Dec 03, 2019 City Council on 2019-12-03 12:00 PM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, December 3, 2019. We do have a quorum, so I'll call the meeting to order. It's 12.05. We'll move through our agenda items, work session reports, citizen comments on consent agenda items. I don't see any blue cards, so we don't have any citizen comments on consent agenda items. Request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda. Request for clarification. Yes, Council Member Briggs. On consent agenda item E, it's a contract about striping, I think. Is that about striping or is it for something else? Oh, it's for the truck. Okay, and so I thought that was this normally a contracted service and so now we're purchasing our own truck or is this a second truck that we were purchasing? No, so we have a couple of striping machines that we typically use to put paint down. Part of what this truck allowed us to do is we went through the budget cycle last year. This was one of the items that we had put in the package for supplementals. When we go and build a roadway or resurface a roadway, currently we have to rely on a contract for striping to come in and do the permanent striping, which typically means we put tabs, those little plastic tabs that stick up, or buttons or something else on the ground. Then we have to pull those up, which leaves an area where the pavement is now been disturbed again and then we repaint it. And hopefully we follow that in a timely manner. This truck does two things. It allows us to, instead of doing those tabs, go ahead and stripe it ourselves with just paint, which will only last about six months. But it gives us a lot more flexibility with our paint contractors, which put down that, they call it a thermoplastic paint, it's a much more permanent paint. They can come in right behind that, add in their timeline within a six month window, and paint those lines. We're not running up our costs or running into issues trying to get the contractor to actually show up in a timely fashion. Okay, just a follow up. So on that, so now say when there's streets that have been micro-sealed, I walked on one the other day that still hasn't been striped at all, and it's been a while. So this will help eliminate that. This allows city crews to come in immediately upon that resurfacing, put the paint down, and then when the contractor does have the time, he can come in and put the thermal on top. Okay, thank you very much. Any other questions of clarification on the agenda? All right, seeing none, we'll move on. Let me get situated here. Okay, we'll start on our work session report 3A, Receive Report, Hold Discussion, Give Staff Direction Regarding the Development of the Hunter Coal Ranch Master Plan Community in Southwest Denton. Before we get started, I think it would be important if we could write your questions down, because this is a very detailed presentation. I want to make sure that we can get through it in an orderly manner, and then we can go back for questions, because I know we've received some of this information in the backup, and we'll be presenting some additional information here. So if we could, if it's a question, quick question of definition or clarity that can be easily dispatched, not a problem, but as far as substantive discussion, I'd like to save that to the end so we can get through the presentation. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Ethan Cox. I'm the Director of Public Works for the City of Denton. It's my pleasure to introduce this item for your consideration this afternoon. As the Mayor alluded to, we do have kind of a multi-pronged presentation that is pretty substantive, and so we will move through this as quickly as we can and then definitely have some time for questions. So what I'm going to be doing is giving you just a brief overview of the Hunter Coal Ranch Master Plan Community. I'll then hand it off. We do have the developers here. We have Mr. O.C. Vest, who is the Senior VP for Stratford Land. We also have Mr. Brian Karloch, who is the Senior VP for Hillwood Communities. And so once I finish up with just kind of a brief overview, they'll come to the podium and walk you through their items, and then Richard Canone, the Deputy Director of Development Services, will take it from there, and I'll be back to close this out. To start us off, I want to give you just a brief refresher background on the Hunter Coal Ranch development. This is located on the southwest side of Denton, across I-35 West, near Robeson Ranch. It's approximately 6,400 acres and is zoned as a master plan community. That constitutes a very large development for single-family homes, just approaching 13,000 single-family units, 6,400 unchanged multi-family units, and several hundred acres of potential commercial and industrial development as well. Obviously, this is one of the larger developments that council has ever considered. The other thing that makes it somewhat unique is it does have a municipal management district that's been proposed and essentially enabled by the state. This is something that the council considered in early January and February of 2019. The council passed a resolution of support that enabled the state to consider that. The state passed the enabling legislation in June 14, 2019. That being said, however, there is additional action required for council in order to actually activate the MMD and to create the improvement districts that would be operating underneath it. A little bit of information on an MMD. It is somewhat unique from other improvement districts that you might consider. Most notably, this is essentially a political subdivision of the state that does allow the district to essentially collect ad valorem taxes as well as issue bonds to reimburse the developer for improvements in infrastructure. Given the location and the size of this development, it is going to be critical that regional and major infrastructure get extended to that area, and that bond issuance and ad valorem tax ability allows the developer to collect some reimbursement of their costs as those improvements are put in the ground. In order to activate it, as I said, a resolution will be required by city council. If council declines to activate the MMD or actions not taken, then the MMD would essentially sunset and deactivate on December 31, 2020. For today's discussion, obviously there's a lot of ground to cover with the development of this size and this complexity. So we're going to have at least two work sessions, the first being obviously today. We also have one set aside for December 17th to consider a couple of agreements. Really what we're going to try to accomplish today, the developers will come to the podium, give you really kind of an overview of the project, some concept. Also talk about some MPC amendments, the master plan community agreements are being amended for a couple of reasons. These were activated several years ago. Since that time, there's been a new DDC adopted. There's also modifications to gas well setbacks and reverse setbacks. And there's also updated land uses that need to be incorporated into those MPC documents. And so Mr. Vest and Mr. Carlock will walk you through that. Once they get done with that item, then Richard will come to the podium and walk you through staff's assessment and provide a little bit more detail on the MPC amendments. So before I hand it off to Mr. Vest, any questions for the overview? All right. Let's see. Do you guys have your flash drive here? Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is OC vest. I'm a partner with Stratford land. Mr. Mayor and members of the city council. Thank you for the opportunity for us to be here today to present Cole and Hunter ranch. A portion of our proposed project, as Ethan mentioned, we're going to break the actual proposal for Colin Hunter into two pieces. Talk mainly about the MPC amendment today. We will touch on the agreements that are necessary to go forward later in the presentation. But I think the idea was to focus today on the MPC amendment. There's quite a bit there to discuss, and that probably take the majority of our time today. The coal and Hunter ranches. This is a story about two pioneer families, farming families that have owned these properties for over 100 years. Hunter ranch was acquired by the Hillwood group years ago and since have been ranching that property for for probably, I guess, Brian 20 years now or so. Cole ranch is still in the hands of the coal family. MT Cole, again, a pioneer farmer for the area before the city of Denton was even incorporated. So a long history of families that have owned and controlled these properties for a long time is why they're still in the state that they are today. The agenda for today, really pretty simply, we're going to go through the project background just to update you. I know that we've mentioned several times we've had several conversations about these two properties. I'm going to go through that pretty quickly because I think you will remember a lot of this information that we've covered previous times on the vision. I'm going to ask Brian Carlock with Hillwood to come up and talk about the plans going forward. And then again, we will touch briefly on the city agreements at the very end. This is a project timeline to indicate how long we've been at this in 2001 was when Hunter Ranch was incorporated into the city annexed in. And in 2006, Cole Ranch was annexed in that was along the same times kind of following where ropes and ranch was, if you recall, ropes and ranch started in 1999. And so these properties came on very soon thereafter to annex into the city and subsequently zone. You can see the zoning for Cole and Hunter in 2008. Hunter had a modification in 2010. Fast forward eight years to July 13th of 2018. And this is when we first broached the idea of the current proposal. This is where this idea was basically hatched. And the idea was that we would do a improvement district within the city and do it in such a way that the city would have the necessary control in order to feel comfortable with it with a district existing within the city limits. Again, a lot more of that in our next work session. But that was the idea behind the improvement district from the very beginning was to help us to finance the major and regional infrastructure that both of these properties would need. We made the decision, Hillwood and Cole together to do this together. It made a lot of sense to do it that way. To 3000 acre master plan communities, if we could do it at the same time and dovetail a lot of the design and planning and infrastructure that goes with that. We felt like we could be a lot more efficient for our purposes and for the city as well. As you can see, here we are today, December the third towards the end of the timeline with our first City Council work session on the full proposal. And we're hopeful to get to this body for action in sometime in January. The objective and this is this is pretty worthy and I'm not going to read it to you. But the idea here is the MPC amendment and the city agreements are necessary to provide the governance for these two projects. We have a plan of design. We have a plan of finance with the with the improvement district. What we need now is to pull all these things together so that we have not only the vision to build these two projects, but the financing vehicle in place to actually make it happen. We believe this is a mutually beneficial arrangement, both for the property owners and from the city and more to come on that. Of course, regional context. I know you know where these properties are. These these two properties are basically the southern gateway to the city of Denton from 35 W. If you're coming from Fort Worth, this will be the two significant properties that you will see as you enter the city of Denton. I think that that you would agree that that is a significant opportunity both for us as well as for the city. Coal Ranch 3169 acres Hunter Ranch 10 acres larger. Brian always likes to be a little taller than me and a little everything. So he's got 10 more acres than we do it coal together almost 6400 acres. I think the other thing that I like about this slide is it shows a lot about the the how the creeks and streams work with these properties with Hickory Creek on the north. Roark branch going through the middle of the properties and then two tributaries of graveyard branch. There are basically four major tributaries going through the property that help do several things. One, it provides a lot of drainage conveyance, which is very helpful in development, but it also provides a lot of opportunities for trails and open space that's associated with these creeks and the environmentally sensitive areas that go along with that. This is where we're going to show you a drone flyover. Of what the property looks like today and Ethan you may have to help me with this one. It's right there. I like those descriptions on the slides. There we go. This is ropes and ranch road at the south. We're on I-35 looking north. And as we move forward, you can see the ESA areas of Hunter Ranch pilot knob. Now we've turned we're looking south going over pilot knob towards the other two ESA areas on Hunter Ranch. Looking back towards the west, you see ropes and ranch popping up there on the horizon ropes and ranch now on the left hand side. And we're looking north across the NRCS lakes that are on Hunter Ranch. Moving north slowly across the property. This is the eastern side of coal looking westbound. You can see the electric transmission power lines there. A lot of open space. You see some gas wells and the farming parcel, the McCutcheon zone. A lot of people ask us, you know, what's that out parcel in the middle? That is the McCutcheon property. Now we're looking towards the east, down 2449. There's the loop 288 future as it comes off the 2449 interchange with I-35. This is looking west. And you can see the coal property on both sides of existing 2449 there. Question on your abbreviation. Yes, sir. Yeah, I just don't know what an NRCS lake is. There are three lakes on the two properties together that are owned by the federal government. NRCS stands for the Natural Resources Conservation Service. These lakes were built back in the '50s under the SCS program, Soil Conservation Service, to control erosion from farming. When they converted those to the NRCS program, they converted them from farming erosion control to flood protection. The dams, spillways, and risers are owned by the Denton County Soil Conservation Service, but the land and the water underneath it is owned by the property owners. The current status of both properties, again, both have been annexed into the city for quite a while now. Both were zoned as master plan communities back in 2008. If you recall, that's when that ordinance was created, and that ordinance was basically created for three properties, the coal property, the hunter property, and the Clear Creek property on the north side of loop 288. Today, I believe those are still the only three MPCs in the city of Denton. With the MPCs came also the development plan maps to show generally where all the land uses would go. So that's been accomplished. What we haven't accomplished is figuring out how to get infrastructure to the west side of Denton. So the question is, what we're going to talk about today is the MPC amendment. Why is an MPC amendment needed for these two properties if they already are zoned MPC, already had development plan maps approved? Well, there's three reasons to do that. The primary driver of that was our gas well setbacks, the criteria in our MPC is where that was located. We wanted to modify that we want to bring those up to city standards and what the city is looking for today as far as gas will setbacks to do that we had to amend the MPC to make those changes. And so while we're there, let's go ahead and look at the land uses. The city had just adopted the new text amendment citywide, which created all new zoning categories that were different than what we're in our MPC. So what we decided to do was to go ahead and adopt the new land use regulations in the 2019 DDC for these two properties to bring that up to standard as well. Yes, sir. Councilmember Arbiter says she has a very simple question, so go ahead. Yes, ma'am. Well, I believe it's simple. So the term gas well buffer, can you explain exactly how you're defining that? I want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding. Yes, we'll set back. Okay, so it's synonymous with setback. Yes, we'll set back. Okay, that's what I thought wanted to be clear things. The, the idea behind bringing the properties up to the 2019 DDC was once we got into how we were actually going to administer the two projects what we realized was to go back to what we actually have under our vested approvals 2002 DDC. And I think there were 47 or 48 amendments was going to be very difficult to do be difficult for us to be difficult for the city to to administer. So after looking at the new 2019 DDC we decided that we would do that we would forget the old 2002 DDC and we would adopt the new standards that the city has today. We felt like that would make it easier for the city going forward and give us more certainty, as far as how to design and permit and construct projects in the future. We also decided that, again, while we're at it, and while we're master planning these two properties together. Let's relook at the master plan, because what we, what we realized was, when you look at the two original development plan maps put together. It didn't match up very well roadways didn't align open space corridors weren't lined up we weren't taking advantage of the opportunities that each project presented, because they had been designed individually. And then we hired TBG planners Mark Myers here today with us, and they started developing concepts for us that said look we can do this a lot better we can make a lot better product by planning these two together so we started with this image on the right. And what, what I think is important about this is why we want to share it with you today is it shows how the new development plan map was created, what was behind it. The intensity of uses are really following I 35, and they're following loop 288. That's where the highest intensity uses on it go at the major intersections of ropes and ranch and 35 already in 35 FM 2449 which will eventually become loop 288 and 35. And then of course the future loop 288 and 2449 intersection. As you can see what we've tried to do is gather density and intensity of uses around those areas. Those are the areas more likely to be more commercial to provide more sales tax base to the city. And then the idea was to step the density down as you go from east to west, so that by the time we get to our western border, we're sensitive to the residential uses on our western edge, particularly the ropes and ranch community, and the small ranching communities to the west side. So I ask Mr. Carlock to come up and continue the presentation. Good afternoon Mayor, City Council members, good to see you all again today. Thank you very much. I would like to thank the city council for their kind introduction to the property. I want to talk about some of the development of the plan that we're continuing to just continuing to evolve the simple vision of this project is really is to develop a master plan world of sales, parks, amenities, and master plan land uses that are flexible, and also able to grow with the market over a long period of time, we know the market will change throughout the life of this project it's 30 year project say maybe 40 year project we look back 30 or 40 years the market continues to become, you know, more innovative, more creative, and more efficient. This is really the large vision for the project. This is a similar diagram that OC just had up but it also demonstrates in the colors, and this really tracks the zoning maps that you'll see when you see the NPC amendment itself, but really creating multiple districts of the project, lower to medium to higher density residential using the MR and MN OC briefly touched on it but one of the benefits of this amendment it will bring our project up to the 2019 DDC binocular and standards both zoning and development code. So taking the master plan down to the next level you've seen a version of this before again it continues to evolve. But when you start bringing in some of the actual elements of the project. The project kind of starts taking shape with that those zoning district overlays on there. The open spaces the buffers, the ESA is the start to really define your pods. So we're going to spend a little time talking about really kind of each district and some inspirational imagery to help you maybe get a sense for, for what our vision is in terms of quality. One component is education. We've been in tight coordination with the school district on the overall properties combined. There'll be one high school to middle schools and for elementary schools. I mentioned it before but the ISD already own one of the element of one of the middle schools and one of the high schools on the project. We continue to work with them closely to plan the locations. At this point they're okay with the locations and the number of facilities shown on the map here. Education key part of our master plans we embrace the elementary schools middle schools and the high schools but particularly probably the elementary schools. We probably have six elementary schools being built or just completed throughout the state of Texas. I highlight one here the Union Park Elementary School, we just finished that with Denton ISD. And I think they would also tell you it's been a great relationship as we'll, we'll do several more with them. Of course, the one on the top right just happens to be one we just finished down in the Houston market. A little bit about the residential character. This is just a bit of a collage to show the variety of housing that we expect to be present in this community. It not only represents a variety of architectural styles and living styles and also represents a spectrum of pricing across the market. Our intention is to really be able to address the housing needs I'm really probably second time home buyer maybe first time home buyer all the way through the lifecycle to maybe an active adult we don't intend to deliver product that we compete with the ropes and ranch project, I think that's a very unique buyer that likes that lifestyle but we expect really all spectrum of buyers attracted to a master plan community like this. You'll see townhomes to 40 foot lots to 50 foot lots to 60 and 70 foot lots in that vernacular price point wise, from an average standpoint, we're selling this project, this product, all of it across the state of Texas probably 300,000 all the way up to 700,000 on averages is where you'll see this spectrum of for sale housing. All housing is controlled by deed restrictions on the, on the architecture, requiring certain elevated standards whether it's masonry architecture landscape certain home efficiency and technology requirements that are all required in all of our houses. So I'm going to have a few slides here talking about the commercial mixed use areas I'm going to ask Robert, both Logan with Hillwood to take you through this Robert has been with Hillwood for 14 years, and really is overall in charge of all of our North Texas master plan mixed use projects in a variety of markets and I think you'd like to hear from Robert on these couple slides. Thanks. Thank you, Ryan. Mayor council members, thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this session as Brian said my name is Robert folds and Logan so I am out of the Alliance group, but I've been very fortunate. Over my entire career here, Hillwood to be a part of virtually all of our mixed use effort so these slides are not necessarily to say this is exactly what the architectural vision is, it really is to represent our approach to master plan to communities from a mixed use perspective, really with the same guiding principles, smart efficient infrastructure, flexible land use that can grow with the market, very no different than really the residential side, but a hallmark to all of Hillwood projects including the commercial is integration of parks, open space and amenities because we've witnessed over time that the focus on parks and trails used to be really residential, but it is just as much a piece to the commercial and retail environment as any product type these days. So, starting with this first slide, the circle T ranch so I'm going to show you three of our key projects lines town center circle T and then Frisco station again just representation of scale. You may have heard recently about the swab HQ announcement moving from the west coast. Very fortunate to have that project. These are difficult projects, some of them once in a lifetime projects but I put this up here because certainly some of the beauty of the land and characteristics are similar to that of hunter ranch, just with the eastern cross timbers coming through the area. And we hope that over time, while these folks were here partly for DFW airport with the amenities and growth of Denton, certainly the UNT platform and alliance. You hope to attract one of these type campuses over time. Yeah. So taking it down a level again just representation of scale this is swab under construction. And, you know, suburban in some regards from an FRA perspective but goes up to eight nine stories fairly compact, taking advantage of the parks and trails in the lake. In this case the retail will be just to the north and a project called front 44 so walkable in an integrated this is a good example of variation in height so this is over in Frisco station in an area of roughly half a million square feet, six to seven stories on up to 12 story so closer to, you know, 100 to 150 and height. Frisco markets interesting as an example from a planning perspective, and you think about over time. It took this office market some 30 plus years to grow just so happened that Mr pro and EDS really started the area in Plano just to the south 37 years ago. And now fast forward with all the growth in the area, the density is starting to increase so it's an example of a pretty traditional sort of mid rise office product. Now going back to Alliance town center so this is looking north, the North 400. I put this up here because it's a little more representative of where an hunter ranch office and amenity market would be today while it doesn't look like a lot. There's almost 2 million square feet of office 2000 multifamily urban living units. That's our courtyard Marriott Parkside couple of restaurants the THR medical campus up to the north. But all with the same planning principles of very efficient infrastructure, great connectivity and in this case there's a three mile loop trail system that anchors off of Bluestem Park which is our big restored Prairie Park down here to the southwest. Flipping to hospitality again just representation of as the mixed use community grows hospitality will be important. This is a AC Marriott residents in a little more contemporary over in Frisco, but also built on a park called the bend. This is a Hillwood courtyard Marriott over in Linestown Center just down the street so a little more spread