We're going to call the meeting to order at 6.01. Mark, do you want to make an announcement?
Yes. Well, two quick announcements. Two quick announcements for everyone. This month is our first month that we are going to be recording with the microphones in the ceiling.
And video taping, both simultaneous. It will be on the internet and it will be recorded. So just speak normally. Don't use those black microphones in front of you anymore.
Just speak in front of you and the microphones should pick everything up. Also, this meeting is being recorded tonight and tomorrow we are working on a brand new method to caption the meeting.
So, yep, your chair has worked with me very hard on this. Tomorrow on the city's YouTube channel, tomorrow afternoon, we should have a YouTube version of our meeting up with captions.
And I can send out that link even once we have it up. So we're working on this. And there will be a little more information about that later in the meeting.
But we're really happy that we're taking that stuff. You have a question? Yes. Are the actual city council meetings that are already recorded going to become closed captioned?
Let's save that question for later. Okay. And thank you. Back to you, Mr. Chair.
I forgot what word it was. Minutes, I think, next? Oh, and I'll bring up. I think it's bringing the minutes.
All right, I'll bring up. Here we go. I'll approve the minutes. Somebody make a motion. Moe day 10. My second.
I will say. Oh, another thing I forgot to ask. Becky, do we have any blue cards filled out? No, no one's registered for this evening that I'm aware of, but you can ask our visitors.
Did anyone wish to address the committee who's not a committee member or have any business? I think we're good. Okay, so we can.
We can start with our agenda item. A, consider a proposal. Okay, we did that. B, receive a report of the discussion and give staff input regarding the potential police department and its interactions with persons with disabilities.
I'm going to give a brief introduction about that. We have three guests here today from the police department here to talk to us about this.
They don't have like a super set agenda of what they're going to talk about, so I would welcome the committee to ask questions and so forth. I know this is a topic that we have brought up a few different times.
And so first I'd like to invite the victim advocates to come up, which is Richard Godoy and Constanza Johnson, who work with the police department and their role is victim advocates.
So helping people who may have been a victim of a crime or something like that.
What was the first name again? My name is Richard Godoy, G-O-D-O-Y, or somewhat close to that.
And this is Constanza, go ahead. Okay, Constanza, C-O-N-S-T-A-N-Z-A Johnson.
I think I have it in this as well. I think I have their names in the agenda information sheet. We're being recorded by the camera up there.
Don't get nervous. You're great. You were born for this.
Our names aren't listed on here.
On the agenda information sheet, that's the full agenda. But yeah, here it is. So there are links online if you want to go there.
There you are. You're famous. So tell us about the police department and the victim advocate program.
Where do we begin? I mean, you know, I don't know where to start actually.
I've been with the department probably the longest. Constanza is our new social worker that we just recently hired to provide victims assistance.
And my role for the time I've been there has been working primarily with victims of crime.
So I'm a clinical social worker. So I went to UNT for my undergrad when I finally decided to go to social work.
I did social work after, you know, going from music to whatever, and then that's what I did then.
And then I went to grad school at UT Arlington, had my master's in clinical social work, and I'm licensed as an LCSW.
So let me let Constanza kind of share a little bit about her. We'll kind of collaboratively share with you all a little bit, okay?
Sure. So I'm Constanza Johnson. I am not a Texas kid. I moved to North Carolina about a year ago.
And I went to school, got my master's in social work, and I did a lot of more nonprofit work that I always focused in with domestic violence and human trafficking.
And then I made my way down to Texas, and I just got really interested in seeing maybe the other side of nonprofit and then law enforcement.
So I've been with MPD for now a little over two months. And my specific area in dealing with victims of crime is domestic violence, sexual assault.
So that's pretty much my main focus here. So I think for us being here, this is kind of open-ended, which is great for us being counselors,
because we do a lot of open-ended things with groups and individuals. If any of you all have any questions, by all means, please, you know, feel free and ask. Yes, ma'am?
Constanza, where did you go to college? Where did I go? For my master's, I went to North Carolina State University. Okay.
And kind of moving on, like I was saying, we provide services to victims of crime. And primarily what that's going to look like is typically we'll either receive an offense report
from the officer, patrol officer who takes the report, and it'll go through the channel, then it'll come to our section, and we're in the criminal investigative section.
So it'll be assigned to us, you know, depending on what that crime is, what that offense is.
And then from there, you know, for me, the offenses that I'm starting to work now in relation to Constanza, I'm working a lot of attempted suicides.
I'm working with a lot of traumatic type of situations like fatalities, you know, homicides, work with families on the other side who have lost a loved one, that type of thing.
Doing a lot of trauma work in that regard. So let me let her share a little bit about what she's doing on the other side now with the family violence and the sexual assault.
I mean, again, being pretty new, I mean, there's been a lot of training for me, just getting acclimated to the fact that since I come from a different background, you know, it's a bit of a learning curve to be with law enforcement and understanding how their procedure and their work culture is and how they go about their own processes of working with victims.
And so on my end, too, I also get cases and then pretty much it's just to follow up with these individuals that have been victims of crime to see what is exactly that they might need assistance with.
Sometimes it's just being able to reach out to them. I was just talking to this one girl who she didn't want to file charges on her ex, but she just gave me a call. Now it's been twice. She just wants someone to talk to.
So, I mean, it's just really being open to whatever it is that those victims might need at that point and understanding the fact that, you know, maybe they don't want to go through with the whole procedure as we see it in the eyes of law enforcement.
Where you file a claim or a charge, then the person gets arrested and then we move on. I mean, with the victim, when we deal with that, we're pretty much just there to support anything that they want to go through.
We just respect that choice for them. And with that, you know, being that it's more trauma focused, people who we're going to work with, you know, are an extension of an officer out in the field.
The officer is going to be the first, actually the second person technically there. The dispatcher is going to get the first call. And then the officer is going to respond. They're going to be out there on the scene.
We'll receive the case and then we'll be working with the individual in terms of either, like Constanza said, reaching out either via telephone, maybe doing a home visit with them, providing any individual counseling, maybe working with the unit as a family and providing that family counseling to help them resolve whatever that crisis was, whatever that trauma was about, to where they can get to a level of independent functioning, so to speak.
You know, being that we're both, we come from a social orientation, our academic coursework has been really involved with trauma-informed, victim-centered type of work. So a lot of that lends, you know, really beautifully with our skill set in engaging the families and engaging a client in a different sense than from an investigator's standpoint.
Because the investigator's standpoint is going to look a lot different than from what we're doing. And I think Lieutenant Summit will share with you all a little bit of what that's about.
In addition to that, we're going to be working with community resources in terms of linking or brokering a service that an individual may need.
