Apr 07, 2026 City Council on 2026-04-07 12:00 PM (Joint Special Called Meeting with Denton ISD Board of Directors)

I just need a map in there. Okay, we'll get started. Thank you everyone. Today's presenter. (laughing) So today is Tuesday, July 7th, 2026. It is 1204. I hope everyone had a great Easter holiday. And with that, I will call the city of Dinton side of the meeting order. And we in front of the court, let it be noted we have four. - Okay. - So go ahead. - The joint meeting of the board of trustees of Dinton ISD will be held April 7th, 2026, beginning at 12 p.m. in the city of Dinton development services business. 401 North Homes Street, Dinton, Texas 76201. The subjects discussed, the subjects to be discussed are considered or upon which any formal action may be taken are as listed below. Items do not have to be taken in order shown on the meeting notice unless removed from the consent agenda items identified with the consent agenda will be acted on at one time. And so we'll do a call to order and we do have a form. - Great, okay. And then so the first item on the work session agenda is 3A ID 260209 receive a forehold discussion regarding Dinton ISD construction at Borman Elementary School. - Thank you Mayor. Brandon Boyder, Executive Director of Construction is gonna update on Borman and how ready it's going to be come August, right? - Absolutely, absolutely. - All the time. - I'm sure everybody knows where it's at. Everybody drives by it pretty often. Borman is coming along, I would say. I think we're within two weeks of the appropriate date on the schedule. We go through it a little bit here. There we go. I don't know that you really care about all these. We are talking about Borman, but we listed all the projects that we currently have in our queue. If it says in progress, obviously the project is in progress. If it says permitting, we're either going through permitting with the city right now or we are going through final drawings, but we're in the permitting phase that all of those projects have been bid out, taken to the board for approval. That's kind of how we list them in the progress or in the permitting. So you can see there's quite a few projects there on our queue for 26, 27, 28. On Borman, little picture here of November of 2025. The top picture, you can kind of see where that is. It's an ICF construction project. The walls are up and in November, we really didn't have a roof on most of the facility. You can see on the bottom photo there, we are in the dry, all the windows are in, the roof's on, cat sheet's not on, but the roof is in the dry. The only portion of the building that is left open is right there in the middle. And that really is just so that we can get to the courtyard since this building does have a courtyard. We do have to get heavy equipment in and out of that courtyard. So that's kind of why you see the courtyard there or that front of the building that is still open. All the work going on, I won't bore you with all that. You can find all of this stuff on our website, but really what that says is there's a lot of people in this job every day working to get it to completion. The corners of the inside, as well as the courtyard, the bottom photo, there is the courtyard with some heavy equipment in there. So interior, you can see finishes are already going up in certain areas. Certain areas, I would say, are more in the dry than others because of that center section being left open, but we do have temporary walls in there so that we can work on those areas. Photo of the courtyard from the second floor. The bottom photo there is the gymnasium, or that's what we want to call it, recreational area, and that is the spot that we do have an office there for the city. We'll have an office there for after school activities in that area. This would have been a video of Loughborough, but it just kind of gives you an idea of where we at. Obviously the original warman or this way you can't see it, the whole plan, after we finish warman, we will then go into the tearing down of the old warman and then construct the city's soccer field as agreed upon up in that area and all the fixing that goes with that. Any questions on that? Yes, ma'am. - I don't know if you have this information as the oversee of the construction, but can you talk about the capacity at the current site and then the capacity at this new and improved? - Yeah, typically we like to say that our current elementary's, the capacity is somewhere in the 750 range. Obviously that is massaged a little bit. Nowadays with collaboration spaces and all the special programs that go into the school, those numbers have to shake out a little bit, but 750 is what we typically say that design or elementary's will hold. This building will be able to hold about nine when it's total and it's not that it has that many more classrooms, it's that it has some small group instruction spaces that are in the old building, we're having to use a complete classroom for 12 kids and we built some of those for the smaller. So we take a little bit more efficient use of the building. Suzanne, do you have anything on that? - I was gonna say that we're also building on for four pre-K classrooms. - That's correct. - So a building, say 10 years ago, we didn't build four pre-K classrooms inside and we've added that into our newer footprints as well. - And may I continue? - Absolutely. - Is this pre-K through fifth? - Pre-K through five, yes ma'am. - Through fifth? - Yes ma'am. - And this feeds into Calhoun, is that? - This feeds into Calhoun, a little bit in the McMath. - Yeah, a little window there at McMath and that goes on there. - And are there any items or kind of relics from the old historic Frank Vernon School that have been able to be repurposed in the new building? - One of the unique things on this side and why it's chosen to kind of swap land with the city is the woman's up and functioning. So that school, really there's nothing we can do to that school right now because we are using it as a functional school. There is very little in that school that we would want to pull over. I mean, at the high school, we did some of that where we saved the logo that was in the terrazzo and we moved it over and we moved some things like that. The trophies and all of that that are inside Mormon that were one of my students, all of that stuff will be moved over. But actually on the facility, there's really nothing in there that I would say is salvage or usable, you know, for as far as using in the building. - Nostalgic. - Yeah, I don't think that there's just a ton of things like you have at the high school or at the middle schools where you have some of those kinds of types of things. Don't know if I answered that question how you want it. - Yeah, I don't think I earned any trophies when I went to Frank Vernon. - Oh, I'm sure you did. - Because I would notice if I-- - No, no, I'm sure there's something there that we're gonna make. - We'll get you a blank too. - We'll get every one of those. - We'll get your blank. - We'll make