotiate safely. The route suggested, Hickory and Oak, is narrow, and the carriages will slow down traffic considerably, as well as pose danger and damage to both horse and occupants. It's difficult enough getting pedestrians and cyclists through this area, but alone adding an animal that could very possibly spook and bolt due to the noise and proximity of people in cars. The presumed benefit of the proposal is tourist attraction. However, where there are horse-drawn carriages, there are concerned citizens loudly protesting the cruelty and dangers of this practice. The opposition will not go away, and I seriously question the appeal to tourists of an attraction that is constantly picketed. Of particular interest to council should be liability issues. Horse-drawn carriage accidents are frequent occurrences. If it's alleged that the city is in any way responsible, there is the very real possibility that Denton will find itself embroiled in litigation. The good news is, and oh yay, there's the picture, the good news is that there's an alternative to horse-drawn carriages that doesn't have any of these drawbacks. Electric horseless carriages, e-carriages as they're known, are an innovative, eco-friendly, and animal-friendly form of tourist transportation that combine the nostalgic look of a classic horse-drawn carriage with the modern features of an all-electric vehicle. They are classy, nostalgic, inviting, romantic, and quiet, and are increasingly used in cities around the world. The city of Philadelphia is currently in the process of bringing a handcrafted e-carriage over from Germany, and Denton officials are welcome to come check it out. You have an official invitation for the city of Philadelphia. I have spoken with them before making your decision on the horse-drawn carriages. At a time when there is growing public opposition to horse-drawn carriages, and the growing global trend is to ban them and replace them with electric horseless carriages, it makes no sense for the city to move backwards in time by starting up the practice. Denton's image is one of creativity and innovation. We could and should be a leader in responsible tourism in our region. This is the positive direction that I hope Historic Denton will embrace. Thank you. All right, we'll move on to our next agenda item, which is the consent agenda. Council Member Briggs. I move to approve the consent agenda item except item F. Mayor Pro Tem. Second. So we have a motion to consider the consent agenda, except we're pulling consent agenda item F, and that will be under items for individual consideration. So we have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. We will now take up agenda item 4F, which was the agenda item that was pulled. I believe we have a couple of recusals, Council Member Meltzer and Council Member Armitter. I will read the caption, "Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton and Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation, authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with Half Associates Inc. for design services for the University of North Texas Underground Electrical Relocation on the Bonnie Bray Phase 3." Mayor Pro Tem. I move approval of item F on the consent agenda. Council Member Ryan. Second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 4F. Let's vote on the board, please. Somebody not voted. There we go. All right. The motion carries 5-0 with two abstentions. All right. We'll move on to if we could ask the Council Members to return. We'll move on to agenda items for individual consideration, which is our group heading agenda 5. We'll go to agenda 5A, "Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton and Texas to declare the intent to reimburse capital program expenditures of electric utility, solid waste, etc." Good evening, Mayor and Members of Council. David Gaines, Director of Finance. This item is a reimbursement ordinance that we bring to Council around this time every year to essentially get started on some of those CIP projects that we plan to issue debt for later in the fiscal year, but the reimbursement ordinance allows us to begin those projects now before we actually issue the debt for those projects. As noted above, generally we have about 12 months or until the end of the fiscal year to receive the reimbursement from the sell of the bonds for those projects. With each of these slides, I'll go through at a high level from each of the utilities in the general fund what those projects are. I will say just about all of these projects are exactly as they were in the CIP budget. There are a couple of slide exceptions that I will note here in the next slide. So with our GEO projects, as you can see there, $13.1 million for streets for Proposition 1 from the 2014 bond. As we've talked about going into this fiscal year, this is our last issuance of the 2014 bond program, and you can see the street reconstruction, Vonnie Bray funding, miscellaneous roadways, and the final public art issuance from the 2014 bond program. The next slide, we'll go through the CO funded projects, and here's where we have a couple of slight variations from our CIP. So I'll go through each of these. You can see the vehicle replacements and additions just as they were in the CIP, $3.1 million. We issue five-year debt for those has been the practice for the past number of years. We also have our facility maintenance program for $1.5 million again. That's been in our budget the past number of years. Fire Station 8, we are requesting now to issue $5.5 million. This is a $500,000 increase from the budget. We had initially anticipated this project to cost $5 million. We received the bids back. We got a number of bids for the project. The lowest bid came in $500,000 over budget, so that's why the request has increased to $5.5 million here from the budget. Also Fire Station 3 has come in over budget. Obviously that project is further along, and really that $300,000 is meant to make up some of those soft costs that are remaining necessary for funding from fixtures, furnitures, equipment, and tech services, and pieces like that. And then we have the $10 million for the municipal facility that council has discussed a number of times up to this point, and then funding for Lake Forest Dam for construction and dredging of the dam. So I've identified those changes there on this slide. So we'll go into the utilities and again hit these at a high level. If you have any questions, we have plenty of staff here to answer any detailed questions. So for the water projects, the transmission lines, the replacements, and you can see the lift station there as well for a total of $2.4 million. Again, these are the projects that we like to get started immediately as opposed to waiting for the dead issuance. Wastewater similarly, you can see the station, the replacements, and a couple of the interceptors at $11.3 million for wastewater. Solid waste projects is two projects, the renovations of the admin building, and then all those vehicle replacements as we saw with the general fund. And then we have a number of electric projects. Obviously these are grouped as we typically group them with distribution projects, transmission projects, and then some of those other projects we have with electric from the automated meter reading to the communications equipment you can see there. So I'll skim through these, but definitely if you have any questions, we can hit these. And again, we went through all of these in the CIP and there's no change from the budget that was approved by city council. In total, $37.6 million for the electric projects. So the grand total of all the projects included in the reimbursement ordinance is $91.1 million, just with those slight variations from the approved CIP. And with that, I can take any questions after just show you the next steps here as we go through the process. February, we'll start talking to the bond oversight committee, then get with the audit and finance committee in March, and then as we go through the summer, go through our regular schedule for bond sale. I will say, this is our typical schedule every year. Based on where interest rates look like they might be, this could vary each year, but this is the schedule that we typically follow for our sales each year. And with that, I'll take any questions. Council Member Briggs? Just for clarification, since you pointed out some specific projects, but this is just for the overall funding, it's not to go to any direct contracts, correct? Not to direct contracts. This is just giving us the authority to spend the dollars. It's not tying us any contracts or anything like that. Appropriations. Thank you. All right. Seeing no more questions, we do have a person wishing to speak. Jennifer Lane, is Jennifer Lane here? Yes. All right. You'll come state your name and address. Your time will begin. Agenda item 5A. It was tricky to figure out which agenda item I should sign up for regarding the landfill. Is this it? No. So you're only wanting to speak on the landfill? Yes. Is that 5A through whatever? C and D. Is that correct? Okay. All right. So, all right. Thank you. All right. Anyone else wishing to, Council Members have any questions? Mayor Pro Tem? Move approval. Council Member Ryan? Second. All right. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 5A. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries six to one. Agenda item 5B. Consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Ninton, the Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation, authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with Modern Geosciences LLC for gas well inspection services for the Environmental Services Department. Good evening, Council, Mayor. My name is Deb Rivera. I'm with Environmental Services. In front of you, you are considering the gas well inspection contract for the upcoming fiscal year, 2019-20, and it's pretty much the same inspection program that we currently have. The inspection program is to be laid out to provide for inspection near equipment and fence line to detect any leaks, either methane, sulfuric acid, or total volatile organic compounds, knowings, norm, particular matter. We also be able to enforce the sign, the fencing, the trash, the lighting, and landscaping regulation for gas wells, and to establish any condition of the equipment, either because they need paint or they are corroded. The contract will also allow for each inspection to generate a report that will be sent to the site operators, and to also provide a comprehensive annual report at the end of the year for Council to review. It would allow for updating our mapping layer to keep track of the changes in the gas well path sites, and the contract would be for one year, not to exceed $250,000, and two, one year of optional extension, not to exceed $500,000. Staff received four proposals. All those proposals were evaluated against the criteria that is listed on the right side of the presentation, and then there was square, I'm sorry, score accordingly. Of the four, modern year science obtained the highest score, and the other three are laid out according to their score. At this point, staff is available to answer any questions that you may have. Any questions for staff? Council Member Briggs. Yeah, on the, sorry, I was searching for something. So on the things that can be inspected for the gas well inspections, it says leak detection there, and I recently was at a presentation where we were told sometimes the leaks come from the concrete casings. Is that something that can be detected by these inspections, or does that entail something more significant? They use a flare camera, and pretty much that camera allows any emissions to be detected, and if the emissions are high enough to trigger the camera, it would be. Okay, okay, and the other questions I have were about the contract, because there was another Bradley Hodges, which was a little less expensive. Correct. If you could explain or tell us why modern geosciences was chosen. Well, the evaluation criteria includes four criterion as outlined. Even though Bradley Hodges scored the lowest price, they didn't score as high in the other three categories, so when we tally all them up, modern geosciences still come to the top. May I? Sure. And so we had in the past, I think, gotten a, Council has gotten an information follow-up from modern geosciences, I guess an end-of-year review. Are they, is this part of that contract? Will they come do a presentation? Yes, it is part of the comprehensive annual report, and you will be getting that at the end of it. Yes. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Councilmember Meltzer? I move approval. Councilmember Armitage? I second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 5B. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. Moving on to agenda item 5C, consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, Texas, a home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute a contract with Waste Connections, Lone Star Inc. providing for a guaranteed volume agreement for the landfill. We do have a couple of cards who are wishing to speak and a couple of cards who aren't wishing to speak which we'll get to after staff presentation and questions. Thank you, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Ethan Cox. I'm the Director of Public Works for the City of Denton. Have a brief presentation that'll cover the next two agenda items, then I'll be happy to stand for any questions. As a brief recap, council did consider five agreements for disposal last council meeting. Three of those agreements passed. Two were a tie vote and they're basically what's up for your consideration this evening. Some questions and discussion has occurred during the week and so from a staff perspective we thought it appropriate to kind of revisit where we started these discussions. Back on August 20th during the solid waste budget discussion, we had entertained the thought for this and sought council direction on how to proceed. Just a refresher of the conditions on the ground at that time is the solid waste department has had multi-year relationships with five external haulers. There are no contracts in place at that time. That's important for a couple of reasons. Number one, it basically did not allow the council to decide on who receives the discounted rate that is associated with these agreements. There were no volume limits associated with that so on one hand that puts the solid waste department at risk. If a hauler were to leave, could leave a significant hole in the budget about 2.7 million dollars. Conversely, if a hauler decided to increase the volumes, council nor staff would have any control over that contractually. Also at the time the landfill was under recovering expenses by about 3.8 million dollars. Because the solid waste is an enterprise fund that requires that there is funding made up somewhere else. Most notably that is rate subsidization through residential and commercial rates. Just in terms of unpacking some of that, there's been a number of programs that the council has considered from staff to the right size or discontinue. As we've kind of worked through that, it will allow about 2.7 million dollars in stranded debt to fall off over the next five years. What these agreements would enable us to do is to reduce rate subsidization in the meantime if council chooses to approve the three remaining agreements. During that discussion on August 20th, some of the goals that we kind of outlined with council was really staff's desire to formalize these agreements. These in our opinion are decisions that should be made at the council level. These are policy decisions. It's our desire to stabilize the revenue source if we continue to use third party haulers that eliminates the risk of those haulers either increasing or decreasing their revenues or their hauling and impacting our revenues. And lastly, we felt it was important that the terms are transparent. Term limits is something that we certainly wanted to have in there along with volume limits as well as thoughtful consideration of the rates associated. The direction we received at that time was to proceed with the negotiations. What we received back was six proposals, five were existing customers, one new customer in Wise County. Each of the proposals included rate increases from the current $24.50 a ton that was in place at the fiscal year 18-19. The ranges for your consideration are between $27 and $34 per ton. Some of the existing customers did propose volume increases and decreases. A lot of that is associated with their business model and the rate that they're proposing. One outside factor that is playing a significant role here is regional landfills are in short supply in the North Texas region. One of the most significant landfills in our area, the Lewisville landfill, will be closing in two years. That's certainly something that when we negotiated with these haulers, it was on top of their mind and likely led to some of the changes that you see in the proposals. In terms of the goals that we set out to achieve, we felt like from a staff perspective, we've achieved all of those and we do have the opportunity regarding the action before you to perform additional reductions to residential and commercial rates as subsidization of the landfill is reduced. Some of the changes, we wanted to kind of lay out this table for you so you can kind of see what we are continuing with in 18-19 versus what's being proposed. So following my mouse, I'll kind of walk you through this table. These two columns indicate tonnage. These were the fiscal year 18-19 actual tons from these haulers to what they're proposing as part of these agreements. This is the rate last year versus what they're proposing on a rate on a tonnage basis. And then the associated revenues from 18-19 actuals to what would be proposed for your consideration here. Finally, in the last column, I mentioned that these relationships have been in place for a number of years without council consideration. So you can kind of see the duration of how long some of these customers have been a customer at the landfill. So on this chart, is it the ones in yellow that are being considered today? It is. Green was approved last week. Little Elm will be considered next week. We're waiting on their council to take action on the agreement. And so the two in front of you are Waste Connections and Republic. In total, if all agreements are approved, you're looking at about an 85,000 ton increase per year for additional revenue of about $2.5 million above and beyond what we collected last year. I know some council members had a desire to try to land as close as we can to existing volumes. The three contracts approved last week are for 115,000 tons a year. That's very close to the mark of the 105,000 tons that we accepted last year. In terms of ramifications financially, this does allow us a couple of options in terms of rate reductions or rate relief. From a residential standpoint, there's really two options. If we stick with the three agreements that were approved last week, that would allow for $1.50 per month rate decrease or $18 per year. If we do all six agreements, that would allow for a $3 rate decrease or $36 a year. These are our current monthly rates for residential. From a commercial standpoint, it's much more complex. There's a lot more rates to consider. What we will say based on the agreements approved, staff would like to strategically look at rate reductions for side load refuse containers as well as recycling rates. That's based on council's desire to levelize side load containers with front load. Right now, those containers, even though the expense is comparable, the rates for side load are much higher than front load rates. For customers that really don't have an option, we feel like there's an opportunity to balance the equity there. Then from a recycling standpoint, this would allow staff an opportunity to really incentivize recycling when we visit with those businesses. That is it for the presentation. I'm happy to stand for any questions the council might have. >> So sort of a housekeeping question. Is your presentation for agenda item 5D basically the same? >> It is the same. I won't be doing the presentation again. >> Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and call agenda item 5D just because the presentation and questions and comments could be addressed to both 5C and 5D because the side of the names and the prices presentation is the same. Okay. Agenda item 5D is considered adoption of ordinance of the city of Denton and the Texas Home Rule Municipal Corporation authorizing the city of Denton to execute a contract with Allowed Waste Services of Fort Worth LLC providing for a guaranteed volume contract for the landfill. But we will vote on these independently. Councilmember Armitter. >> Yes. So I have, you know, given direction against all of these contracts consistently old and new, I'm skeptical about the word we're getting that the only way to decrease rates is by contracting with these entities to dump in our landfill. Is this really the only way we could reduce rates? Are rates definitely guaranteed to rise with if these are not settled on? Or could other arrangements be made via transfer