For example, being that Constanza, she just recently has come on the department with us, so she's becoming acclimated to our delivery system here and what some of our services are available, so she may receive a case and an individual may need assistance with utilities.
So she'll, you know, if she's not able to find what service that is, you know, I'll give her that information and she'll broker that and link them to that and we'll help like that.
Also, you know, being that this is a disability community, I think, you know, we kind of need to talk about, you know, mental illness and disability because those are two different things, okay?
A mental illness is a mental health disorder or a behavioral health disorder, okay? And a disability more is along the line of either a physical disability or some kind of intellectual disability, depending on what the individual presents with, right?
So, and for us, being that, you know, our background will lend itself, we're able to assess a little bit deeper and work with an individual in providing whatever linkage or whatever assistance they need to whoever the provider is in our community.
I wanted to go back. I wanted more specific information about the services you provided and y'all have covered some of that. I do question the fact that you separate mental illness from disability because in my mind, mental illness falls under disability.
What is the, what is everybody else's thought on that? Disabilities are physical or non-visible, which could be a mental disability, so perhaps it's the way you approach the work in that way.
Right, and a lot of it, you know, I'm referring to the DSF, you know, and we look with that because this is kind of like our, kind of like what we look at to, you know.
Didn't you tell us the full name? It's the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Health Disorders. That's the fourth volume. It's the TR, I guess it's the revised, it's the revised version.
So that's what that is. And in there, it covers like what Chris will share with you about on their training, they have a 40-hour block, which is a mental health peace officer, that will orient them to mood disorders, schizophrenia, you know, those types of disorders that they may encounter in the field with an individual.
And their brokering of services is going to look a lot different than what we're doing, because they're going to look at looking at an offense, whether an offense has been committed, what the elements of the crime are, and that type of thing.
Whereas for us, we're not necessarily looking at that per se, we're looking at what is the stressor for this individual who's been victimized, and what we can look at to help minimize that stressor so that they can get back to some level of living again, and also helping them process whatever some of that trauma was about, and working through that.
Sure. Thank you. So, there are some studies that show individuals with disabilities can be victims more often than those without disabilities. So, like, percentage-wise, ballpark, you know, how many clients you're seeing present someone with a disability.
You know, that's a great question. Unfortunately, I don't have those numbers, because we typically aren't going to, you know, ask outright, you know, well, if you have a disability. I mean, that wouldn't be appropriate, for one.
Number two, I think if someone comes to us, I know for me, and, you know, we're in a session, we're establishing that report, and they tell me, well, you know, because of my disability, this, then I'm going to go there, I'm going to ask, well, you remind me asking, what is the disability? Well, my disability is PTSD. You know, so I have PTSD. Okay, well, let me ask you, and I'll dig a little deeper on what, you know, that was, or I have a bipolar disorder, and we think, well, how is that being treated? Who are you working with?
Are you on any kind of medication? So it'll, it's kind of like peeling the onion, you know, you peel, you know, once you find out the information, you kind of take a layer, and then you ask, at least for us, then you ask a little bit more, so that we can have the right, I guess, the right information, the correct information, or a fruitful base of information, so that we can either refer or channel them to whomever a provider is that can, that can help them with that. So, yeah.
We never want to assume, I mean, that's the main thing with, like, our background, like, we never are to assume anything of anyone. If that comes out, you know, where they just open up and say all these things, well, then, yeah, we'll go there, because that's now kind of open conversation now, we can be a best service that never to assume.
Right. And in that same line, you know, it's an individual say, well, I'm a client of MHMR. Okay, well, what is your, who's your caseworker? And, okay, well, you know, can we get on the phone, let's, you know, let's talk with them and see what we can do jointly to kind of help you, you know, get over this, you know, this hump or whatever this trigger is, or whatever it is.
And not stepping on any toes, you know, if another therapist or counselor is working with, say, like, an individual from that agency, we're not going to provide a different intervention to help. We're going to kind of like, companion them along to that so that they can continue to receive the assistance and the intervention that has been provided, and we're going to provide that support and that encouragement for them to keep continuing to maintain whatever it is that their treatment plan says.
I'm a little surprised that, that any disability information doesn't get passed down because you're one of the last individuals that they see by the time there's, the police comes out as a report, things of that nature. I would think that it's someone with a disability that might come out, whether it's physical or psychological or what have you.
Sure, and sometimes that may be noted in the narrative of the offense report. However, up until now, we haven't had any, we haven't had a software with the capacity to track that or to input that.
So we've had to be, we've had to be very careful, or rather myself, be very careful in what type of information that I'm putting in, too, because everything is subject to go to court. And, you know, there's some things that somebody's going to tell me that isn't really germane to a criminal offense, you know, that kind of thing.
And so, yeah, but maybe moving forward, that might be, I don't know how the new software is set up, and that might be something that our, our supervisors, the superiors may, may want to look at tracking, and particularly if that's a recommendation from you all.
I would always be, you know, because Chief Dix is great, you know. Yes, ma'am? What kind of software would you need, sir? Well, we have, we currently, we just have a brand new one, and I think it's what, two weeks old, three weeks old? It's about, yeah. Darn, it's brand new. Yeah, yeah.
But it's specific for victims of victim services. Yeah. So, but we've been adding in different fields and different types of. So different, like, tags, so if we work with an individual who, say, maybe their trial was dismissed, for example, going to court, then we can add those tags so that we can later find all those individuals that have that tag and be able to count them.
I mean, nothing that would, you know, give away that individual's, like, confidentiality and contact information, but just to have that base of numbers so we can, like, look back and say, oh, well, this quarter, we were able to serve this amount of individuals with that.
I would think you would need some way to do tracking just for your own outcome measurements. Exactly, exactly. And that's what we have just recently received. And it would be useful for the city, I would think, as well. That's kind of segwaying into what I would like to have more information regarding.
When you all are finalizing your interaction with your clients, how you identify them, what kind of information are you putting in that final closure? Oh, it's easy.
Because I was doing it today, right before we came, I had a telephone call from the district attorney's office from a victim who was receiving services from another agency, and they wanted me to help them to access, you know, a higher level of service.
Basically, it was to help them get out of a lease because of a domestic violence situation. So the part of the documentation is what I'm getting that you're wanting to know. It's what I did, you know, enter the date, today's date, 10/17/19, you know, received an email from so-and-so from the district attorney's office advising that so-and-so is having difficulty moving out of the apartment because of family violence.
In the statute, if you're a victim of family violence, then there's a provision where you can move out of your apartment without any type of -- yeah, it's really -- well, it's family violence and sexual assault, okay, so it's really, really good.