one. - Yeah, and I promise if not, we'll make sure we have one for you there. (laughing) - All right, yeah, go right ahead. - I was gonna say, Jill, I spoke to the staff at Mormon recently and as I stood in the library at Mormon, I said, you know, y'all deserve a new building. I went to Mormon as well. But I said, I was standing here when President Reagan was shot. And they said, "You were shot." (laughing) - Okay, the staff here is entirely too young. But the library looks exactly the same. But there is no memorabilia, if you will, to take in the way that we do for our high school. We did do a little event, if you will, at Jennings before we brought it down. So there'll be a timeline before we can turn it over to the city. So we'll have them have it. - Yeah, and just timing of that, once we move the teachers and all of their stuff out of the old Mormon into the new Mormons, and all the new furniture gets put in the new Mormon, there's still a little bit of asbestos abatement that we have to do before we can tear that school down. And so then after we get all of that done, you'll start seeing the building come down. The timeline of that, I think our agreement with the city is we want to have the Stocktonville built by the year, I think it was August of 28, I think, which it'll be done way before that. I mean, we're living in the first quarter of 27. We think we'll have that turned back over to the city so that they'll have a Stocktonville in that location. - This park has just been great. It's really worked out to the benefit of the community as far as the swap and what everyone is willing to do. And so it's very much appreciated. Did anyone else go to Mormon here, by the way? - No, I don't know if people would have been great. (audience laughing) - If you didn't go to Mormon and you go to Mormon, it's easy to get lost in Mormon. That building was an open concept building and then got turned into a smaller compound, it's more room-sharing thing. So it's intricate. - Mr. Saffron? - Charlie. - I know when we use SCF, we usually have some harder spaces for windstorms. - Yeah, let's do that. - No, sure. - Absolutely. If I go back, Charlie's, what he's bringing up is the wall system here. And obviously the new code mandates that we build storm shelters in facilities. So the storm shelter of this particular building is the part that's already completed, it's the gymnasium. That is the storm shelter for this building. However, all of the walls in this particular building are ICF, if you don't know what that means, it's insulated concrete forms, or there's insulation, and insulation, there, if you put the rebar in the middle of the wall, it gets anywhere from 12 to 18 inches thick. So they can all classify as hardened areas. The great thing about this is it does make a really robust building, security-wise. If you go to the old Texas A&M test where they shoot two befores out of cannons into walls and see what will go through it, there's never gonna be a two before that would go through any wall in this facility because it is hardened. But the storm shelter is the gym, and it has its own bathroom facilities and all that as ICC 500 code mandates for us to do in this particular building. But the entire building is built of the same wall system that you have on the storm shelter. The only difference would be the roofing system and the holes in the walls, the windows, and stuff like that. - So what's the capacity? How many people can you cram in there toward any of them? - Sure, you really put me on the spot here. Six square foot per person is what the code requires. And if I remember right, it is our total building population plus 20%, something like that. It is what is... But here's what I'm gonna, I promise you, that if we have an F5 tornado, I don't know any, I'm just gonna speak for myself. I don't need six square foot. You don't have to stand six square foot for me. You can double right on up if it's an F5 tornado because I'm not gonna really be worried about my own personal space if there's an F5 tornado and we're able to be in a facility that can withstand it. And this one obviously is a facility that's designed to withstand those kinds of things, yeah. - Council Member Burke. - I was gonna ask about parking. We have that softball field over there. We're looking forward to soccer fields. Will this school accommodate additional parking or will we need additional parking? - Well, so right where the soccer field is, we sank all of the parking lots that were to the east of Borman. All of those parking lots, the city is getting those parking lots. So really your soccer field now has twice the parking that it ever did. Handicapped accessible ramps, handicapped accessible parking, where previously your soccer field was kind of located in the center portion of that park and really everybody had to walk to it. Now the parking lot is right adjacent to your rec center. So all of that parking you gained. And then we also, you know, we added a road to the south of this school, grapple road, I didn't make it. But, and then we also put an entrance ramp off of the new road into your parking lot so that nobody now, how that little intersection over there was kind of a poor intersection and just because how everything was built. So I would say the parking has increased 100% from what you previously had, yes ma'am. - Thank you. - Yes ma'am. Okay, any other questions? Seeing none, okay thank you very much. - Appreciate it. - That takes us to item B, ID 260208, receive four hold of stuff regarding city of Bend construction projects surrounding Bitteniski campus. - Hello, I'm Alice Wing, Interim Director of Parks and Recreation. So Garcia and I will be sharing updates for capital construction projects that impact Stanton ISD. First up is Deena Park. The Deena Park Foundation is a major infrastructure and amenity update. The project consists of grading of the softball fields for improved drainage, electrical and lighting updates, new fencing, new trails, restroom renovations and ADA accessibility upgrades. This phase of the project is complete. The final phase of the project will be the addition of the new soccer field upon completion of this new Foreman Elementary and demolition of the former Foreman Elementary. And you can see here everything that's light and color is complete and then the new field. (indistinct) You can have a turn like that, Snore. Also, the Natatorium opened in 2003 and has just undergone its first major renovations since it was built. It got a new roof, was power washed inside and out, everything has been cleaned, every nook and cranny. The windows and doors have been resealed, the restrooms and hallways painted, the sidewalks have been repaired, there's an entirely new pump room, the pool deck and pool shell were renewed, new lane lines and reels have been installed, new lifeguard chairs, new ADA chair, new UV lights and new full lights. This just finished up on March 23rd and we're done. - What are those men working on? The flight? Jai and Easter egg? - Those are the filters in the pump