Nov 04, 2019 City Council on 2019-11-04 12:00 PM

Welcome, everybody, to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is Monday, November the 4th, 2019. We do have a quorum. I'll call this meeting to order. We'll go through our two work session reports, Work Session 1A and B. We'll start with 1A, is receive a report, hold a discussion, give staff direction regarding capital improvements to downtown Meuse Streets, which are Pecan, Austin, Walnut and Cedar. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. My name is Precham Deshmukh. I'm the Deputy City Engineer, and I will be talking about Meuse Street improvements. Quick overview, look at the project goals and the current status of this project, then talk about the existing conditions, give you a timeline of where we've been through with this project in the planning phases. We received a bunch of public feedback last year, and we have some information regarding that. There is a larger component of solid waste, I'll be quickly going over, it's just one slide of where we're at with that, and then come up with, present the options for beautification of these streets that are on the backside of the square, and then finally close it with cost and schedule. So what is the goal of this particular project? We're in the planning phases, and the primary goal is beautifying the back streets around the square. These, I don't know how that moved, but, so beautifying the streets, there's a first part of the goal, but most importantly is make it ADA accessible, make the sidewalks that are currently in the backside, they have elevation differences with the buildings and entrances, so make it ADA compliant, make it pedestrian friendly, and add more aesthetics, more trees and more beautification elements to it. So the current status, we've gone through the public engagement process, extensive public engagement last year, through early this year, and then we have developed three options. So here's a quick map of where we're at, these are the back streets, we start on the west side with Cedar, it's just behind, I don't know how that is happening, so Cedar, which is on the west side of Elm, and then you have Pecan on the north side, Austin on the east side, it's left over from the 31st. And then Walnut on the south side, I think so, so quick timeline, what has happened, so we, as I mentioned, we started late last year, around November, we had a bunch of public events, started with meeting the downtown group, then we had open houses, we had office hours that people could come in and discuss the alternatives and options, and then we also had an online survey earlier this year. Now since that time, what we've done, I think we realized that the important component to this particular project and the planning phases was the solid waste component. So through the summer months and all the way to the fall, what we've done, and worked with the solid waste department to implement a, go through a pilot program, pilot project for valley, solid waste valley services, and then implement that in the downtown area. So all these, I have a quick slide later on, but that's what has happened for this project and currently here we are in November presenting to council about the options. So the public feedback, the majority of the public feedback that we received to maintain the two-way status of these streets, so primarily the survey that we received, most of the public wanted to maintain the two-way streets. They also wanted an increased lighting because of the safety element of it. So as you improve or beautify this, they wanted to be safer, they wanted those back streets to be safer, and then wanted to be more pedestrian friendly, so add the sidewalk element. And also as I mentioned, solid waste was a big element, there were a lot of loading zones and areas coned off for solid waste dumpsters, so valley service was something that was recommended by the public. Quick overview of the valley service, the service actually was rolled out in the downtown area on September 9th. Most of the businesses typically get assigned one to three carts that they use and one or two carts for recycled bins. And then all the dumpsters in the downtown or the Mew Street on the back sides have been removed as of October 21st, and then because of the removal of the dumpsters, there is an approximate gain between 13 to 20 parking spaces on the area that was occupied previously by the dumpsters. So that's a quick overview of the valley service, if you have any questions, I have Brian from Solid Waste that can answer, but I just want to keep on moving. So this is the proposed cross section for the back streets, all of them. You have a two-way configuration here with parking, parallel parking on either side. And then you can see there is a large pedestrian area with other beautification and other elements. I'm going to dive into the options. The first option is the basic option. So if you look at it, you can see some trees here, and I'll go into the elements of what the basic option would have. It would have bike racks, similar to what we have on the square, or some other options and alternatives that we can look into decorative bike racks as well. It will have trash cans, street lighting obviously is one of the important things that was requested by the public. And then some street trees, so as you can see, there are about four street trees there on one side. Of course, there are some street trees involved in the basic option. Going on to the next, which is the enhanced option. And in the enhanced option, you will primarily have all the basic elements of the basic option, which will have bike racks, and trash cans, and street lights. But what we're adding in the enhanced option is more trees. So the number of trees will go up, as you can see in this graphic, the number of trees will go up, as well as there will be stamped concrete along the parkway area. So you can see it's more beautified, it has more enhanced option for the parkway area. And then the other piece to that is there will be planters. So we're pretty much replicating what's out there currently on the square, as far as the enhanced option. This has the same feel, it has trees, it has planters, it has stamped concrete in the parkway area, or pavers in the parkway area. So the last option is more luxury option. What's included in here is all the elements of enhanced option include the basic, the bike racks, and trash cans, and street lights are there. But on top of that, you will see there are pavers and/or stamped concrete along the parking stalls. So that's an additional element. There are also pavers and stamped concrete along the crosswalks, so you can have some decorative crosswalks within this option, in the luxury option. And then last but not least, the number of trees will be increased, along with additional planters. So just, and then more shrubs and bushes under the trees in the tree well. So those are the additional elements that will be added as part of the luxury option. One other thing