out. Generally the same program in this case is anchored on Bluestem Park, but very high quality has got a great amenity and conference center that doesn't exist in the area and again, we think that certainly, you know, in the next 1015 years you're going to need some hospitality in this area. Flipping over to multifamily. So the, the some of the considerations here in height, even on the multifamily side the way we look at it is, whereas the market today may be a more traditional 18 units an acre garden. Very quickly, we would get to this type of product which is still surface park still suburban because it doesn't support the rental rates for a garage, but the goal here is more pedestrian oriented, highly amenity as you push the building up to the street, and all the parkings on the internal side so these two are a couple of projects in Linestown Center that you could go visit again highly amenitized internally, but then more importantly is connected into the park system on the outside. Compare that to move up over time and density station houses a Hillwood project in Frisco, so generally the same 300 units but instead of 12 acres on five acres, as it goes vertical with structured parking in this case it's on a another park system. This, we're all a little surprised but that is sky house it just opened up within our project a couple of months ago we're surprised and I don't think that anybody would have anticipated this type of product, just yet so it's a 25 story 311 feet high for rent residential project, but it's here because of all the job growth on 121 with Toyota JP Morgan Liberty Mutual and, you know, not to say that this will come to Hunter anytime soon but you think again with Denton and the Alliance growth. You certainly could see it over time. And finally a couple more slides I put this one in here. What what it's generating now. Yeah, go click away. Yeah, all right. This is, this is one of the earlier phases of alliance town center and it's in here for a reason. For retail, we take our CC ours and guidelines very seriously so all of our properties, as with the residential we have 18 commercial associations that we manage I personally am on all of those boards, and the design review boards. This is an example of suburban retail, that you can still do suburban retail right with the right landscape lighting signage guidelines and hopefully when you drive down 35. And you look on the left side alliance town center you see a big difference to some of our neighbors. We have an office down the street. Still very class a surface part but three four stories, ultimately, the way we plan it very similar to the thought process for hunter is, you can start to build density over time. With that, I guess we'll take questions later but thank you. So I want to spend a little time talking about the open space and green belts it's really the backbone of the entire master plan everything that's done is done with the spirit of trying to integrate mobility pedestrian or vehicular mobility and tied all together. But ultimately we get to about one third of the overall 6000 acres being open space in one form or another. So this slide just kind of identifies the lakes and ESA pretty identifiable strips throughout the property. Then you layer in the Uplands habitat on the property so I can toggle a little bit so you can see how they pop up some of the Uplands habitat particularly on coal, actually resides within the floodplain ESA hunter ranch is a little different in that you see pilot knob that starts to emerge in that series of three or four upland the essays that come into the project. Next thing that brings in is really green space related to gas well buffers or setbacks will use those terms synonymously. But while we are prohibited from doing any kind of construction or any activity, any vertical construction within the buffers. What we've done historically in our project is the neighborhood really has kind of taken over those buffer areas to be used as passive open space whether it's a pickup game of throwing the baseball, soccer, or other kind of passive activities that are actually very useful spaces, although we're not proposing to do any kind of vertical construction throughout them but add the buffers for the, the gas wells that are there and propose you get to close to 2000 acres of open space. The next thing just to kind of bring in graphically is kind of where are the trees, tree canopy, both existing and future is an important element throughout the plan. You can kind of just see as I toggle the existing tree and tree canopy. I think Richard will hit the statistics in a minute but we are another city wide objective to be about what 30% canopy I think ours reaches over 60% as a project which will obviously will bring the city wide average up, but we get to around that 60% mark overall. Next thing we bring in again I'll just continue to toggle a little bit is really the then programmed parks, whether they're neighborhood, city parks, dog parks, what we call pocket parks which are half acre to one acre community parks that are owned by the HOA. But once you bring those in and we'll talk about those individually in a minute. By yellow, I think you can see here by yellow asterisk been working with the school district, there's some programs out there that exists this way but the idea is to co locate every elementary school with a neighborhood park, efficient use of parking and facilities that kind of feed off of each other just an efficient way to use that space, all of those are located both elementary school and the co located neighborhood parks are located along tributaries and within the residential neighborhoods. The city parks. There's two city parks, both coal and Hillwood have agreed to donate 50 acres towards a city park that city park is a more high level of development might be skate parks on the Hillwood, Hunter and side, the southern city park. They agreed to work with and plan with the parks department so that there could be a library and a rec center city rec center combined joint use. So we've been working with the city about doing that really on the, the southern city park area. The exact locations are to be determined once again you'll see both of the red asterisk indicating city parks that are located near and adjacent to green belts and parkways dog parks, I'll show a few images in a minute dogs everybody dogs they just do they've become quite the rage and master plan communities. We love them. They're evolving we just opened one up in Little Elm that we're quite proud of. And lastly, you can barely see them but you see a lot of little dots throughout all of the primarily residential areas. Those are what we call pocket parks. Those are half acre to one acre pocket parks that are programmed trails benches playgrounds things that are built and owned by the HOA, but they certainly serve us a really important need for just kind of day to day and night to night recreation. And again all the amenities all the open spaces and parks. We test ourselves to something that we know is important to the city as well as how close are they to all the neighborhoods. We have and y'all have this 10 minute walk theory. In addition to the open spaces and the playgrounds and the neighborhood parks and the city parks really again woven together by a trail system. Different hierarchy of trails 10 foot trails six foot community trails in all this ends up being a little over 58 miles of trails obviously far exceeding any requirement on the master trail plan at the city and these are a combination of a variety of type of trails. The objective is to follow major arterials follow green belts, connect neighborhoods to work neighborhood to retail schools to neighborhoods playgrounds to playgrounds things like that. So we have a unique opportunity here to really have an extensive trail system it also opens up left right well west east north and south of the property to be able to connect through these corridors to other parts of the town. Denton is a unique place as as all of you you know the size of scale of the city the unique nature of the higher level education the universities the interest in art and music really creates a very interesting. The culture that we would love to bring into our open spaces as we program these how do we affiliate with the organizations to bring music art and other entertainment within the communities. I'll show you a few examples of some things that we've done just potential we call these potential public park spaces these are all things that we've done in other markets. And other projects, but you can kind of see a variety of these park spaces so you think about integrating, not only community interest but city level interest art music festivals. The two images on the far right or two images images of a dog park that we just opened in Little Elm amazingly popular the one on the left is a little lake fishing camp on a lake down in Houston that we developed. In addition to the parks of course you have the trails a variety of trail types, certain requirements of course during in the ESA areas on what type of trails can be done there. A hierarchy of 10 foot six foot working their way through the upland ESA areas, the floodplain, ESA is another also neighborhood parks and connecting along major arterials. The idea is to get people safely on a sidewalk so they can travel from spot to spot. In addition to the public amenities the public trails of public parks which will be amenities, there will be private amenities as well. The amenities we program they continue to evolve we leverage our planners and our other consultants to pick up great ideas that are emerging, as it turns out primarily on the west coast. We would have never imagined the amenities we're doing today 10 years ago. So we're excited about trying to stay on the cutting edge of innovation. We have facilities that we've done in certain other markets, pools, outdoor entertainment areas, indoor areas that are used for a variety of things from weddings to just community, community events, exploration parks in the bottom right. Similar concepts, but different projects. We're proud of our amenities, we're proud of awards that we win because of our amenities, we're pleased that people recognize them and we get, you know, nice pieces of glass but we also hear from our people who move into our communities that they're moving there for a variety of reasons, often at the very top of the list is the level of amenities, parks, trails, private and public amenities. So we're gonna try to pull all this together with an animation that will take us through the property. See I think you're going to help me a little bit on the full screen. So, if you remember a little bit of the, if you remember a little bit of the path that OCS flyover so this is going to be really a kind of a developed animation sequence to give you a sense and scale don't get hung up on the building blocks that represent development whether it's an office building a multifamily building or a single family building. The intention of this is really to demonstrate really how 2000 acres of open space, make their way into the master plan, kind of a level of density. But I think it's I think it's helpful to be able to visualize a project like this not many people get to even think about a 6400 acre project much less actually planted out so we're going to start and stop a little bit here and I'll try to keep you oriented if you need help I can at least help start you out. So we're going to start down here and I 35. I'll put pause here for just a moment just to kind of let you get your bearings key landmarks always our pilot knob, as well as the other upland ESA is that form this kind of a ridge, if you if you will here, obviously ropes and ranch Boulevard. Pretty much everything in color is things that is related that are related to my fact they are everything in color is really related to hunter and coal. As we come down, approaching from the south to the north. This is where Hunter Ranch would start its development sequences is really down at this intersection on the south side of of Hunter Ranch. We think the area most viable for retail commercial, hopefully led by, you know, grocer anchored type mixed use center would be this corner of ropes and ranch Boulevard and and I 35. You start to see other uses be at multifamily, and we'll come up here and look at this you can see the scale of the building starting to approach. As Lucy mentioned our objective is to focus the highest intensity mixed use along the highways, and specifically around the the intersections. So we're coming into what is would be the already I 35 intersection area. To your north there but this is really your office retail mixed use center there'll be some single family high density residential worked within this to kind of create that live work play type atmosphere. People pass by pilot knob on the left. You can see generally staying away from the upland dsa's. We've now turned around and headed south so we're kind of headed south to north actually do south yeah do south over the knobs. As we work our way in here, you'll start to see the presence of some trail systems that make their way through pilot knob in the upland dsa's. One of the component you'll start to see here is this idea of heliport helipad. We have heliport helipads in really all of our master plans in North Texas. We use that currently for a variety of reasons we certainly can forecast the need and use for heliport helipad opportunities, just as the market changes whether delivery, or just transportation, everybody is aware of uber elevate, and those initiatives very very beginning parts of that is a key partner with uber in those ambitions. In the meanwhile, we use our helicopter and helipads for commercial activities for for marketing for showing properties, which ends up being really kind of a key strategic advantage as we're showing off to the office or anybody relocating to a potential property, there's really no better way to show it off. Kind of flying right through pilot knob here, banking off to really the west but headed south you'll see kind of tucked in here in between the ESA is largely these are these ideas of office parks or commercial between the nodes. High high quality of life for these residents, being in these areas here very similar to circle T ranch, there's heavily wooded hills that have been very attractive to the Deloitte swabs and fidelities, as they're making decisions on where they relocate. Once again there's a spot between the essays. This is actually pretty accurate in terms of scale and elevation these hills are mapped pretty accurately. We've now turned around and we're flying up the western side of hunter ranch with ropes and off to our left so ropes and ranches are really future ropes and ranch here yourself to pick up pretty. The nature of the residential communities, split by these green belts and trails. You'll also see the presence of gas wells and gas well setbacks that create open space for sure, largely if there's a gas well pad. We've shown it indicated with kind of trees that outline it. We have landscaping requirements both vegetation and wall requirements in our DDC. Again strong connections with these trail systems and linear parks. As you work your way up this particular green belt you'll start to see the idea of parks and schools located on them. This is one of those in our CS lakes we are refining and working with the parks department exactly how these parks integrate, particularly the rec center and the library how they integrate with the open space how they integrate with trails, and how they integrate with with these lake systems. You'll see other schools pop up top left it's a high school that's the current location for it. And you'll see middle school emerged top top left. As we cross over 2499 we're starting to get into coal ranch, as you can see. We'll start to see that other lake that OC mentioned right there to our forefront. Once again, positioning the schools and other parks around the lake and around the open space we think is a key element. Stopping here to get oriented. Right, we're now up in the northwest kind of pointing southeast so we're going to track the 288 future 288 loop around so you'll see some of the coal property development proposed property on the right hand side of the screen, which starts to get you into a little bit of the proposed industrial park, as well as a neighborhood that's kind of trapped between 288 and the industrial airport again focuses on hanging around these intersections we have five or six intersections being developed by text on so this is the, I guess that would be the 2499 intersection future intersection. This is flying into that neighborhood, just north of 288. The park start to pop up in a moment that'll be. This is probably more on the acre size pocket park that will be programmed. And then lastly we kind of fly straight down south on I 35 you'll see pilot knob on your right, as you're aware, Hunter ranch exist on the east side of 35 as well. Maybe just pay particular attention if you will just to the preservation of the pilot knob and the other uplands, USA or certain requirements in your DDC were far exceeding those requirements for preservation, as I think Richard will touch on specifically gives you a good eyes view bird's eye perspective of the project. Okay, so great. A few particulars as we start to dive into some of these details, Richard is going to handle many of the details. We want to hit several things really kind of hit head on. One of the things that we've all been talking about is gas wells and gas well setbacks. So, we thought it important to be able to at least compare our existing entitlements under our NPC, and maybe even our initial proposal when we started talking to counsel about a year ago about the same topic to kind of where where we are now, as we've gone through extensive discussions and documentation with staff, we've had many sessions with people at the city level about where we are on our proposal we've obviously been able to watch and be involved in the sidebar conversations going on where you've now adopted a new gas well ordinance, I think, November 19 so all that's been happening I think as we've, as we've been planning ours so our intention is really to kind of match up with the proposed gas well standards. You can see on Hunter ranch where our existing zoning allows for 250 feet from the well head. There are four particular wells that were negotiated with ropes and rants and country lakes back in 2010 to where we agreed to a greater setback. Now we're set the proposal for both Hunter and Cole, is that we have a 500 foot setback for all pads from the and these are now measured from the from the edge of pad and not the well head. There were the four existing wells that are what sites well sites that were negotiated with ropes and and country lakes that had another provision that took the setback to 750 because of the existing homes and we intend to honor really that obligation. And I don't know that I get a chance to say it anywhere else but there are several obligations we committed to to robes and in 2010 and we intend to keep all of those obligations those I don't know if you hit it on your timeline or not but we did have a nice town hall meeting with the ropes and residents back in November, well attended and I think well appreciated to be able to discuss any proposed changes that we're talking about. But all in all the change from our existing zoning to this proposed 500 foot, obviously it has a significant impact and ended up being over 600 acres of additional gas well setback or buffer imposed on the property. The key areas of the NPC amendment that will be talking about and I think we'll be talking about it with PNC next week as well. The gas well setbacks. We just talked about that land use as OC as mentioned land use is important in that we're agreeing to come up to the 2019. DDC standards from our 2002 existing DDC requirements. Just the master planning of course like we've talked about more organized more focused on intersections and and highways, a reduction of overall residential density we'll talk about it in a moment but a substantial reduction in the amount of residential that's proposed in the project. All in all, parks trails open space we're exceeding all the requirements that are required throughout the city at this point. Development plan map again just more organized between the two projects. If you remember, in February, when you agreed to let us go to the state to try to achieve this legislation. The caveat on that was fine go get the legislation if you can, we need to come back and talk about the details these three documents really are the details. The final steps to allowing the district to be created in the operating agreement the consent resolution and the project agreement. This is going to be the topic of conversation I believe for the next Council workshop but just wanted you to know that we're certainly are spending an exhaustive amount of time working on these with staff because we know really the devil's in the details. All these are just pretty pictures and conversations unless these agreements are memorialized somewhere in the documents, the consent resolution. has several things that are important when it limits the projects to dividing no more than four times into these four districts, and also allows the city to have a representative on the board if they choose to. We've talked about the NPC amendment. The operating agreement will really be the rules in which the districts are allowed to to operate the TCEQ has very strict obligations and requirements of these districts when when created. These are additional up and above not just TCEQ requirements but also the legislation that was created that gave certain rights to this district. Once created this will further put in a box and limit those. Those rules that will apply from the district tax rate last time we talked, it was 55 cents upon further evaluation and consideration all the way through this we're now proposing a 49 cent tax rate. We, last time we talked we talked about the bonds being able to reimburse really all infrastructure that would be allowed by the TCEQ we've now limited that to only major and regional infrastructure throughout the project. Also that the, the district can provide funding for the M&O to be able to maintain things that the city would otherwise be obligated to maintain we talked a lot about the parks in the open space and the thousands of acres. The great news really is is that we're not only going to construct those but the district and or HOA will be maintaining all those improvements so it doesn't become a burden or cost to the city. And this is really some of the difficult development agreement call it zoning requirements is a little bit about how the project will look and feel. This is where you'll see the obligations for the developers to dedicate land for certain things and also commit funds for certain things. The affordable housing, we've talked about affordable housing a couple times and how to approach that there's no citywide citywide program. But we've created something that we think will be meaningful in terms of funding the existing, existing affordable housing program, we'll talk about gas wells again in this document the 500 foot setbacks. I didn't mention it before 100 ranch has agreed to limit its 19 allowed well sites to 14 will highlight it in a minute but I also want to mention that we also have an obligation, recognizing the the number of the population and the requirements for firing police that a project this size would bring each project is obligated to fund $5 million each towards fire and police, either construction of or expansions to kind of at the direction of the city on how those are to be to be handled. The city and Council obviously you've expressed Hey, is this going to cause a burden to the city at all. Is it going to cause any stress in the system, we Hillwood and Stratford have funded and agreed to fund these four critical studies that Todd has identified to conduct I think most of them are either done or almost close to being done I think we'll talk about them probably in a conclusion type format I hope on the 17th but the fiscal impact study the wastewater and water transportation and the city facilities study. So we're optimistic we've seen bits and pieces of most of these and we think they're headed the direction that we would expect them to really in conclusion I want to summarize a little bit. This is a little bit of that format of where we are and what we initially proposed on a couple of key elements to where we are now. The items on the left the gas well setback the MMD tax rate all the way through residential density. Those are things that we think if we went back and listen to all the tape, the workshops we've had before what were the things that really this council throughout as issues concerns things to consider maybe things that really need to be thought through. So we really just want to hit them head on here. We talked about the gas well setbacks. We're reducing five off of Hunter Ranch we're also coming up from the 200 and the 250 feet existing entitlements up to the 500 feet measure from the edge of pads. The MMD tax rate we were at 55 cents. Previously in our proposal that's the way the legislation was created at the state, even though it allows 55 cents, we want to limit it to 49 cents. At this point, I think this is a really big point is that we're agreeing to really let go of any benefits we got from the old standards of 2002 as amended 47 times. We've agreed to bring that up to 2019 standards that were just adopted by the city. Affordable housing there is no requirement. We really didn't reach any. We didn't have any meaningful discussion really last time we talked about this back in February and January. So we've really been trying to be as creative as we can. We certainly don't want to ignore the topic at all is an important element. However, you define affordable housing and is an important element going on a conversation going on around the country. So we've agreed to do is a fund, $1.5 million per owner into a fund paid over a period of time we've, we've proposed a mechanism to pay that that goes into the existing affordable housing program. Next is the project impact. This is a little bit wordy, but I've mentioned before that we are paying for all these studies we the developer paying for all these studies. We are agreeing to donate land for fire stations library recreation center city service center city parks community parks neighborhood parks dog parks skate parks spray parks and electrical substation for Denton electric. That would be required under your city park program. All those other donations of land clearly are up and above what would be required throughout the city. Lastly, just an outline. This is what we expect the timeline to be. So we'll be back hopefully talking to you all on the 17th and we'll be talking to PNC I think next week largely about the amendment. The next time we hope we're in front of you, we're talking more details about the project agreement operating agreement and the consent agreement. I think at this point Richard wanted to go next. I have to yes. They're pretty much, they're very simple to answer. Well, I can ask them and then you