room. - I see. - Yes. - All right, good afternoon everybody. Seth Garcia, Director of Capital Projects as Alison said. So a lot of you guys have seen this information so I'll run through it quickly. We're gonna start looking at our Bonnie Bray area where we did in high school in Reeves Elementary area. So to start out, Bonnie Bray phase six, so we are in active construction. We're getting really close to being complete with our underground work, which is our storm drain and water line sections. You may have seen recently, we started sub-grade operations there at the north end near 77. Again, our plan for this section is build what will be the future southbound lanes, get all the traffic moved over onto those future southbound lanes and then build the northbound lanes. So we're hoping late April, early May, you're gonna start seeing the first concrete sections going down, making good progress out there. Again, this is a picture of the section of Riney Road in front of Reeves Elementary that we expedited and almost made it before school opened. We're really close. So this is a great update for you guys. So Riney Road East is the rest of the expansion here in front of Reeves Elementary going back to the east towards US 77. So we've actually begun construction on this project. A portion of this project was to build concrete trails through North Lakes Park to connect the park section to the back of the elementary school. That's where our contractor is currently working. They're also preparing some utility relocations there on the roadway section. They're moving some fire hydrants back along the park section. So you'll see sub-grade work happening in that section soon as well. So we're under construction. They started in March and we're anticipating being done Q1 of 27. - Where are the trails, please? - Trails, so they're not shown here, but essentially from the last pavilion on North Lakes Park that's in between kind of the soccer fields and the play areas. We will be extending a trail along the sides of the soccer fields, in between the soccer and football fields, and then north into the back of the school site. - So hold on. First, can you repeat the question? And then two, can we hold the questions? - Yes, sir. So the question was, where are the trails going through North Lakes Park? And so at North Lakes Park, if you're familiar with the site, there's a large pavilion just to the north of the playground area. We're essentially gonna connect onto existing trails there. We're gonna run along the east side of the soccer fields. We'll cut in between the soccer and football fields along the existing concrete path, and then run north along the parking lot to the back of the school site. (pencil scratching) So next, our Westgate Road Connector Project. This is what connects Bronco Way to the service road. So we are substantially complete. We were able to get some lanes of traffic open back right around Christmas. They're finishing some various punch list items, but again, hopefully this is alleviated some of the traffic there at Benton High School. We are planned to be done by the end of this month with punch list items. So we will be out of there, and we'll have all four lanes open for traffic. So Neighborhood 2 and 6, this is one of our bond packages from our 2019 Street Reconstruction Bond. This whole package of 2 and 6 is roughly 120 segments. Some of them impacted the areas around the old Calhoun site , and we have several street segments around the new Calhoun site and Newton Raiser. Good news here, we're finishing up a majority of that work. We've been waiting on Atlus to finish up some of their low pressure relocations. So you'll continue to see some ongoing work in the area through the summer, early fall, but we are on track to be complete by quarter four of 2026 with all the construction in this area. So some more good updates, safe routes to schools. So we have four sites that we were working on, SRTS projects. We are complete with all four. So this is the last time you'll see these slides. Here's some photos of the completed sidewalk segments at Pecan Creek and Schulz Elementary. And then also along Jennings and Alexander Elementary School. So we had various sidewalk segments that were completed with those grant funds. We are done, so hopefully the students are able to enjoy those pieces of sidewalk. And then one more piece of good news. So our Transportation Services Department has been actively pursuing some grants. They were just awarded 4.6 million in a new Safe Routes to School program. So this is gonna be around the Calhoun Middle School Newton Racer site. So we're in the early, early stages of initiation and planning, moving into design. So essentially we'll look at all areas within roughly a half mile of that school or both school sites and see what we need to do for pedestrian and safety and hamper enhancement. So that could be sidewalks, trails, bike lanes, at a minimum I think Crescent and Malone is gonna get a refresh for some of the pedestrian infrastructure that's out there. So over the next 12 months we'll be evaluating what all needs to happen and then probably at our next meeting I'll have a good scope, a clarification update to give you guys on what we're gonna be. And that is gonna happen. Take any questions? - Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. - Mayor, would you like us to go through these topic by topic? 'Cause I'm gonna have questions about all of them. - No, as long as there are questions, we're great. - Sure, sure. So I did ask parents for what questions they were wondering about. So Bonnie Bray, phase six, there's still ongoing safety concerns from parents who kind of live in the Kingsridge side of Bonnie Bray, traveling to Reed's Elementary with their students. They're concerned about lack of traffic signals, temporary safe crossing and streetlights. So my question on that one is what safety measures are currently being taken and do we have opportunities for any further safety measures at that intersection of Rynie and Bonnie Bray? - Yeah, great question. So this is a challenge that we faced. Again, there was not existing infrastructure out there. A lot of the sidewalks came from one side to this intersection and dead ended. So we tried to provide as much access, as much safe access as we could as quickly as possible. Again, we were able to install some temporary crossings to come across at this intersection to focus the students towards the schools. We can evaluate it and see what else can be done. Again, as we go through and actually start our paving pieces, you'll see sidewalks and other pieces that will come in along north-south Bonnie Bray. Again, that will provide more opportunity for us to do additional pieces. Again, the last thing we wanna do is put students in an unsafe area because this is an active construction zone. So just north and south of this intersection, we're gonna have paving operations going on on both sides. So the safest thing for us is to keep students out of those areas so we can work. But again, anytime