So, but, law enforcement, and usually it's the victim's assistants who -- we have the forms that we can fill it out because we have access to the offense report, right?
So, I'm working with another law enforcement entity, the district attorney's office, in writing up my follow-up on there. I was putting that in there. I called the victim on the phone to get some additional information. I filled that out. I scanned it to a PDF.
I emailed it to her, emailed it to the district attorney's office, and then I put -- quote what I did -- and then I put no additional contact unless contacted by the victim. That's it. Yeah. So, it's not case closed or -- because, realistically, I mean, I've been there for a couple of years, and I still receive calls from individuals that I have worked with back in '98.
And, you know, so, you know, in working with a family that has had some kind of a trauma or some kind of a significant impact from being a victim, oftentimes, you know, even though the criminal side can be closed, like, because justice means different things to different people, right?
But for a family or for an individual, a lot of times, during the course of the year, particularly as we move in terms of the developmental life cycle, different things come up, you know, for them. So, they want to reach back out because I've already established that rapport, and they feel safe and comfortable.
And as opposed to going to somebody new and starting all over again, it's, you know, yeah, like that. So, I guess to answer your question, we don't -- at least for us right now, that's something we haven't discussed as of yet.
But in terms of closing a case, I think we may look at just leaving it to where no additional contact needed, unless contacted by the victim or by the family. That way, we can go back and enter something else, like a year from now or three years from now.
Exactly. So, with your new software, is it possible and is it against your code of ethics, so to speak, for you to inquire of the people you're approaching if they mind disclosing whether or not they have a disability so that eventually there will be some numbers about individuals with disabilities who have been impacted by violence in some way or another?
Right. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there is. I mean, it's a brand new package and, you know, we're meeting with other law enforcement victims, assistance people who use the same software. It's pretty generic around the Metroplex with people who do what we do in law enforcement.
But being that it's new to us, you know, we're still becoming familiar and we're adding things as we move forward. And, you know, that obviously could be something that we can add in there because I think at a certain point when we reach, we're going to look at, you know, obviously running some numbers to see statistically.
Okay, we, you know, for this quarter, for this, you know, year, we saw, what, 600, you know, victims out of that. We provided X amount of, you know, direct interaction, home visits, or whatever that was.
Out of that, ethnic breakdown, we had, you know, whatever that was. And out of that, we could probably also add, we'd have to run it by, you know, we're city employees, so we'd probably have to run it by legal.
Of course. Yeah, and then, and if we receive the okay with that, then we can add that in there in a way to where it'll capture that to where we can give an accurate representation for the next time we come back and share with you all.
As a member of this committee, I would like to see some effort in making that happen. Maybe you'd like to give us a follow-up if it was permissible or not.
Sure.
I agree, I'd like to hear the answer to that.
So, if I could, could I make the suggestion that we transition to the Lieutenant Summit, and then if there are, oh, you have another, okay, and one other reminder is make sure you go through our chair to be recognized before you ask.
You did raise your hand, but just make sure we get it.
I'm just curious, when you spoke about people with mental illnesses, I understand that you all are not diagnosticians, but most people with mental illness, percentage of people with mental illness either don't know they're mentally ill or aren't going to admit it.
Right.
So, do you all have something in place where if someone seems to you like maybe there's a problem, what do you then do with the fact that maybe you're not getting information about them being mentally impaired?
Well, a lot of that is going to be caught hopefully at the front end, you know, with the patrol officer, and maybe Chris can answer that, and on another footnote, you know, my clinical license allows to assess, to diagnose, and to treat, and to bill.
Of course, being a city employee, I don't do any of that. In private practice, I do a lot of that. But, you know, if, for example, we do encounter a case like that, because I have that skill set and those strengths, I'm definitely going to use them to help the individual, because at the end of the day, our goal is to do right by whomever it is that we're working with.
I mean, you know, because I definitely want to, I mean, we're in it to help, to do the best we can to make some kind of a difference, some kind of a change in the world. And if using some of our skill set to broker, to leverage that with an individual, we don't do it.
And if someone does tell you that they've got a diagnosis of this, that, or the other, do you then follow up with their doctor?
Only if they allow, and if they are receptive to that. Sometimes they are. Sometimes, you know, I have my own therapist, you know, and that's okay. I mean, it's not in our field.
You know, but ideally, it would be great to have this collaboration, but it looks different to a lot of people. Collaboration looks different to a lot of people. So, yeah.
I actually have one other question. Do you ever find that because you are affiliated with the police, is that ever a hindrance? I mean, are people ever afraid, or does that ever factor in, I guess?
Well, let Constanza go first. Well, actually, I was speaking with this young lady that I told you guys earlier about. She called me on the phone, and she said, "Well, since you work for the Denton Police Department, will I get in trouble because of this and this and this?"
I'm like, "No, no." Like, I'm not an officer. So, I have absolutely no power to do what an officer would be able to do in that sense. I just told her, "No, you relax in that sense."
So, I think once they also get that difference of what victim assistance does, what a peace officer does, then they can say, "Okay, well, both entities want to assist, but they do so in different ways."
So, it's being able to explain that to them upfront, explain our role, so they can have a better sense of how we can help them, really, as well.
And usually, when it comes to us, and they realize that we're social workers for the police department, it's like, okay, they kind of know, and they kind of ask you a way to help them qualify for food stamps or something.
Because historically, social workers, they do that kind of thing, or with CPS. And although within the last 20, 25 years, we've kind of really entered the field of police social work toward victims' assistance.
And really, the only way that we'll interact is in forums like these, and also, unfortunately, if you've been victimized. But know that we're here to help, okay?
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you all for having us.
But do stay here in case...if I can invite you, Lieutenant Summit. So, our next representative from the police department is Lieutenant Summit.
And you do have a designation as a mental health officer within the department.
And so, we would just love to hear about your role in the department, what goes on. Do keep in mind, he is a member of our local police department.
So, if there are questions about sort of the broader American political, you know, let's keep it local, and to Denton, and constructive questions and suggestions. Thank you for being here.
Sure, my pleasure.
My name is Chris Summit. I'm a lieutenant within police. I've been with the police department 25 years now.
Started right after Richard. So, right now, my current role is I'm a patrol commander. So, we have four patrol shifts. I command one of them.
I'm one of the day shift commanders. I'm also a certified mental health peace officer.
And I got to do lots of interesting jobs at the department that included a stint as a lieutenant over criminal investigations as well.
So, one thing that I can say, when we look at developmental disorders and how that's impacted us locally,
Chief Dixon has brought in quite a bit of training for us at the field operation level on how to better interact with people on the autism spectrum.