that would be added is string lighting. It will have a feel of the entire streets on the backside would be lighted, and it gives a better safety enhancement, it gives a, aesthetically, it invites people over to this area. So based on these options, we had a planning level cost estimate defined. And here are the total costs for all these streets. As you can see, Cedar Street primarily has already been enhanced. It's going to remain as it is, but then the other street really need the dollar amounts to enhance them. So the basic option is a little under $5.5 million. The enhanced is about $6 million. And then the luxury option is another additional $1 million over the enhanced, that's $7 million. So these are, at this point, planning level opinion of the cost estimates needed to enhance these back streets, the new streets, with the different options and elements associated. So here are the recommendations for staff. If you have any questions, I can go back. But staff recommends the enhanced option, which is the middle option, going with the similar type of improvement that's already out there on the square. So that is the option that staff is recommending. Depending on the available funding, what we can do is add some of the elements from the luxury option. We can add string lightings, or we can add crosswalk pavers, and so on and so forth. It just depends on the available funding. Schedule just to give you a quick idea of what's going to, if we kickstart the design process and if funding is identified, we will require about ten months for the design to be completed. There are several utilities in this area, and DME has a lot of utilities in there. That will take, the relocations will take an additional ten months. We go through the city bidding process for construction for about three months, and then the actual construction is 18 months. So that's a timeline if we move forward early next year in February, then by 2022 we should be able to enhance or achieve these enhancement projects. Potential funding. What are the sources? And if you want to get into the details of these, David and Jessica are here if there are any questions. But obviously the first option is go certificate of obligation, CO emissions. The second pot of money is the downtown TURS, tax and green investment zones. And then the last option is always a future bond program. What can happen if funding is identified, we can take a phased out approach, depending on the amount of funding available, we can move forward with the schematic phase. The design phase itself is going to require $1 million, so we can go do a schematic phase for approximately $350,000, and then the remaining design phase can be funded separately. And then finally the phase two will be construction funding. So this is just to identify how we can approach it. We can go in a phased manner where the schematic is completed, then we get a better understanding of what our construction costs are, and then also at that time a better understanding of what funding we can use for construction. So that's an option. What are the next steps? Once we get direction from council of what alternative we want to move forward with in the schematic phase, we will definitely go and present it in front of all the boards and committees, the downtown tourist board, main street association, economic development center and so on and so forth, through planning and zoning commission. So we'll let them know that this is the alternative and get their feedback on what should go in the design and what other things we need to consider. And then the next step is definitely move on to the schematic design. Any questions? So just a few questions and one comment for clarification. So someone, I posted this on the downtowners and someone mentioned, well, can we just do one new street and see how that would work. But what I'm hearing is that if we choose the enhanced, we can say we'll look at Cedar because that is how all of the other ones will look like. So we basically have already done that. Correct. Correct. We have all of the streets that are within Elm and Locust and Hickory and Oak. We have all of those elements present at the corners, you see the planners, you see. So a lot of them is already in place. So that's definitely something that they can go look at. Okay. Next question. Will the backs of the buildings from the downtown be usable and open? Correct. The whole idea is to actually, right now there is a great elevation difference between the street level and the door. So the idea is to have a wider sidewalk with street furniture, active area that can be used for different uses. We have not defined, but that our sidewalks are wider than 10 feet. So we're definitely thinking that that area will be usable in some form or fashion. Okay. Like maybe sidewalks, tables, things like that. Yes. Two more questions. So I'm okay with the enhanced. I think we need to run it by all the groups and look for input. I have a few things that are very specific and that kind of bother me right now. The one main one is that I hope that we don't do any more of the brick facade like we have on Hickory Street for the crosswalks because it's just peeling and falling off and I would not be in favor of spending any more money on that type of whatever that is. So that's pretty much, so the one way street now that's in between downtown and Sweetwater is going to go back to two way? So you're talking about Austin or Walnut? Walnut, yes, that will be two way. Okay. Because it was two way, then it's one way. So it'll go back to, it'll all be back two way. Okay. Thank you. Indirectionally, I'm so supportive of this and I think adding to the sense of place of downtown and kind of building on the strengths we already have and I think it'll create greater opportunities for more festival space. I think it'll benefit thousands of people. I like many of the elements of luxury. Of course, it all comes down ultimately to not just what's good and appealing, but can be actually funded. So whatever detail staff is prepared to share, I'm entirely interested as far as funding sources. Well, at this point, we don't have a hard budget. I think what we've been keeping in mind is probably some sort of a mix in this project from TURS dollars as well as a CO. I would anticipate in the next year also getting some feedback from you in the next several months on City Hall West and so the idea would be do we do a seal package and plan that in the budget for 2021 to basically fund part of this program as well as City Hall West if that's where we decide to go, but I think this is certainly a project that makes a lot of sense from a TURS perspective. This is exactly the kind of project that you set a TURS up for. So really what we're getting down to is there's only so much capacity right now and so I need to spend some time with David and Tony on that, but if the council wanted to proceed in this direction, we would certainly put together a financing plan that probably mixed and matched both of those funding