we can evaluate and open up an area safely for students to get through, we'll continue to do that. - Thank you. And kind of still on that intersection, I think some residents thought that the city was saying by August 20th that that intersection would be fully complete, like 100% complete. What completion did the city actually mean and when would the traffic lights and all the final, final stuff be added? - Yeah, no, great question. So what we meant by complete was permanent paving installed through that intersection. So part of our phasing plan initially had this broken out with several closures. We kind of remodified that phasing plan with our contractor to build it in halves with a little shoe flag, if you all remember, around the existing intersection that was there. Sidewalks, ramps, traffic signal conduits are typically some of the last things that you're gonna see towards the end of the project. So as we go through and complete off the paving, we want radiuses, we want ramps put in. So as they start boring conduits for signals, we make sure that they're out of the way of where the pavement improvements are. I don't have an exact off the top of my head when that will fall into the exact schedule. Again, it's kind of dependent on setting some of those permanent pieces with the paving. But again, we'll work to expedite everything that we can to get that signal operation. - And I assume the signals will go in after the north-south lanes are constructed. - That is correct. - Not before then. - That is correct. - And then the closure, I guess intermittent closures between Conquest and North Elm. I think there was a closure up until March 23rd, and I guess it's intermittently still closed. Do we have an estimated timeline of when those intermittent closures will be? - Yeah, so if it's not open already, it should be getting open pretty quickly. We were installing the final pieces of drainage infrastructure that were crossing perpendicular . There's a couple of waters of the US right there. There's some small creek channels that probably shouldn't be waters of the US, but they are. So we were getting our final box culverts through there. As soon as that's open, again, we wouldn't have another closure until we get that south side port and everybody moved over. So again, we're trying to minimize those traffic impacts. - I'm almost done, y'all. But then I'll hand it back for a second. And then what accommodations will there be on Bonnie Bray for people bystander scooters, using scooters like students ? - Yeah, so a part of our entire Bonnie Bray program from phase one to phase six, we're gonna have at least a 10-foot trail on one side. So for this section on the east side of the roadway from US 38 all the way to US 77, there will be a 10-foot trail. On the west side of the roadway, we're gonna have a six-foot and eight-foot sidewalk, just depending on which section that you're in. So you're gonna have larger than normal sidewalks on both sides. Again, on the east side, on the park side, you will have a 10-foot trail that'll accommodate bikes, pedestrians, anything. - Second to last, lighting. Is there any lighting planned for the side paths and also along Bonnie Bray facing? - Yes, so not specific to the side paths, but our street lighting will accommodate for lighting across those trails. So we'll have lighting all the way from US 382, US 77, the section of Riney Road. They're actually putting in conduits right now in front of the elementary school. And then with the Riney Road East project, we extend that lighting all the way to 77 on the east side. So full lighting everywhere. - I'll pass it back to Mayor on this on Bonnie Bray and Riney in case anybody else has questions. - Okay. Council Member Beck. - Thank you. Seth, I had some of the same questions that Mayor Portend did. I guess, as we stage these things and we have temporary access as the phasing goes forward, what's the plan for the phasing of various temporary bike ped measures, if you know it, and how are we gonna communicate that with the community? - Yeah, so great question. A lot of communication, the best place to go is our Disgusted website. There you'll get frequent updates at least monthly. You can also ask project managers or it'll have project manager contact information that you can reach out to. So that's where we always like to point people for the most valid updates. For temporary, again, a lot of it's gonna depend on the scope of work that's happening. One of the questions we get asked a lot is, we want temporary things where existing pedestrian infrastructure didn't exist before, that's hard to do. So where existing sidewalks are, we're either gonna clearly sign that, "Hey, this is currently closed," while we install drainage boxes or roadway improvements. Again, part of our phasing plan will install those sidewalks with the concrete roadway that's coming through. So as soon as we can get sections open that are safe and will get you somewhere, we'll open those up. - Are you designing alternative paths for folks that have to use bike path access to the schools? I mean, are we going through other directions, even if it's more roundabout? - Yeah, we're currently not just because a lot of those areas did not have existing pedestrian pathways. So if they were riding on the street, they can continue riding on the street through the work zone, but we didn't have any continuous places of sidewalk that came to any of the school system there currently. - I'm gonna encourage you to be on these things around schools to be as proactive and as push-centric as possible to make it so that people can get timely updates pushed to them as much as you can. Thank you, sir. - Absolutely. - That's almost it. - Anybody on midnight? - Yeah. - Chancellor Hall. - Thank you. The east end of Sunset between Carroll and Bolivar, is that imminent? I mean, is it to be knocked out or finished soon? - Yes, so I believe you're referring to in the two and six project. Yeah, so we had our first portions of paving go down, I think a little over a week ago. So as soon as they get all the remainder of the concrete flatwork, they'll finish the last two layers of asphalt. - Part of that will be curved for the first time ever. - Yes, yeah. Yeah, section between Bolivar and-- - Right, adjacent off, right at the corner. - Yes, sir. - Very nice, thank you. - You bet. - Chancellor Jesser. - I've got a couple of questions. I don't think I need to take up everyone's time for, but if I could just catch you maybe in between meetings today, I've got a couple. - Yes ma'am. - Thank you. - Yep. - Two comments, two questions. I did get parent feedback, they love the sidewalks by Alexander, so I guess parents are using those and they really like that. They're really excited about the Safe Rocks to School project around Newton Razor, other parents are. Two questions about Westgate/Bronco Way. - A parent is concerned about the lack of streetlights along Bronco Way near DHS and was wondering if there is opportunity to add streetlights or any plans to do so. - Yeah, so