So, I know that was an area that we had some deficiency in. We're taking the right steps to correct that.
But like Richard understands, I'd like to just, I'm sure you have questions, comments.
Mark?
If I could just ask, could you just tell us, you mentioned mental health peace officer. Is that a statewide program?
Just tell us a little bit about that and what you did become that.
So, it's a state licensed status. You attend a 40-hour class that focuses on slightly better than layperson diagnosis recognition of specific kinds of mental illness.
I certainly don't have the education and background that Richard and Costanza have for doing that.
But really, when we're talking about emergent services in the city, so somebody that, if you look at the health and safety code,
they have a diagnosed mental illness. Because of the mental illness, they are a substantial risk of serious harm to themselves or somebody else.
And you cannot leave them by themselves to go up here at Judge Robeson's court and get an order to detain them.
So, we're going to involuntarily place them in the hospital. They don't want to go, but with our legal authority as a peace officer in the state of Texas, we can do that.
You do not have to be a mental health peace officer to be able to do that. Any peace officer can do that.
But there's a lot of frustration with the mental health system in Texas.
I've taught crisis intervention at the police academy for 15 some odd years now.
I would tell you, when you go in eyes wide open, Texas is 47th best in the country at delivering mental health services to its citizens.
And Denton County is one of the least funded counties per capita, despite being the eighth largest county in the state.
So, therein lies the source of our frustration. We have almost a million residents in Denton County.
We have six beds available on a rotation basis for emergency and voluntary hospitalization.
Six beds. And when you look at Wichita Falls State Psychiatric Hospital, that's our nearest long-term care, state-funded psychiatric hospital.
That serves 37 counties. That includes the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex area, which is about eight million people.
They have about 330 beds. So, there's a crisis of resources.
There's not a crisis in training on how we interact with people that have mental health disabilities.
There's a crisis of resources that are available. And that's something that, as the city of Denton, we don't have the capacity to impact.
Right now, Denton County MHMR maintains the contracts with the psychiatric hospitals we use for committals.
So, because they administer the funding, they have the right to say who goes into the hospital or who doesn't.
Just because I have, as a peace officer, I have the authority to put you in a hospital, who would pay for it?
So, I mean, because the hospitals don't do it for the city of Denton for free.
What is MHMR's name?
It's Denton County Mental Health Mental Retardation. And it is a very divided house.
You have the mental health side of the house, and you have the developmental disorder side of the house.
They have different approaches, different staffing, different populations that they serve.
On your opening statement, you mentioned individuals that could not be left alone because of the danger that they present.
And that you make a placement in a hospital.
Any particular hospital here in Denton, and are those hospitals prepared to work with individuals in a mental health crisis?
Sure. So, the contract hospitals that Denton County MHMR uses are UBH, Mayhill, and then we use Millwood as an overflow.
And the Denton County Sheriff's Department.
So, the process is, it was streamlined, but there were some cost overruns at the county level that have caused a change in process.
So, we're back to, we encounter somebody in a mental health crisis.
Our first priority is to make sure they're medically stable.
So, if you're drinking or using drugs to self-medicate, you're not medically stable.
So, we now have to take you to the emergency room, and we have to sit with you while you're in our custody until you're medically stable.
And once you're medically stable, a representative from Denton County MHMR, a clinician, can either come to the hospital or we can go to the psychiatric triage facility off campus at Presbyterian Hospital and get that person evaluated.
If that MHMR clinician decides this person needs to be hospitalized, then they call the Sheriff's Department, and the deputy responds, and then the deputy decides, because they're the person who's signing their name to the custody order.
So, they're not, they have their own input into that process, and they decide that that person meets the criteria for involuntary detention, then they go to the hospital.
It doesn't happen often, but it does happen that the closest available psychiatric hospital may be in El Paso.
So, that's part of the reason that we as the Denton Police Department are not driving people to the facilities. We don't have the capacity to do that. And in the Denton County model, we don't have the capacity for a closed-circuit court appearance, and that patient is entitled to appear in court on the next business day to challenge their committal.
So, we don't have the capacity for a closed-circuit televised court hearing, and the patient actually would have to waive their right to appear in person before the judge to have that closed-circuit option as well.
So, we get them to the hospital, but the next business day, somebody has to get them from the hospital to the court, and then the mental health court will make the determination how long they stay.
And during that whole confinement process, that patient still has every right to refuse all aspects of treatment.
They cannot be forced to take medication unless they're destructive, disruptive, or attempting self-harm, and they're using the medicine as a form of restraint rather than physically restraining them for doing medical restraint by other doctors.
Do you all help schools in that manner, and what is the process for youth underage?
So, we have school resource officers in middle schools and high schools, and of course, they will assist in an elementary school if needed.
The elementary school is always welcome to call 911.
If you have the designation as an SRO, you're actually more limited in what you can do, SRO being a school resource officer.
The state actually places more limitations on what they can do than if one of my patrol officers just responded direct to the school.
But our job is never to enforce the rules of the school.
We are there because there's been a criminal violation, and we'll take appropriate enforcement for that, or there's a psychiatric emergency, and we can take appropriate action for that.
Generally, with children, we're relying on the parent to commit.
So, you don't really do an involuntary committal process on a child because the parent has the right to make that health care decision for their child.
The problem that we run into is when the child needs the health care intervention and the parent refuses, and then it's real sticky.
One of the mental health judges has said we are good to do an involuntary committal in that situation, but there's three potential mental health court judges that we may deal with.
And we may not get him, and the other two judges may not share the same opinion.
It's not really established in law yet, so that's kind of a gray area.
And again, I know it's frustrating, but we're 47th best.
So picture walking into a used car lot, and there's 50 cars on the lot, and they're progressively worse.
And think about what the first best used car looks like compared to the 47th best, and that's us.
And again, those are state funds and state political positions that we don't have the capacity to impact at a local level as a city.
So with that, in public schools there are individuals who dealt with their family, they're in facilities or residential homes, and often experience violent behaviors in their crises.
Where does the role of a mental health officer or a police person?
So we can certainly try and link them with services.
It's hard to do.
It's not common, but it's not out of the norm for us to try and make a referral to Richard or Costanza to see if they can do something on the back end after the crisis is averted,
because it's very easy for people to slip through the cracks.
But if Costanza is primarily working domestic violence, we're going to intake, what, 900 offenses this year.
So not a lot of free time for her to be involved in other things.
And if Richard is assisting with that and trying to help with everything else, there's just some real limitations resource-wise that we have on that.
So we can try. The problem that we run into, and we see this with our special population, we have a lot of people that are developmentally disabled that are living in homes in the community, right?