can. Okay. Okay. So, um, on the, on the map, when we were one flowing through and seeing things so I know I noticed that most of the MR development is where the large essays are, and our new code allows our requires only 30% of that ESA to be preserved or saved. So, my question was, where you can't were you encroaching on those because the pictures look like they were staying as is but I'm just curious what you even the visualization, the animation it did encroach slightly into it we, I think. Richard will hit it specifically I think your DDC requires a 50% preservation in those upland the essays will not for non residential right zero I think 30% 30% non residential. That was my one question I guess I can ask him about it as well we're preserving 50 and 55%. Okay, and on the, on the gas wells on the pretty pictures we saw it looked like they were all encased in with trees around and I didn't see any large roads for big trucks. So I'm wondering is there access for that or are you closing them off, our new well is going to be drilled in that area right there, we have to assume they're either going to be reworked or additional wells will be drilled we're following the current requirements in the DC on access off of certain hierarchy of road system may not have shown up necessarily in the animation quite so clearly but we understand the requirements on access to those to those sites. Okay, so they're not they're not intended to be locked off and never touched again. Okay, thank you. Let's take a five minute break before we get into the last part because not knowing how long yours is and yeah. And then we'll pick up with questions after Richard's presentation. Welcome back to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Tuesday, December the third 2019 it is 123pm. We are moving down our work session reports. We are still on work session item. 3A. And we're wrapping up the staff presentation and the developer presentation and then we'll entertain questions so. Good afternoon. Yeah, good evening. Not yet. Richard can only development services department, just wanted to give kind of a quick overview of some of the items that I'll be covering specifically related to the two amendments for these NPCs. Again, the background looking at some of our existing land use policies, the plan amendment itself and then doing some comparisons from the old to the new. Get in a little bit more detail into the East upland habitat tree preservation and as well as gas well setbacks. And so one slide I wanted to kind of kick us off with is looking at this in context of the city as a whole and kind of where we're headed. And so as I started to do the analysis and really looked at this project in comparison to other projects we've had in the city and really looked at, you know, how have we planned for growth and how we manage growth. And for the most part, we've been managing and I think citywide we've been trying to adapt roadway networks for as a result of growth. But this is really a fresh palette. I mean, it is truly a green field that can be planned properly where we put the infrastructure in place. We're not trying to readapt or tear up roads. It's all being developed in concert with the expected intensity or density of the area. But just to kind of put some things in perspective as far as kind of where we were and where we're headed even as a city. I was at the APA conference about a few weeks ago and one of the statistics they threw out was that approximately 1,400 people are moving to Texas daily and half of those are moving to the Metroplex. And then I started thinking, well, how does Denton kind of fit into that? What is our share of that pie? And then the USA Today article came out and ranked us 25th in the nation in population growth. But what I thought was interesting, they also had Frisco at three and McKinney at five. And I think it had noted about Frisco about it. While it's still notable, they talked about how they're almost running out of land to a certain extent. They don't have the 6,000 acres to bring into the city anymore. They are starting to go vertical. You'll see that on 121. And so it's just really looking at, well, what has really been our population increase? I mean, that 63% is pretty high. And has that been the norm or where have we been? And just kind of looking at even some of those 20-year projections, 30-year projections from kind of the comp plan, we're expected in our 2030 plan to have just over 207,000. And while it seems like while it's an awful lot of people, just kind of look where we've been since 1990 to 2018, we've grew by 106%. And so if you look at those trends, we're really, I think we'll either meet or exceed those numbers. And so it's, again, going back to how do we manage for one part of the city for this growth? But also, how do we plan for areas like this, particularly when you see the numbers of a population potentially out there of 50,000 people and with what they're expecting for office and mixed use, a possibility of 16,000 employees. That is a city for the most part. That was about then in 1990, give or take. And so that was, I just kind of wanted to kind of frame the discussion in that context. And I won't go into a lot of detail into this, but just, again, wanted to provide, kind of already touched on this. Coal Ranch was, that MPC was approved in 2008, as was Hunter. There were some amendments to Hunter in 2010. There was some land that zoned out of it. And then there were some exceptions to gas wells that were also adopted in 2010. And so one of the first things I looked at is how does this compare to our current land use plan and our comp plan? That's kind of our base analysis on just about everything. And we had some specific policies with respect to our MPCs and promoting the develop consistent with the long term vision of the preferred growth. But below that was even a more specific policy relative to establish a process to facilitate revisions to land use mix and design of approved and future MPCs, including. And I won't read down every single item in there. But I thought it was interesting that we created this policy kind of recognizing, and I think they hinted to it in their slide, there was somewhat of a disconnect between the two MPCs. The roads, the major roadways didn't align. And so I think, again, I wasn't here at the time, but I'm reading this as saying, well, we probably recognize that something needs to occur, something needs to be refreshed out there. And so as we looked at that in doing the comparison, I thought, well, when the MPC was created in 2008, what comp plan was in effect? How was that built off of that? And if you look at the 2020 plan that was in place, you really see this more intensity along 35, as well as where the loop is. We get to the 2030 plan, and while we had these policies that recognized sort of this change, we didn't necessarily change the map to reflect any of that. We just kind of followed what was put in the master plans. And while I still think it's consistent, I think for these large scale master plans, it's really hard on a large scale land use policy to get that granular in very specific areas of how these weave in and weave out. But just to give you an example, this is the tie in of the loop in 2499, and we have all low density residential. So this will be a major, major roadway. And I don't think it really, whether it be a land use or zoning perspective, really makes sense to have low density residential next to a highway, for lack of a better way to put it. And so I think as we look at this plan and these amendments, how can we, one, probably adjust what needed to be adjusted from that 2030 plan, but then still follow these sort of items that are enumerated in policy 211. And so the MPC, there's what's called a major amendment and a minor amendment. And these MPCs are governed by the, here's where it gets really interesting, the 2008 version of the 2002 DDC. And so I think they hit on this early on is as we were looking at these amendments, just finding the correct version of the 2002 code was a task in itself. And then trying to do amendments off of that to fit in with the 2019, it just really didn't make sense. And so when we approached it, it was really this discussion of we just adopted a new code. How does that fit with where your vision is long term? And can we just almost adopt the mini-DDC for these? And so then we have one set of rules. We're not governed by various versions of various codes where none of us are really happy and it's really a nightmare to manage it. But for the most part, this is what is considered a major amendment. Anything that's not major is minor. But again, these are really, for the most part, two through six is what they hit on that pushed it to be a major amendment. And so again, this is that comparison of the two development plans. And so what I did is off to the side, really looked at those items that policy 211 addresses that need to be looked at. So a mix of housing types reflect changing demographics and housing preferences. And so under the 2019 single family detached town home multi-family accessory dwellings, cluster subdivisions, as well as a contribution to affordable housing. Well, that's not a DDC requirement. They have offered to do that. And so it's following those new standards that we put in place, different than the old DDC, which if you were greater than two acres, it was governed off density, not minimum lot size. So those minimum lot sizes that we just put in place would govern. Appropriate siting of schools, civic buildings, and community amenities. So there's, I think they touch on it again, overall increase of open space, better location of school sites with libraries and parks incorporated. Even if you look at this old plan, I think there was some, I'm not sure how it happened. But within the airport overlay district, there were some school sites which obviously aren't permitted to be there. But somehow when we approved the MPC, those sites were incorporated in there. Adjacency to existing transportation infrastructure systems, again. Pushing that more intense growth closer to 35. Looking at the widening project on 35W that has been now accelerated. And then again, furthering those connections of the west loop and truly creating that plan network, not kind of guessing or having to go back and retrofitting. Conservation development where appropriate. Again, looking at increasing that ESA upland and the ability for cluster subdivision. Again, these are changes from that, the 2008 version of the 2002 code. Incorporating compact mix use walkable development patterns, again, I think that goes hand in hand with really where we were with the 2019 amendments. Including the increasing of height and the ability to attract larger employers. Integrating area wide trails, greenways, and green infrastructure. Obviously, as you saw, the new plan incorporates a comprehensive trail and greenway networks that really kind of weave through all of those uses. And then really looking at developmental acreage imbalance with the overall development of the city. And really looking at that overall, it actually has decreased what they're permitted to do now. And then again, adding in what the infrastructure planned along with that. And so we'll just dive a little bit deeper into just kind of the current versus proposed. And you see really that change in balancing of the acreage. So again, this is Hunter, so it went from an 84% land use or acreage to a proposed of 38 for residential or single family. And mixed use went from 10 to 62. And so you see that ability now to attract a different, sort of a different type of development as they presented. Again, pushing that closer to 35 where it's not just acres and acres and acres of residential subdivisions. Similar with Coal Ranch, you see their current mix as well as the proposed. One of the things if you'll note, you'll see utilities in schools. One of the things that the 2019 code allows for that the 2002 didn't, there was a prohibition of schools in certain residential districts. And so when they created their MPCs, they called out specifically those school districts. So what the 2019 code did is really corrected that and allows for schools in residential areas. And so that's why you don't see that kind of that carryover of that and the utilities at that 3%. But again, lessening the amount of residential single family. But again, slightly increasing industrial and mixed use. And so what I want to get into a little bit here is just the major changes with respect to uses. And so there's two lines, the 2008 changes of what they're permitted today. And then any major change from the 2019 code. Now some things that I didn't include in here, one in particular. And this is something we'll ultimately be bringing back for an amendment. In the 2019 code, temporary batch plants require a specific use permit. The 2008 code didn't. But what that's actually done now is it forces just about every development in the city to seek an SUV. If they want to put a temporary batch plant on their site, whether it be for a parking lot or for interior roads. And I don't think that was really the intent of that. The alternative would be a multitude of cement trucks lining up, which I don't think we really want traveling through our streets. That's something that's going to come back at a later date overall. But that change is not reflected here. I just bring it up because they're permitted to do that under the 2008 code. One of the changes with respect to residential is to allow multifamily in R7 without an SUP. Allow for single family in MR. Right now the code allows it to be in MN, not in MR. They put a limitation in there of it would be subject to the R7 standards and then limited to 60% of the net developable acreage of the MR district. It would prohibit manufactured housing in R4, R6, R7. Some of the changes, again, public and institutional from the 2008 code, I kind of hit on this already, but allowing public schools just about in every sub-district. Removing some of the restrictions, jumping down to commercial, removing some of the restrictions that we currently have for retail square footage. Again, we're planning for a new, so there's not too much of a concern, at least from our perspective, for compatibility because there's really nothing there. Allowing for mobile food courts in an MR without an SUP. And then again, there's certain prohibition of uses. RV parks, boarding and rooming houses, motels, major auto repair. Parking lots and outdoor storage as a principal use. Some of these are permitted in the 2019 code. These would be prohibited with respect to the two ranches. And then a limitation on auto sales and leasing to indoor only. And then allowing minor auto repair, that would be like an oil change place within the MR district. Industrial, no real major change. Public and semi-public. One item that they're requesting is allow solar collector as a principal use of wind energy conversion systems within the MR, but requiring that with an SUP so that would go through that dual public hearing process. Accessory uses, allowing accessory dwellings in all districts. However, with a limitation that they be one bedroom or less. And so that's the intent of not really creating two bedrooms or almost a duplex unit, but just limiting it to a one bedroom or less. But allowing outdoor storage in MR with specific standards. Temporary uses, again, in the 2008 code, they really weren't, 2008 version, they really weren't enumerated where in the 2019 code we did do that. But some of the changes would be to allow for farmers market, open air market. Sort of introducing a new temporary use, this is something we'll ultimately bring back citywide, is allowing for parking for model homes in subdivisions. Sales and leasing office, and one of the others is limiting seasonal sales. So they will have a properties owner association over the entire development. So those would be the ones who would apply for that. As they mentioned, two new uses, Heliport, Helipad, both of those would be limited to the MN and MR, and both would require an SUP or that dual public hearing process. And so off the bat, really staff didn't have any initial concerns with the modifications to the uses for this area. Looking at the overall density, it is a reduction of units. And so as you start to look at some of these changes, you'll see the current that's permitted, as well as the proposed, both for Hunter and Cole. So it is also a switch, you'll see that balance more of a, between single family and multi-family, right around that 60 to 70%. And then just an overall reduction, substantial reduction in units. One change that they are requesting with respect to R7 is a reduction in the lot width from 50 feet. These are 4,000 square foot lots in R7. They're requesting a reduction from 50 to 40. But as a result of that, kind of give you the little diagram here, what they're proposing is to allow for that zero lot line development. So there would still be a, ultimately, a 10-foot separation between the two with a maintenance easement. Looking at the height analysis, this just gives you an idea of what they currently can do under their MPC. And so for the most part in Hunter, they have a cap at 100 feet. Interestingly, Cole does have an area of CMG. In the old DDC, there was no height limitation in our CMG. So it could be as high as they could go with respect to the distance from the airport. What they're proposing is in that MN to increase it from 65 to 100. And within the MR, allowing that to go up to 200 feet. And then anything greater than 200 would require an SUP. And so when we really looked at this, we thought, well, this is, it's substantial. This is different than anything else we have in the city. But then again, it's really, it's almost like we're creating a separate city out there. And where would this intensity and density make the most sense? But what we also looked at is what they currently can do and what we were requiring. And so we had these, and I'll just jump back really, well, maybe I don't have it here, sorry. The, within the, I'm sorry, within the NR 10, 15, and 20, those were specific multifamily districts. And so you see that height limitation of 35 feet. And so really what we were creating was sort of this forest garden style apartment building. And so you could never, you could never really truly get more of that compact green development because you have the numbers, you have the density there, but you have this cap on height of 35 feet. And so it just spreads it out as well as spreads out the parking. And so by loosening that, I think it just allows for a more efficient land use than what you typically see with the sprawling garden apartments throughout. Again, it is a green field. But given the location of where they're looking to have that height, as well as the limitations on single-family acreages within, the acreage of single-family within those areas, as well as the provisions we have already in the code with respect to setbacks and stepbacks from residential with respect to height, we feel that it could be easily accounted or accomplished. One other proposed change that they have proposed is with respect to cluster subdivisions. And so this is one we went, we've gone back and forth with them on a number of times and expressed some concern initially with just allowing for two parking spaces on site with garages. This would be essentially a shared driveway for all, but requiring a two-car garage. And the product that they had provided to us is really requiring deed restrictions that would prohibit residents from parking outside of the garage or on the shared driveway. And then it would include one on-street or off-site parking space per unit. And so that's where you see these carve-outs within the development for that on-street parking. And so what they've agreed to do is limit that type of development to 15% of the net developable acreage within the R7MN or MR. So these wouldn't go in the R4 or R6. Again, this would be R7MN, MR, unless it was an age-restricted. So if you have a 55 and older where you typically don't have multiple people with multiple cars, that would be the only time where it wouldn't fall under that 15%. Getting into the ESA upland habitat, again, wanted to provide a little bit more clarification. Again, we looked at what the current MPCs, what they speak to with respect to the two -- the non-residential requirement and the residential requirement. And there was a chart that provided sort of this overall 55%. But under the old DDC, if you recall, residential was at 50, non-residential was at zero. We changed that in this year. And so for non-residential, it's 30% minimum. What they've agreed to do is remain -- keep that residential at 55%, but really look at that upland habitat overall retaining 55% of that. And so it would still far exceed what we would accomplish even under the new standards. We also did a comparison of tree canopy and preservation, and while most of the trees that are existing, a good number of them are within the upland cross timbers or flood plain ESA, obviously there's a lot of -- you can probably see that from the arrows -- a lot of mesquite scrub that's been out there that I think includes a lot of the area you'll see here kind of the patches throughout. But their existing tree canopy today is about 18%. Doing the math based upon acreage and requirements under their existing MPCs, the minimum canopy would be about 39%. And so what we did is we took that -- those same numbers and then applied it to the new zoning districts or sub-districts. And what we did is we actually netted it out to net developable acreage. So we could have done it on the gross. We really looked at it on the net developable. So it probably will be much higher than this number, but at the bare minimum, it's at 57% canopy, so still a substantial increase of where we even are today or even what the existing regulations under the MPC allows for. Getting into gas wells and pad sites that are out there, this is just a summary of the total number of well sites that are permitted. Hunter has 19. They did indicate that they are going to be reducing that by 5 to 14. There's five existing well sites, four that are platted but undeveloped, which leaves 10, if you will, that could be developed. That number may be reduced to five. It really depends which five they ultimately remove. But, excuse me, looking at existing wells, Hunter right today has approximately 14 wells. Undrilled wells, again, this is what's permitted by PLAT, is 188. And while I have the two asterisks there, because there are essentially 10 other pad sites that could be a maximum of 10 that could be developed, we don't know the number of wells that's yet to be determined. Cole is, they're permitted to have 15. They have 15 now. They have 38 existing wells and 24 that are undrilled. Most of their pad sites, I think those PLATs allow for four or five wells per pad. Getting into some of the changes for the gas wells, and I clarified this slide from the version that was submitted in the packet. I was just trying to consolidate it and I realized it probably didn't convey the message properly. And so I really wanted to clarify it a little more for today as it relates to drilling and production. And so in the current MPC for Hunter, there's four well sites that kind of have this, I don't want to call it a special exception, but it's sort of a special exception. They have a setback requirement of 750 or 500 feet, 750 from the wellhead or 500 from the site, I'm sorry, 750 feet from the wellhead. Or that could be reduced to 500 with written approval, and that's kind of the standard language we have throughout. And then the other 15 well sites, the setback again from the wellhead to structure, 500 could be reduced to 250 again. So these are new drilling and production sites. The reverse setback, so these would be for residential developing where we have those existing sites, or even if drilling and production came prior to the residential. It really just follows what was in place in 2008, which is 100 feet from the wellhead to the residential structure. And so that is what is on the books today. And then 300 feet from equipment for assembly, institution, or education. Again, this is essentially the bare minimum from the fire code that is in place today. What they're proposing, and while we'll be reconsidering it, the gas well ordinance, what they're proposing is those four sites that it be the greater of 750 or 500 feet from the pad site, or 500 with written approval. Again, this is essentially the standard that's in the code today. And then the new well sites, while I have 10, that number most likely will be reduced. Again, following the standard of what we have in place now, 1,000, with the ability to take it down to 500 with written approval. Again, these are what's in the code today. But what they've also agreed to do is follow the reverse setback of 500 feet from the pad site. And so this is probably, I think, this most substantial change from the old to the new, where the currently is 100 from the wellhead to structure. Now we're at 500 from pad site to lot line, particularly for residential. Coal, very, very different because all of the wells are already there. But the biggest difference, again, is increasing that reverse setback to 500 feet, again, to match what we will be reconsidering shortly. Well, not really part of the reconsideration, but. Looking at this in terms of numbers and just trying to quantify it and sort of how this proposal fits in with all of the recent discussions we had with respect to gas well. One, looking at reducing the number of single family lots by 29% overall. Reducing the number of well sites from 19 to 14. And then increasing that tree canopy, again, assisting with sequestering any air pollution. But looking at it just in terms of numbers, we ran some, just had Cody run some quick analysis on just gross area. And then looking at pad sites and then pad sites with 100 feet distance from that. So if you drew that concentric circle around the wellhead, what does that really encumber? And so you're at, of the 6400 acres, it's about 1.7 acres. That's what kind of falls into the land of that reverse setback. Again, this is looking at the nine wells on Hunter and the 15 on Cole. Applying that 500 foot to the pad site, again, this is assuming it's all going to be residential. But again, or protected use, you would encumber approximately 690 acres, or 11% of the site. So a substantial increase of where we are today under the existing MPCs to what's being proposed. And so sort of in summary, just kind of want to hit on some of the items for consideration. Again, that reduction of lot width for R7 from 50 to 40, it would, again, follow that zero lot line. It would still need to comply, I know we talked early on about that 40% rule where the garage cannot exceed 40% of the width of the house. With a 40 foot lot, once you factor in setbacks, you can't have a front garage. So the garages would be either rear loaded or setback behind the house. So that would be, they would need to comply with those regulations already in place. Reducing the parking for single family, again, I'm sorry, single family and cluster. Two off street, one on street guest, but then again, limiting it to 15% of the net. The use modifications, I won't go through