that part of the road was built by development. We actually recently had a question that came through Mobility Committee about the same section. So I got with DME, they don't have a current project there, but now that we've been notified, we can start programming it into either the capital plan or the streetline plan for DME to see if we can get streetlights added in. But currently there is no project for that section. - And then final question, I heard from a Westgate resident that I think their understanding was the plan was for northbound traffic on Westgate that they cannot turn right on Bronco Way heading towards Denton High School. I was able to find the video where I think it was supposed to be a bug out to discourage it, but you can't 100% deny people from turning right. So I don't necessarily need an answer, but just that's something that the neighbors are concerned about. I guess a lot of cut through traffic coming up Westgate to skip all the traffic on Bonnie Way and the flying down Westgate it sounds like. - Yeah, so we do have signage that's going in there that says no right turn, left turn only, and not a student drop off location. Again, part of the geometry of the roadway does point for a put it left out to try and force people to go back towards 35. So again, once we get all the infrastructure installed and that is complete, we can probably reach out to PD and see if some sort of enforcement or something there can help. But we did not include the poor chop design. There were some concerns with our transportation department on how that was gonna impact. People are just gonna drive around it and do the wrong thing like at Torchies. So again, we can continue looking at some other options to help enforce that. - I appreciate it. That is all I have, thank you. - All right, any other questions? Good example on Torchies, that's a challenge. - Yes, sir. - Just as HEB is going in. So a couple of things. The, go back to the screen, there was a, I mean, second slide, Mormon. And if I get the, someone from the school board's input, so I'm assuming they'll come in near the, to the south there, that's the front of the school. And then I'm just curious about the queuing, because it'll wrap around in a good way. So if it's up against that north curve, is there enough space for people to leave? - So Mayor, how the queuing is, those roads are not gonna be one way in and one way out. The road plan west, as we look at to the left, that is the entrance. If you're coming, the front of the school is still facing the Mormon community, as always. So you will enter from that road, you will drop off, and you will leave through the road that's right there by the rec center. So those will be one way. And so you can imagine the queuing there is massive compared to what we previously had. So you can queue all the way down, you'll drop off your student, your passenger door, or the passenger side, and then you will leave right there, about between the rec center and the soccer field, one way out. And so that is still the front of the school. There is an entrance from the back. We typically like to separate pedestrians, or cars from buses. So the plan right now is that buses will enter from the south road, drop off and leave so that we don't mix those two together. And there is also a door that they can enter from that side as well that will be manned. So we'll have parents dropping off at the front, bike riders, walkers coming from the front, and then we have buses coming from the south. - Thank you, appreciate that. And then, Seth, if you wanna touch on the, you can't even sidewalk, 'cause that will help also with Alex, now again, I don't know if we have anything to help them cross the street, but if you can touch on that project. - Yeah, so we had an interim project for McKinney Sidewalks . This goes from Loop 288 on the east, all the way to Woodrow Audra. So that has begun construction there, during the process of staking right away and starting. So you're gonna have a variable width sidewalk that is continuous on the south side of the roadway, all the way from Loop 288 to the Woodrow Audra section. And I believe we're supposed to be done in roughly six months from now. It just began construction in March. - And then similarly, you wanna touch on Woodrow and Morris, the signal light, the status, 'cause that affects-- - Yeah, that is actually our transportation services group. I don't know, I know various infrastructure is going in, the ramps are in, the signal should be going up. I would estimate within the next few months, you'll see the signal up and activated at that intersection . - So those buses trying to get out on Audra and all those things, or parents getting in across that, that'll be much improved. And then lastly, and this is not on your presentation, but related, so two things. Calhoun, is there someone driving by there every now and again just to make sure no one's moving in, right? Delicate as I can say it, but two, have we continued discussions about the tennis court and how we can activate those areas and work together on those. - I can talk about that. We are, Parks and Recreation has just taken possession of the tennis courts and the field space in front of the old Calhoun Middle School. We are going to go to the John B. Denton Neighborhood Association meeting in April to engage the community about what they would like to see those courts become. They'll still be courts, but are they, right now they're tennis courts. Do they want basketball, would they like pickleball? What kind of court activities would they prefer to have there? We'll take input from the meeting and we'll also have online form to engage the greater community. And then fairly immediately do some improvements on those courts, repair the concrete, make sure that everything is safe for play and set those up to be what they shall become. - Okay, great, thanks for that update. And then lastly, again, not on your slides, but I would advocate, and it's a not today thing, but I'm just planting the seed. I would love for the city to facilitate a meeting with the city, the school district and TechStop to talk about access from University Drive to what was Newton Raysor's site, because I think it adds value if we can navigate that. And if, you know, again, it's whatever that is to bridge that gap there or find an alternative access, but I think when we're trying to help our, the numbers are substantial, you know, the value added between Starbucks and those other things that came back on the tax roll. So in this instance, to have add value to that piece of property, I think if it had University access, access from University Drive, it enhances that and just helps us all by proxy. So I would think there would be that the accrued meeting to have to try to see if we can one, figure out how to span that ditch area, that runoff or whatever, and two, market, so that they can market that as access or, you know, pending approval, all those things. But for what it's worth, I just think that's a great opportunity to help them, help everyone else, and I think it enhances the quality of project, 'cause the alternative is somebody's gonna put a multi-family thing on there. You know, just, I just like to see it highest in values. Right, so, understood? Any other questions? Great, thank you very much. That takes us to item C, ID 260207, see reportable discussion regarding property tax exemptions and multi-family affordable housing in the City of Denton. - Good afternoon, Council and Trustees. My name is Jesse Kidd, I'm the Director of Community Services for the City of Denton, and I'm excited to talk to you about tax exemptions and affordable housing. About one in every three renting household, according to the American Community Survey, the census is severely cost burdened, that means they pay more than half of their income in rent every month. 