So it's an imperfect situation, but you have two patients that are developmentally disabled. They're at a young, juvenile functional ability, but one of them assaults the other patient.
And under the penal code, we have a family violence assault, and we have a duty to the patient that was assaulted to prevent further injury, and sometimes that results in an arrest of the other patient that also has a developmental disability.
We do the best that we can to accommodate them. Nobody believes that jail is the proper place for them, but as the initial first responder, I don't have the legal ability, legal authority to directly divert that person into another part of our system that may be geared towards providing a more supervised location for them to reside or something like that.
And again, when I teach this to my cadets, they're very outraged that they may have to go into a house and make an arrest in that situation, but that is really what 47th Best looks like.
There's just not a lot available to us, and we have a duty to that other patient that was assaulted to protect them as well.
Sorry?
I appreciate your unionatedness, Lieutenant Summit.
So my question, similar to the question I asked, is just more like just statistics about as your officers are going out, how many are going out because of a crime to a person who is disabled, whether that be physical, mental, intellectual.
So here's the problem with that.
So there is one penal code statute, penal code 22.04, that is injury to a child, injury to an elderly, injury to a person with disabilities.
The different subsets of the offense are broken up by the severity of injury, not what particular population you want to.
So the vast majority of cases that we see on that are going to be child abuse cases.
But there's no way for us to capture the data and say, okay, in this injury to a child, elderly disability case, the member of the population was somebody with disabilities.
We don't have the capacity to capture that data because we just file it as is. So we'd have to take a manual search and physically read every narrative to get a sense of what the actual number is.
And unfortunately, with the amount of CPS referrals we get for child abuse, that's a lot.
There's a lot of offenses there.
But we assist the officer of the inspector general when there's an offense at the state assisted living center, something that might be a little more complex, that they may require more local resources and then they're able to bring as a statewide agency.
We'll assist in those investigations.
We'll work investigations on the group homes in the community.
And of course we try and make accommodations for the victims.
We do want to be as sensitive to their needs as possible.
We certainly recognize that, especially people with developmental delays or mental health disabilities, it's a very vulnerable population.
One question that you asked, one of the talking points that we talk about in the mental health side is a person with mental illness is 13 times more likely to be a victim of crime than a perpetrator of crime.
So, you know, we spend God knows how much more money on research trying to fan the fear that mental illness is more dangerous than any other condition.
Certainly people can be volatile, but that's true of any population.
Any last questions?
One question.
Don't take our silence for complicity.
I think none of us are surprised that we're 47 and horribly underfunded.
I don't think that comes as a surprise to many of us at all.
And I'd like to compliment this gentleman because he saw me getting my walker out of my car and stopped and said hello and asked if I needed any help.
He's clearly aware of people with disabilities.
So thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Let's all eye up on that item.
Okay.
We'll go to the next item, which is item C, CPD 1903A.
Receive a report of all the discussion and give staff info regarding the city's bike share.
Targeting on right of way obstruction and efforts to prevent this from occurring.
I'm going to start discussing this.
So as you may be aware, in the city we have a bike share program.
The company that runs it is called Veo Ride.
And they have somewhere 300 or so bikes that are based on UNT campus and another 100 that they're permitted to operate within the city.
They are being very heavily used right now.
Like I think it started in September of last year and at this point, a year later, we are at like at least a 50% higher use rate.
And so in my other career, I'm the bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the city, which is thrilling for me that we have so many people using the bike share.
But I do know that also people sometimes park them in bad places where they block sidewalks and so forth.
And so since the committee brought that up, I've invited Tim Courtney, who's the - come join me, Tim.
He is the manager - well, is that a good title? - of the chief lead fleet operator here in Denton.
I work with him closely and he's here to answer questions about that work.
Can you just tell us a little bit about how it works and how you guys reach out to students and help teach them how to properly park things like that?
Yeah, from the company end of it, on the user app, there are sections about proper parking and overall safety videos that encourage responsible parking.
Now, not every user might look at these suggestions.
But when that happens, if we find a bike that's been properly parked, we can go and we can look, see who the last user was, and send them an email, send them a message.
Now, our emails are all archived, so if we send somebody a message and older messages come up telling them that they've been properly parking, we can kind of see a pattern.
We can threaten fines, we can threaten to cancel accounts.
And I've sent emails, I haven't sent any to - I've only been doing this three months as the lead person, so I haven't come across any that have been repeat offenders.
But, you know, I've found some that are parked in ridiculous ways.
But also have found that - and I've talked with Mark about this and actually talked to somebody at UNT that witnessed somebody move in their bike, not a rider.
And that is one thing that I know is happening.
People are wanting to make a nuisance out of the bikes and just kind of impede people's convenient transportation down the sidewalk, whether it be on foot or a motorized car.
So, yeah, I've seen bikes in this place in ways that - when I see it, I know that somebody's doing that as a prank, they think it's funny.
I found one yesterday that was in the street on the corner of Hickory and Austin Street in a way that I can't imagine any responsible user would park.
I found bikes blocking the handicapped entrance button at doors at UNT, which that could be a user that's just arrogant enough to think that they're too important to park at a bike rack and just walk the extra ten feet.
So they get messages.
I've gotten some responses saying sorry about that when I've sent messages out, but I've yet to get one that says that wasn't me.
But I know that that's probably going to happen the more I send more messages out.
Yeah, our goal is to coexist with everybody, people that use the bikes.
And as Mark said, there's a lot. Our ridership has just skyrocketed.
You know, being here for a year now, we've had so many more people from last year that have seen the bikes and used them.
And then all the freshmen that came in for orientations and we were at every one doing presentations and, you know, handing out promotional items.
And the bikes being there, they already knew of the service. And once the freshmen moved in, the numbers exploded.
And as did complaints of bikes being improperly parked.
We try to keep them as orderly as possible. We have a crew of several fleet technicians.
Right now we only have one vehicle that's picking up bikes and rebalancing them.
We actually got a bike wreck that's going to increase our capacity from six bikes to ten.
So we're going to be able to move more bikes in a quicker fashion.
And when you have Mark who has contacted me a few times saying that he got a call and, you know, once you get that,
if I don't go and get it personally, I'll send one of the other technicians to pick them up.
But when you have over 300 bikes and only a limited capacity of moving them, you know, they are going to get placed in ways that can be an inconvenience.
And we do our best. We do not want people hating the bikes just because of the fact that somebody did something ridiculous like park in the middle of a sidewalk perpendicular to the sidewalk.
And again, I've seen that.
And, you know, I've been, you know, 14 years ago studying music and in the process got really into cycling.
And suddenly I went from, you know, being a musician to being a musician and a bike share manager.