options. Yeah, I'm aware that there are a number of possible claimants on that pot, right? Yeah. The PECFOR as well. I think there's something like a million in there at this point. There is, and I think that there was an overall cap on that, around $23, $24 million. So that would have to be planned out and PECFOR is also certainly another project we'll probably come back to you at some point. Todd Estes and his staff are taking a look at some other options right now, some grant opportunities that we might need to come back for if we can get some federal funding for that come in and use as a match out of either the CO or the TURS funds itself, but either one of those or a mixed thereof would be possible at this point. Thanks. I'll just add one more comment if I may. Oh, sure. Yeah. I think there are opportunities, more kind of in the luxury slice, to incorporate public art, including in the crosswalks themselves, things I've seen in other cities, as well as the bike racks. Those things can be distinctive and special to Den, not to nerd. Thank you. Councilmember Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. I'm good with going forward to the other boards and kind of get some feedback from them as well. One of the questions I also have is how many businesses, and this is a data point that I'd like as we go forward, how many businesses actually face the new streets as to what we're actually helping affect because when you look at the history of it, they were basically alleyways of the square, and is it potential to have growth in those areas, then? Are there potential storefronts that could open up the backside of buildings or buildings on the other side that aren't currently used as storefronts? An additional point on this would be if there's any options between the square and Austin Street on Oak, the grade change in there is so great that being a usable ADA sidewalk, it's pretty much impossible. Yeah. I think once we get into design phase, we're definitely looking at different options at tier level or how we can fit it, but that would be a consideration, definitely, in the design phase. Councilmember Davis. So I also like the direction we're heading. I don't like that our top tier, we labeled it luxury because some of those things, I think like the street trees and the tree wells with good plantings, I don't necessarily see those as luxuries. I think those are good planning. Some of the other stuff, you could like street pavers instead of stamp concrete, you could call that a luxury item, but some of the other things, and then like the additional illumination for safety, people see the string lights and they think it's all aesthetic, but that really is a safety concern. We were talking about Walnut a little while ago. You've got the backs of the businesses and you used to have the dumpsters and you had the cars parked right up against the wooden stairwells or stairways that those businesses have, and it's really not very safe at all at nighttime. I would be okay with too, we could call it the enhanced option, but I'd be okay with skipping some of the elements that we see in the enhanced option and going straight to some of the stuff like more plantings, more street trees, better street furniture. Stamped concrete, it matches what's on the square, but it's not that important to me that these back streets have the same stamped concrete that we see on the square. It's not important to me that we have on these kind of back streets distinctive crosswalks and stuff like that, and if we're able to find some savings by not doing some of these kind of in-between things like spending, the difference between the tiers seemed pretty great to me to go from the basic to the enhanced to the luxury, and you're kind of going not quite orders of magnitude, but you're adding millions of dollars in the process. I'd be okay with going to something more simple with some of the luxury features, I'll call them luxury features, but some of the enhancements, but then also with some cost savings, maybe looking at some of the other streets that we have in this area. We've focused here on the Meuse. For instance, Walnut is a much less important street for business investment than say Hickory to the west of the square, and some of the improvements that can be done there, including ADA compliance there. Locust and Elm south of the square are right for investment with the right kind of public improvements. I'd honestly like to see this scaled down a little bit on the Meuse and expanded out if we're going to be taking the squares bubble out that far and focusing on some of our big streets, too. Councilmember Armitage? First of all, apologies for coming in late. I teach until 1150, so I got here as soon as I could. Yeah, I have a somewhat similar response, and that is in that I like the idea of the Meuse streets, and if cost was no issue, then I would say yes, do all of it with some tweaks. I would like to see council decide on a prioritization as far as which issues, not just as far as the Meuse streets and these proposals we consider highest priorities, but for instance, I consider ADA accessibility in our downtown square a huge number one issue, because it's a public safety issue, and this addresses a lot of that, but then there are some aspects of this that don't address that issue, so as far as cost, those are the ones that I would want to prioritize, and then to look at what other things, budget-wise, that we would have to when we get to, I'm talking about from a comprehensive city-wide point of view, where we would say, well, we can't do this, we can't provide this neighborhood with water because we just spent $7 million on the Meuse streets, so that's the way in which I'm thinking. To the extent that counts for direction, that's my, so I like the idea, the cost is a lot, I just kind of prioritize. I think between council member Ryan and Davis is where I fall, I think you're not going to pick up enough usable business space on Walmart, Walnut, I believe, I mean, I just don't think, you may pick up some, but it's not appreciable, so I think there's a tiered approach, I absolutely would support the lighting across, I think that's inviting kind of, hey, what's down there, that's a driver, and so, but kind of assessing the streets, so Walnut versus a, so on the east side there, yeah, so yeah, so Austin, North Austin, so yeah, those areas where you can kind of pick up some of that traction, or there's a business facing, or that area may be Queenies, et cetera, that area may be further developed, that type of thing, I think it makes sense, Pecan, the same, there's a couple of buildings there that may be redeveloped, that sort of thing that could have potential, so that's kind of, I see a, let me look at the tier so I can have the right name, sorry, the lower, basically the lower end option, so the basic model, I think, fits those, for example, the Walnuts of the world that don't have, we're not going to pick up an appreciable amount of new business, but then those areas that are, do have businesses facing the streets, I think that's where we could go, again, I think I fall, I'm fine with the basic and add lights, et cetera, some of those other features, I think, work well, the extra trees, that type thing, all the way around, but kind of focusing on those streets where we can pick up new growth and maybe use that as an incentive to bring in new growth. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. So have we come up with a solution for the grease traps that are in the area? That might be a brine question. Okay. Because I know there's a couple on these streets. There are several grease traps on the streets and those are something that we're currently looking at. Currently we're not including them in the valet portion, but as we expand, once we have full implementation into the six phases, we do want to start looking at grease traps and other solid waste-related applications within this area. So it is something on our list to look at, but right now we do not have a solution for that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Maybe some paint? It seems like based upon some of the comments that, I mean, obviously you brought back a very specific thing, which I think at some point that was sort of council direction, bringing us back a general proposal and those kind of things, but yet it seems as if it's sort of been expanded. The one question I have, and it's really a numbers question, on the slide where it shows the street improvement opinions and costs, you've got enhanced at 6 million and luxury at 7 million, but when I look at, I guess it's the next to the last slide, no, second to the last slide, so three slides from the back, it shows phase one funding design is a million, phase two construction is 6 million, so that's 7 million. Was the cost on the slide for the cost just the construction cost, or is that the all-in cost? So the 7 million is we're just taking the luxury example and broken it down. Oh, okay. Okay. I thought because y'all, I thought, did y'all recommend the enhanced? Is that? Okay. We did recommend enhanced, but in this breakdown it was just an example. All right. Okay. So I think what I'm hearing, or maybe what I'm hearing a general theme of yes, we sort of like the concept, but then there's some variations, it seems like that almost everyone has sort of added, you know, an additional variable like either expanding it or taking it down to, you know, looking at it more street by street and seeing if we apply one of these types of labels on a more street basis instead of saying they all have to be equal based upon use. So I think that's a good observation. But what I think I've heard is go ahead and start talking to the committees, and then I think you'll have additional feedback, and depending on how that flushes out, you may come back with a different concept. I will say that I agree that down towards Eagle Drive, of course that's one of the major entrances into the square and exits from the square, but the TURS or the business district, what is the cross street where that ends? Is it Maple Sycamore? Does anybody? And if not, just -- Yeah. We don't have the answer. We know there's Sycamore, but we'll confirm which one it is. Because I think -- and when we come back, it would be nice if we revisited just as part of this discussion, not a total comprehensive look, but because the TURS financing plan breaks down specifically how much is sort of generally categorized for each form of improvement, so I think that would be helpful in knowing how much is for drainage, how much is for street improvement, and then I think there's a policy discussion that we talked about when the TURS was first created, and that was you don't issue bonds to be paid back with TURS revenue, it's all cash funded, but that can be another -- I think that's going to probably need to be another discussion on do we still want to maintain that policy or on some of the bigger projects once we've got a -- you know, we've got a fairly good track record of income, do we -- and I was one that said, hey, no, let's don't fund it with bonds, let's do cash, we've had, what, how many years, four or five or six years of it, and so it's just part of the discussion to see if there's any appetite for a change, and if not, that's okay, and if there is, that's okay, too, because I think that would help with the funding of it in that regard, because certificate of obligations basically go into our debt service, and so do the obligation for bonds on the TURS, however, I think they can be such that the TURS revenue is looked to for that, so -- because that's primarily was part of why that whole thing was created, but I think to -- because everybody -- I think I'm the only one here that was on the council when the TURS was created, and so I think to go back and revisit, here's the financing plan, here was what the intention was, and just give sort of a historical context of all that. So is that direction sort of -- everybody's okay with them beginning to talk to the different boards and commissions? Yes, Councilmember? Well, this is a strong objection. I would add public art to the list of folks to talk to. Okay. All right. See if they have something to contribute. Yeah. Well, and also, that would also possibly connect some additional funding sources, because I wouldn't want to fund the public art from the TURS money or from COs, but so if you want the public art, it might open up some additional avenues of funding for that specific entity, depending on how things go tomorrow and also just in general. Yep. Because I think we have some additional public art funding from other places. I think so. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yes, Councilmember Davis? Just real quickly, I was trying earlier to kind of encapsulate what I've been hearing from folks about the project. I think the big risk here and the thing that's driving some of the costs is a big risk of over-designing. Like when we talk about Austin not being the same as Walnut and all that kind of stuff and trying to make things all fit a mold as we go all the way around the box, I think it's really important and Mayor Pro Tem said basically the same thing, that really designing for exactly what we need. Do we need stamped concrete everywhere? No. Could we use trees everywhere? Sure. That kind of stuff. Because some of this stuff, it just seems like the costs, the designed-in costs could run away pretty quickly and get us up into that $7 million range where I don't know that anybody necessarily wants to be. Okay. Okay. I think this is a great opportunity to really continue to work on the downtown area and I think we're going to get a lot of input, which is always helpful. Todd, did you? Any other questions? Comments? Fantastic. Thank you. Appreciate it. One thing I did notice though that intrigued me, which I think we need to consider as part of the discussion, and that is we go ahead and move forward. I can't even say this with a straight face. As we go forward, you know, instead of parallel parking, maybe see if we do back-end parking on those streets. Obviously, I'm just kidding. Just kidding. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Well, I mean, I'm sorry. You know, Chair has a little bit of leeway, I guess. Maybe that's not good. All right. Work session B is receive, report, and hold discussion regarding the Mayhill Road Phase 2 DCTA Bridge from Colorado Boulevard to north of Quail Creek Road Improvement Project. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, Todd Estes, City Engineer. I'm going to do my best not to have the same technical difficulties as pre-TAM, but no promises. Just wanted to give you a brief update on where we were with what we're calling Phase 2 of the Mayhill Project, which is that Mayhill DCTA Bridge, where Mayhill will go straight and over the railroad tracks. The project really has four focal points. It is, first and foremost, to get up and over the railroad tracks so that it improves safety, mobility, and it increases that reduction in congestion by providing better mobility throughout the corridor. In other words, instead of making the short jog around to the side like you do today, Mayhill will force you to go around and over and then take a left. This project would allow you to just basically go from 380 straight to I-35 and back, a very direct route. It does enhance that safety from the railroad crossing, and we'll look into that here in a minute, as well as this project has the ability to resolve some flood issues that occur downstream of Mayhill itself, and we'll get into all those items here shortly. The current project, so this map here facing up and down, the blue line is what's currently under construction. We are actually very close to being complete with all four lanes of that Mayhill four-lane divided thoroughfare project that goes from 35 all the way down to almost the bridge. We did change order out a piece of that to make a better transition. If you recall, last year we changed order out about, I think it was about 1,000 foot, where we took some of the roadway piece out in anticipation of coming to do this bridge, and we put in temporary asphalt. So in a little while you'll see a little elevated cost to this project. Part of that is that we took part of that project out of the original Mayhill phase one project and put it back into the bridge project. And then the little piece down here to this south in the drawing or the bottom of the drawing, that's the DCTA bridge. So that's what we're calling phase two. There is an interim step here. That is the change order that will be coming to you in December/January about the Mayhill-McKinney intersection itself. Believe it or not, that was not included in the original Mayhill project. It was anticipated to be in the McKinney project. We changed ordered that piece into this one. It has not come to you for approval yet. We're still working through the pricing with the contractor. And then we'll be able to bring that to you so that essentially when Mayhill is completely finished, at least in this blue line, even the intersection at McKinney and Mayhill will be complete and not left as it was intended to be when it was originally left. Let's ask a couple of questions. Just a couple of questions that I did before we move on. Just looking at this map, so now if you stay on Mayhill, it goes around and then you can turn on Edwards. So will that stay the same? There will still be a piece of that section of Mayhill. Let me go back to this map here. It'll show it a little better. So that existing Mayhill road before we ever started the project came straight and turned and then Edwards went this way. This piece of road, when we turn up to go over the bridge, this little segment here will actually have an intersection with what's left of the old Mayhill alignment and will allow you to go to Edwards. We're going to take out this piece here so that that railroad crossing, that very unsafe crossing goes away. It's as safe as it can be for what it is, but it's a pedestrian crossing as well as a bicycle trail crossing as well as vehicles. That will be taken out with this project. But you will still have some kind of tie-in here with Edwards. We're working through what that looks like as part of the design of this project. Okay, thank you. Real quick question back on the McKinney-Mayhill intersection. Yes, sir. You say it was sort of contemplated that would be part of the McKinney project. Was that when the state was charged with doing that? But since we now doing that, we didn't include that in necessarily that that wasn't included in that component. We were going both pathways with that. There were some timeline issues. Okay. So we wanted to make sure that we got McKinney out to construction per the requirements with the cog and we did. Right. That was opened last week and that will be coming to you soon for approval in November. But that last piece right there at the intersection, there were some right away concerns. So we went ahead and we removed that piece, which allowed us to complete the construction and our obligation with cog for the funding and then get this piece included in the Mayhill project. So it's really to facilitate this construction project to meet the deadlines basically. Yes. Okay. All right. So just a few overviews of what these intersections look like where the primary focus of concern has been and will be resolved with this project. This is this picture here talks about that railroad crossing. You do absolutely have a trail that crosses through here. So there are several factors will be resolving with this project. One being that there will not be a crossing there across the railroad tracks. We would be bringing it under or down this way and around. We're not sure yet. We're still working through what those individual components look like, but we want to get rid of that at grade crossing for the pedestrian, the cyclist and either give them something that goes over similar to the vehicles or something that falls alongside until we can go over. But today there's a sidewalk on both side. Well, at least on one side, sorry, down both sides on one side that trail comes up this side crosses and then goes over the railroad tracks. So if we're going to make this as safe an intersection as possible, we're going to remove that connection and provide an alternate connection. That's the council member. Go ahead. I saw council member Briggs hand go up to maybe she's thinking the same thing, but kind of following on from her earlier question. So what happens there to the I guess the west on the pit, the top picture, it's on our right hand side. Do you still have access of some kind to Edwards from there or do you only access Edwards from the north along the old, so you would have to go over the bridge and down to the intersection. I'll be at a lower level and then you would come back to Edwards that way. Okay, so you kind of have to exit Mayhill. Correct. And then go. Okay. Yeah. That's the only way we have right now to remove