58% are cost burdened, they pay more than a third of their income in rent every month. And so over the past several months, the City has been evaluating our affordable housing programming, and looking at ways that we can improve the ways we're incentivizing affordable housing development within the City. We're gonna do a little bit of, drinking from a fire hose here, there's so much to talk about around affordable housing and so many things that are relevant. There are two really important topics or concepts. There's one, it's the median income, the area median income, and the other is rental restrictions. So affordable housing in the United States looks at income through the lens of area median income. A lot of them are federal programs. Any program that has to serve 350 million people is going to lose nuance throughout it. And so when we look at income here in our community, we are looped in with the Dallas Fair Market region. I've got it mapped out in here in blue. And there are a lot of high income areas within that blue area. So typically, housing programs focus on those households at 30, 50, and 80% of that area median income. Those are considered low income households. And for the purposes of these programs, we're measured against them. In 2024, the Denton's median income was $80,900. But we are held to the affordability standards and income for the Dallas Fair Market region, which is significantly higher at $110,000. 48% of Denton households, just in general, according to this definition, are considered low income. So what does that look like in terms of actual incomes when we look at a household of four at low, that is considered low income, that's set at that $93,850 a year. At very low income or 50% AMI, you're at $3,650. And then the extremely low income households are those that earn $35,000 or less for that household of four. These scale based on the household size. So as the household size decreases, the amount of money that you need to be able to pay rent to live in a household that accommodates a family at that size decreases along with it. And it steps through this function. So you have income, and on the other side, there are rental limits. So HUD's programming that incentivizes affordable housing that provides incentives, monetary benefits, other programs looks and says, for those households that make those incomes, what would we need to cap the rent at so that they weren't paying a substantial portion of their income in rent? So these are the rental limits that are most often apply, that apply here in the city of Dunton for those programs. So for example, that four person household could choose to rent that's making 93,850 a year, could rent a three bedroom apartment that has taken advantage of these incentives or these financing in some way, they cannot be charged more than 2,400 a month in rent, 2,441. We look at income for our region, we say based on that income, households should only pay this much. Based on that reasoning, we set rental limits for programming. So when we look at the most common occupations here in Dun ton and compare that with where we see the market rent at, these are the top 10 highest, excuse me, largest workforce industries or not industries, but professions within Dunton County. They account for about 22% of all Dunton workers. And you can see that based on their income, what 30% of it is, they don't often reach a level that makes housing affordable for them. When we place income restrictions on units, say at the 50% AMI level, it becomes more affordable, but still not that definition of affordable for a lot of folks. And then when you do 30%, that's when you're really reaching a level that is affordable, that folks are able to provide affordability. The very last one is what I've got online for a starting DISD school teacher salary. So that's just for your benefit. Housing is considered affordable if a low income household spends 30% of their income or less on housing. So we have those income that were assessed against the Dallas region. We income qualify apartments that participated in programming and we set rents based on those income levels. So income qualified apartments set rents based on what a household at their target AMI can afford based on that 30% rule. In Denton, the market rate that we see here falls below the affordable rate for an 80% AMI unit. So when we look at our programming, when we look at the projects we're trying to encourage, we are looking to encourage as much 50% and 30% AMI development as possible. Those are those units that we call affordable for Denton. So the market rate, if we were just kind of stacking on the AMI chart according to the 2024 ACS, it was about 63%. So it falls right around that 63% marker. And that's not a trend that is new or it is suddenly happening. When we look at the rental rates and the income, or excuse me, the market rate for the past 10 years, that's been the case. Those low income rental restrictions do not fall below for those 80% units, do not fall below the market rate here in Denton. Those 50 and 30% units have historically, those are the ones that are most likely to lead to a rental reduction for a resident. (mouse clicking) So tax exemption, how does it play into all of these things? We've got people who are spending too much of their money on rent. We have now categorized ourselves based on our region, what incomes are, and HUD has helped us set rental limits for them. Many affordable housing developments utilize tax exemptions as part of their financing structure to increase the affordability of the property. The idea being, if you do not have to pay property taxes, you do not need to recoup as much rental revenue. You can afford to charge less. So in Denton, there are 22 properties with tax exemptions. And this is a little bit out of date. There are six more that are in construction. The number is a little bit higher now, but there are five different taxing exemptions that a developer could use for these things. So when we estimate just on population data for the census on what the average household size is for renting households, what portion of those are school-age children, we see about, we estimate about 1,650 children that, or school-age