all of them. But again, there were some limitations that were added in there with SUPs or other acreage limitations with respect to single family and MR. And then also the height increases, again, going from 65 to 100. Right now, it requires an SUP in MN, just allowing it by right in both branches. And then MR allowing it to go up to from 100 to 200, and then anything above 200 would require an SUP. And so from sort of an overview of kind of a bigger snapshot of this with respect to zoning, that's really all I had. >> All right, before we get started with the questions, just to help us sort of focus the discussion so that we can achieve what our goals are here today. What exactly is the, it says, the posting says to give staff direction out of this meeting, I know we've got another meeting. Out of this meeting, what is it that you're, the direction that you're needing from council? Is it this slide here, basically? Is it this summary here? >> It's essentially these two slides. >> Okay, all right. So if we could, I mean, obviously there's a lot of questions to ask and things such as that. But let's really also, and if I have to, I'll try to keep us focused that by the time we adjourn this particular part of the work session, we need to have direction on this. So I'm going to try to keep us corralled into what we're trying to do here today. Okay, trying to figure out the best way to do this. I know Council Member Armitter had a question that she graciously was willing to wait until the end. So I'm going to let her go and then we'll just take it as the questions come forward. If we have to, we just might start on one end of the dais and go the other direction. Council Member Armitter? >> Yeah, so I wanted to, well, I mean, a number of questions, but the one that May was referring to, has to do with what you were saying earlier that I think covers a number of these considerations about how having low density along I-35 is not reasonable. And am I correct in understanding that you're acknowledging that that's in contrast with our 2030 plan? Is that correct? >> Correct, and so what I think our 2030 plan, while we recognized and created these policies to really look at, I mean, facilitate revisions to the land use mix and design of approved and future MPCs. And so while we recognize that and then list, kind of enumerate those bulleted items, we didn't do anything for a change to the map. There was another policy that talked about a small area plan. I don't know that this is really a candidate, true candidate for a small area plan. It's kind of what we, the process I think that was undertaken over the last year or ten months. We don't have vast neighbors surrounding them other than ropes in which I believe they met with. And so it's really kind of reformulating it and really focusing of as we're planning and connecting these roadway networks and not having kind of these gaps. What makes the most sense and really to lessen that development intensity back from the major roadways and the interstates as we start to tear back. And get away from the kind of the 2499, I guess is the perfect example as we see those roadways cutting through. And then all of a sudden, backs of residential neighborhoods flush up against those six lane roads with lots that were anticipated for commercial and getting into this hole. The concerns that we deal with on a daily basis in looking at these retrofitting of projects and roads. Where this one is truly, I mean we're truly for once planning and focusing on how we develop this properly. >> And so I understand that this is coming from trying to imagine how this property could work best within this space. My comment on that and why I'm going to be directing no to these considerations has partly to do with what I like about the 2030 plan. Which is how it focuses the increased density from a city wide perspective on the areas closer to the center of town. And emphasizes lower density on the peripheries as a way of maximizing housing and mixed use closer to the center and keeping our rural areas rural. So I'm not objecting to the way that you work with this within this space because I understand that that was a part of the objective in kind of maintaining that. But I would just rather not have this there to begin with. >> Because I see when you drive that road now, I mean yes, a major highway, but you've got a lot of country, you've got ropes and ranch, but you've got country. And so any incarnation of this makes it no longer a country road. So that's why I'm opposed to this on that principle of the 2030 plan. But I hope you understand, I understand that you are trying to respect those principles in configuring this property within that space. >> And I don't know if they'll be able to do it, but I've asked for, and if you can't, that's not a big deal. Those last two slides that show what you're needing direction on, if we are able to get a hard copy if we can't, I just know we're going to be flipping back to that. But I want us to make sure that we are addressing those particular items as well. So just wanted to reiterate that because there's a lot there for us to consider and try to do. Okay, we're just going to start over here. I haven't seen a lot of people, is it okay if we start over here? You know, I start over to my left all the time. Is it okay if I start over here? >> Yeah, that's fine. I was just going to make a comment. >> Oh, go ahead, sure. >> I have a problem about her question. >> Sure, go ahead. >> Yeah, because that's a concern for me too. When we talk about neighborhood, so neighborhood shopping areas and walkable business districts, it looks like this is more of a highway corridor, which is fine. But if all the residential is so far back, people are going to have to get in their cars and drive up. And so I was hoping, or I thought maybe we could focus on those, having some of that more in residential so that you could have walkable, you know, kids could ride their bike to the store kind of situation in a development so large as this. >> And that I think we do have. >> Oh, okay. >> Maybe I just didn't explain it correctly or properly. But if you really look at the plan amendment itself compared to, again, and what's unique about this is we're not starting new. So it's almost, we're adapting of what they're already permitted to do. And so it's how are we, is this an improvement? And kind of that's where I looked at. Is this an improvement of what they can do today? And so it's not that they can't do anything. They have an approved, we have two approved MPCs. But we really looked at, you know, again, looking at focusing around these nodes. But then also, again, tailoring it back where you have these R4, but limiting where you have some MN at certain locations. So you still have that neighborhood serving retail and commercial. But what I don't think we want is to have office employment back here in residential neighborhoods. Where that is pushed further to where the interstates are. Where whether we have people that are working and living in the neighborhood or coming from elsewhere, it keeps that traffic off the local network as opposed to coming inside. But there are the roadway, local roadway, as well as local trails that would connect each neighborhood to the parks and schools. I think we'll probably get into that more next week. That was just my follow-up, so thank you. Yeah, so I think what would be helpful, if we could, if our initial questions will probably, I don't know how long we're going to go, but let's keep them concise. But if the questions could be addressed towards the direction that is being given so that your questions, whatever questions you have regarding these items that they're needing direction on, that you can get those questions answered in order to be able to provide the direction either way based upon the responses. So that would be helpful. Because there's a lot here that we're not really asked to decide today. That we're going to be asked to decide maybe the next week and talk about, whereas this is really what we're here to try to give direction on. Councilmember Davis, we'll start over here with you. Sure, I have a few questions, one very quick comment. I want to try to avoid describing this area as having a rural character. I understand why we do that. There are cows out there. There's a windmill. But we're talking about an interstate highway sandwiched between the 25th fastest growing city in the country and one of the five largest cities in the state. The time to decide whether this was going to be rural or not into perpetuity was back when the feds gave us 35W. And we ended up with an interstate running from Denton down to Fort Worth. So my questions pertaining to these considerations kind of have that understanding of this land and the way it's going to develop into the future. Kind of going back to Councilmember Briggs question, I understood your answer with regard to traffic flow and staying within the neighborhood and that kind of thing. How does that, and some of the recommendations we're looking at, specifically the density questions, how does that relate to our preferred growth concept? We have the opportunity here to shape the direction of 6,000 acres, 6,400 acres. How are we orienting this new MPC agreement toward neighborhood retail? How are we orienting it towards that clustered growth, even though it's being done and planned in a large way? How are we planning kind of the sub areas inside of there? I'm just wondering if I'm seeing enough of the MNs at the major intersections. I'm wondering why I'm not seeing any MD in there. Can you help me understand that and how it relates to the preferred growth concept? Certainly. Let me go, so as we look at sort of the plan amendment, if you will, compared to what's there today. Really looking at allowing for that flexibility within those districts. I think the provisions that we have built in the 2019 code have certain protections to avoid those incompatible uses between commercial and residential. But having that flexibility, particularly with R7, to respond to some of the market conditions, where I don't necessarily think we want an MN at every key location, but on some of these major roadways, the 2499s and closer to ropes and ranch, I think definitely makes sense. But again, with the uses that we're requesting to be allowed within R7 to allow some of that retailer commercial, I think we'll promote that. I mean, it's hard to say that every single intersection is going to have that, but I think from where we are to what's being proposed puts us in a favorable position to accomplish those sort of four or five areas outlined under that preferred growth. Again, focusing on those kind of those nodes, walkable trails, integrated mixed use, employment closer to work, closer to employment. My next question has to do with your second consideration slide in height. So I'm less concerned with along the highway, I'm more concerned with adjacent to the airport, and I have another question there as well. But can you tell us what are the boundaries of the existing airport overlay? And are we are we making any changes there with this? I assume that those are they butt up against each other, but they're not. There's no overlap there. That overlay, what's current today will be currently current with respect to this plan. So there's really no changes with respect to that. So they would need to comply with all of the restrictions within that overlay. And then again, I think if you go above a certain height, I don't remember the exact if it's two or 300, that requires FAA approval. It's been a while since I've worked on a high rise like that. But those items are already built in. And then on the MR, this is kind of an overarching question. Typically, when we're talking about some of these things, we have a draft ordinance or something. We have the draft. And which map are we working from? Because, for instance, the kind of if you go go back further in your presentation, you've got one of the maps that we saw in their presentation as well. But then if we look at their bubble map that we've got on the phone core over here, that that doesn't exactly line up. So, for instance, what we've got big broad swaths of of M of MR right along the highway. Then in theirs, there's kind of some mixed MR in there. There's kind of some R7 stuck in there. Yeah. And then even like on this current slide, you've got MR, all the purple there under that kind of wavy road parallel to the highway. But then on their bubble map, that's not all MR. So what are we kind of working from at this point? Both. I know that sounds really confusing. It kind of goes back to that consideration. So I think what their what their bubble map does is actually takes it down another level or two from that overall the zoning layer of MPC. And then we get into the sub districts. And that's kind of where we've stopped. They've taken it down another level or another floor to start to get into that granular. Let's look at some of these developable pods. And so the R7 that you may see there, while it's still our MR, it would still be MR. It's going back to that item for consideration. Should R7 be permitted in in in MR to kind of fit with where they're what they're anticipating. So for some of those, I have different feelings on different parts of that consideration. I think overall I'd prefer to see something closer to that granularity if we're going to say is R7 permitted in MR. I understand the flexibility of MR, but why aren't we not just saying it's R7 as opposed to MR? We've been a few weeks ago, more than a month ago now, we looked at the razor ranch plan and we had some heartburn over the fact that it had changed from what we had originally seen on slide. And what we had wanted back then probably was more granularity and more permanency in the plan. So it's striking the right balance between flexibility for the developer and the products they're going to offer and the changes in the market, but also knowing what we're actually planning here. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with big, broad swaths of MR, whatever that's going to be, as opposed to a little bit more granularity, something closer to their bubble plan. So like on this slide you've got up there, single family and MR, I'm just not there yet with that. I prefer to say this pod in this place should be single family or should have that allowance given to it. Let's call MR MR and R7 R7 and decide where those things are, even if it's just at a bubble map level. I think those are all my questions for now. Thank you. I'll just listen and primarily I think for me the decision points for me are one, kind of shape the discussion going forward with planning and zoning. Again, I don't think it's time to make sweeping decisions as you've kind of pointed out. It's hey, how do we shape the conversation so that we can get all the necessary input? I think for me though, in my kind of review, one, when you're talking about the 2030 plan, one, I served on that committee. So I have a different look at that and I can't wait until we redo it and it be done right. And I can talk days about how I don't like how it was put together and saw that firsthand. I think also when we're talking about it, I will piggyback off of Council Member Davis' point. When you're talking about a rural look, I think everything you've shown and everything, it's important. Everything they've done has been, has maintained that character. Everything in Northlake, and I just ran some quick numbers if you believe, Google, AT&T has 100,011 if you count standard room seats, if you will. The Texas Motor Speedway has 181,655. The screen is bigger. You drive I-35 and you barely know it's there. You barely know that there's a rail station back there and all the corporate campuses back there. They've done a great job at developing that and maintaining that look, maintaining Alliance Airport. So these are things they've already on the ground done and stayed true to the geography. So I don't have those same concerns about that. So with respect to your kind of decision points so that I can get out of the way, I think I'm okay with it. Can you take me through, though, the parking cluster and where those will be located again, please, just so I can understand that better? Let me go to the graphic. And so, again, this is, again, sort of a modification to our cluster subdivision standards. But really what the modification is with respect to parking. And so they've showed the – and we were – quite honestly, we were very reluctant initially in supporting this. And we – they've showed us some products and how it's managed. And part of our concern is – the concern that we had was everything turning into this and what issues could potentially occur. I'm not saying it's bad, but again, like anything, anything over – in excess could be bad, right? And so we looked at how can we – how can we at least limit this so we have some reasonable expectation of – to ensure that we have sort of the even traditional neighborhoods built in with the cluster. And really it was that limitation of 15 percent, again, and it wasn't – we talked about should we limit units, should we limit acreage. And with the number of units, I think it just – it becomes too restrictive. I think it's better to even look at that net developable acreage. So we're not even looking at gross acreage, we're looking at net developable. So we're shrinking that box even more. But taking it down to just 15 percent of that area, again, and limiting it to R7MN and MR. So is this – let me see. So this is a cul-de-sac always? Yeah, this is a private drive. So typically you would do the cluster if it would be built around an open space area or some other area that they would look to preserve. Public road here, private shared drive. So you'd have a two-car garage for each. The way the deed restrictions are written, it prohibits any parking outside the garage. So it's almost a self-policing, but then ensuring that there's at least some offsite parking for visitors or guests, one per unit. And when we looked at it, just being familiar with a number of similar developments, only restricted to 55 and older is where I typically have seen these, and I've never have seen the issue where two retirees have more than two cars. It's not necessarily – could happen, but at least that's kind of the premise behind it. Okay, got it. And then if you could take me through just the zero lot slide. Correct. So the zero lot line – and so this gives that – and we had asked them, provide us with a graphic so it's clear what we're talking about. And so it's not a – what you would consider that – what's a duplex, right? And so really it's the two lots here. You'd have a zero lot line on this side, 10-foot on here, but a four-foot maintenance easement. So whether they need to clean gutters, wash windows, paint the house, whatever they would need to do, that easement, that maintenance easement would be – well, it would be on this property. Everyone would have it for their neighbors, if you will. So it allows for – it still allows for a 10-foot separation between the units. It's just a different configuration. So is there fencing? It could be. There could be fencing. They would just need to provide access for that – for that maintenance easement. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Well, and so that I can sum up, I think I'm at this point okay with staffs, with kind of what's laid out here. If you could pull those slides up, please, Richard. Yeah, there's two slides. I think this is the first one we have. Yeah. I'm okay with staffs' support column for a couple of reasons. One, it'll go forward and get the public input. Two, I'm okay with the zoning kind of approach and flexibility because they developed two housing – or two developments, I guess, is the easiest way, just to the south of here. And so they have to be in tune with the market and the trends, et cetera. And they develop alliance, which is – I mean, we're busing people there for jobs. So obviously that's been successful at one time – 61,000 jobs, and DCTA is running people out there now. So we can't say that that isn't a great benefit to our citizens because we're trying to support that. So thank you very much. Councilmember Meltzer. And on these specific narrow issues, I'm perfectly comfortable with staffs' recommendations. You know, the questions I have are sort of on a much bigger scale. I don't know sort of if you want to get into everything or not. No, what I'd like to do is first get around and get this done, and then we'll have some questions – we'll save some time. I'll allow some time for some questions on the bigger issues so that the applicant can hear that, the developer can hear it, so that it'll just be more information for them if you don't mind that. Yeah, that's fine. So I'll, you know, let you move along. Okay, all right. And I'm going to go last. So Councilmember Armitage. Going around for direction? Yes. Yeah, so I already gave my direction that I'm against all of these. Okay. I appreciate staffs' creative, you know, working within these limitations. Okay. Okay. I'll just run down the list here. On the first one, what I'm afraid of is if we allow the reduction from 50 foot down to 40 foot, they will end up with all 40 foot. So as long as we can get some type of a limitation on there as percentage overall, I'm fine with it. And as I recall, in the new DDC, you can actually get even below 40 with townhomes, and they are allowed in R7. So the limitation has to kind of include where we're going to be at with that as well. But otherwise, I'm okay with it. The second one on the one-guest off-street parking, trying to look at the map, because the only place in town I could think of that kind of went like this is Shadowbrook Court, and that works very well. And it looks to me like there are eight homes and eight parking places in that Center Boulevard area, so I'm comfortable with that. I do kind of question, and maybe it's, I think Councilmember Davis had the same question, the single family in the MR. That seems a little odd, and I'd like to know, kind of have a little more background on that as to why they feel that that's a necessity. And again, we had some of those same concerns. We got to a point, again, limiting the acreage. And certainly they can respond as well, but what we really looked at in discussing it with them is allowing for that flexibility, if it were to be an office park, to have some residential closer to it within that MR. Okay. Like I said, I probably want to have a little more explanation, and I can get comfortable with it. As far as the height increases, I'm okay with it because we do have the setback rules that if you're setting back from single family, how far you have to be to be a certain building high, so I'm comfortable with that as well. Okay, so just to summarize, so I'll make sure I got it right. On the first one, you were saying that you'd like to see some type of limitation, in other words, not all R7 could be reduced down to 40 feet. Correct. The parking and single family and cluster subdivision, you're okay with that? Yes. And then the use modifications, you need to hear a little bit more about single family and MR. Correct. And then you'll make your decision on that. And then on the last two, you're okay with those? Correct. Okay. Councilmember Briggs. So just to clarify, you're going to let us go around and ask questions for next presentation? Yes. Okay. So this will just be for these. Yeah, yes, yes. So I'm okay. I mean, we worked on this code in DDC. We got into the nitty gritty of it. So I'm familiar with all this, and it's been, we've worked through it, and so I'm happy that they're going to comply with that, especially when we're talking about the ESA. And the tree canopy. And I like the flexibility that you talked about, but I also like the idea when Councilmember Davis said, you know, we need to lock in some things because I don't want the same thing happening. I mean, this is going to be a long project, 8, 10 years, 20 years out. And so we need to make sure, I mean, this is going to be this council's legacy, really. I mean, we need to make sure that it's done right. And so I want to be a little bit more clear on some of those zonings and the use of single family and MR and R7 and, you know, how much can go where. And, you know, walkable neighborhoods, kind of, you know, the idea of what that's going to look like. So as far as these considerations, you know, I'm okay with them. I just want to see a little bit more detail about it. And the SUPs will come to council. It would go through P and Z for review recommendation and then to council. Okay. Yeah, I just have some questions about how their board works as well on setting restrict, you know, other other stuff. And I guess that'll be in the next conversation. You're talking about the individual MMD board of directors and the HOA is that what they're called. I don't know if that's what they're called. Yeah, I don't know. Did they do they have those kind of zoning powers and that may be a question to come back to later. But yeah, that's something I want. Yeah. Okay. I have some more stuff I'll ask later. But as far as this goes, my understanding was they're they're looking at a an overall property owners association. And so so that was something we talked about with particularly with respect to seasonal sales is for for such a large development. How can we so we don't have every single business doing a different different seasonal sales. How can how can we be a little bit more strategic about it and really have that run through the property association? So I think that that that was their intent, but I can I would defer to them. I just have one more question about the ESA because, you know, we're pulling it up and there was the the non-residential is they can for 30 percent. And it was kind of iffy like, well, maybe they are maybe they aren't. But it was like, well, they can do this, but they're not going to. Is there a possibility to actually lock that in more? I believe there is between the break. Mr. Carlock had indicated that they're really looking at retaining 55 percent overall of the of the upland habitat. So so when will when we bring this back, we'll we'll refine that we'll refine it more. But again, it was to at least at a bare minimum meet the the new standard, the standard. But I think if we go to where it's 55 percent, whether you're residential or commercial on an average, but if we can get that narrowed down, I think that I think that's something that we can do. That's going to be important to see. Thank you. OK, a couple of comments, sort of general observations. One is I want to be mindful of any decisions that we make that are contrary to the D.D.C. now that applies to everyone else in town that we understand that the first thing we're going to hear when somebody asks for that is that. Well, wait a minute. You gave it to Hunter and Cole Ranch. So that's some of my questions are going to be helping me understand what's the current status status of some of these. So like on the R7 minimum lot with I think we can go down to that in R7 in the new D.D.C. or no. Is it is it a 50 foot requirement? It's a 50 foot. OK, so that's that's a deviation from the current code. All right. The single family and M.R. that's a deviation from the current code. Is that