of funds to solid waste? Other ways financially for rates to decrease? >> This is one component of the entire financial picture for solid waste. Keep in mind we did a 12% residential rate reduction prior to last year's budget. And so from a staff perspective, we're constantly looking for efficiencies and ways to optimize, to make it more appealing for our rate base. That being said, the injection of revenue is really what enables us to be a little bit more aggressive with rate decreases at this point in time. The other alternative would be to allow some of the debt service that I alluded to earlier to fall off in the out years. So really this provides council the opportunity to take those decreases now versus waiting. >> Can I ask another question? >> Sure, sure. >> So another question has to do with the content of what these entities can permissively dump in our landfill. There's lots of concern community wide about the environmental impacts of illegal dumping. This is legal use of landfill. But I'm wondering if you could speak to to what extent the content is or isn't regulated. So for instance, there could be chemicals, pharmaceuticals dumped along with the solid waste. >> Yeah, the types of permissible waste are outlined in the contracts. And it's very similar to what we would regulate on our own as our own hauler. The solid waste industry is highly regulated. The use of our landfill is permitted for municipal solid waste. So that's very clearly defined in TCEQ regulations. So we hold any hauler that contracts with us to those same standards that we hold ourselves to. >> So say if there were some bottles of prescription drugs in there, would that be sorted through? I know that big items, yeah, that's too small. >> Similar to what we see with our waste mix now. Really there's not a sorting operation to eliminate that type of waste from going in there. Obviously we provide as many of the communities that use these haulers do programs to remove that type of thing from either the waste or the water stream. But there's really not a financially feasible way to sort through and get everything that doesn't belong in the trash out of there. >> Thank you. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> Just so I have two questions. But on that point, so has the waste coming to us been through do the communities or the places do they recycle? So has the recycled material been withdrawn or is it just all included in the tonnage? >> So there's a number of communities that are served by these agencies. So you have a lot of the local communities around this area. I'm not certain as to whether all of them mandate recycling, but I do know in terms of Waste Connections Republic, they also utilize Pratt Industries for their recycling. So recycling is offered in their programs. As to whether it's mandated, I don't have the answer to that tonight. >> Okay. And just a follow up for clarification. The three contracts, you mentioned that earlier, we approved last time, were enough to reduce the rates, just a little. I mean, it's not going to be an increase in rate, but it's not going to reduce them a lot. So for me, that was enough. The ones tonight are a little bit extra in added income. And so the loss of the landfill to me at this point is a little bit more important than that extra income. So I appreciate this graphic. It's very helpful. Thank you. >> Councilmember Meltzer. >> Yeah. So the air space in the landfill is finite. We're not selling a service. We're selling off something that we own that's finite. I'm sure to agree. Can you give us an idea how much time you currently feel we have left with the air space in the landfill that remains? >> Right. So right now, we estimate about 17 years in the remaining cells that we have right now. Now, keep in mind, we do have a permit pending with the TCEQ that would add additional life to the landfill through expansion. What's being contemplated here, all six agreements, out of that 17-year life, we estimate between three to six months would be accounted for with these volumes. >> Do we have any reason to believe that they're going to not need a place to put their trash after three years, or are they going to want to continue? >> I think, like I said earlier, the regional landscape is very tight right now. And so I think the idea behind these types of agreements, this is a three-year term, is we bring anything that we see at that time back to council for consideration. And understanding the market dynamics, it would be something for council at that time to really weigh the volumes and the rates and what that does for the city. >> Maybe you could help me weigh the impact of this decision a little bit. If I assume that they'll, because of the landscape that you described, they'll continue to want to renew over the course of our now, I believe to be 17-year life. So if there were five renewal periods, let's say, then how much are we reducing the life of the landfill? Maybe you can remind me what you just said. How much is it based on just what we've already agreed, based on a three-year term? >> So based on a three-year term, it's between three and six months. And we really can't speculate on what the conditions are going to be in three years, or what the proposals might be. I mean, it's a fluid situation. >> So it might be, but it might be 15 to 30 months of a reduction. In other words, I'm just taking your three to six months times five, assuming that these other places to go are going away, and that they'll continue to have a need. And I'm speculating that future councils may like the idea of revenue. We could be looking at, off of our 17 years, taking 15 to 30 months off of that. You can kind of get the gist of where I'm going. I'm going to be voting no. I think we've got a finite resource that Denton's going to be really glad we have, if we don't give it away to outside entities. >> And I appreciate that comment, and you echoed that comment back in the work session. I guess, and you're certainly entitled to vote as you see fit, but we're not considering a 15-year deal here. We're not considering five renewal periods. So you can certainly vote how you decide to vote, but I don't want to misconstrue or mislead the public that this is a three-year agreement with an estimate of three to six months. And Council Member Meltzer, I think we voted, I guess it was a year or so ago or less than that, to continue to move forward with the permitting process for the landfill, I believe. We gave direction to continue to move forward, and I believe you voted for that as well. So I just want to make sure that the public understands we are not voting here tonight for five three-year agreements. We're voting for two contracts, three years each, and in three years the Council at that time will be able to make a decision based upon the environment at that time what that policy is. So I appreciate your rationale. I just want to make it clear that that's not what we're doing here tonight. Council Member Armitter. So yeah, just to add another perspective to that, you know, during that period of time that these contracts exist for, the trash that goes to our landfill will stay there for perpetuity. So we're not contracting with the trash, but the trash will, you know, those contracts will go away and the trash will stay there, and that is tons and tons. What is the total tonnage again for just the two in question? You're looking at about 70,000 tons, 72,000 tons. And that's, you know, I mean it's a kind of quantity, and that's just for those two. So that's a lot, and to me that's a cost. So I don't see that the gain, the financial gain, measures up to the cost. I will say I have consistently voted against the landfill expansion permit. It was my understanding, and Council Member Meltzer can speak better for himself, but that, you know, he had wanted to try to limit, as I understand it, you know, what could be done within that permit. So yeah, I just wanted to make that clear. Thank you. Council Member Meltzer, Davis is signed up in Ryan, so let me come back to you, let them speak first if you would. Thank you. Council Member Davis. Two questions. So talking about the two entities in yellow, am I reading this correctly that the first one, waste connections, the proposed tons is about 8,400 tons less than what they're already bringing, what they brought last year anyway, and at a higher rate than what they paid us last year. That's correct. And then Republic is an increase of, quick math, you know, 24, is that 24 tons more? They're about. And they're going to also pay us more than the rate that was not under contract, just what they're paying at the gate. That's correct. Last year. And then obviously for Wise County and Little Elm, we know where that trash comes from, comes from Wise County and Little Elm. Do you have any idea, can you tell us, waste connections, what some of their collection routes are, where they're from, and Republic, where that trash comes from? So we don't have a comprehensive list, but both waste connections and Republic serve a lot of communities in Denton County, smaller communities that don't have access to capital to fund a landfill. Many of these entities did offer to give us that list. We may have it somewhere, but I do know that they serve the surrounding area, predominantly Denton County, to the north of us. Can I ask a follow-up to that? Sure. If we don't continue a relationship with these companies, either at the current rates and informal agreements like we have or under a contract, where does that trash go? That's a good question. You know, for waste connections and Republic, some of these entities are contracted with other municipalities, just like they would contract with a new city. Those have terms and are based on a certain rate for those citizens as well. And so they would basically be put in a position to try to swing a deal comparable to what they've gotten from us, which is probably unlikely. At the very least, they'd be transporting a further distance, likely going through Denton to reach those other facilities. At that point, then it's really just a kind of a financial game on what they can withstand or basically cancel out on those contracts. So there will be a ripple effect if we choose not to renew with these. It's hard for us to say without knowing the ins and outs of those agreements with those other small communities. Councilman Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to get some clarification on our prior practices versus this new way of handling things. In the past, if someone came to us, they were a commercial bulk waste hauler. They would get a rate of $24.50 per ton or a gate rate of $44. And under this new system, we limit what their total amount is, where we had no limits before. They could bring one truck or 10 trucks a day. So we're now putting a limit on what they are and we're getting more money. And if somebody else came in and said, look, I want a reduced rate, I'm a bulk hauler, we would say, no, it would have to go through another contract with the city. Whereas in the past, that would have been a decision made at Solid Waste. Yeah, we can go ahead and accept it. Right. And I think, you know, I sent an email to Council a little bit earlier talking about deconstructing and rebuilding the budget, the capital plan. I think the rate discussion was one of those things. From a staff perspective, what we found with prior practices was that the rates awarded to some of these entities and customers was all over the board. It was $23 per ton two years ago. And so we increased that to $24.50. We basically reduced the pool of folks receiving those preferential rates down to the five existing customers that you see here tonight. And so Councilmember Ron, what you said is exactly correct. If someone requested that type of consideration, it's likely the staff would say, okay, there's only a certain volume that we would entertain that thought to bring it forward to Council in the first place. Very low volumes, haulers that we would consider less than stable. We wouldn't bring that forward for Council consideration. But we certainly make Council aware of that and ask those customers to default to the $46 unless we're directed otherwise. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem, if you haven't spoken yet, do you want to speak? We've got two queued, Councilmember Meltzer and Briggs, who have spoken. Do you want to take them in order or you want to go ahead and speak? No, no, I'm going to advocate that we get to the public's comments. That's my only comment. Okay. All right. Fantastic. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah, just because the question of the permit vote was raised, I said from the day I sat at the time of that vote that I was for completing a process that was a lot of the way done, but that I hope never to use it. And consistent with that, I'm not looking to increase the volume going into the landfill at this time, certainly not from external sources. Yeah. Councilmember Briggs. Yeah. So can you, the $44 gate rate, can you explain who pays that? And this may be, you may want to come back up after we get public comment, but I'm just kind of confused now. So is that for residents or is that for other outside commercial haulers or is that for everybody that doesn't have a specific contract? Yes. So there's actually two rates kind of harkening back to the rates that were approved for this budget year. $44 is still the rate for local businesses and residences per ton. And for any hauler outside of Denton, say they're coming from Argyle or Sanger, they would pay $46 a ton. And that's in response to kind of council's preference that there needs to be some differentiation there. So as the landfill starts to kind of balance the books and get to full cost recovery, that's another thing that we can consider that the council can consider in terms of rate setting is do we want to provide a more preferential rate for our citizens and businesses that haul directly themselves? But thanks to your question, the extra part of your question is there are a number of smaller, what we consider mom and pop haulers that aren't necessarily as large as those being considered here. There's also other municipalities that haul directly to us that haven't approached us with these types of rates. To kind of circle back to council member Ryan's question, if another municipality approaches, that's definitely something that we would want to raise to the council to see if that's something you all would want to consider. But just for now though, only these contracts are the ones getting special rates. Anyone else that comes to the landfill would pay either one of those two? That'd be $44 or $46. Thank you. Yes. Okay, any other questions? All right, we'll move on to public comment. I will take those speakers who do not wish to speak. We've got Ed Soph of 1620 Victoria Lane, or excuse me, Victoria Drive here in Denton is opposed to agenda item 5C, and I'll repeat his comment for agenda item 5D, and Carol Soph of 1620 Victoria Drive, Denton is opposed to agenda item 5C as well. We've got three cards wishing to speak, and if you'll come down and state your name and address when your time is called, your time will begin. Kevin Richardson, if you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. Awesome, thank you. So my address is 911 Chiquita Street in Texas. I also work for Texas Campaign for the Environment. So I come before you as both a resident and as employee of Texas Campaign for the Environment. We're an advocacy group that's concerned with zero waste issues in Denton and Dallas, and we also have thousands of members and supporters in the city of Denton, many of whom are concerned and interested in reducing landfill waste. So this is a big issue for many of our supporters and members. Today we urge you to vote no on these contracts. There are a number of issues that have been brought up by council members today, and we want to echo those issues and why we think you should vote no on these contracts. One of the first and major issues is the rates that are being given to these third party outside waste haulers. We're talking about these haulers are receiving a deep discount compared to what residents and businesses in Denton are being charged at the gate. Considering the fact that the landfill is a valuable public resource, we think the city owes it to its constituencies to get a better deal on these contracts. The second issue I want to talk about comes down to the long-term impact of these contracts. Now they're three-year contracts, but we have no guarantee that in three years the city council isn't going to re-up these contracts or expand or extend them. And once you have this revenue coming in, these millions of dollars, it's going to be hard to say no in a couple of years. So we're very concerned about that. I would ask any council member that's supporting these contracts to say if in three years they're going to extend them or to commit to not extending them in three years when these contracts expire. Additionally, I think it's time that the city council also commits to implementing a series zero waste plan, especially in light of these contracts. And the final issue I want to bring up is the timing of these contracts, not the timing of these contracts, sorry, let me repeat that. The final issue I want to bring up concerns next month, I believe the city council is supposed to take up a serious long-term solid waste management plan. And so I'm curious as to why the city is locking itself into these three-year contracts before actually developing a long-term solid waste plan. And obviously these contracts would have a significant impact on whatever that waste plan would look like. And I'd also like to echo the fact that TCEs, members, and supporters would like to see a significant zero waste component for that plan. So for these reasons we urge you to vote no. We think a better alternative would be to negotiate fairer contracts with higher rates, as well as limiting the amount of landfill waste that comes into the city landfill from outside haulers. Again, we're talking about 105,000 tons to 190,000 tons. I think we should keep the rates or we should keep the volume around 105,000 tons and not expand that. Because once you expand that it's going to be hard to bring it back down. So we urge you to vote no. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem you have a question for the speaker? Yes sir. So I've heard you, thank you for speaking, and so you say better deal and then you said fairer rates. Yes. What do you, do you, did you bring any data? Do you share the number that you would attribute, say is of? Okay, yeah so as the recent discussion indicated the two contracts are being charged $27 per ton. Residents and business members of Denton recharged $44 per ton at the gate. We think probably a fairer rate that would be in the middle would be closer to $33 per ton, I think would be fair. I mean honestly as close as you can get to $44 would be really fair, but I think $33 is a fair rate. Okay, but that's just a, just a, you're advocating splitting, just splitting the difference. Yes sir. But then also I have a question about that. So volume discounts, you don't think that's a real, I mean I'm just, I would like to hear you on volume discounts in that practice no different than a Sam's. You go to Sam's you get a discount because you buy in bulk. There's, it's a common practice, but I'm taking from your comments you don't support that. Well my main concern is the fact that the landfill is a major public and valuable resource. We don't really want, we don't want to be treated like a cash cow. Ideally you don't want to be bringing a lot of waste into the landfill. You want to be reducing waste, doing better practices so there's less waste going to landfill. And so if you're going to do these contracts and bring waste into landfill, I think it behooves the city to make the rates they charge these people be closer to what residents have to pay. And honestly I think that's a wiser use of the landfill resource itself. Got it. And then if I may, and then I was curious also your comment about, and I've heard it here at the dais, the attraction to the num, to the money, right? Yeah. So you understand the city has, is a one plus billion dollar budget and your concern is, what is that, one percent of that is attractive and would be in tight, it would be addictive or, I'm just trying to understand because it's such a insignificant amount to the total budget. I just want to make sure I understand. When you think about it in context of these presentations, it was a very enticing number to go up there, say two million dollars, especially when you're looking at the debts that are being accumulated within the landfill, which are the result as they've I think presented in previous city council meetings the result of bad decisions made for example in the landfill mining operation. So I think when you think about this as not the total budget but associated with what it costs to run the landfill, it's a very addictive number. And I don't think either sanitation or the city council is going to want to give up this revenue stream in three years once it's established the revenue stream. Got it. And then lastly, your last point was on the future. I mean you're not, I'm going to echo the mayor's comments, you're not asking us to predict the future and what future councils would do. I mean that's just, I hope that that's not what you're saying. I think you would agree that future councils will make decisions based on the merits at that time and there's, it's a blind corner. So I would hope that you would agree that we can't predict the future and we should trust those that we elected to represent us as a community and hold them accountable at that time with what we know then. Well my main point is the fact that like once you have these numbers established it's hard to go back down. In 2009 the city of Denton was importing 50,000 tons of trash per year. It's doubled since then to 110,000 or 105,000 and that's the number that we're talking about keeping today. So just the fact that that number exists is what we're doing is a powerful thing and I think it'll be hard for future city councils to make a change going downward. And so I think that's something we have to take into consideration when we consider these contracts today. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage? Yeah I was wondering if you could feel comfortable speaking to something that that was brought up a little earlier and there's this idea of the ripple effect that is you know if we say no then they're just going to dump it somewhere else and I'm wondering if you could comment on if I'm thinking the right way about this my thought is that is that if everybody said no then these entities would be forced to really reconsider their own trash production you know and so kind of we're assuming that others will say yes and it will go it'll go elsewhere but I'm not sure if that's the you know correct way to think about it or just kind of what your thought is about this idea of the ripple effect in the bigger picture outside of City of Denton with this issue. No I think that's a great question and a great point. If it comes down to the fact that we're giving these rates because quote unquote they're the market rates and clearly cities aren't stepping up to say that hey this is our valuable resource this is what it costs citizens we should be bringing this in at a higher amount so I think if City of Denton stands up and does this it could be really a trailblazer and actually changing these rate practices and getting much better rates and I think honestly as the rates go up we're going to have people have to actually consider really long-term reductions in the amount of waste they produce and those I think are the two long-term goals we can hopefully get out of this. Thank you and I just want to add I want to thank Texas Campaign for the Environment and all you've done to really get make people aware of the issue and I wanted to emphasize that with all of the mail we've received about landfill expansion emails coming in on about this issue people have been writing in their own words and really feel deeply about this issue so this is not just a bunch of people signing on to you know petitions on on Facebook this is really people residents speaking from their heart and you know including children. So I wanted to thank you for really tapping into these feelings that already existed in people. Council Member Davis. It's just a question for the speaker. Yes. So thank you again for your advocacy on this issue on other issues and for your organization's advocacy. The emails are still coming in the letters are still coming in on the landfill issue not just these contracts and these agenda items. I have two questions for you the first is it seems like you recognize that this is what the the staff presenter called an enterprise fund that this is essentially a business unit of the city and that every choice we make impacts residential rates. One thing I haven't seen yet from from y'all's advocacy is what is kind of the pain threshold for the folks who are writing in how much more are they willing to pay in rates if we cut third party are they willing to double their rates are they willing to triple their rates if we don't bring any third party or commercial trash. I think the main issue that's coming in from these letters and from people we talk to and support is is that they're less concerned about the issue of rates at the moment more concerned about the overall impact on the landfill and the overall generation of wastes and dumping of waste that's going into the city. As you know with the landfill permit we're talking about potentially expanding expanding the landfill to be over 200 feet tall and we're in a time period where we should be reducing waste not increasing waste. I think that's really the central issue that speaks that we speak to today. Other than that I mean there have been other proposals I think Councilman Armentor has proposed just taking money out of the general fund to make up for some of these differences you have to increase the rates and so I leave that kind of question to the discretion of the City Council but from my perspective I think what people really care about and what the issue is is reducing waste and increasing the volume of imported waste is not doing that. Second question yes if we could yes yes sir we've got a couple more speakers and when I when I hear from your folks and when I hear from you I hear continually the issue that I'm very concerned about which is waste generation and I hear a reaction on the disposal side that really is speaking to an issue on the generation side. Do you have any data whatsoever that shows if we charge these third parties more which they can assume we assume is going to they're going to push those rates down to their rate payers is there any data out there at all that when we charge people more to dispose of their trash they generate less trash or is there better better data that shows when we look at zero waste plans and those kind of things that's what really affects the volume of trash we generate and ultimately have to dispose of. So I don't have any specific data on this issue of volume trash plans is a very new thing and a very sort of sudden event that's happening here. My general opinion is on this issue is that if we change how we practice our disposal or we change our disposal practices that will change people's mindsets change city's mindsets and pave the way to doing really a reduction in generating waste and that has generally been my perspective on this to answer your question. Thank you appreciate it thank you very much for coming down thank you so much. Next speaker is Diana Leggett if you'll come down state your name and address your time will begin. Diana Leggett 1019 Aileen I like for you to look the other way so if these haulers are bringing in why aren't we having them haul out our recyclables and creating a business for our recyclables. If we educate our communities just a tad more like San Francisco New York Atlanta Chicago and what other city is in Georgia there's another one in Georgia they're not just closing their landfills they're they're bringing education to their communities to completely turn that mindset around. In San Francisco you get an organic container you don't just get a garbage can and recycle and you have to separate your recyclables in such a way that the businesses that pick those up can take them directly to whatever smithy or whatever whatever business it has to reduce that to another product. In fact those products in San Francisco and in California I know don't throw anything at me are are multi-million dollar businesses so why aren't we helping our haulers turn around and become a better business. I don't see any reason why we can't do that our population is going to be 185k in how many years not that many our infrastructure isn't ready our landfill is going to be completely demolished if we keep putting other people's trash in it and I personally don't want to see any kind of of chemical or toxic material in our landfill because that's all leachable and that all any product that comes out of there is contaminated. Now if Lewisville can close theirs in two years ours is what 17 not even 20 years away we should be looking at the elimination of our landfill rather than the addition I. Please don't vote on these contracts for a yes let's make this business turn around and make it more profitable for those businesses therefore for our city. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is Jennifer Lane. Thank you. Jennifer Lane 1526 Willowwood Street Denton. I noticed that it rang out that there were 70,000 tons of waste that are under discussion to be increased and the large large amount of additional waste additional trash to be brought here. I think that the public is already has been debating the new composting yard materials bins and so on and so forth and and wondering why the pressure is on it to be so careful with its trash if if the outside entities can bring so much trash into the city and use up the landfill space that the public needs in the future especially if the city's growing. So I would ask you to please vote against these contracts and also to reconsider the contracts that you approved last week the a couple of those ones that you've already improved are quite high amounts and maybe perhaps more disturbing even than the ones that you're looking at today in terms of the amount of tonnage that would be brought. I do believe that the public in general is who that is writing to you does feel that the pressure is on us as individuals and to be very sparse with our trash so that there can be more room for this and people may just rebel as they have on a microcosm regarding the the new brown bins. A lot of people have really had a surprisingly sort of angry reaction to that little by little it settles down I have one I like it I like having my trash you know in other cities even in the south we had bottle collection and so on and so forth separate from the recycling and you know as Diana Leggett was just saying it can be more easily picked up and reused when it's already separated by the customer at relatively little trouble especially glass but I do think that this is a bad way to go I don't think you have an infinite resource here with the landfill and that these contracts should be declined thank you. Thank you appreciate it all right those are all the cards that I have Mayor Pro Tem. I'm going to move approval and and just short comments it's the the the information against is it's not a one-for-one type of analysis in my mind I think the the fiscal component of it is one not persuasive for me personally and I don't know that we can encumber or predict the future going forward