children that live in these taxes and developments. And then we anticipate based on these ones that are in construction, at least 500 more school-age children that will need education. This is a busy slide, so it's a little bit better for posterity, but there are a number of different legal vehicles that a developer or a complex can use to secure a tax exemption to provide affordable housing. The city has a public facility corporation. It's not currently active on any projects. We are not currently granting any tax exemptions. The housing authority through chapter 392 of the Texas Local Government Code is active and provides tax exemptions for properties. There are housing finance corporations, there are Chodos, there are community housing development organizations, and then there's just exemptions for nonprofits. It's not really, we need to get too bogged down, but there are different ways to achieve a tax exemption to provide affordable housing. Okay, so putting all that together, there are people who are paying too much in rent. We need to find a way to reduce the rent, but these apartment complexes, they're businesses, they have to raise a certain amount of revenue in rent to be able to pay for their expenses. As a community or as a state, there is not always a lot that we can do about what is the interest rate on lending, how much does construction cost, what is the going rate for personnel to run the development . But one thing that we can do that the state has given us tools to do is say, "Well, we can eliminate this property tax expenditure for it, and in exchange, you'll agree to cap rents at a certain amount for a certain number of units at certain levels." And the idea is that when we eliminate that expense, we are able to retain balance in the budgets of these businesses while charging less for rent. That's the intention of property tax exemptions in this concept. And so when we look at our community, what we've seen is there are a lot of properties, a lot of valuation and revenue that is foregone by the three taxing jurisdictions, you all the school district, the city and the county, that we give up to try and provide affordable housing for our community because it is such an intense need. But what we found is that a lot of the rental restrictions that are exchanged for that revenue are often not at a level that leads to a rental reduction. I've got it broken out by market units because in some mixed unit developments, you can have market rate units in them. They help to balance and offset the cost of affordable units, that's great. We don't have a problem with market rate units. There are 80% units, which is the majority of these tax exempt units. And that category also includes some 60% units. There's a good proportion of those that are actually 60% units, but when the city characterizes our housing plans and our strategy plans, strategic plans, excuse me, we include 60 and 80% together. Those 60%, if I can go back, again, that's right around where we've seen the market, it doesn't lead to a significant rental reduction. So based on the estimates, because we don't have complete data on rent, based on the data that we have available and where we see the rental caps at, we estimate that our community is exchanging or we're forgoing about $15 million annually in revenue in exchange for $1.2 million in rental reductions. That might not be, that's our best estimate based on the information that we have. And that will continue to grow. There's 5,000 multifamily units in development in the city of Denton right now. Half of them are expected to have a property tax exemption. So the city council reviewed this data, reviewed this information. We had a work session last November and the city council directed staff to change our policies on how we are affording our tax incentives. So I didn't mention on the slide, but most of these tax exemptions occur without jurisdictional oversight. The city doesn't have to vote to approve, the school district doesn't have to vote to approve, they can occur independent. One way that we do have some saying, the structure of these deals is through the federal government's low income housing tax credit program. And so council directed staff to amend the policy to ensure that we are trying to get as much or as many of those 30 and 50% units as possible. I've already shared so much information. I'm not gonna dig in way too deep on housing tax credits, but they are distinct from tax exemptions. Tax credit, money from the federal government to help with construction. When we look at this balancing act, the goal of housing tax credits is to reduce that mortgage section. By reducing the mortgage section, you can charge a little rent. But housing tax credits are great. Money coming back from the federal government has no long-term tax impact on any of our jurisdictions. It's money coming to our community to support affordable housing. But they are often paired with property tax exemptions, which do have a long-term impact on revenue. So to help try and encourage more affordable housing, developed the criteria by which the city will offer its approval for housing tax credit developments . Was changed, but a higher focus on affordability. We're not awarding points on our matrix for those 80 or 60% units because they don't tend to lead to a rental reduction, or they're not required to provide a rental reduction. And we're focused on those 30 and 50% units. And because these tax credits are again, going to be coming into the community and they don't necessarily have a long-term impact, we scale how many points we expect the development to have based on their property tax status. If they are a fully property tax development, we have a very low threshold. We think it's great. You wanna provide affordable housing. We're happy to support you in your application to the federal government. If you are seeking a full property tax exemption paired with that tax credit, we would like to see some additional affordability to ensure that the revenue that we're all foregoing is being spent towards affordable housing development. And when we look at the distribution of tax exemptions in our community, we find that the property tax paying affordable housing developments actually provides a slightly higher proportion of 30 and 50% units than the property tax exempt developments. So the state legislature over the past few years has really been digging in on affordable housing tax exemptions. The PFC law was amended with the '88 legislative session. It required greater affordability, required more accountability and transparency for these types of deals. Last legislative session, they changed the HFC part of the statute to require that, what they found is that there were municipalities or governments across the state that were going to other communities, signing deals to take multifamily off of the tax roll and then netting a little bit of income off of that. So the state legislature said, we're not doing that anymore. If you're going to have a tax exempt deal, you need the