And, you know, I really want it to stick.
I want to see our service encourage more people to ride and to go on and, you know, get their own bikes
and just be a part of a community that's growing.
And again, thanks in part to what the city has done with Mark and Julie Anderson beforehand to, you know, increase the mobility options for people on bikes.
And, you know, just trying to coexist with everybody.
I have a quick question. So for somebody that still wants to use a bike, do they go through an orientation, what kind of requirement or?
Well, you know, we have the basic information that actually on the sticker on our bike just saying how to use it.
And when you open up the app, you know, that there are the options of like safety, how to use it, how to use the bike, how to park it.
And, you know, it's saying near a rack or in an out of the way place. You know, the website has a list of parking options, like, you know, furniture zones.
If there's no bike rack around furniture zones where we normally have tree lines or benches where you'd be out of the way.
And they always encourage near a bike rack. But as we know, they're not always an option.
This may answer my question. I was going to ask, how do we report it other than call Mark?
So we can go to your page and report if there's a bike that we can't get out and move it. We can report to you on the website.
The customer service email is hello@VRI. We also have an 800 number, which is 1855VO2256.
So I've gotten emails from the customer service with bikes that they've had reported to them that needed to be moved.
And so that's, you know, two options. And the other option, I mean, I could give you my personal phone number or email.
Because, you know, the quickest way to get to the person that can move the bikes is to get in touch with the person that can move the bikes.
So that's another option. And I don't have an extreme deal ride charge, but I can give my number out at the end and I'd be happy to do that.
John?
Do you all give out information to freshmen during orientation?
Yeah, we're at the, we're partnered with transportation services. So at every orientation, transportation services would have a presentation that we would be part of.
And I would go over the whole spiel about being part of a transportation services, how we offer discount, you know, memberships to students.
And of course, then go into the slideshow about, you know, here's what we offer. Here's our service area.
Now wear a helmet, use hand signals, park like this, don't park like this.
And it's, you know, it's usually a small, a small rigma. I talked to far, far fewer incoming freshmen than you've had registrations with the app since the start of the year.
It's been, it's been pretty ridiculous, I mean, since September, you know, alone we've had over a thousand people just download the app and register.
Some of them are one or two time users, but, you know, a lot of them are just using the bikes on a very regular basis.
And, and again, I like to think that for the most part, they're doing it responsibly, but then there's always the outlier.
One of my hopes is that as people start using it, they will get the hang of it. So I can expect a little bit of problems that first week.
You have a bunch of new freshmen, new users, but I, and it does seem to be that way that I'm getting fewer calls and so for the people getting the hang of it, they're learning the right way to do it.
So, optimistically, we're going to have some blips at the beginning of every school year, but people, people will get it figured out.
I mean, you know, just like I hear at the beginning of every school year, the police have people going the wrong way on one-way streets, so, you know, just people, people have got to learn, so.
And we also have occasionally another issue is perhaps somebody is, you know, aware that they want to park next to a sidewalk and they might put a bike on the lawn or something, and we get a windy day and unfortunately the bikes are susceptible to heavy winds.
So a bike that was parked in a responsible manner sometimes falls over and blocks a roadway, so there is, you know, that issue. But, you know, during the summer it didn't seem to be too bad, you know, but once the fall hits and the winds come, then, you know, that starts up again.
And, you know, it varies. We have a system where we can see all the bikes and especially now with so many people that are using them and taking them off campus to their apartments or to downtown.
You know, I always want to be aware of how long that they're out there. I know our agreement calls for us to have the bikes removed within 24 hours.
So we'll set, we have filters that we can set, and, you know, we can set for one day idle, two day idle. If we see that a bike has been somewhere off campus sitting for a day or two, you know, we want to make sure and go and get the ones that have been out there longer.
You know, in some cases if we find one that's been out there for a few hours, you know, we'd like to account for the fact that perhaps the user is going to ride it back. But if we find one that's parked in a way that we know they're not going to use again, we'll grab it.
But, you know, we start, you know, every day I look at the map. I see where they are. I kind of look around the north part of town. West side of campus, you know, a lot of bikes go there.
And the south side, you know, Eagle, it's just, they get out there. And I've got to figure out where the bigger clusters or the longer sitting ones are, and I want to attack those first. So, and then the flip side of that is I might pick up one that's been out there for two days, and on the way I might pass one that just got there and is obviously not going back.
And so I could pick up a bike within 40 minutes of it being used, and I could pick one up two days after.
So if someone reports one parked improperly, how long would it take you to correct that?
You know, it depends. Yeah, if it was reported, you know, in the evening after I, because, you know, I work, you know, morning and afternoon. So if I don't check my email, but customer service got a complaint at like 8 p.m., I might not see it for 12 hours. But, you know, once I do, then, you know, priority is to go and get, go and get that one.
Thank you. So, first, I appreciate you going to all the orientations, because I was there too, and y'all had much better stickers than I did.
And I do, working at UNT, I see the students riding them, and I appreciate that service, service for them.
If you could clarify, whenever you log into the app, you've mentioned that there's safety videos or something, but it's not required for them to view the video before they can access the bike, or how does that work? Is this optional?
Yeah, it's an optional thing. So you can hope that they would look at it, because, you know, the app has the, I'll give you an idea here. When you open the app, it kind of just goes right to the map, and you'll see where the bikes are, and most people are just going to find the closest bike, scan it and go.
So you have the menu option, and you have help and info, and safety, so it was the two. But when you sign up for the first time, though, don't, there are a couple of, um. Required users.
Yeah, there's a couple of, I mean, it's been a while since I signed up first, but. Yeah, actually, I signed up with the app before I started working with you, alright, and it's been almost a year, so. Yeah, when you sign up.
Yeah, so you don't, like, recall the process, but, you know, if I went back and created a separate account just to see what the process is.
I just wonder, you know, if it's optional, I know when I, you know, see agreements, I usually just kind of scroll through them, yeah, I agree, email it to me later, or if it's something, as a new user, you're just doing the app, you're required to watch and say, okay, there's a safety feature for these, or how you access the vehicle, this is how you park the vehicle, if those are required, or if it's just optional.
That's just a question, because I feel like if it's required and you have to watch it before you're able to access the ride, then at least you can say they're getting it at least once.
Yeah, I should say I downloaded the app almost a year ago, and there's been multiple, multiple updates to it over the course of the year, and as the company grows in other markets, and they've included electric bikes and scooters, especially scooters in some markets where they want customers to make sure that they know that there are certain parking zones, and that they have to be left in certain spots.