that fully from the railroad crossing. That answers one of my questions, but the other one was is about the cycle and pedestrian trail because if we are raising that the bridge right for the train, that's that's going to be up there. The train is going to go on the bridge and this road is going to end right here and not even cross. Why are we removing the I may have misunderstood you the trail. We're going to remove this crossing and then either extend the trail along and under the bridge or we will find a way to get the same crossing up and over the rail. We want to remove the pedestrian and the cyclist from being in conflict with the train. No more accidents at those rail crossings if we can prevent it. So for doing this for the train to and the cars not to do that. We want to do the same for both the cyclists and pedestrians and there are several ways to get there. I thought I heard you say and maybe I misheard you. I thought you said that the train would be on the bridge, right? No, this is a vehicular bridge. Oh, okay. Yeah. So we're not raising everything up. Well, we're raising the roadway up so that the train Yeah, they're raising a bridge to go over the tracks and then they're eliminating this at grade crossing of Mayhill. Yeah. Okay. Well, that makes more sense because I thought we could just leave the if we're raising everything out, we could just leave the trail in place. But I gotcha. Okay. Okay. We're still working through the money show how that one's going to come together. It's a tricky one, but we've got several alternatives. And then of course, this top picture is what you see if you're driving north away from I 35 E coming up to the Colorado Mayhill intersection today. And of course, in the future, we'll be able to go straight. And then this over here on this side would be gone. We wouldn't have that entrance on that side. It would just purely go to the left. The other component of this project is a flood control piece of the project. When Mayhill was originally designed and contemplated, nobody really took into account the floodplain that existed here. So Mayhill runs this line today. And it wasn't fully fleshed out as to what we would be doing with this. And this is something we had talked about a couple of years ago. The channel over here, we this is Cooper Creek, pre damn in this Cooper Creek on this side. So Cooper Creek runs on this side. No, I'm sorry, it's pecan Creek. I see it over here. You were wrong. And I was wrong. Pecan Creek. So concrete runs this way. And this is a tributary that runs through there. For whatever reason, the flood study stopped here to establish base flood elevation of the hundred year flood and then stayed in its current configuration on the map. It's what we call a zone A. It's an approximate flood zone. So we don't know definitively that's where that flood zone actually occurs. And then the original Mayhill project didn't take into account that until really we got involved in this process and gone to construction in the fall of 2017. That's where we got engaged in determining what could you do to alleviate this concern where you're currently you have multiple homes in this area there in the flood plane. You also have these buildings over on this side in the floodplain and then nothing was ever contemplated here. There was as part of development in the area, there was a study done in this area to nail down where that flood zone was, but nothing in between the two. So we have gone back and we are working through that process of delineating exactly what does this look like. There will be a full flood study complete when we're done with this project to define those limits. But one of the things that did come out of that analysis was the need for some flood control structures to reduce that floodplain. So if I'm going to remove that floodplain from the area here where a lot of these little homes are, then we would need to construct some kind of flood control ponds. And this is the first glance of the smallest size ponds we would need to reduce that flow to keep it within the channel banks. And you can see this is if I'm on currently the old Mayhill Road and I'm looking back this way away from where the future bridge will be, this is what you're looking at. Currently the floodplain limits go well beyond the banks of that channel. So what we would do is we would build two ponds on this side, may even be larger than what you're seeing here, but would occupy all this space next to the bridge on both sides that would reduce the amount of floodwater that moves past the old Mayhill, New Edwards Road, and reduce it within the channel banks here and keep those homes out of the floodplain. Just on that picture, because it was my understanding that this raised, the raised street would save trees, and now it looks like all the trees are going to have to be cut down. We don't know that definitively. We don't know how much digging we're actually going to have to do versus how much of it is just sheer width of space. So we don't know if the trees may stay. And we are just getting into the limits of how much area do we actually have to keep holding water back. They may not stay. We just don't know the limits of that just yet. We just know of rough size of how big that pond would actually be. Currently projected cost for the project are $24.5 million. That's a very large contingency we have built into that. That is based on some of the ongoing costs that will be coming to you here very soon in relation to real estate acquisitions that we need to make that bridge come to fruition. So the construction cost of the bridge, if we still hold it per the estimate we initially had is roughly between $11.5 million, $12 million. We are doing some value engineering on all that to make sure we completely have the best cost. That's an ongoing process. We're about 30% through that process, and then we'll be able to get you a better number. Some of this, $24.5 million, originally we talked about $18.5 million. Some of that is real estate. Some of it is that additional change ordered amount from the original Mayhill project that is now in this project. So that's why that cost has gone up. We do anticipate both some savings for the Mayhill project and for some value engineering in the project to keep that cost where we don't have to ask for more funding. Can you go back to the funding, and this is all the cost to the city? No. The city has about $5 million in this project, and about $15 million is coming from the cog. So that's RTR funds that are being injected into this project to make it work. And is that amount of money kind of just spread out throughout all of this, or is it specifically saying it's applied to this one part? No, it's spread out throughout the project in different costs. Okay. Because I was wondering, and I guess this is an appropriate time to ask this as any in the presentation, I know that the question about the idea that the train is going on the bridge, that was a misunderstanding. That's going under the bridge. Exactly. So