so that that is noteworthy to me and and I think it's important to note that the this some of this issue and staff sent out an email for me to to evaluate but it was because we were aggressive in programs that were unsuccessful so we I think this is a net result of trying to be forward thinking that just had a negative consequence we just as a city we missed on on a few opportunities but we're continuing to work towards those things I think we have great corporate citizens that are doing good things I always point to Morrison Milling that that has almost 24-hour operation and I think they have one dumpster that rarely fills and I think that is the key to continue to partner with corporations and educate them and in reductions the key so with that I'm going to move approval. Okay Council Member Briggs. I was going to wait for a second and then I have more discussion I'm not going to second. Council Member Davis. I'll second the motion I have comments but I'll hold them. Okay Council Member Briggs. Yeah so I just want to again I'm not going to be voting for these and I had I voted for the original contracts and it wasn't something that I wanted to do it was a really difficult thing for me to do and if I had my way I would have zero trash but the ones that we approved were enough to stay close to the tonnage before that we were accepting and not cause a rate increase but a slight decrease and that for me is a lot of value in that now going extra and above this is just revenue right it's revenue that we can use but we don't have to have and then when you add on the extra amount of tonnage to the landfill and it is a it's a finite resource it is it's not something I'm willing to do right now and also when we were talking about the gentleman that spoke earlier he said well you're going to keep doing it because you're going to get used to the income well the reason why I had to vote to approve the three that I did earlier is because we were already dependent on that income so it has happened and it could continue to happen if we use the money that we're dependent upon so I was in the situation last week because of the income we have been dependent on because of these contracts so and also just one last comment when we did get our greenhouse gas inventory the landfill is a really large part of that and the increase in the the gases is due to the landfill and then when we add even more tonnage with these two contracts and then the next contract coming up that's I forget what it was 90 something thousand extra a year right it's not just total it's per year so that's pretty significant for me and when I've made a pledge to to help reduce that I can and conscious approve these next three so just thank you for listening. Councilmember Davis. I'll try to be brief wasn't here last week so I have a couple things to add to the conversation the first is I think we have to acknowledge in this conversation as we've heard already from some of the speakers and last week that we have a global waste issue not just a Denton waste issue but a global waste issue and it's primarily a generation issue and what do we do with all the stuff that we're generating so the first argument against these contracts you know bringing in other people's trash it kind of breaks down to a knot in my backyard that we don't want to address this global issue in the right way that we want to make sure that trash pushes somewhere else it goes to somebody else's landfill as opposed to ours the second argument seems to be kind of a kind of a blood money argument you know trash is bad bringing in trash and accepting money for it is something that we shouldn't be for because it's dirty money it's tainted somehow because it's attached to trash generation unfortunately even though this is a global issue I think my first duty and the first duty of people in this council is to our rate payers to our residential rate payers the folks who put us here and we operate an expensive operation we just heard about earlier in the agenda about capital reimbursements we heard earlier in the year about in the budget conversation that single pieces of equipment just to operate this place can cost between a hundred thousand dollars and a quarter million dollars for a single piece of equipment to operate the landfill and that's whether or not we're bringing in third party trash we still have to operate this place so for me the dollars and cents make sense for me the waste management aspect of it if we're upset about generation of trash increasing our own rates increasing commercial rates passing those rates either the rates that they pay in Justin to whoever's hauling to our landfill the rates they pay in crumb or sanger taking those rates up does absolutely nothing to bring down the amount of trash your average family generates or your average business generates however I'm going to reiterate the call I made earlier in the year and we've said already tonight for a zero waste management plan excuse me a zero waste plan or at least a multi-year phased plan to get us where we need to be on the generation side because waste generation is the issue disposal is not in the meantime we have a financial stewardship duty to accept these good dollars. Councilmember Arbiter. Yeah so just to address some couple of those those issues that have been brought up um first of all so I myself don't have a problem with the money at all it's I don't see it as blood money money is fine I have a problem with the trash and I don't want the trash in Denton and I feel like the people have spoken up and said we have enough of our own trash to deal with and the fact is that as far as generation goes we're working on getting our own generation down and so it feels counterproductive you know when we're taking in the over generation from others while we you know advocate for efforts to step up recycling the purpose of which is to cut down on the landfill so if we're increasing the landfill exponentially by tens and thousands of tons you know while we increase our recycling education bit by bit by bit the landfill growth outweighs what we're doing for recycling and that's counterproductive for the the zero waste goal as I see it and finally I want to say that this is not not in my backyard issue it's it's a not in not in anybody's backyard issue and as the speaker said earlier we could really be a leader in or actually really really more like a follower because other cities they're they're shutting down out their landfills we're just saying you know we just want to focus on on our own stuff it's you know when you've got issues of your own you want to take care of yourself before you take on other people's issues and so that's what this is about it's about good self-care for our city and setting an example for other cities. Councilmember Ryan. Thank you Mayor yeah just a few closing comments on this one is in the prior administration the solid waste department kind of had a carte blanche and spent a lot of money and put us in a lot of debt our debt service is up in the around nine million dollars a year and over the three-year life of this contract that debt service is going to drop will be painted off and will be down 2.7 million so the thought that we're going to have to because we've got this money that we're going to have to renew these is not necessarily true that's going to be the decision of the council in three years so I would like to say that that these are you know that it's not a productive way to to handle a resource but there are two types of resources at hand here it's the airspace versus the the overall debt that we have that we've got to find a cure for that so that we're not doubling up what our rates are to our paying customers we've had a lot of discussion here lately on different solid waste programs and we're going to have quite a few quite a bit in the future and but I feel like this is an excellent plan I don't know you know as these haulers came up with their numbers when they increased how many tons versus what they've done in the past was that just kind of you know making sure that they've got it covered is that stuff that right now is going someplace else that's something we'll find out over the course of the three years and we can decide after that as to whether to renew these or not but I'm in support of these contracts tonight Councilmember Briggs did you have a comment a question just okay yeah because I'm curious we're gonna try to wrap this up right well go ahead yeah no question yes go ahead just a question because the the chart earlier said the three before was a slight reduction in rates and then if you do all of them you get a larger reduction in rates but we've been talking a lot about debt so is is it going is this revenue going to some debt relief as well or is it just going to rate reduction so so the two are kind of tied together if you will so for residential and commercial haulers this is some some information that I sent out to the council a little bit earlier via email down here at the bottom you can see our debt schedule that Councilmember Ryan was alluding to so we're essentially taking that from 9 million down to 6.2 a lot of this is associated with the landfill what happens with the landfill is whatever cost we don't recover because it is a very large fixed cost operation debt notwithstanding whatever we don't recover from outside haulers or folks utilizing the facility proper then that burden shifts to our own collection fleet which is residential and commercial it gets built in and baked into your rates and so for instance a typical citizen may be paying you know three to four dollars per month just for disposal services and that's baked into that rate that they have and so anytime we can reduce the subsidization required for that facility it can essentially just be distributed straight out to the rate base any more comments I'm gonna have the last word any more comments thank you staff I wouldn't encourage anybody who has any extra time I went back and watched the work session when we had this on August the 20th and actually no information that is being presented here wasn't it was presented there there's not any new information except the tonnage on the final contracts but there certainly was an indication and a direct representation of increased tonnage there was a direct representation of what the intent was for and I will tell you I mean everybody votes for the reasons they have but I can tell you from my perspective if we had said we don't want any of that trash from people we've had now or even these two I'm fairly certain that the city manager would find a way to to make it work because that's