And now there's actually a feature where they will ask you to send a photograph of the parked scooter, and I don't know if they would do that with the bikes, especially with the numbers that we're using, because our market is just, the number of rides for such a small area would be kind of system overload if they had a certain picture of every bike.
Does NEO Ride offer recumbent bicycles for disabled people?
I actually was thinking about that, and I don't know that we do, but I kind of hope we would.
I mean, I don't think you could leave those all over town. It would be more, you know, maybe you'd have to reserve one or something, but I would like to see recumbent bicycles added, because there are a lot of people that would utilize recumbent bikes. I know a lot of people that use recumbent bikes already.
Yeah, I should find out. Our website actually has a little section on the vehicles, and they just show the basic scooters, e-bikes, pedal bikes, and they even have like fat tire bikes in some markets.
Some point I will learn to navigate the website, and here's our page with all the parking information.
There's a lot of people that are, especially the police now, in traffic, in the way, but some people aren't going to listen, and some people just don't even look.
Yes, actually I don't know where the vehicles that we have are, but I think if it's not something that we have, I think it would be an incredible thing to offer to just increase mobility for everybody, and it would be a great addition.
Any last questions? Thank you. Thank you very much.
It's all for that item.
Okay, I'm going to discuss this one, Mr. Chair. This is actually exciting, because we've been meeting as a committee for what, seven or eight months, and we haven't actually had an official recommendation go to the City Council, but I have organized today's topic as an item that we'll, hopefully, we'll take a vote on today, and pass along to the City Council as a recommendation.
So, I don't know if you've noticed, but at the end of all of our agendas, this is our agenda for today, we have this standard language that the City uses, and I'll just read it out loud.
"The City of Denton Council Work Session Room, where we are today, is handicapped accessible in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The City will provide sign language interpreters for the hearing impaired if requested at least 48 hours in advance of the scheduled meeting. Please call the City Secretary's office or use a TDD telecommunications device for the deaf so that a sign language interpreter can be scheduled through the City Secretary's office."
And so this was brought up, I think, either at our last meeting, maybe the one before, that, I mean, I think it's good, it's great that the City is offering something, but as a committee, we recognize that there are many different ways to offer an accommodation beyond just sign language interpretation.
So the purpose of this is to create a statement from the committee to the City Council that says, "Hey, we would like to see the City broaden the language that they use in this statement," because it can be any number of different things, right?
So one way that the City does this is by using a report format called an informal staff report, and that's where staff put together, it's a memo, they put together information about a certain topic, and so I have put together a draft informal staff report that we can use on behalf of the committee.
So the subject would be providing reasonable accommodation, and I may even, that's one thing right there. So reasonable accommodation, when looking at the laws, that term gets used a lot when talking about employment accommodation, but not necessarily like utilizing services.
So do you, as a committee, think is the word reasonable the right word here? I'm seeing the Chair shake his head no. So just say accommodate.
Providing disability-related accommodations.
Related accommodations?
Disability-related.
I like necessary instead of reasonable.
Reasonable accommodation is for employment purposes when it comes to disability.
Disability-related instead of reasonable potentially, and you said necessary maybe?
Yeah. I like, disability-related is good, but it needs to be a necessary accommodation.
Impression.
Yeah, is what's necessary.
What's necessary, that's why you have to make it related to the disability.
Okay, that makes sense to me.
Well I'm going to make a note of what you suggested. Okay, so providing disability-related accommodations to persons with disabilities at city board, committee, and commission, maybe I'll just say, well, if you trust me to do some wordsmithing later, I might do that.
So a little bit of background. So I give background that under the ADA, cities do have the mandate to make sure that meetings are accessible to everyone.
Currently the only accommodation that the city specifically offers is sign language interpretation.
Other types of accommodations could also be provided by the city, the committee on persons with disabilities would like to request that this language be modified to include the broader umbrella of, and I will change that term, of accommodation.
Accommodations under the ADA can take many forms, may include a variety of actions such as sign language interpretation, captioning, I'm going to change that too, I keep learning all this good stuff, extra time to speak, allowing an aide to help an individual speak, a chair or stool.
I mean, are there any other kind of typical examples that anyone would like to add there, or, and we don't have to, but.
Do you have CART, computer-aided, whatever your transcription is, I forget.
Computer-aided.
It's C-A-R-T.
C-A-R-T, I'll look it up, okay, I'll include that.
I forget about that.
And then, I mean, we don't have to, I just, you know, if there's something that in your mind pops out, please get, be recognized by the chair and tell me.
So then I, in the document here, I put, here's what the current language is, and then I explain why we would like it to be amended or modified.
The current statement limits the city's provision of accommodation to only sign language interpretation. The staff and the committee recommended the statement be updated to reflect the fact that other reasonable accommodations may be needed and can be furnished by the city.
And then I made a version of it to propose, I mean, probably it's going to go through the legal department and they will ultimately decide, so I don't know whether to even leave that in, but I mean, I think it's somewhat helpful.
I, so the underlined portion here is a portion that I added. Let me get rid of the reasonable there. The city will provide accommodations such as, and I left that as an example, and then the, what do we call this, the strike-through font is areas where I removed wording.
So it's about the same length still. Anyway, so it's a pretty simple straightforward document, but just as far as, you know, the first thing that we send forward as this is something the committee feels strongly about.
And so then there's a conclusion, you know, the importance of accommodation. The city can demonstrate its commitment to making its functions and services inclusive by offering a broader array of accommodation.
This informal staff report was requested and approved by the Committee on Persons with Disabilities. And then when you're ready, you can call for a vote of support.
So I mean, are there further, are there further thoughts about this? Do you think we've captured the intent of it?
The original statement that we had, the word handicap, can we, that needs to be figured out. I don't know what we have here on the agenda, but you showed the very first one.
I may have pulled mine, well, maybe there are slight differences between some of them. Yeah, so getting it right. You're right. So accessible there.
Accessible to persons with disabilities. Okay, I'm just going to put a note at the bottom.
Yeah, that's great. I didn't even notice that there were different ones. I may have pulled mine from a council agenda, this top language, but that's a great point.
Just a question. Are we limiting this accessibility exclusive to city functions such as commissions, boards, and meetings? Are we looking at all activities that occur for the public in the city?
That's a good question. That's a great question. For this, just because we had noticed the statement at the bottom, I was, in my mind, I was at this time limiting it to the language on those agendas, but I think that broader statement is absolutely something that we should also look at.
And we have discussed a little bit, but this one, I would say I'm limiting it to the board, commission, and committee agenda notice.
Thank you. Do we have examples of any city events where there's publication of literature that has a language or does it not exist? Just to piggyback off of Belle's question.
I don't know if we want to go down that roadway if there is a city event put together and there's a flyer and does that language exist?