yeah, I understand that that was a misunderstanding, but actually that was a question that I had had had had looking over this that if DCTA, was there any discussion about the train being elevated and keeping the pedestrians there, and would that in turn, would that only involve not having to make people move for the train, but the train moving for the people, and would that also have lowered the costs? Do we ask that question? No, because this project was so far along when we got into this discussion, I don't know that question was ever asked. We can certainly ask that question as we go through this. Now, train bridges versus vehicular bridges are very different in nature. They require a lot more infrastructure to support, because a train cannot go as steep as a car can, up an incline or down an incline. So from that standpoint, the bridge itself becomes more costly, because I've got a lot longer bridge to then build. Yeah. I'm just thinking in terms of also in terms of cost, then it would be, the cost would be DCTAs, obviously we pay for DCTA too, in part, but I'm thinking of the city like Chicago, which we're not in that area, it's not a Chicago-like area, but just where you've got the parts of the city where the trains are up here, so that the people can walk along down here. We can absolutely ask the question of DCTA, I don't know that their funding is in such a place, much like UP and several other rail providers are, they're not in a place where they make that happen, but for very rare instances, because it is very costly. Yeah, I know it would be costly, and I know we don't have a lot of that, and my other question related to that has to do with the families of kids who go to Pecan Creek Elementary, and I don't know exact, like I haven't looked at a map of all of the, obviously the neighborhood feeds into that school on the other side of May Hill, and to what extent over May Hill, and who walks there, bikes there, drives there, how that would affect traffic and what the community has to say about that. From a walkability and cycling standpoint, those are things we can absolutely handle with this project, and those become easier to connect, just because the infrastructure is much smaller, and it's a little easier to work through the actual project itself to make that happen. As far as changing the roadway connections or adding another roadway connection and remove it from a rail crossing, that would almost double the size of the budget if we were adding two vehicular bridges to make this work. Oh yeah, and I only asked about the bridge, my only interest in the bridge was thinking that if that would be something DCPA would pay for, in addition to being a good person. It's absolutely something we can ask, I don't know the answer to that. Okay, well yeah, thanks, and just to kind of get, at some point, I know this is a big project, but at some point getting input from some sort of meeting with the, specifically obviously you're going to talk to people in the community, but families of Pecan Creek Elementary kids, to get their input. Any other questions on that? No, no, yeah, go ahead. All right, I'll just give you a brief overview of the current schedule for this project. We are proposing to be complete with design by this coming spring. At the latest, we'll be bidding this spring, and we anticipate going to construction May, June of next year, provided that we continue moving this project forward full steam ahead as we have been. Where does this lie in its overall landscape with all the other construction along this area? So we will obviously be finishing up in very early 2020, the entire stretch of May Hill that's currently under construction, we anticipate February to be the latest date we would be done. We may even have traffic turned over much sooner, and they'd be out working on the sides. You will see the construction of the bridge going next summer, we don't anticipate more than about 12 months to get that constructed. There's not a lot of traffic out there, so there's a lot of things we don't have to worry about that someone like Textot, who's trying to build two bridges on a major interstate, has to worry about, has taken a long time to do. So we just don't have those constraints. And then Textot anticipates coming in about the time we wrap up our project or this bridge crossing right here, then Textot anticipates going to construction down on the south side, picking up where we leave off, all the way down to 2499.935. Councilmember Ryan. I may have asked this in the past, is this bridge designed to six lanes? The bridge currently is designed to six lanes, yes. Okay. Just want to make sure, because I know we've got the room to add on to May Hill in the center, down the road when it's necessary. Councilmember Davis. I'm looking at the Katy Trail, and there's a part of, between the Med Park station and the intersection that we're talking about, where the trail jogs south and runs along the southern edge of the right-of-way. Correct. Do we know why it's not already on the northern part of the right-of-way? I mean, it seems like part of our, if we're improving the pedestrian crossing and the bike crossing, if it's already on its own, regardless of what we do with this project, going to keep taking that jog south and then cross back over in roughly the area we're talking about. It seems like that's got to be part of the solution, is how does the trail just stay on the north side of the right-of-way? Yes. We're absolutely working through that solution, because ultimately the idea for that southern piece where it jogged over was, where could they jog over, easy enough to actually tie in to the Med Park station like you're talking about. So that's part of what we're working through right now is, instead of having that at-grade crossing, what may be a part of this would be a pedestrian cyclist bridge that you stay on the north side, and instead of crossing at-grade anywhere along the way, you'd end up going over. And that way, they'd have their aerial crossing and nowhere connected to the rail. Okay. Is there the possibility that they just stay, I'll call it at-grade, but not the crossing, just stay on that north side, and if we're kind of doing some engineering for flood control or whatever in that area, that we can improve that trail along the north side of the right-of-way without flying over anything? Well, you can. That trail's going to stay at ground level on the north side all the way up. When you cross the railroad tracks, the fundamental question becomes, this will be an option that will be part of the package that ultimately council says go forward with, do you leave it at-grade or do you take it over? And we've got two options that we're working through. What are the costs to both of those? The advantage of taking that pedestrian cyclist bridge over wherever you cross, over the railroad tracks, is that obviously you're preventing that scenario of people and a train getting into an incident, as opposed to, which we've had several