correct? Yes. OK. And the same with removing retail square foot limitations. Yeah, there were some some limitations on on square footage that would require require an issue. OK, certain limitations within within M.N. But then there were other limitations with respect to maximum maximum square foot of retail and then anything over that amount would require would require. All right. So then allowing multifamily and M.N. without S.E.P. currently requires an S.E.P. Correct. OK. And so I just to make sure where there's no staff support where it's blank, that means you're not supporting. I'm sorry, where it's blank, it just kind of summarized. OK, when I see how adding helipads and heliport uses, you're saying that space next to these removing retail square foot limitations and so forth and so on. Yeah, we are in support of all that. Yeah, we we lumped we just lumped that into this. OK. All right. Within that box. And then on the height increase, currently an M.N. is sixty five. If you go to sixty five feet, does it require an S.E.P. From sixty if it goes to anything about from sixty five to one hundred, it requires. OK, so that one hundred foot is allowed. Currently, it's just the S.E.P. or no S.E.P. that is the deviation. Correct. Correct. And the same with the second one, the M.R. M.R. would be an increase. They're allowed to go to one hundred now in M.R. OK. They're actually asking to increase that to two hundred and then anything above two hundred would require an S.E.P. And so how is it currently in M.R.? In M.R., I believe it's one hundred by right and then anything above that requires a S.E.P. So they want to double it and anything above that by right. OK. For me, in general, conceptually, I mean, I want to provide I want to continue the conversation. I guess I am concerned about a precedent that we're setting. If we begin to say you don't need an S.E.P. here, you don't need S.E.P. there, those S.E.P.s are in place for a reason. If we would increase something higher, OK, fine. But we put them in there so that people could have input, people could have the neighborhoods. When you're looking at a two hundred foot building, I don't know how close residential supposed to be to that based upon at least the concept that I've seen. So maybe there just needs to be more education on my part in that regard. But I want to be mindful of that because in essence, we're applying a different standard to a major portion of our city, even though it's not developed. And so if we're going to do that, I think we need to have an understanding. And I think Councilmember Briggs said this would be our legacy. Look, over 30 or 40 years, whatever's out here now, that's going to change. I mean, I mean, you can look at some of the other places in town that we've had that we've had things in place that we needed to modify for the marketplace for, you know, the desires of the community. So here we're trying to give it our best guess to get it on the ground, to give it some future look. But 20, 30, 40 years from now, I don't know. So that's another reason why I want to make sure if we deviate from the current code that we really do that with some intentionality and some understanding of what is it, how is this going to come back at us? Not necessarily in this development, but it could, but also in some other developments that because we still have some large MPCs that are still raw land out on the books. So that's not a criticism. It's not a definitive statement of I can't support or I can support. It's just more putting it out there so that we can have an understanding. And that that is something that I wrestle with. So I think without knowing some of the rationale and the interests that were that are being pursued in some of the deviations with a little bit more clarity, it's hard for me to to make a decision on that. I'm not saying default against it or default for it, just I need to understand for I'm going to make this decision that it makes not sense, but it's it's reasonable given because to me the most important thing if this moves forward is and I know that we weren't held. They're not held to the flyover and the last animation. You can look at this developers other projects and product and see that it's some way very similar. You've got a nice class a office building and you got surrounded by some nice multifamily. So you do have that certainly more walkability, more transportation opportunities other than vehicles than what we currently have in a lot of areas in our city. And also when you look at their commercial development, which to me the most important part at least from the city's perspective and maximizing its its its opportunity here is the commercial corridor along 35. I mean, could you imagine if you're able to get a corporate campus a class a corporate campus which we, you know, we have some corporate located corporate headquarters here that we could add to. So my concerns with precedent, I would say they're minor up to about 40 50%. I just want to be mindful of that because we spent a lot of time. We spent how many meetings did we have a lot, you know, a year and we're coming to a close, you know, if we have in the next meeting on the 13th or not. But so I think a little more explanation, not necessarily today, but maybe in a white paper or something would be helpful in that regard. But I think from what I've heard, there's a strong consensus or a consensus to move forward in principle on many of the staff supports with some clarification as Councilmember Davis had pointed out. So I think that could all get worked out at the next meeting as well with with some additional clarification. Does that make sense? No, it does. And just a little a little bit more. But and that was kind of where I started with that first slide again. You're looking at managed growth versus plan because I think a lot of the scenarios we ran through with the new DDC while we looked at new development. A lot of it we really we kind of looked at within the confines of 35. Okay. And so kind of stepping out of that and saying, you know, maybe this does make sense to have good points. I remember we had that height discussion about, well, maybe it makes sense to have have taller buildings along 35. But then again, we've got a lot of neighborhoods as you get 35 E out here. We don't necessarily have that. And that's a good point. That's a good point that that was really created in the context of a greater vision. But primarily the loop cord, the loop and I 35 boundaries of how do we manage that given some of the things that have happened, you know, in the recent past regarding neighborhoods and development and things such as that. So that's a good point. I certainly appreciate that. And I think that and if there's some way that we could even create something in the current DDC that really does codify what you just said. And then sort of I don't want better like a word permission to say, hey, you know, things are different or it's something that just says we may do this in the future and it doesn't seem like it's such a deviation. But that's a good point. And I think that's where we went. I'm glad to a certain extent we brought back that the PD provisions right while they could be abused. I think, you know, when you look at a zoning code, it's you're applying it for the for everybody across across the board and not everything fits within that neat box. And so I think you have these, whether it be the MPC or PD to really look at those special areas and plan accordingly. So do you think you have enough information or do you I mean, if someone has a question here to get a little bit more clarification on one of these items, because it's probably going to be coming back so that we can give staff the information. So obviously, the developers here to hear that as well. But so that we can make it as comprehensive as possible when it when it comes back. Yes. So I have a clarification from what I said earlier. I'm actually not in favor of removing an SGP where one is required on some of those, especially the height. Okay, or the multifamily. That was a critical conversation when we had that. I know that this is a newer development and there's not going to be a lot of homes yet. But I think that's a valuable process. I'm going to go with Davis and then Councilmemorandum. Yeah, just in case I wasn't real clear earlier, I think I'm fine with all of the staff support items, except for the use modifications. I think that's where we need the attention. And I really like their bubble map a lot better than I like our big broad map. So somewhere in between there is really what I'm looking for to give us a little more granularity. Also on the ESAs, right now they're under the zoning. You know, like they are zoned. I would like to see something that pulls them out of zoning and preserves in a better way. I don't know if that's a ownership issue to talk about another day in conjunction with the other parks plan. I don't know if that's another kind of issue to take up in the conversation with the MMD later on. I would like to see greater protection given. I'll say the hills, not just the ESAs broadly, but the hills that we've referred to as ESA, I think ABNC on one of the maps. I'd like to see something in the MPC that really sets those aside, besides the broad percentages. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll return. >> Yeah, so now they're going to be storage facilities or facility on this? >> I believe those were, they were only permitted in LI. >> Okay. >> But there, I'd have to go back to, I don't remember every use of numerary, but I believe the storage facilities may be permitted currently within the commercial areas. And I think that that was something that was being requested, if I'm not mistaken. >> Yeah, and that's kind of what I wanted to clarify, that was my understanding that a storage facility would be allowed under these. >> I'd have to, I don't think, it's not every district. I would have to pull. >> Yeah, that's fine. >> You can bring that back as clarification. >> Yeah, thank you, and we can hear about that later. >> I'm sorry, and Cole Ranch would be allowed in MN and MR. >> MN and MR, okay, so. >> In Cole. >> In Cole, yeah, and so I found out just last night and I saw, I had asked for the minutes of this today that in, over in North Lakes where they've got a similar, the same developer or the hillside. >> Hillwood. >> Hillwood. >> They, the North Lake City Council, they recently voted against a zoning change. I say recently, this was in May of this year, I believe, late May. Allowing, it was regarding a zoning change for, I believe, a storage facility. And their zoning labels are different than ours, but it was basically a change from rural residential to a commercial use. And so I was wondering if we were going to be going through something similar regarding these uses. >> There wasn't a wholesale change of the use table. I just don't have the PDC, but I can easily provide that. >> Okay, thanks. So I do want to say, I mean, obviously from an historical context when we had this conversation originally, it did pass to go down the legislature to even allow us to have this conversation. And some voted for it and some voted against it. I think what we're talking about now is what is it going to take, if it's going to take anything. I mean, Council Member Armitry, you already said you don't support any of this, I appreciate that. That as we're making requests or suggestions or our position, I think it's important that, well, I can only tell you from my perspective. I mean, if somebody's asking for something and they get it and then they decide to vote against it, I think we need to be mindful of that. And I want to be mindful of that because I don't necessarily want to put everybody in that box. I mean, so we're trying to figure out is there a way that this council either moves forward or doesn't? And I'm hoping that, and I know that we're asking for the things that are important for us in this particular endeavor. And that, so I just, I want to say that because there's going to be a lot of back and forth. There's going to be a lot of back and forth in this particular thing. So we're going to, let's take a five minute break then we're going to come back to the general questions and we'll start with you, Council Member Mouser. And then we'll go around to see questions to help with the presentation next time. Welcome back to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Tuesday, December the 3rd, 2019. It is 2.50. We're on agenda item, still on agenda item, 3A. Now we've basically gone through the formal presentations and then some direction from council on the items that staff was needing direction on with some clarification. So now we're going to open it up for some general questions. I'm going to allow about 15 or 20 minutes for this because this presentation is going on for about three hours or close to it. So let's really make it concise so that the developer can understand what questions need to be answered the next time around. So, Council Member Mouser, you're up. Yeah, I'm having a hard time being concise. I'll be short if I can. Sure. You know, just make some overall observations. First of all, you know, no one's really commented. Staff has done quite an impressive amount of work in collaboration with the developer. There's quite a lot of movement since what we saw before. You know, and I very much appreciate that. And I absolutely do get that Denton needs housing up and down the spectrum. I absolutely get that we need classing office space, that that's a critical requirement to getting career type jobs. We have employment, but we don't have career type employment, and those employers need class A office space. And I very much appreciate the canopy, the three million dollars toward affordable housing, the trail network. But in forming questions, I'm a little torn in that I'm a little unclear on exactly why, exactly what the choice is in whether we do the MMD or not. Is it that we feel that if we don't do it, nothing will happen here, or something will happen, but without the sort of negotiated benefits. It kind of leads me into different directions, not knowing kind of what's the door number two. So I'll say a little more about that before you attempt to answer that. I see the city manager is ready to answer. If I look at it as we're going to do this extraordinary thing that we don't do for other developers, who have to put their infrastructure into their housing prices, then I'd say it should be something extraordinary that Denton wouldn't otherwise have. The fact that what's being proposed is better than what's required is good, it's absolutely good. Is it good enough to say we should do this extraordinary thing? And that might not be a reasonable stance. I'm just saying that's in my thoughts. If I heard we should do this because with this agreement, we're going to preserve all the environmentally sensitive areas. That would be in and of itself almost a compelling reason to do this, because otherwise that wouldn't happen. I don't see West Lakes Park here comparable, and we're adding like a third of Denton again, more than that. North and South Lakes Park are like three, four hundred acre properties. Like I said, this might not be reasonable, but this is in my thoughts. So yeah, I guess maybe I'll leave it at that. I'll tack on one very narrow question, which is will our constituents at Robeson Ranch be able to drive their golf carts up to the new retail? Okay. All right. Did you want to address, I think you had a question on clear choice of MMD. Did you want to? Yeah, I don't know about the golf carts, but with regard to why is this necessary, I think that's a really good question. Obviously, when the MMD request was made, there's consideration for that. It becomes a negotiation. So what staff's done, I appreciate you acknowledging the staff effort, especially Richard and Mac Rewan from Legal and Cynthia Kershaw. They've spent an enormous amount of time drafting these agreements and going through the plans. And really what's driving this is kind of taking off from where the council was a year ago, the questions, concerns that you had. Obviously, the 35W, this is something that's going to change the character out there. They're adding additional capacity, three more interchanges out there. It's going to change. Our consistent message to them since the council voted in the MMD legislation last year was, look, we heard about affordable housing is a concern in the community. We understand you know that open space and preservation of the upland habitat, the ESA is a major concern. What are you doing? We want to see enhanced gas well setbacks. And since July, this council has been talking about increasing it to 500 feet, asking a lot of questions. And we basically said we want this plan approved from the entitlements that you previously had, or we're not going to recommend it. And that's really been the approach that we've taken. We've been very blunt with them that we wanted to see some of your goals hit, and we wanted to come in and basically say this is an improved plan. The density is down significantly on the residential side. So while there's a lot of cluster developments, there was the potential to have about 30% more housing out there before the development. There was a potential for homes to be within one to 200 feet of gas wells. They didn't have to ask you, and that was by right. So we've tried to kind of listen to where the council wanted to go and to try to meet as many goals as possible out here in consideration. If at the end of the day, what you're seeing right now is just sort of a work in progress that's been vetted up to now. You're not seeing all the negotiation that's taken place before we would present something to you. So today was really a good opportunity to say, are we generally on target? Are we heading in the direction you want us to head in in order for you to consider authorizing the MMD so they can change the SUP, the development plan out there and get moving forward? There's been a lot of movement and goals that were important to each of you. And our concern today was Richard hit some of the planning issues. I like the question about what kind of precedent we're setting. That's important, and we'll get back to you on that. But generally, it's a check in. Are we in the right direction before we come back with the operating agreements and the overall project agreement, which is next up and memorializes all of this? And so it's real important that if we're off base and some of the changes that they've made, and they have been significant. All the reduction in density, all the lost acreage, all the additional compaction up along I-35 is pretty much directly related to the preservation of the open space and the gas well compliance that we've asked them to hit. And the question for the council, it's not our call, it's your call, is are they getting close enough? And if not, where do you want us to continue working with them? So that's the whole point of today. Ultimately, unless you're satisfied, the MMD doesn't go forward. And so I think based on what I'm hearing today is that my take is that we're generally heading in that direction. There's definitely more specificity and granularity that you'd like to see in a few areas, and we're happy to do that. But we really needed to hear from you before we come back with the proposed agreements. I'm not anticipating this is over at all on the next workshop. It's such a huge development. There's so many different opinions on council with this that we're anticipating probably another workshop being necessary or two. It doesn't matter to us. The issue is, are you going to get comfortable with this? And what direction do I give staff to pull this forward? So that's the context for why we're even discussing this and why we're here today. And a lot of slides here basically just showing you where we are at a point in time. Mayor Pro Tem? Thank you. Yeah, again, thanks to city manager staff for pulling it forward. I do think we're going in a great direction. And I want to say, I think for me, just going forward, especially when you're talking I-35 and what that's going to look like up against that, I just think that's a really difficult ask. And what I want to avoid is almost runs parallel with wanting to see specificity, is not over-promising and under-producing. And we don't -- no one in this room has control over TxDOT. See Teasley Lane, see I-35 that's a year behind, we have no control over that. And so I don't know that it's fair to hold anyone's feet to the fire regarding TxDOT. I've seen one entity that can make TxDOT move faster than they plan to, and that was amazing. Other than that, I've not seen anyone be successful in those endeavors. And so I'm sensitive to what we want to plan, but I also want to factor in reality that you're talking about something that we cannot control. And so in that vein, though, I was encouraged to see the presentation. I want to see more on how this development manages that traffic flow. And so understanding if that is the number one thing I've heard from those that live on that 380 corridor, that they function inside their neighborhood and those neighborhoods very well, but then they're stuck waiting to turn on to 380. And that's been a major pain point. So when I look at kind of projecting forward what this will do, I just want to try to learn from those experiences and from those that I've talked to. I've been consistent all the way throughout, and I'll tell them again to Paul's point. If there's not a unique feature in this development, then I'm absolutely -- my decision pivots on that. And you look at 380, there was a lagoon that they added to the development. I've shared my thoughts with them, but it will need to have some unique characteristic or that it could be the greatest deal ever, and I'm going to lean towards nothing. Because we just -- that's just -- it's that important to me. When you're talking about MMD, if we could -- when it comes back, I'd like to know, or if we can get something in advance of that. I think that -- Todd, correct me if I'm wrong, but the MMD with the city appointment, that's a new feature. Has that always been in place? That -- I believe that's been in place since the initial legislation was run, that we have the ability -- the city council have the ability to appoint someone to each of the MMD boards. Okay, got it. And then I just want to understand those kind of rules, regulations, where those individuals have to live. I just want to kind of understand those, maybe it's a chart of some sort that says if this and that, kind of a flow or chart. I just want to understand how those boards are made up. So we appoint a person to -- does everyone have to live in that general area? I just want to understand more about that as we shape that, because that's going to be important. And so that could be next presentation. And lastly, I think I do look forward to the next presentation and those numbers and seeing if they -- to borrow Council Member Davis' vernacular, if it pencils out. I think that's going to -- that was kind of one of the things that we were told initially that it would pay for itself. And to have a third party give that analysis will be very valuable. Thank you. Council Member -- Council Member Riggs. So I'm going to separate this conversation from the one today. I just took the considerations and although I was originally -- I voted no for it, I took these as individual considerations and weighed in today. But next meeting is going to be pretty valuable. I enjoyed seeing the pictures and the videos today. It was really pretty and the development was nice. But the issue I have is we're still creating a separate taxing district. That's the main issue here and that's still where I'm stuck. But I would like to see if -- what is our financial modeling over time in 20 and 30 years? And does the property tax that we're going to get without what the developers are going to get pay for our upkeep throughout the years? And I think that's something we saw on the consultant, but I want to make sure that we really nail that down and get a figure. Because since I've been on council, it's been back and forth. It's been this, maybe it's been that. So that's going to be very important. And I'd also like to see if we could separate the two developments because when you lump them together, they look really large and it looks like it's unrealistic for developers to put in the infrastructure. But if they're separated, what that's going to look like because it's -- for me, it looks like it's easier to do without the district. I'm curious if the residents are taxed in perpetuity forever or if that ever ends. And also, I'm interested about sales tax, if that's affected and how that works in the MMD, if that's not at all. Okay. My main concern -- okay, here's some other things. So I want to know more about the power of the HOA and the board to make changes, as Richard touched on earlier, that they were asking for something. I don't even know what it is that they were asking for. I'd like to know more about that. I would also like to know what kind of talks they've had with DCTA to make that more of a transit, you know, some sort of oriented development with dedicated lanes and stops for the buses, for, you know, people to get out to where they live and shop. And then, again, my main concern that was touched on is that there's a potential for 188 brand-new wells, which turns this beautiful development with all these lovely green open spaces into industrial areas. And so that's still a big concern of mine. Okay. Council Member Briggs. I've asked him a broad questions before. I'd like to echo part of what Council Member -- excuse me -- Mayor Pro Tem, Hudsbeth, and Council Member Briggs said about what they want to see in the next conversation. I'm also very concerned about board membership. I'm also concerned about the financial analysis that we're going to see. That's kind of make-or-break stuff for me, you know, what the city's overall costs over time are going to be in maintenance and other things. I'm not concerned about the quality of this development. I'm concerned about our financial wherewithal going forward, maintaining it and maintaining the quality of this development. I also really want to see that ESA, the Hill situation. I need to see that nailed down before I'm ready to commit to anything one way or the other. I think there are probably some solutions out there that have already been in the talks. And then at the appropriate time, maybe it's when that traffic study becomes available, I'd like to talk a little bit more about the traffic flow, yes, but also some of the specific design standards. I don't want to get off in the weeds today, and maybe it's just an email. But on Hunter Ranch, for instance, I see lots of roundabouts. On Cole Ranch, I see no roundabouts. And we're about to have another agenda item about traffic safety. And I would like to see that conversation we're about to have kind of merged in with the things that we'd like to do in the future with our transportation projects addressed now at this planning process with Hunter and Cole Ranch. And whatever the appropriate time to do that is, whatever the appropriate agreement that is to work that in, I'd like to see that. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Yeah, so my closing comments on this, I want to reiterate again how sincerely impressed I am with what staff has done to make this better. It was a challenge, and I only know the smallest bit of what went on behind the scenes. So I am truly appreciative of that. I hope people can see that. That said, I obviously still object to the whole idea of this, which is essentially a city within a city that we're hosting. Mayor Pro Tem had mentioned that some developments like this have the problem where they can get around within the development, but you can't really get out. I can see that the way this is envisioned, it's made to be a kind of place where you don't have to get out, which kind of begs the question, well then why even have this be part of the city of Denton anyway? I see how it's to their advantage of the developer, not necessarily to the advantage of the people who live there who are paying more in taxes. I see the impact it will have on our roads, and most of all, I see how no matter what changes come to this area after whatever we decide to do, it will never go back to being a rural green space, and I know it's already not idyllic because we've got all those gas wells on it. So I'm not making any promises that this city council could even potentially preserve this space forever, but I can promise that when decisions come before me as a council member, that is how I'm going to vote. It was mentioned unique characteristics, how important that is, I want to underscore we've already got unique characteristics in that. We've got a kind of a buffer between our city and other sprawling cities. And even though we're headed towards sprawl, we don't have to continue in that direction. I did want to ask one question, and then I had a follow-up comment about procedure. Can somebody answer for me, what is the proposed light industrial use that is planned, or is that not known? I saw there's going to be some light industrial. Well, I think that's something that we can get clarification on in the next meeting because we've got several things that are going to be coming forward that's a little bit more detailed. If somebody knows now, I'd like to know now. Yeah, if they do, fine. If not, just get it to us. I think it's probably just a list of uses in the DDC for right now, but we can certainly have that conversation and get back to you. Yeah, because I would definitely like to know. And so finally, just as kind of a point of procedure that I had addressed the last time we heard from the developer. So I understand that under current procedure that a developer comes before council on a work session. There's no time limit on how much time they have before us. And I have a problem with that, and I'm not faulting the developer for taking full advantage, as would I, of not having a time limit. I'm sure if they did have a time limit, they would keep to the time limit. But I have a problem when we're talking about something as big as this, big size wise, and the impact it'll have on really changing our city in such a permanent way. How such a large percentage of this time was taken up by a kind of a well done, but infomercial type presentation on the- Councilmember Armitage, I need to ask the city attorney if we're still in posting, because you're talking about a process that is addressed to- Yeah, the point of procedure is always in posting. I don't know about that. What you're talking about is council rules of procedure and developing other different rules. So I guess I'm just going to ask the city attorney, is this line of discussion or commentary? I certainly don't think it's germane to the discussion that we're having today in trying to get direction and clarification for the next meeting. It's not in our council rules of procedure. So if you want to make a request to change the council rules of procedure, you're certainly more entitled to do that. Yeah, again, so again, vague to differ, I think that a point of procedure is always pertinent. Okay, well then I need to ask the city attorney, because if he says that it is, okay, you're fine. If he says we're out of posting, then I'm going to have to ask you to please refrain from this line of discussion. What you're referring to is a point of order, which gets to the actual rules. The rules of procedure, what you're really getting at is your concern about the rules of procedure, which are in 2-29, whether or not other individuals other than a developer may be able to speak. Or the amount of time that's allotted to them to speak on a work session item. And that's all what your disagreement is with the rules of procedure and the practice of council of allowing that, and that's not the focus of the discussion. While it pertains that the developer here is speaking concerning this, that's a different issue beyond what is posted today. So yeah, and so I agree as far as the posting goes, but it was my understanding that within Robert's rules, that it's always pertinent to bring out matter of procedure. Anyway, obviously, so I'm numbered on this point, but I just wanted to reiterate that again that we've got elected representatives who the people elected to be here. And we're limited on what we can say. I'm going to ask you to please, thank you. Thank you. Exactly. Thank you. You bet. Did you have something? Yeah, just a couple of items. First off, I think a couple of people have been concerned about the upland habitat and the ESAs and one possible vehicle is a conservation easement. That might be an option to look at for protecting those in some way. One of the slides talked about 700 people moving to the Metroplex on a daily basis. And on RTC, we quite often talk about 1,000 people moving to the Metroplex and they don't bring their roads with them. This is a process by which they can pay for those roads when they come into town. So I'm glad to see the drop from what they were proposing of 55 to 49. I think the devil is in the details and we'll get all those worked out as we go along. I've been in Denton for 37 years and in that time, there has been a 263% population growth. This project is supposed to take about 40 years to build out and it's about a 39% population growth from where we're at right now. It's well within line of what the way Denton has been growing in the past. So, Councilmember Meltzer, to address your question about unclear why we're having the choice of a MMND, it's because somebody asked us for it. I mean, to me, it's just, I mean, what are our options? Somebody requested it and this council is considering it and this council can say we'll consider it. [INAUDIBLE] Well, I mean, I don't know if that's necessarily for us to decide. That's really up to the developer if that happens. And if they have an idea and they want to share it, that's fine. If they don't, that's okay, too. They already have entitlements on the ground. So that's how I look at it. They're asking us for something. And I will say, Councilmember Briggs, I appreciate your comments. Even if you separate these tracks out, there are 3,000 acres. I don't believe we have one development in this city that was 3,000 acres. I think the next largest one is the hills of Denton, which is out north Locust. So I don't think combining them or separating them is going to make any difference as far as the necessary infrastructure, how it's going to get paid for, and things such as that. In fact, quite honestly, you can have a little bit more urban planning perspective and approach if you do it. So I don't necessarily want to debate you. I'm just saying that we've not had anything in this town that's 3,000 acres for development. I don't even know if Robeson Ranch, I think Robeson Ranch may be close to that. And Robeson Ranch, a lot of people have made references to Robeson Ranch on a lot of different other areas. So if this council gets the answers to their questions, or if enough council members get answers to their questions to a level of comfortability, then we move forward on it. If we don't, then we don't. I mean, I just really approach it that simplistically. I do appreciate all of staff's time. I do appreciate all of the applicant, or not applicant, but developers' time in this regard, because this is not an easy task. And I think the next meeting will really provide the details that we need to make an informed choice based upon, and we may have to have more meetings than that. I mean, there may be things that we're not comfortable with, and what's extraordinary to Mayor Pro Tem, and what's extraordinary to someone else. It may be different for someone else, and the numbers will show certain criteria. So this is the process. I'm comfortable with the process. I know that there's a lot of strong issues and concerns and opinions on either side of this. But I trust that we will get to a point where this council will make a decision based upon the information provided us that will give the applicant the developer direction and help them make a decision, whichever way it goes. So I'm comfortable with it. There's still a lot of open questions. There's still a lot of open, whatever the options are outside of this. I don't really know if it's really the council's job to determine those options or even to know those options. The decision before us, at least to this point, is can we get you enough information to make a decision on our request? And I think that's what we're doing, and I really appreciate all the hard work to get us where we are so far. But obviously, based upon the conversation here, there's still things that are needed for each one of us to feel comfortable whichever way that we decide to go. Sure. I have a tip of just a few more brief and smaller ideas and questions, like three or four. As we look forward to seeing the financial analysis, which I know we're going to see, so it's important to me, too. If it's on the margin, I don't know if this is a good idea for the developer or not, but just a thought is if streets were built to a higher than normal standard, that would reduce our maintenance cost in the future that might tip the balance, just a thought to contribute. Another question is, is the percent that's commercial enough in that you keep the sales tax from this population within Den? I think the temptation to go down the highway would be pretty strong there. And/or public transit connectivity over to Razor Ranch, just what might give us more assurance that the sales tax will stay local. And just a couple of just informational questions that may not be determinative, but I've heard from others and that occurred to me as well. What's in the flyover zone so near the airport? Are those uses compatible with the air traffic? What uses are going to be near where all those new wells will be drilled? Is that a problem waiting to happen or not? That's my remaining list. And I appreciate that. It reminded me of something that I wanted to ask for for the next meeting, because we saw a lot of indication of private/public green space parks. We saw some indication of facilities being either donated or some contribution. I would like to see that summarized in a really good spreadsheet of what is it that the city is going to be responsible for on some of the right-of-ways? What's the Homeowner Association going to be responsible for? What is the monetary value of the land donations for the parks that are going to be public and then the ones that are private, are they accessible to the public at large? Just a real understanding of what is it that this development is doing that -- I don't know. I can't remember the current MPC if there's a requirement to provide certain types of public safety facilities or things such as that. But just an understanding, maybe to have a spreadsheet that says here's what's required in the current and here's what's being proposed as far as the added value to the city, both in asset donations such as land, public facilities, and then also the value of any type of maintenance that will be performed by either the Homeowner Association or the developer on properties that typically would have been the responsibility of the city. So because I think in some ways that's hidden in here and we see it sort of peppered throughout the presentation, but I think if we saw it all in one slide and saw the amount of value, that would be part, I think, of the consideration. So if we could do that, that would be great. Okay. Anything else? Fantastic. Oh, you have something, Ethan? Okay. I'll be very brief. I just wanted to kind of lay the groundwork for what our next meeting looks like. So we do have a work session with Planning and Zoning on December 11th. My understanding is they're going to be getting the same presentation that you all received today. We'll be returning on December 17th. I know the developers hit it. We do have some cleanup to do on the MPC amendments, so we'll circle back with any of those unanswered questions. And then we're going to try to start diving into the project agreements and operating agreements, as was stated earlier. That may require one more or multiple more work sessions for us to get through the details on that. And then we'll also start seeing some of the results of our studies that we have outstanding. Most of those should be coming into us within the next week or so. We'll start providing counsel with those reports and then kind of hitting it at a high level during the meetings. So we do have some placeholder meetings in January and February. We can certainly add more if it's at counsel's pleasure and if it's necessary. Mr. City Manager, can I be lazy and ask for a kind of even a carve out of the minutes from that P&Z meeting, whoever speaks, that sort of thing? Can we get like a synopsis of that or, you know, emailed out or something like that? The one that's coming. Yeah, it is. Versus watching it and taking my own notes. The one that's coming up. Okay. Yeah, the one that's coming up. No, it's just kind of a, because that'll be good to kind of track who's speaking when, that sort of thing in public service. Thank you. And also, I know, I think we got a, it was either a legal status or something to sort of describe. It was sort of a white paper on MMDs and the boards and, you know, what they can and can't do. If you could send that out and then if you heard something here today that maybe is not addressed in that white paper, if you could maybe make a modification of that just so that we'll all refresh our memory on that. Because it is daunting, you know, it's sometimes hard to understand how all these things work and what the implications are. So I'd appreciate that. Okay. We'll do. All right. Fantastic. Thank you very much. We'll go on to the next work session item, which is agenda item 3B. And at 4 o'clock, I've got to step out to talk to the leadership meeting. So, Mayor Pro Tem, you'll have the helm at that moment. So will 3B is receive, report, and hold discussion regarding the Vision Zero Roadway. Boy, how can you say that? Vision Zero Roadway, real quick, five times. Roadway Traffic Safety Initiative. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, members of council, this is Pre Tem Deshmukh, deputy city engineer. And I'm just here to introduce a couple of folks here that will be talking about this initiative. And really getting into what exactly Vision Zero is, what it entails, and what are the ways of how Denton can move forward with this type of initiative. So the first person to talk about will be Amelia Hayes. She is with the Federal Highway Administration down in Austin. And then the second person will be Jayes Crossley, who is a consultant with Farms and Areas. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. Like you said, I'm Millie, and I'm with Federal Highway Administration down in Austin. I'm a safety and traffic operations specialist, and I've been in that office for about eight years total. And today I'll just be speaking about more of a kind of preliminary talk about some of the practices and then go into a little bit of further resources if you're interested. And then I have my speaking partner today, Jay, who will be following up on some possible next steps. So what is Vision Zero? These are the three overarching themes of Vision Zero. No loss of life is acceptable. Traffic fatalities and injuries are preventable. And that people will make mistakes. I was initially going to have you watch this video, but I highly recommend watching it on your own time. It's about three minutes. So for the hopes of having a good discussion after that, I'm just going to skip it. But the thing that I wanted to point out with this video is that it has the highest levels of national and international safety and highway leaders that are all supporting Vision Zero and goals towards zero deaths. As a summary for the video, there are a few different terms that you might have heard of. So I'm talking mostly about Vision Zero today. Vision Zero, there's a network called Vision Zero Network, and that focuses most on city plans. And we also have an organization called Towards Zero Deaths. And that is more of a state focused, really the state DOTs and governor's highway safety organizations that are all really that state level emphasis on the zero deaths. And then we also have Road to Zero, and that is our best efforts at a true national coalition. It's headed up by several folks, including USDOT, which is part of federal highways under USDOT. And then we have about 900 member organizations, and that spans auto, government, insurance, public health. So it's a whole bunch of folks who are included there. So really, you know, I'm throwing around the term Vision Zero for the rest of the presentation, but it is that concept of a zero-based goal is really what I'm promoting here today. So really adhering to the principles that I'll be speaking of is, to me, the most important part than any one of the branding that you would pick here. So why do we need Vision Zero? In the red, I have City of Denton's traffic fatality data. This is through a couple of months ago, so I believe it is now higher. And then the blue line is statewide traffic fatalities. Obviously, these are all greater than zero. TechStat has an End the Streak campaign. And so that date that's on the slide, November 7, 2000, that's over 19 years ago. So it's over 19 years every single day since that date in the year 2000 that we've had at least one person on our roadways who has died. And to me, that is simply unacceptable, and that's what Vision Zero is hoping to help correct. So in terms of other cities here in Texas who have adopted Vision Zero, we have Austin, San Antonio, Laredo. A few weeks ago, Fort Worth City Council adopted. It's being considered by Dallas and a number of other cities currently down the pipeline. And really, all of these match up pretty well with our Texas Strategic Highway Safety Plan. So if you're not aware of that, that is our statewide vision and our statewide highway safety plan spanning a couple of years. So two years ago when that was adopted, Texas for the first time adopted an aspirational goal of zero deaths. And then most recently, in May, TechStat announced a goal of zero fatalities by the year of 2050. And they have an interim goal to reduce the fatalities by 50% by the year of 2035. So they're really emphasizing more how are we going to commit to this aspirational goal and what are we going to do in the future. And so there's a lot of efforts being devoted to that. So as part of this Strategic Highway Safety Plan, I want to point out the emphasis areas. We have seven different emphasis areas that are on the slide. We have distracted driving, impaired driving, roadway departures, speeding, pedestrians, intersections, and older users. So each of those emphasis areas has a task force that meets regularly, and that's folks throughout the state who are interested in that specific area. So whatever it is that Denton decides to do after today and in the future, we'd hope that you become familiar with the efforts that are already going on. So you can further, you know, no point in redoing things that we're already doing across the state and possibly take some of those countermeasures that are identified and bring them here locally. So how is Vision Zero different than what we've done before? There are five principles of Vision Zero. These are the first three. So traffic deaths and severe injuries are preventable and the protection of human life is the highest priority. Also, human error is inevitable and our system should be forgiving. So really this all stems off of what Sweden had developed years ago. And when you look at the Swedish model, it's really a social contract that we're going to provide the safest facility possible and that the users need to behave in a reasonable way, but also understanding that the users are human. And so they will make errors and they will make mistakes. And it's just in terms of what will we do to make that roadway forgiving when they do indeed make mistakes. So as a traffic safety professional, I know a lot of the times we say safety is our number one priority. And a lot of the times it's hard to make the system forgiving. And I think we really need to emphasize that. So at the end of the day, these three are centering around one concept that everyone deserves to go home at the end of the day. These are principles four and five. And so if you're not familiar with the safe systems approach, it's been emphasized by Sweden, the Netherlands and Australia. And it's continuing to be a growing area in traffic safety internationally. And the thought there is that we have an ethical responsibility to make things as safe as we can. And that's doing so and focusing on safety is paramount. So we've been focusing a lot, especially with federal highways, with USDOT on behavior solutions and trying to change people's behavior. So we've been doing that for the past 60 years. And just to me, continuing to focus on those behavior solutions is we keep asking for better users. And if we continue doing that, we're going to continue seeing the same type of fatality and injury numbers that we've had for the last 60 years. Got to switch it up a little bit. So that last one is the comprehensive approach that involves all of the folks who are listed there and more. And so sometimes I'm with the federal government. We are often still kind of siloed. So the thought is it's not just engineers. It's not just planners. It's not just our enforcement friends. And so it's all of us together. And that's really the only way that we can do this is all of us are needed at the table. So if you go later and watch that three-minute video, you'll see that all of these five principles match up really well with what was included in that approach. And so really, it's just to double down on what works, advance lifesaving technologies in vehicles and infrastructure, and to prioritize safety by adopting a safe systems approach and a positive safety culture. So these are some practices, and I'm going to spend the rest of the next few slides speaking to each of these practices. And Jay might be speaking to this a little bit more, especially in terms of Austin and San Antonio and what they've done with their outstanding leadership. But I wanted to point out, obviously you can read the slide, but Austin did I think a lot with this because they were able to have enough resources to commit to a dedicated Vision Zero program manager and also a dedicated Vision Zero outreach coordinator. I'm not saying necessarily to do that, but if you do have resources that had worked really well for them. And in terms of accountability, that's a huge part of Vision Zero concept as a whole. And so in Austin, they had an action plan that was very specific that had 60, 60 plus action items. And so regularly, they're reporting to the public, very transparent reporting on number of miles that they've improved, and they have report cards that go out quarterly and annually and I believe monthly, showing how they've progressed in each of these action item areas. And so that is a definitely a best practice. The next principle is to be data driven. And so a lot of the times I know working with the transportation staff, we have, we have the data. So we have all these crash reports and what do we actually do with it and it's really taking that data that we already have and being strategic and using those to, to help guide our decision making process. So in Austin and in San Antonio, they created network maps and it's called a high injury network, and it was using data that they already had and it was with that data they were best able to really not necessarily look at where are the most crashes but where are the crashes that are most severe. So our severe crashes are the ones with the fatalities and with the, with the injuries and really honing in on those corridors to be smartest about how they're focusing their projects. The next principle is to implement what works and I have a couple slides that will talk on the specific countermeasures. So what works, my friend over here, thank you for the shout out about the roundabouts in the previous agenda item. So these are all FHWA proven safety countermeasures, and these are all generally accepted and should be used wisely, widely, we have roundabouts that are showing between a 78% and an 82% reduction in in crashes and so definitely that is one of them, we have 20 such countermeasures in total that we're recommending that you look into I know your staff here is very familiar with it. There are six new ones that recently came out, and they're really typically roundabouts might not be the best example of this but many of the solutions are lower cost and can be done systemically and there's also a few items like US limits to which federal highways is having as a guidance document for putting together your, your speed limits your posted speed. So I believe Jay is going to be talking about speed, and this is a good resource for your staff and FHWA has a website that has one to two page tech briefs on each of these so these again are all have decades of research on what we know works. The next principle is to prioritize, prioritize safety and so this is really just building a safety culture by doing all of the actions that are here. Obviously when we think of safety and how to implement safety. We think of our street design policies and our standards but there's also safety implications with other things like permitting and land development and what are you doing to maintain your streets. So all of these together. And again maintaining that collaborative approach to really prioritize safety within your city. And these are some links that you can go to, I want to point out the Austin vision zero plan especially since it's here in Texas. This is considered among my colleagues to be one of the top five plans in the country so when you look at that keep that one in mind. And then everything else that I've referenced today is included here. So with that I will turn it over to my friend Jay, and we'll be here for questions also. Thank you Millie and thank you all for your service to the people of Denton, and for having us here. My name is Jay. I work for a five one C three nonprofit so I am a research and advocacy organization that works across the state on public policy issues. I hope to give you guys information and I hope you can do more to save lives on the street but I don't have a product I'm gonna sell