approval of the local jurisdiction for those housing finance corporations. And we're gonna monitor the 90th legislature to see if they're going to take any further action amending these codes or the other codes that are related to tax exemptions and affordable housing. That's my presentation, but I'll stand for questions. - Thank you very much. I remind everyone it is one, so we're at time to go right ahead. Councilman Jessert. - First of all, thank you for this information. I think this is very important for everyone to understand where we are as we say affordable housing, what we mean here in Denton. And that means something different to different people. In going through the matrix that you also attached looking at the length of time that some of these developments have been exempt from property taxes, it seems that some of them have, I mean not even by Denton standards, but even by our North Texas standards, don't have any affordable units. Do you know, is there a mechanism because it seems that these terms are indefinite, is there a mechanism to go back and say, you have no 80%, 30%, 50%, why are you off the tax rolls? - There shouldn't be, so, and that might be the way we presented the information. They all speak the state requirement, but there are a lot of developments that are on that list that have 50% market rate or unrestricted, there's no rental restriction, and 50% or a very significant portion at 80%, which those rental caps are not set at a level where we kick in for our market rate. There's also, oh, I see the one you're saying, the heritage jokes. I'll kick, my staff member will be texting. - No, no, no, I was just curious, and I'm also curious, is there a mechanism by which council or do we need to go to the state level to say some of these are not affordable housing and should not therefore continue indefinitely off the tax rolls not contributing to our schools and city and county? - So the state legislature has taken action against on some of these other projects. So for example, on the PSC deals, which are constituted under 303, they went back and said these deals are not serving their intended purpose. Now, if you're going to provide a tax exemption through this method for acquisitions, you can only, you have to ensure that 60% of the development provides an actual rental reduction to residents, or you don't get to keep it on the tax rolls. For the HFCs, the traveling HFCs, the state legislature was very, had strong feelings about it, and they made it to where these traveling HFCs that were taking properties off the tax rolls across the state, they said, not only are we not even gonna wait till September to sign this in the law, I'm gonna do it today, but if you don't receive the municipality approval by January 2021, you lose your tax exemption. So it depends on what legislative action the state could take, and now I'm getting too close to being over my skis with the legal. - That could be something that this group together, you know, when we go down for Denton County, these et cetera, if the will is there, of course, I'm not speaking for anyone else in the room, but I would be interested to see if there's a consensus to say this shouldn't be indefinite forever, circumstances change, and there should be, whether it's the state, county, or city, some kind of ability to review and revise. Anyways, that's my comment. Thank you so much, again. - Okay, so, representative Pabla. - Thank you. How are these things monitored? You get the tax break, but you don't actually provide low income housing, how is that, who monitors that? - So I think it depends on the agency that provides it. So for example, housing tax credit, which I'm most familiar with, it's the state monitors those developments for the first 15 years, and then the IRS monitors it, for the 15 years after that. As far as the other things, those are probably monitored by the governing agencies, either the state or the tax exempting. - So if somebody goes in and looks at the inventory of units and looks at the numbers, you know, this many at market rate, this many at 30%, this many at-- - They have to submit their rental report to show that. - But they don't require that it's necessarily a rental reduction, they require that you are capping the rent at that level. So, again, an 80% unit doesn't guarantee a rental reduction, it's a commitment that they won't raise it above the threshold that HUD sets. - Okay, any other questions? Councilman Baer. - Thank you. For these things, I understand that it's floating as the caps float with the various income levels for our region. Is the number that they agree to in their contracts float as well? I mean, if they agree to 15 units or 20 units or whatever the appropriate number is, what governs and who monitors the proportions? - Yeah, it's set by those rental caps. So they say, for example, when we do a 212 agreement, one of the city's affordable incentive programs, when we approve a LIHTC property, we say we're gonna provide 50% at this AMI. And so because the AMI restriction is tied to income, that's what fluctuates. - But the number of units is going to stay fixed from the initial terms. Or the number of the percent of units is gonna stay fixed at the time. - I don't believe they change, but it would be governed by whatever the applicable law, whichever of those five that they're in, that they're governed by in the contracts that they are providing. 'Cause the state says a property tax exempt property under 303 will meet these requirements. It has to have at least 50% at 80% AMI, and I probably do, but they set these thresholds. And then the deals that these agencies that grant property tax exemptions make with the developer, they're independent so long as they stay, they color within the lines. - Okay, that's my question, thank you. - Okay, any other questions? Very good, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Well, that concludes it. I'll let you close and I'll close at you, but I'll just say thank you all very much always. And you know, it's a lot of good information. I appreciate the relationship we have with DISD and the work y'all do and the students y'all serve. Everyone top to bottom that makes all that go. A lot of them are, so thank you very much for that. And we will be, for those that don't know, we'll be hosting the Ryan State Champs, rural state champs. I think that's our next meeting, something like that. But yeah, so we'll have them at City Hall if y'all wanna come in, just to make sure everyone knows. But we really do appreciate what y'all do and the difference you're making in our community. Couldn't do it without you, so thank y'all very much. And whatever you have to add. And if you have anything, okay. - I don't have anything. - Okay, all right. Well, if you wanna adjourn. - This will adjourn the DID and ISD joint meeting. - 107. - 107. - Okay, and then likewise, that concludes the City Council meeting at 107, where we convene at two o'clock at City Hall chambers. All right, thank you. Yeah, thank you. - Thank you for coming in.