I know the Jazz Fest had some language about parking and things like that, but how about I just make a note that that's something else that we can look into, because I think it's related but separate.
Any other input regarding this?
No?
Markey did a good job.
Oh, Sandra?
Yeah.
I'm not going to accept it with Mark's wordsmithing.
So you're going to accept it with some, if you trust a little wordsmithing on my part?
Remember, it's next month.
Yeah, right, because if you didn't, I would have to bring it back next month, but this way, if you trust me to make a little edit here and there based on your feedback, it can be submitted and I can send a link when we do that.
It will probably go in what's called a Friday report, so every Friday the city council gets a packet and kind of anything that's happened of interest in the city during that week gets forwarded on to them, so they get informal staff reports, upcoming possible legislation or ordinances, things like that.
So that's where it would go, and they may ask, they may just say, "Oh, city attorney, please look into this and update it according to them," or they may invite us to come and address them at a city council work session or something, and I would probably be the speaker there, but I would invite and love for any of you to come as well and we would communicate that.
I mean, you can come and represent the committee. Anyway, that's what would happen if you vote on it, but you do have the motion.
I second your motion to vote.
All those in favor?
Aye.
They get to ask any opposed.
Any opposed?
Okay, so I am going to officially record that we have, we have seven people today, seven in favor, and zero against, what would I say, with four abstentions, or if we're missing people?
Four absent.
Great. Well, wonderful. I'm excited about this. Yeah.
We got our first official thing, y'all.
That's right. We made a vote. I appreciate you bearing with us.
It took us eight months.
As we've gotten everything.
That's not worth another eight months.
Yeah. No, I think now we've got the, we've got our tempo down.
We've learned what we needed to learn, and now we're actually going to have some output.
Yep. Yep. So, Mr. Chair, that's all I have about that topic.
We'll move on to E, CPD 19041, staff report.
Okay. It's me again, Mark Oliphant, bicycle and pedestrian coordinator. Let me see. So, well, I already mentioned that we are live streaming and recording.
I wanted to mention, it has been brought up in this committee, but a number of other boards, committees, and commissions, the issue of the sidewalks on the south side of the shopping center where the Kroger is at University and Alice.
There's incomplete sidewalk infrastructure there. We're aware of it, solving it.
I have been in touch with the owners of the shopping center, the management company. We've talked to them.
Text dot also maintains that road, but I just want to, it didn't make it onto an agenda officially for us, but in this month's Traffic Safety Commission and Mobility Committee, it has been discussed.
And when I have something of substance to report, I will bring it back to you to let you know about that.
Okay. So closed, well, captioning, right? This is another, something I've had to learn. I've been saying closed captioning, but captioning is really the umbrella term to describe written accounts of meetings and video recordings.
I had actually also prepared an informal staff report about this, but we decided in discussion with city management and so forth that we weren't quite ready for it yet.
I did mention tomorrow we are going to, for the first time, we're going to publish the recording of this meeting to YouTube where it will have a caption. And someone, someone asked about the city council.
That did come up in the past year with the budget, but it was not passed. So this is something that we can think about and revisit.
I, because of the way the budget works in the city, we just started a new budget year October 1st. So things don't change a whole lot budget wise, especially at the beginning of the budget year as things are getting, the new budgets are getting, they're starting to use them and so forth.
But this is something that I know is important to the committee. And so we just want to be strategic about how we recommend and promote this.
And so there will be more about it in the future when we are working on it. The chair has been good talking with me, working with me and city management to educate us on the topic and so forth.
So upcoming events, Clear Creek Heritage Festival, we did hear from them at one time I think about volunteering, and the bond election will be coming up. If it passes there could be some sidewalk things coming up, some information about that is at this website.
So I'm going to go to, okay, so future topics, well committee, we have these four potential topics for the coming month.
Disabled veterans, park and playground projects, the complete count committee of the census, remember we heard about that maybe in June, this is an update potentially.
And then current capital projects, so hear from project managers who are working on projects actively right now, designs and run it by the committee. There is also someone presented recently to the Parks and Recreation Board about adaptive recreation I think was the topic.
And I've been in touch with that person about potentially speaking with us. And then as you know working with me this often changes from month to month, but right now this is what we are potentially looking at.
And then for December, disability considerations and emergency management, more volunteer information, we're going to get the Keep Denton Beautiful and Animal Shelter here, bond information if that does pass, ADA transition plan, we're sort of still figuring out how to, where to put that.
Oh, we have some other items that haven't been planned exactly, I did want to just give a very quick update that I did speak to DCTA one of their construction managers today and as a result of our input to them a few months ago they are in the midst of improving two stops on McKinney.
And so once I have the final info about that it's the stops in front, I want to say the fountains and the veranda apartments over there. So I mean that was a direct result of us discussing that and going to them.
Those were the two stops that they didn't have to cooperate with the city or TxDOT to do, they can just do. And they are, they're doing it, which is great.
They got them, you know, we recommended ten and they're going to knock two right off the top of the list, that's great. So props to our DCTA rep in the corner there.
And then I've changed the format of this a little bit where this is just like a general list of things that we have discussed that I don't want to fall off.
But I mean we have enough topics I think to fill two years worth of meetings. So anyway, a little different format but I just, I want to try to just keep track of all our ideas and brainstorms.
I mean you see there, well, as an example, remote participation. We went through the manual for boards, commissions and committees and one thing that is a possibility according to the manual is video conferencing of meetings.
And we had several people who weren't able to make it today. So anyway, just ideas that we want to not lose track of. But I think that's all from me unless there's questions or anything.
On the top part of that we have November, December. One of the topics on there, the emergency management went on for December. It's kind of timely. Maybe not here locally but I know in California with the wildfires there's actually been a death to an individual with a disability because there was no preparation when the power went out.
Oh, right. So if we could move anything up that would be something to move up for next month. I mean it's timely, it's relevant.
Okay. Yeah, that would be easy to do. And then the parks in the background, I know it's one part of the hour. Yeah, that one is directly called out in an hour. So enabling that makes sense also. Yeah.
I'm glad you're keeping a list of the topics that come up and that we don't quite get to because I know Val and I both had shared a concern that some things were kind of falling through the cracks maybe. So I'm glad to see that you're keeping that list.
Yeah, we cast a web net and so you can't get to every topic all the time but yeah, right. We want to keep track of them.
I like moving the emergency management up as well. Yeah, I'll get on that. I'll reach out to Mike Penaluma.
Any questions or comments? No? Are we going to get out of here before eight o'clock? Can someone make a motion for a term? I make a motion we leave before eight o'clock.
Really? Thank you. Good job.