of, just over the last 12 months, as opposed to we just leave it at-grade. You can do that. That is absolutely something we could do, and it will be one of the options presented, but you lose the safety factor in that. Thanks. Councilmember Amitra has a question. So I had a question about that. I'm thinking of the bridge, and I've actually never been up there, but it goes over the loop. Is that even the pedestrian bridge? The one there by the MLK pedestrian bridge. Yeah. The MLK. Yeah. I've never walked that. I mean, that's still, people can walk that. I keep meaning to park my car and walk that. So that, and I know that's not about a train crossing, but that theoretically is there so that people could not have to cross 288, which is really dangerous. But in reality, people do cross, and we had just recently someone get a cyclist get killed on that really dangerous, huge wide street. So I'm not so much doubting that theoretically a bridge makes safer, but people aren't going to necessarily want to, you know, it could be a really expensive thing that people don't end up using. Well, and that is absolutely, per view of council, when we come back with that project defined and go forward, it would be, which way would you prefer to go? Because you have a trade-off. Absolutely. I can't make a choice for a person. They can leave the sidewalk at any time and choose to cross the street. But have we given them the safest alternative? That's all we're recommending is we give them the safest alternative. If they choose not to, that is their choice. And I want to say also about the flooding. So I'm glad that I was glad to see the presentation addresses because I've heard anecdotally and seen a little bit of flooding that just drainage problems, I guess, that people in the area have. So I know that's a real concern for people who live in the area. I'm concerned about two things, primarily about all this, you know, in no particular order. It's tied for number one, the cost, which I know this stuff costs a lot and then the costs keep going up. And the impact, again, both of these tied for number one, the impact on the people who live there, because as you mentioned, not necessarily that high traffic in area, but people live there. And so I would just want to make sure that at every stage of the construction and when it comes to timing, for instance, or would it be better if we did this in, you know, in August or September, you know, things that can make a huge difference for the people who live there that we never would have thought of, I would just want to make sure that every step along the way that the community gets asked about those kinds of questions. A couple things. We've talked about a pedestrian bridge over the track. I know that on the green belt when it was open, you know, part of that trail goes under a line. I say goes under it. I think it was already built up. The line was already built up, but it's not a contingency. You can tell it's sort of carved out of the embankment. So is that an option or is that just too much headache with the railroad? It could be an option. It could be an option. The trickiest part we have with this one is unlike a connection where I'm just trying to get a pedestrian from one side to another side, this is the actual station. So we just have to check the graves there. It may or may not work out. I'm not as familiar with that area as I should be as far as that question goes. And I just want to just re-emphasize that the reason why this alignment, the direction was given for this alignment was twofold. One is we could not have done it. This alignment would not be done if it weren't for cog participation. And cog is participating because of 2499 being improved. This provides a direct link all the way from 380 sort of a north south connection all the way to the airport. So they were really interested in trying to improve that. So that's why they chose to participate. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation. True. Any other questions, comments? Yes. Will this be coming to council as an item or is this just an update? This is an update. We do have an item coming I think November 19th for some of the remaining parcels that are tied to this project where the bridge will touch down on both sides and there are a couple other miscellaneous easements that we're working through right now. Those items will all be coming to council towards mid-November. And at some point will we have a better understanding of how big the ponds are going to be and what trees need to go away? Yes. The size on the drawing was the smallest size we could come up with. So it would get bigger than what's drawn. Really we would come back with to show you all those impacts one way or the other because there are significant concerns about the trees and open space that would be impacted in this area. Yes. Thank you. Yes. It's a little bit of arithmetic I didn't follow. You said we have 5 million in it and COG is contributing 15? Yes. That's 20. The total is 24. So where's the other 4? So that's part of what I was talking about earlier. We're still value engineering some of this project which does not mean we're cutting corners. It just means we're looking at all the do we really need all this fluff or do we need to make a different adjustment here? So the numbers you're getting right now have a very large contingency tied to it. It's also a guessing game on some of the real estate. So we've got some fluff in there. We also have some expected carryover savings from the current Mayhill project. So we change ordered out a piece of that project early on to make a better roadway transition knowing that this project was coming. When we did that there was a piece of that funding that would have gone there would be a part of this project now. So the 24 and a half is still a number in flux. That is going to be the highest number that we would anticipate but right now I really think that's going to come down to 2021 when we finally rest on a landing spot on this thing. But that's we'll have a better idea when we get more to the numbers that I know Councilmember Riggs would like to see as far as what does this pond really look like. All I know right now is that this is the smallest sized pond we're going to have out there. Any questions comments? I just wanted to reiterate that we are still working with the exact budget that we've been working with all along. So even though there's that $4 million contingency set aside that's been planned all along and his idea is to try to reduce it. I think the other thing to Councilmember Briggs point could you just let everybody know when you're planning on bringing this back for a formal award on this phase? Yeah we'll be bringing this back to our formal award to the contractor next April at the latest. So it's moving very quickly. Okay any other questions? All right thank you Todd. Appreciate it and I believe that brings us to the conclusion of our meeting. So we don't have any concluding items so we will stand adjourned at 1.05.