you or anything. And so, and our biggest project is vision zero Texas and we work at all levels of government and we believe that every single government in the state of Texas needs to adopt. Vision zero goals and action plans to end traffic deaths. And so quickly it's pretty important I think to understand what's happened we've been very successful at the state level this year. And so three things happened. One is sort of important that text on staff text on adopted a system safety approach, and they are overhauling the way they think about safety, and the, the, that will continue to change what text does for a long time. Relate to text thought may change based on some of this. Second, the Texas transportation commission did adopt a goal to in traffic deaths in Texas by 2050 and cut them in half by 2023 2035. And, and then finally, increased funding for safety and essentially doubled safety funding across the state of Texas adding $300 million a year for two years. This will mean your local text that district will be creating a four year safety plan including how to spend that money here. And there may be ways your city can work with your district to get some of that money for some of the priority areas here. And very recently the city of Houston adopted vision zero cities across the state are moving this way. And we are, we're working, we're trying to work in every single city we have 950 more or so in 254 counties and 23 MPOs and we think that each one of them needs to to do this as part of our regular course of business. Every city. And we, we do a lot of stats and just to sort of show you where you stand. This was like the 10 biggest cities in Texas plus didn't. And this is traffic deaths and serious injuries per sort of population and jobs, so that you can compare suburbs to cities. And so, a lot of DFW cities seem to be on the worst end of these charts, and you guys are apparently not quite as bad as Dallas or Fort Worth, but not on the right side of this chart higher up means more deaths and serious injuries. But this is the same data but just looking at change over time and so it's interesting you guys haven't really got you've slightly gotten better over the last, you know, this five years, so you're not some cities are seeing really dramatic increases, and for some reason you're kind of staying where you are. So, one key just to make a point is if, as you move forward towards Vision Zero it's crucial to have good data and use data and transparency and accountability and equity and to build equity into this as you go. People of color are more likely to die on our streets, and also more likely to be pulled over. And so we need to sort of solve both of those things at the same time, and we need to do Vision Zero through an equity lens. And there's a lot of good material at Vision Zero network on how to, how to do this as a city. Texas Street Highway Safety Plan I just want, there's a lot of great info here and there's a lot of great tools you can use you can use this to back something you're wanting to do. This is the state, the sort of like agencies across the state saying we should do these things, including safe design speeds. It is now part of the state plan that it's okay to use slower speeds and slow down the speeds on little streets and things like that. I think speeding is our biggest problem, essentially drunk driving, distracted driving and speed are our biggest things but speed impacts all of them. And we, we have basically completely failed at designing our transportation system and we have to completely change it. And so we need to design our streets for the speeds we want. And so just really specifically there's the old 85th percentile basically said, however fast people feel like driving, that's where we should set our speed limit. And the US Federal Highway now says that that was a bad idea, and the US limits too is a different way to approach this. Instead of having speed limits that react to the way people are acting, we instead should design streets so it feels comfortable to drive safe. And in the ideal vision zero treatment someone doesn't know they're being safe. You know, you don't want them to be mad you want them to feel like driving at a safe speed. I just think that a key part is you could some of this can be inexpensive and interim treatments and little neighborhood roundabouts. I think the neighborhood greenways concept, which you basically identify a network of little neighborhood streets that already are fairly slow, but a grid network across your entire city and put in the safety treatments so that it, no one really can drive over 20 on those streets and have a grid network across the whole city and the city of Portland did this for $50 million for a city of 600,000 people and basically connected the whole city with this grid network. And they actually use federal water quality money to do that, because all the little changes they did were actually little water, green water swales kind of things. So, you know, ideally from my point of view, what you guys might do next from the council elected official level is to set the standard and to choose that we want to say for our community ending traffic deaths is our goal, and the zero is the only acceptable thing to do to figure out what time frame we can do that within the city of Austin is trying to do it by 2025 text thought is trying to do the whole state by 2050. So somewhere in between there. What is reasonable for for Denton, and that's really I think the leadership role and to empower your staff to get this done is the key. At least when they do vision zero set a goal, and then ask staff to come back in six or 12 months with a plan, and then the does some of these things. I guess the key is that federal highway has a focus on pedestrian safety in Texas, and can, if you ask, they might be able to come do a pedestrian safety action plan for you, and things like that. So, thank you very much for your time. I think that's all our slides and. Yeah, and I'm sure we have some questions but I have a question first for the attorney. Our posting says receive a report and hold discussion regarding the vision zero roadway traffic safety initiative. It doesn't say anything about direction. It's direction part of discussion I mean, I know we typically would include that as that so given that it's different from the rest of the items that are here. No direction would be given but just simply listen to the report and have a discussion amongst yourselves. And then if staff so desired to maybe bring something to us, then, then we can, we can do that. That is correct. Yeah. Okay. Councilmember armature. Yeah. Oh, well, that's too bad because I was going to request to give direction that we adopt the vision zero goal for the year 2025 to try to keep up with with Austin. I thank you for the presentation. Sorry, we didn't get to see the three minute video. I will check it out. I assume is linked in the presentation. So, and this I love the idea of changing the infrastructure instead of trying to change behaviors. It's, you know, you can't change people. And the same rule that works for, you know, destructive habits in in relationships also applies to, to, you know, looking at problems in city planning, you know, you can. So there's a lot that that can be done. And I really love this kind of macro big picture approach, because when decisions come before us on a daily on a weekly basis, we can end up making decisions that do not, you know, fit with this kind of goal. Although none of us want deaths on the highway that's a lot on our roads. It's the last thing we're thinking, but sometimes decisions we make, I believe, end up adding up to unsafe conditions. So anyway, I look forward to giving direction on this when we can do that under posting. Councilman braves and council member Davis. So this is an item that came up through mobility committee, and the committee actually was in favor of it and move it to council for policy direction. So why it's not caption like that, I'm not sure, but we can't really move forward with it since it's not. And I asked for some data just for this year because the charts were really nice, but it didn't actually show the numbers in the city of Denton, which I thought were really important. And so we have crashes total crashes 3673 and pedestrians involved in crashes 40 and this is just for this for this year from January until November it doesn't even take me. Yeah, the end of November. So, number of bicycles involved in crashes 28, and that that these are our residents and our citizens and I think that adopting a plan like this and allowing staff to use that to reduce these crashes and death is very important. So, I am extremely supportive of this and hope that staff finds a way to start implementing these things if this council is an agreement of saving lives. Councilmember Davis, so not providing direction but just as a matter of discussion gosh it would be neat if someone would come up with a plan for them under these guidelines so I, I'd like to hear a little bit from staff I have one quick observation and then I'd like to hear from staff on on this but, you know, we, we already have the goal. We don't say it in as much we don't have a stated plan, but of course we have the goal of zero traffic fatalities and then, but if you look at the last, the last handful of pedestrian fatalities especially those are on text up facilities, and some of those things we're going to have to get with our partners at text out and figure out how would how to better move our pedestrians in and around text up facilities and how to have text address some of their speeds and that kind of thing we have very few pedestrian involved incidents on our, our smaller residential grids, you know our little four way stops within neighborhoods, they're much more in our high speed corridors and that kind of thing where we need to make some improvements so my question for staff is, let's just as a point of discussion say we adopt a plan. How is this different from what we already do, how does it affect the planning that we already do. Is it another layer of, you know, we get a bullet point every time we make a big change it says and we've checked for compliance with the vision zero plan, we are in compliance, you know, like we do with the 30 plan. Is it another level of bureaucracy or is it something that's helpful to us in reaching that goal. So the way I see it and we were talking before this meeting before this item came forth. A lot of these things are already rolling we're implementing most of these, the changes there that were presented roundabouts we're talking about those all all pedestrian phases at the square signals with. They were really excited to see that something happened in Denton. So, some of these are already in play we're implementing these safety measures. What it does is the council adopted as a policy as a goal, and that would get a lot of staff now go through the process and develop a plan to implement this goal and then we can come forward with these are the things that we've achieved during this year, according to the plan so it's, it's, it helps both parties, as far as policymakers to make the policy decisions, as well as staff to continue working on those safety initiatives. Councilman Walter. What is a pedestrian hybrid beacon I'm sorry if you said it I didn't catch it. So it is sort of a signal. So what happens is, it's, it starts flashing, and it turns completely red so at a crosswalk, you will have a sort of a pedestrian signal with with red indicators on the top and yellow at the bottom so the minute pedestrian hits a button, start flashing yellow and then turns to red so that indicates that all vehicles that are traveling on that particular street have to stop for the pedestrians across so it's a pedestrian beacon signal. So it's safer than what we currently have and just flashing. I'll just share. Now this would be considered untrue because it didn't happen in Texas but in another state that I was in during the break. I saw what I think was a kind of a pedestrian hybrid beacon I thought, that's kind of cool. When there's either a pedestrian or someone on a bicycle present about to cross there were like lights built into the roadway that flashed like totally unmissable. So I just share that with you, you might know what that's actually called. Those are just flashing lights flashing crosswalks. It's not a cool name. Oh, okay, then it's good because it was in Texas. Mario. Yeah. Yes. Council members on the in regards to the posting, you know, that was a mess on our office primarily me I should have caught that additional wording. So we can do is talking to the city attorney, we can bring this item back not to do a full presentation but just add that additional wording and see council direction. Next to see you next Tuesday. And that way we can go ahead and get your former direction through the work session and then we can move forward with. If you decide to do that next Tuesday, we can do that. That was that was my mess. Apologies. Councilmember breaks. Could you just make it an item for approval on on individual consideration and then we could talk about it then and then assume they're coming. Are you envisioning bringing forward a plan for council to adopt. Next week or do you need time to be able to put that together final adoption. Okay, great. It would be direction from council for me to move forward with the goal of vision zero. Councilmember Arthur. So, Mario, I would love to see, and I'm sure that staff is probably already thought of this and probably already did this so it might not be necessary but you'd mentioned I forget which city, Houston maybe that had significant part of their. I actually know maybe it wasn't a Texas city, but they had federal funds can stormwater federal funds grant. What city was that. So that's the city of Portland, Portland. Okay, Portland, Oregon. Yeah, so not far from Texas, but still federal within the country same federal funds apply. So anyway, I'm sure staff is already thinking about it, but we'd love to, you know, just for what it's worth my. I can't imagine anybody would disagree that that would be a good thing to look into and I also wonder kind of what other staff might be interested in looking into what other kinds of federal grants for other kinds of problem solving measures. You know, could be applied for to also work towards this end. Councilmember Mozart. Oh, I'm just going to suggest that according to consent agenda I mean I think if it were an individual item, maybe get two votes in favor of death but I don't think so. So, I think it could just go straight to consent, you know that you want to see a plan. All right. Any other questions. Can we go back to Millie's slide 11. I have a question. About this philosophy that it's a data driven decision. Help me reconcile that with the council's. I think you suggested the council grab a number, and then staff work towards that goal. So it's an arbitrary number like count. We grab an arbitrary number versus do the data, and then understand they understand our budget they understand our constraints and then do it that way. Well, I just want to understand why we, the council would adopt a target with no data, and then staff work towards that. I will say there's some data at least a study of statewide that that all states have to do strategic have a safety plan so they don't have to have a zero goal. And so, about half of states. But now more and more including Texas now had a zero goal by this date, and half didn't and there's a study that the states that had a goal showing we need to be going down. We're actually being more successful at their safety strategies. So there's some evidence that having a goal actually improves your success. And so, and then I would just say that in general cities have said 10 years, and there is no real science to that. And that if you set a goal for next year you would not achieve your goal. If you set a goal for 100 years from now, you probably also would not keep your goal because it wouldn't be meaningful. I think it's important to have a goal, but you're right that it's a reasonable question of how to pick that goal. Got it. Okay. Yeah, no, it's good. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Okay, very good. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Yes, safe travels. And I will call the next item so that takes us to does anyone need a break. Okay, I'll call the next item which is item D3D it's ID192470 receiver report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding the Denton municipal electric budget. Good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council, David Gaines, director of finance. This item is intended to talk, talk about our bond oversight committee that would be developed in response to the bond election last month. So as I go through the presentation, we'll talk a little bit about what the current bond oversight committee does, and how the potential committee would be comprised. I'm sorry. I thought we were on. I thought we finished the sauce misspoke. So let me, let me call the right item, and then you can start over. Sorry. So we're going to go back we're going to call item C ID 192822 receiver report hold discussion and seek direction regarding the creation of a bond oversight committee to monitor evaluate and report on progress on bond election capital improvement programs. There we go. Okay. I'm here for both of them. So, as mentioned this this item is, it's a talk talk about the construction of a bond oversight committee in response to the bond election that was held last month. The bond oversight committee as I've as I've detailed here is a committee that we've used for our passbook pass bond programs and most recently with our 2014 bond program, where a group of appointed members meet quarterly on a quarterly basis, and we report the status of the bond program projects and talk through any options that may come up regarding funding or adjustments in any of the funding for the projects. So obviously we we meet with the committee first and then we'll bring any of those changes or updates back to city council, but they are a group that's involved in the monitoring evaluation of the progress of those projects consistently throughout the year, especially over the past number of years as we've really focused on getting those bond programs out the door and getting those projects completed the reporting that we've done to that committee and the involvement of the committee has been integral in that process. So, the current bond committee is we call it that we call it the 2014 bond committee, but it does, it has monitor the progress of the 2012 bond program and the 2005 bond program as we close those out. So, as we look to form the new 2019 bond committee, we would just call it about oversight committee knowing that we're still closing up 2014 and 2012 bond programs, and we would ask this committee to oversee the 2019 2014 and 2012 bond programs moving forward. Currently we have five members of the committee. These were members that were chosen from the 2014 bond bond oversight bond advisory committee. They were the chairs and subcommittee chairs on that committee obviously in 2014 we had subcommittees on the bond advisory committee as opposed to the 2019 advisory committee that just had to chair and co chair we had no subcommittees. One recommendation here but obviously any alternatives could be considered by city council. Our proposal would be that we reappoint the five current command members of the bond oversight committee, three of those members did serve on the bond advisory committee and then we would also recommend at this time to keep the other two members that are currently on the oversight committee on board. Obviously as we're closing out the 2014 and 2012 programs, they would have that that experience, and they've also been a part of the committee prior, and then inconsistent with how we formed the committee in 2014 we would recommend that we appoint the chair and co chair from the bond advisory committee to this new committee with a total of seven members. And again, any alternative could be considered as well. We would bring this back to city council at the next council meeting for approval. This is just a work session to get direction on how we should tailor that resolution. And I'm open for any questions. Thank you, David. So what are the, what are the absences of the individuals who were on the bond committee and I know that we're going to talk about that later for our other committees but I would assume that that would be pretty vital and important. Is that something you've taken into account when you made your recommendations on if they were present or not? You know, we can go back and get the detail on that obviously from the minutes and follow up with you. I did not take into account in the recommendations so we can provide that information to you. That would be really important for me before I can make any recommendations here. But I am in favor of adding members from the 2019 to to the committee. Councilmember Davis and then Councilmember Arbiter. So I'm also concerned about attendance and involvement in the discussion that led to the 2019 bonds, especially because the goal here is to wrap up the previous bonds and move into a phase where they're primarily helping us oversee the 2019 bonds. So I'd like to see, I'd like to see more information about that also. I also like the idea of bringing in the chair and vice chair from the 2019. Those are both great, great additions, Pat Smith and Susan Parker, those would be great additions to the oversight committee. They both have a wealth of knowledge, especially Susan has a wealth of knowledge in this particular area. Have we talked with the people who are on the 2014 committee, especially the ones that did not serve on the 2019 bond committee? Do we know that they want to serve? Do we know that they're excited about serving? Are they looking forward to every quarterly meeting or would they rather step back and let somebody else serve? I haven't had any private conversations with them to know one way or the other. If they're just really set on being on that committee or if they'd rather let somebody from the 2019 process take their spot. I've reached out to everyone on that list there and all but one of them have responded saying they're excited to be on the committee and want to move forward. So there is one that I just haven't heard back from yet at this point. Yes. So I think I like your recommendation because it keeps us at about seven. I think seven is a good number for a group like that. If we have another spot, either because someone from the other committee doesn't want to continue serving or we had attendance issues, somebody else we don't want to put forward, another name I'd like to put in the mix is Eric Pruitt. He served on the 2019 committee. We just retired. Very data driven, very in tune with the issues. I think he'd be a great addition if there's a spot for him. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, so two recommendations. Number one, and I want to be careful how I word this. The -- our previous bond elections were -- as our very transparent bond part of our website shows, you know, were very slow to implement and there was some money that was not -- it wasn't clear exactly what happened to that money. And I know it was a lot of work for this administration to oversee and continue to oversee previous, you know, bond election decisions. In retrospect, I'm not faulting the bond oversight committee. I have no idea why this was -- why it happened this way, but I think it's a bad look for us to appoint the same committee. You know, I'm not -- again, I'm not blaming the committee. I want people to understand. But I think it's a bad look for us to appoint that same 2014 committee that did this on a previous bond. So I would -- what I would be in favor of is a seven-member committee where each of us, you know, gets to pick one person from -- and it could be -- I know I'm going to pick someone who was on the 2019 bond committee, but if somebody wants to, you know, they could pick someone from the 2014 bond committee. I strongly recommend that. And then my other recommendation, it's really a question that nobody in this room will be able to answer right now because the person to ask isn't here, but I would like to know if the city auditor or somebody from the city auditor's department -- I know they're very busy -- but would be interested in having a staff role in a committee like this. I think I probably wouldn't need to explain what the relevance is to the city auditor role. The question is, you know, do they have the time and the staffing to do that? But at the very least, I would like for that question to be asked of them to see what they say. Council Member Meltzer. Yeah, I also favor the alternative where, you know, each council member would make a nomination to the committee, and I think it would be perfectly appropriate to have before us a slate of past members from 2014, from 2019, and the attendance information. And I think that some people will probably choose to nominate people that you've recommended, you know, but the weight of the decision will be distributed amongst us. Council Member Ryan. Thank you. And I agree with the need for the attendance information from the full 2019 committee before we make definite recommendations. And I'd like to also maybe have some further information on the two people who were on this that did not go on the 2019. Was it that they did not want to be on there or were they just not appointed by someone? I think at the time, both of them indicated they were too busy with other things. I think Brandon just got appointed as chair of the United Way, if I recall, and I can't remember the other issue. They were all invited. And I do want to address Council Member Armitage's point. I think you're mostly right in your thinking. But I will tell you the folks that were on that 2012 and '14 bond program, I can vividly remember being with the city about three weeks and getting my first, I'm not going to say that, but hearing how frustrated that committee was with staff and the quality of the information that they were getting. And I don't really think it's fair that they were that. They clearly were upset. They clearly knew they weren't getting updates in the information. And I think it gets down to who do you go to during a transition period. And so I get what you're saying, but I really want you to understand that it was very obvious they were tied in, they were frustrated, and they made it very clear to me that their expectation was no different than the Council, that they had got out and worked to get these bonds approved and wanted these dollars spent. I understand what you're saying, but there's also that other point to it, that how much control do they really have? Council Member Armitage. Yeah, so thank you. Just to respond to that, that's why I was very careful to say that I think it's not a good look and that I'm not faulting anybody. And that's also why I didn't say, well, nobody from the previous committee should be considered at all. It's just I don't think we should replicate the same exact committee because I think it's a bad look. All right. So, David, here's what I have by way of traction. I'll lend my name to the attendance