what's happened over the last three years is we've gone to the effective rate to our tax rate so I have full faith and confidence that that would have happened in fact what I just saw I think what and correct me if I'm wrong that if we would have discontinued all six of them we'd just basically be at the status quo it might have maybe it's maybe a slight rate increase but we had proved those to get a rate decrease so it could have been a break even proposition so I went back and watched that and and so I guess things have changed I do regret getting some emails from organizations that I don't think really accurately represented the facts that were presented there and made some assumptions about how council members understood or did not understand the information which I think was totally inaccurate I'll be voting for this not because I think the council is going to vote for it in three years in fact I think probably the opposite is going to happen quite frankly and I think when we talk about rates of trash accumulation and tonnage in landfills if we're talking back in 2009 how it was at one level and now it's a different level from 2009 to now 2019 we've also had probably what a 10 to 15 thousand population increase so if we want to get down to that data let's get down to the data but let's not make kind of general pronouncements that that are backed up by data considering all the factors but you know what this is the process I trust the process we had an agenda work session information was presented votes were taken these votes were delayed more information came out people can decide what they want to do they can change their minds as as much as they want they can stick with their minds as much as they want so that is one thing I'm grateful for is the process because it allows us all to vote our conscience and I think that's what's the most important so we have a motion and a second for agenda item 5c let's vote on the board please uh motion carries four to three agenda item uh what is that 5d consider adoption of notice of the city of denton texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager to execute contract with allied waste services of fort worth llc council member hudspeth move approval council member uh ryan second I did want to read into the record um the comments again by mr ed soph of 1620 victoria drive uh is in uh opposition to this and carol soph 1620 victoria drive is in opposition to this um I think the only other person that signed up for agenda item d c and d actually uh jennifer lane signed up for agenda item d is miss lane still here and I believe diane leget signed up for agenda item d as well okay we have a motion and a second for agenda item 5d let's vote on the board please motion carries four to three agenda item 5e is consider nominations appointments to the city boards of commissions and committees animal shelter advisory committee and health and building standards commission mayor protem move approval council member davis second council member ryan um I had pressed the request to speak before anybody made a motion on it uh mr ortiz is on there by error it was a miscommunication between me and the uh city secretary so okay so throwing him into his name okay all right so uh so noted from movement and seconder that mr ortiz's name will be removed from that is that okay on the motion yes all right thank you all right let's vote on the board please motion carries seven zero let's take a quick five minute break we've been at about an hour and 40 minutes welcome everybody back to this meeting of the denton city council on october the 15th 2019 excuse me it is 8 17 pm we're moving on to our public hearing agenda item which is 6a hold a public hearing consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of denton texas approving a request for an alternative environmentally sensitive area plan for approximately 49.9 acres of land generally located on the north side of west university drive and west of north mosh branch road in the city of denton i'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing so i don't forget to do it so we will open the public hearing have staff presentation and then uh council questions and then public input all right good evening mayor members of the city council haley zagorski with the planning department this is an alternative environmentally sensitive area plan request for uh floodplain modifications for a fisher 59 distribution facility the property is approximately 50 acres um located at on the north side of university just west of moss branch road notification for this case was originally published back in june and july the site's been posted since that time in the interim months the applicant had to work through some challenges with the texas department of transportation regarding rather additional detention facilities would be required on site however in that time with all the notifications we've only received one response which was provided in your backup that was in favor of this request the property at the time this application started was zoned employment center industrial since that time as you know we've transitioned zoning so this property is now zoned light industrial however the distributions that are warehouse use is permitted under the new zoning as well this um originally started back in 2009 when a field assessment was first done of two tributaries of the dry fork of the hickory creek at that time in 2009 the riparian buffer designation for both of those streams was removed the eastern channel which is what this project tonight centers around was found to be severely eroded and undercut the canopy cover was limited and there was an at grade road crossing which we can see here which bisected the channel at that point in time this western channel was also found to not meet the characteristics of riparian buffer and since that time in 2013 a lomar was completed through fema and that has been channelized so what we have here is the plat for this property in 2018 the planning and zoning commission approved a preliminary plat of two lots for this property a lot one being the large tract here where a distribution center is currently under construction that has been final plotted you can see here in the hatched area that channelized western stream lot two is the area outlined in blue that we'll be focusing on this evening that has not been final plotted yet that step of the process will be completed and a road will be built across this to connect this distribution facility out to moss branch road if this plan is approved this evening and with that I will hand this over to deb revere so that she can talk you through the plan itself good evening the revere environmental services in 2018 we perform another field assessment for the floodplain it was determined that at the time it was undeveloped therefore we maintain the esa designation on it these are photos of the site on your left side will be the pictures that we took during the field assessment 2018 on on the actually yeah on the left side on the right side is the picture of 2019 not much have changed within the past year or so this is also pictures contrasting the two the same location in a year so nothing has changed and this is a panamaic view of how the site look I have identified right here for you where the building is just for reference the picture was taken at 380 looking north of the site so for them to be able to have that road that will connect to match branch they will have to encroach into the floodplain they will have to put a couple of culverts and actually build up that uh drive aisle to be able to do that because they will be encroaching into the fema floodplain they will also have to go through a clomer conditional letter of mal revisions at this point the clomer have been submitted to fema and is currently under review just to go through the numbers to be able to put that culvert and that drive aisle they will have to put a little bit over 7,800 cubic yards of field just to build up that road and uh to compensate for the value storage that that field will take they will have to uh excavate approximately 12,000 cubic yards of that area by doing the cotton field that would represent that 5.51 acres would be disturbed in some way or fashion if the clomer gets approved this area in blue in solid blue will come out out of the floodplain however i just wanted to point out that that will expand the floodplain further this is one of those rare occasion where the floodplain reclamation will end up expanding the footprint of the of the floodplain for criteria of approval section 2.8 letter d um list six items as a criteria for approval the proposed plan meets five of them the only one that is not met is the maximize public access and utilization because this is a private property which is not connected to either a trail or a park the mitigation was actually designed around water quality enhancement they are proposing two by retention areas highlighted here in red one here the other one there and this is how they frame their the whole proposal just how they can offset what the road will take away from our water quality volume treatment in this graph what is showing it is the actually um water quality treatment that is performed currently by the floodplain the two gray line shows what the 0.27 acres where it will take away from the floodplain treats right now the blue segment here shows what the bio retention will be doing in regards to water enhancement so actually it offset what the 0.27 acres will currently do and actually will provide an additional treatment here is the actually our water quality volume treated by the two bio retentions going through the numbers again the cotton field will uh require the disturbance of point for a point five point five one acres however they're uh proposing to re-vegetate that area plus some more and the bio retention will also have native plant uh planting on it so that would be an additional planting area the plan in front of you will have a long-term habitat management monitoring program that will require a three-year monitoring period where they will have to do a report back to us on a yearly basis and they will be required to replace any dead material and any erosion and trash that accumulates in that area after the three-year period if they meet all the criteria a staff will inspect and will issue final acceptance of the bio-retentions from a long-term management the plan also provides a inspection checklist that will provide guidance to the property manager on what on how to keep off those bio-retentions and also a non-routine maintenance for trash and vegetation i'm not going to read all the conditions i'm just going to highlight what each one of them is trying to accomplish number one is just to limit the disturbance to five point five one acres the second conditions is requiring the seeding of native uh prairie habitat in six point six acres as a mitigation and they have a period of three year for uh maintenance following installation and that material needs to survive at least 90 of that material needs to survive to meet that condition condition number three talks about the construction of two bio-retention system and that those bio-retention needs to be in place prior to a co is issued for the facility right now the shell of the building is there they're still working in the inside they're hoping to finish the building by the end of the year condition number three just for clarification needs to be revised instead of referring to condition number seven should be referring to condition number eight that change will be made into the ordinance before signature condition number four talks about the water quality volume uh they're asking some some leeway in case uh they need to do some modification however the water quality volume should not be reduced uh to five percent of what is already stipulated in the um alternative vsa plan condition five talks about the annual report that needs to be issued to staff and condition number six talks about a dedication of an easement for the bio-retention area just in case those are not maintained that will allow the city to step into it just as an update um they already have submitted those easements for staff review and uh we have not finished them but however i think that they will be able to meet that condition in a couple in the next couple of days uh staff is recommending approval with all six conditions as um included any questions yeah councilmember arbiter yeah so why are we not waiting till the fema results come back in was that discussed or maybe i misunderstood well when we submit the clomart it is it meets all the city requirements and it meets fema we send it to fema uh for them for the final approval um they they are um they are very close to that approval and i think that they will not have a problem with it one of the reason why we waited uh to move with the alternative vsa plan until the clomars because the commerce giving us all the numbers the total disturbance the um the number of cubic tons or cubic yards that will be required as a field or as a cut so all that information that we needed to frame in a very quantitative way the alternative esa plan it was already done through the clomer and is there anything that the city would stand to lose if we waited till uh hearing from fema well i cannot think of of anything okay and the applicant isn't here i'm afraid it's not yeah unless the applicant's member of staff if fema came back for some reason and denied it we would we would certainly sit back down with the applicant but once they check all the boxes according to our ordinances and our laws we have we're obligated to move it forward so there's really no risk at this point unless fema there was some snag in the paperwork then we work through with them yeah yeah yeah yeah thank you kathryn i'm breaks thank you for putting the pictures in it really helps um get an idea of what the site looks like on the ground um but with that so the the photos that we saw with the um with the water what is that is that just a general picture of what's on the site or is that where the actual road is going to go like where the the water is i'm no that's general picture uh along the channel okay and so can you help me understand a little bit more about this road and its purpose okay um the road will provide remote access to the distribution center is part of the requirement for the fire department uh when you have a distribution center or any facility of that size that you will have their main access that have been granted by t by tech start along 380 but they still need to meet the remote access which is the access uh to match branch okay so that would kind of answer my second question it was would a bridge work like it would but if it has to be for a fire truck it would probably not be the kind of bridge i'm thinking about yeah and the cover would provide that the will not impede the the passage of of the flow so the cover from an engineering standpoint will will suffice they will have to size this accordingly to allow for the water to go through it okay thank you all right seeing no more questions uh this is a public hearing anybody anybody here wishing to speak on this agenda item please come down state your name and address anybody wishing to speak seeing no one we will now close the public hearing councilmember homer turn yeah i wanted to move to postpone uh to an event certain until we hear back from from fema i would feel much more comfortable uh and again since there are no disadvantages to the city uh in in waiting for that i i would feel more comfortable with that all right so we have a a motion has been made to postpone the motion will need a second oh do we still have presentation no i just wanted to offer clarification um they're the clomer the conditional letter of map revision is approved by fema that authorizes them to go out and do the work on site there's a letter of map revision that fema has to approve after they've completed the work that step obviously is not complete yet but fema has authorized them to move forward with this work so there's nothing yes the clomer is approved there's nothing else to wait on at this point um from fema okay okay so in apologies for not having understood that earlier so this it comes this wouldn't come until the work is finished fema kind of has a two-step process for floodplain modification you present to them your proposed plan for modifications they approve that and then once you complete the work you do that additional step to get the official fema floodplain map revised to reflect the work that was done so they've completed step one step two of that process has to wait until after they have done the work on site and by the by the work you mean the complete the construction of the road the seating correct oh so okay so my so when you say we're waiting on it it's not that we're waiting on it it's just correct they've completed everything they can up to this point just wait on the map revision approval to where they actually change the map correct yeah yeah okay so apologies for not for not having understood that's why i was got it i will withdraw that motion then okay councilmember briggs so just one last question so when they did the um the placement of the road um that was required of course by fire to do um did they look at the the land location and look at the least impacted area of that well one of the um one of the pictures i believe right here right here so pretty much there's already a low crossing already done for the gas well that was that is located to the west so they would portion of that of that uh drive i will go through that area that already been clear for the gas well so in some extent they are minimizing the amount of impact by using the low crossing that is already there okay mayor protin yeah i'm going to move approval of uh item 6a in it with the inclusion of staff's six recommendations and i want to comment that uh fisher 59 is is taking on a great bit of this project without uh asking for a lot of funds et cetera and they've been a good uh corporate citizen so i appreciate what they're doing there it's going to be a fantastic uh addition to our city thank you councilmember ryan i'll echo uh mayor protin's comments and second the motion councilmember armature yeah i was wondering um could you explain the uh fema's reasons for expand for agreeing to the floodplain expansion so i understand i guess that they're okay with if they're okay with this part of the plan then they're okay with this part being taken away and why do they what's the reason for expanding it or maybe another way to put it would be why wasn't that additional part already part of the floodplain okay um the the blue outline shows the limits of the existing floodplain the black outline shows the limits of the floodplain after the reclamation work is done meaning when the culverts are put in place the field is put in and the cod is done in this case what they are doing they were needing this area that eventually will be the drive aisle to be outside the floodplain to be able to do that that means that some of that volume have to go somewhere so that means that that area in red will be where the new floodplain is going to be when the low mark the letter of my revision is issued by fema that's where the new boundary of the floodplain is going to show okay okay got it i understand thank you so much you're welcome mayor pro tem did you want a speaker well i was going to call a question if if there's other speakers until i have to get in line to okay to truncate that but i think yeah we have a motion in a second for approval of agenda item 6a let's uh vote on the board please uh motion carries six to one concluding items council member briggs um yes so i just want to take a moment to wish a happy one year anniversary and a happy birthday to the chief um a police today happens to be his birthday but it's also one year anniversary here in the city and we want to i want to thank him for his service um and also on sunday the north french library from two to four is a district two meeting on homelessness um everyone's welcome council member ryan thank you mayor just want to remind everybody the early voting starts next monday the 21st uh and uh due to some bad scheduling uh 25 years ago i will not be at next week's council meeting it's my 25th wedding anniversary so i will be absent all right council member armature happy anniversary council member ryan um see uh last week i had a really really good and interesting meeting with park staff regarding some questions that i had about the the ipm and um uh you know one thing that came out of that meeting for me was you know the need to for us to i believe have a discussion as a council about what level of weed tolerance and spot spraying do we believe is necessary citywide that was something that came up and when we had our our well anyway i'll stop right there but i'm going to be requesting a work session on that it seems like a productive area we've already come out as a council and we had the roundup discussion saying that you know we're okay with more weeds so i wanted to see us have a discussion about what are the implications of that anybody else i will adjourn the meeting at eight thirty nine