issue to give you four, so there's a consensus kind of to -- well, it's fine. So that you have five-ish to kind of -- so that kind of bring that back to us. And then there's not really a -- I need to hear from others on -- Paul and Deb have touched on a desire to scrap the whole thing, rename individuals, kind of pick. So I need -- I have not heard anyone else. Sure. When you're -- I'm driving. Yes. Well, having more information on time and attendance is going to make -- I'm not ready to say yet. I'm okay with the number of seven. I'm not sure about just rolling everybody in there and the two, I'm not good with that recommendation yet without seeing more information. But the amount of people that are going to be replaced are going to depend on that information that I receive. So -- But I think there's a -- if I could narrow that to say, even with that information, the decision point is -- or the conversation and discussion is, regardless of that, regardless of what that information comes out to be, staff has suggested this structure and then there's a separate structure of -- just appointing from scratch. And so that -- regardless of how that data comes back, that decision is the same. So that's kind of where I'm trying to see if there's traction for that. I'm okay with the number of seven and how I get to there is going to depend on what I get. So it could be a fresh new. So you can add me to that. Okay. John? Well, I think that institutional knowledge is very key in this. So anybody knew that we're adding -- if one of the original five or two of the original five decide not to continue on on this, should come off of the 2019 bond advisory committee. I don't think we need to be grabbing new people in here who didn't sit through all the discussions that were -- that took place this last summer. Okay. So I'm not in favor of individual appointments or individual nominations in the voting on a slate. I'd rather start with the core that we have now. I suppose it could change if we get the attendance information and it's just abysmal, but at the same time, there may be folks who are on the 2014 oversight committee who come to find out we would like to know about their attendance as members of the 2019 committee and they decide that maybe it's not for them anymore. So at this point, I'm not in favor of the one-for-one each council member makes an appointment. I'm in favor of starting with what we have and filling spots to get to seven. Okay. So that's the direction. So we're just shy there on that component. You'll bring back the attendance information and we'll -- Mayor Pro Tem, if I could? Yes, sir. Are we getting the attendance information of 2019? I understand. Do you also want it on the 2014-12 bond? Yes, please. Okay. Please. Thank you. And how far back do you want us to go? Just three years? Three years? Sure. Okay. Sounds good. At least. Okay. Council Member Meltzer. I'll just object to the characterization of starting from scratch. I haven't heard anybody suggest anything other than looking at people who have served on the bond committees. Noted. Okay. And then is there anyone else? Yes. I was going to say the same thing. Noted. Any other questions? All right. Thank you, David. And I guess you're staying there. I'm still here. All right. Very good. So that concludes item C. And then -- so item D is -- I'll call that. So it's ID19-2470. Receive a report, hold discussion, and give staff direction regarding the Denton Municipal Electric DME budget. Good afternoon. This item is intended to be a relatively quick update on the DME budget, if you recall, during the budget process last year heading into the '19-'20 budget. As we had some significant discussions on the DME budget, we talked about some of the shortfalls, particularly in the ECA component of the budget and the intended use of reserves in the '18-'19 fiscal year. That could be offset with increases in rates that the council decided not to do to keep rates status quo. But during that conversation, we said we would come back to you early in this fiscal year with an update of how things ended in '18-'19 to take another kind of temperature check on where we were and if any decisions needed to be made mid-year. So I'm going to go through the presentation of where we are right now and how things compared in actuality to how we ended '18-'19 versus our estimates that we presented during the budget process. So overall, just to kind of cut to the chase at the end of what our recommendation will be, we are not at this time recommending any rate increases. The picture really looks a lot better at the end of '18-'19 than it did at the end of the fiscal year. And as we'll talk about and obviously answer any questions, that's primarily driven to August of this year when we had really high spikes in demand with our electric department and also higher prices. So you can see how that shook out from a bottom line perspective here. With our estimate for '18-'19 during the budget process, we estimated to have about an $18 million net income, a negative net income, so impact to our fund balance of $18 million. In actuality, we had a $3 million positive to our fund balance in DME. So obviously a big shift, and that's really due to that, primarily due to that July and August time period where we saw significant revenues come in. And we had the performance of the deck, which was higher than we anticipated, as you can see there, with our net income on the deck of that negative about $2.5 million, coming at $14 million positive. That when we talk about the net revenue on the deck, that really goes back to that dashboard that we have on this presentation that we present on a quarterly basis of what are our expenses at the deck versus our revenues versus those credits that we get on the ERCard market. So $14 million positive because we had to use the deck so much, particularly in August. Is it a really short presentation or is it okay? Thanks, David. You can go ahead. So just to put that in another lens, what we talked about significantly during the budget process was how that ECA portion of our rate was under recovering and in total our base rate portions were over recovering. I wanted to show that here. You can see 18, 19 here in this column was our estimate where we had our base rates over recovering about four or five, between four and $5 million, and our ECA rate recovering almost $23 million, under recovering almost $23 million. So again, a quick refresher on that. The ECA rate is intended to fluctuate with the market as purchase power goes up, as we have those higher costs in purchases, in our electric purchases, that rate increases, whereas the base rate is really intended to cover those fixed costs, our debt service and things like that, that we know we're going to have year in and year out. One of the significant reasons that the ECA is now under collecting is because we have that first year, full year, this in 18, 19 of the deck debt service that has both principal and interest. So that's why we saw that big shift in the ECA rate where the deck is included in our ECA expenses. So that's why we saw that, that we anticipated the shortfall in the ECA, and we came to council to talk about what was the best way to handle that. We do anticipate as we go into the 19, 20, 21 budget, we'll continue to have those discussions of, do we want to get to a point where the ECA fluctuates with the expenses as they come in, and maybe have a base rate reduction to coincide with that. And so those will obviously be conversations that we have heading into the next budget year, but for now, we wanted to give this update to say we don't see any need to make a change mid-year before we have those discussions from a five-year forecast, ten-year forecast perspective. So ultimately, you can see just with each one, our base rate's over recovering significantly, and ECA not doing quite as poorly as we thought. One important piece to point out on the base rates, when we show the base rates over recovering like that, there's more that's in that, that's really everything that's not the ECA. So a piece of that is our TCOS, that's transmission cost of service, all of our transmissions assets, we get a TCOS return from ERCOT on those. Our rate of return is very high on those assets, so we over collect on a lot of those, or we bring in significant amount of revenues on a lot of those, and that helps us to keep the base rates low. So that's really mixed in to that base rate over recovery there. Here we've kind of laid all that out, that I just said, with revenues on specifics, where you can see the base rates, how they came in a little bit higher than our estimate, you can see our TCOS revenues there that I just mentioned, and obviously our DEC revenues coming in higher, and we'll show that here on a following slide where you can see the full picture on what that DEC looks like at the end of the fiscal year. On the expense side, you know, yes, sure. I asked keenly to wait so it wouldn't be right, but we're two slots out. Yes. You know, the biggest thing on the expense side that we talked about during the budget year was the change, if you're looking at how we ended the year and our estimate versus the budget was not paying off the TNPA scrubber debt, we initially had that in the budget to spend about $28 million to pay that debt off, instead we refinanced that debt over the next five years, saving about $2 million in total over those five years. But that has an impact on how you see that the actuals compared to the budget, and also while we got more revenue in, obviously with the increased demand, we did have the increased cost to go with it, so you can see that there with our increased expenses and wholesale power. DEC pro forma, I'll just touch on this at a high level and obviously we can answer any questions regarding the DEC's performance last year, but you can see there, you know, even as we made this estimate of the negative $2.5 million for net income for the DEC last year, we were still doing a lot of guessing. You know, we hadn't had that full year of the DEC performance to see what was realistic, so trying to be obviously somewhat conservative, but getting through the end of the fiscal year, we can see how that August with the increased demand, increased prices really affected the DEC and affected that net income. The agency obviously ended up at $14 million positive as opposed to our estimate of about $2.5 million negative. So to recap, no mid-year changes recommended at this time. We'll bring these forecasts back to you during the budget process here in a few months, and we'll continue to provide those DEC updates to you on that performance. Thank you, David. Council Member Briggs and then Council Member Melton. So you touched on it a little bit. I wanted to talk more about the scrubber debt and what the total of that was, because when we saw that we thought we were going to be in the red, we kind of pushed that off, and we were actually going to pay it off, right, and it was going to be out of the way. Correct. And so where do we see that factored in here? So that was in the, if you just look, obviously this is a lot of money within this administrative administration group, but it's within that administration is where that TNPA scrubber debt, so that was about $28.6 million that we had budgeted to have a payoff. If you recall, also during the budget conversations, we had an additional $9 million payment over our budget on our DEC debt, with that first revenue debt that we had to pay, where in the bond covenant, just the way that we had to allocate out those payments was different than how we budgeted it, so that was an additional $9 million of expense. So within that, you have a $28 million that we didn't pay, but we also had an additional $9 million in DEC debt, and we had the debt service on the TNPA, so we can definitely provide more detail if you want to see how that's all broken out, but those all went into that, the biggest changes within that administration. Yeah, so I would like to see that and how that factors in, and what was that, what is the date now for our payoff, and how much did we, how far away? Same, 2025, so it didn't change the payoff date at all. Okay, for the scrubber debt? Correct. And my other question is that it looks like operations, the estimate was pretty, for DEC, was significantly more than what the actuals were. When I look at the difference there, do you know what, because I remember approving some things for that DEC that wasn't in the, they weren't planned for, so I'm just. Of the decrease in operations. Yeah, because we had the budget and the estimate, and then that's a. I think Terry has an answer for you. And is that low number something we can count on, or will it get higher again? Good afternoon, Terry Nolte, Assistant General Manager. The primary cause of the lower expenses is right here. Is this number right here. So the fuel cost for the DEC was $6.9 million versus a budget of $14 million. So we ran the DEC significantly less hours, but we achieved much greater margins in the hours that we actually ran it. So that's where most of that savings is coming from. In operations? Operations, yes. Less run time? Yes. Less run time means less gas burned. So we purchased less gas. Okay. But we're not, you're not like using less employees or they're still there as much as they need to be? Yes. Okay. And. The biggest single operating expense for the DEC is the fuel. And so when you run half the hours that you originally planned on, your gas expense is about half. Right. And so for the budget, as we go forward, will we continue? Well, now I see it's like at 480 for the 1920. So will we just, is that just kind of a, we're just going to throw that number in as a guess from now on? Well, it's an educated guess. Okay. It's a forecast. It's based upon what the forward curves are telling us, the amount of run time that we're estimating for the following year and the next four years. Okay. So yeah, it's a number that we have to account for because when we look at net income and gross margins for the DEC performance, we have to, we absolutely have to take into account the amount of fuel that it's going to take to produce those revenues. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yeah, back on revenues. You may have spoken to it and I just might not have caught it. But it looks like five and a half million dollars higher than estimated in the other revenues. Right. Which is nice. What was that? A point, a great question. So we have a bullet point here that really relates directly to that. With TNPA, obviously, as we're going through a number of things with TNPA on the sale and a number of other pieces, one of the pieces of revenue that we got from TNPA that we haven't gotten in previous years is a share of their transmission costs. So they have their transmission costs for all the transmission assets that are with TNPA, and then they have the revenue that they get in for those assets. And they took the difference of those, the net, and they distributed them out to the member cities. So we got $4 million in '18-'19 that we hadn't budgeted or planned for at the end of the fiscal year that we can apply to. That's actually being approved at the December meeting for TNPA, but we've already booked it into this fiscal year. So that will go on forever, obviously. Correct. Yeah, we haven't budgeted for it next year. It's possible that the same thing happens at the end of next year, but to be conservative, we just haven't included that in our forecast. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage. I have a question for, I think it's for Mr. City Manager, but you can answer it if you're able to answer it. And I think Tony probably knows what I'm going to say, but every time the subject of our DME rates and cost of service comes up, I always point out that I prefer our, wondering what that sound is over there, that I prefer our water department rate structure. That is almost an inverse of DME's in that it charges the bigger users more and the smaller users less instead of giving kind of a bulk discount. What I would prefer for DME, and my question is about should I put this forward in one of these one-minute presentations, or can there be some sort of preparation to at least have us discuss this at that upcoming meeting, what did you say, halfway through the year? I forget when that slide, I could look for it. You're in the budget process. Yeah. So in the springtime? Yeah. When that comes forward to us, because I'm not going to, I'm not saying that I'm taking for granted that that issue is going to be in there, but if it's not, then I will definitely put it forward for a one-minute presentation. But I'd like us to consider the possibility of for that highest category of the 25, what is it, $25,000 or more, those entities that targets the Walmarts, all the biggies who don't have a special power purchase agreement with the electric bill. I believe $24,000, $25,000 a month or more. Again, this isn't small businesses. It's not even your typical big business. It's the really, really, really, really big monster businesses, you know, that they have a higher rate, which could be kind of like help potentially as a hedge for to help keep rates low for residents. So I'd like that to at least be considered. So I'm wondering how procedurally can I be sure that this is brought forward? So Tony, point to the chief financial officer, my comment to you is that so that inherently there's some differences how these rates are set for both the electric and water as the example you've shown, more of a conservation versus cost recovery. We've had a number of questions that have come up, you know, here at the council and also by our PEB. And so our intent was to bring back during the budget process, not only a discussion about transmission cost of service and how that works and the fundamentals behind that, but also we did perform a cost service study that sets some rates. And so we did plan to bring that forth as part of the budget process, kind of a more detailed discussion on that issue. And so if you can give us a couple of months, we'll be back here in front of you to have that discussion and get to seek council's direction on if there's any changes they'd like to see. Oh, yeah. And that's awesome. That sounds great. And so that study has already been done and the results are in or is still kind of underway? Yes, correct. That is done, correct. Okay. I might be hitting you up for like a sneak peek meeting. Sounds good. Thank you. We're just taking questions at this time. Any other questions for staff? Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. We'll go on to the next agenda item. What is it? E? Yeah. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction on a request for a future council work session to discuss whether to adopt additional regulations to the city's gas well ordinance. Sorry, I didn't. My name is Ken Banks. I'm the general manager of utilities. And I'm here to present a clarification item for direction on future gas well work sessions. Just some quick background. During a pending request for information work session on October the 22nd council meeting, staff presented a request made by Councilwoman Armitour to have a future work session to discuss various items related to gas wells. And staff is seeking clarification on which items to include in the future work session on that on that particular topic. So on October the 22nd, the request was presented as by Councilwoman Armitour. Basically, the original date of request was September the 29th. And essentially it was a request of future work session on gas well safety and possible gas well ordinance inclusions. We've included a couple of several informal staff reports that may be of interest to these topics just for your reference. And the requested format was a work session. So staff is here to really seek consensus on the following areas for future work sessions. So the request was that notification be given to new and subsequent home buyers and renters living within 500 feet of a well site. Request that line compressor stations should be addressed in the gas well ordinance. Request for continuous air monitoring within 500 feet of a well. Request for an implementation of soil testing. And then also request to have Dr. Hildenbrand, who is a researcher from the University of Texas at Arlington, or other air quality experts present to the council. So with regards to item one, basically the request is that notification be given to new and subsequent home buyers and renters living within 500 feet of a well site. We do have current standards of notification to be sent to owners within 1,000 feet of the site for certain activities. So basically that involves a drilling operations completion, Recompletion, plugging operations, and then any seismic operations for exploration purposes. There are four types of disclosure required for plats that propose a single or multifamily residential lot within 1,000 feet of a drilling or production site. In a very brief summary, those include a text note on the plat, a map to be included with the plat, information included with any restricted covenants that might exist, and then a notice on the title to the property. And then, of course, we have information provided to the public on the gas well inspections page. Essentially, you can get information on any gas well that exists in the city, including its location. There's a measurement tool for proximity, etc. So with that information being out there, I just want to pose the question for the council to consider. Do you want this topic to be included in a future work session? There was some language in there that was sort of ambiguous. And so staff asked me what I meant. I said, well, I can't answer that. And you make a decision on that. We need to bring that back. So I'll take full responsibility for the confusion in that regard. So I think I said something like I don't want to rehash things. And so that just doesn't give much direction. So that's that's that's on me. Yes. So this is kind of on that point. So I understand that. I mean, I was surprised to see this come forward because I thought that we had consensus on this. But I understand and I went back, I watched the work session. And, you know, as the as the mayor just explained now, as the city manager had explained to me on the phone when I expressed my surprise and in seeing this the last time it was on the agenda. It was to my understanding that what we're supposed to be discussing today is this point of clarification about not rehashing old subjects, right? Subjects we've already talked about. That was the that one person within that that consensus had that point. So I was and I expressed this to the city manager already. And now I just wanted to express publicly confused by this presentation. I know we're just on this this one first slide, but there are additional slides that follow because it it addresses things that are far beyond the question of have we discussed this previously or not. So I like some sort of explanation from I'm not sure who, you know, whoever made the presentation or maybe this city attorney. Why all this additional information in here? You know, as you'll see in subsequent slides, it's bringing up and for me it was kind of ironic because we're supposed to not be rehashing all the material. It's bringing up again, you know, old arguments that we've heard about, you know, could be a violation of HB 40 to do soil testing, for instance. So, you know, why is this what it is? And shouldn't we be sticking it to in our conversation about what have we talked about before versus what have we not talked about before? So if I could if I could just address your comments. So would you feel better if the information here's your item one. Right. And so you're saying that if that's what we should be considering without the information in between that, is that what you're saying? No, I'm saying so I mean, close closer. It's that so you had, as I understand it, requested that you wanted to make sure that in bringing this forward, we're not rehashing old material. I forget the exact quote, but right. So, if that's the point of clarification that's needed in the discussion today, then the question being asked, should not be. It would seem to me, does the city council want this topic to be included in the future work session because we've already asked that it should be, has the city council already, or, you know, if the city council were to bring this forward, would it be a rehashing of old topics? Right. If that's that being the point of clarification requested. In other words, it feels to me like a redo of the entire work session and it, you know, and maybe this is unfair of me to say, but I felt like the slides. This one actually was my favorite of all the slides, but the other slides, they felt to me like they were kind of arguments against or against bringing these these forward and that might not be the case right that that might not be how they were intended. But, again, I'm not sure why we're, it feels like we're having this whole discussion all over again if simply a point of clarification on rehashing old topics was was requested. And since I was the one that sort of precipitated this I'd like to respond to that. Because to me, I mean you say that these things are arguments. These, these four, these three bullet points in blue. I don't really see it. This slide is this slide is the best one. This slide is not so much a problem. I just wanted to if the question were for the future one sure if someone asked me. Okay, was this one of the things you felt like you would be rehashing and I would say yes because we've talked about notice requirements on many, several different occasions on many different levels. So take that narrative out of there and I would say no this wouldn't be one that I would want to be included because I think that we've gone over it already. Okay, so thank you. So it's in the case of this slide again it's not so much those three bullet points in blue but the one at the bottom that's the question. So as you said, so you wouldn't be for this because it's come before us previously. That's just my rationale. Yep, so and I would like to for kind of that question to be continued to be asked for each subsequent slide or each subsequent item. And again, these are all issues that were brought forward by DAG, the Debt and Drilling Awareness Group. I was just the one to say, you know, I would like these to come forward to council because I happen to support them. So I would like that question to be the question that is being asked for the subsequent slides. Okay, I mean, I still think they're going to give their presentation. I can add further as far as our office's involvement with this and coordinating with staff and preparing this. When this was requested to be brought forward, it was brought to be brought forward not as a one minute but as a regular work session item listing out the information that we've done. And putting it in there, letting the council decide for each one, do you want to do this or not, this particular subject in a future work session. With number one, which you've said is fine, given that there was no reasoning in some of the requests that DAG made as to why that notification is insufficient. Staff in our office worked to put together something as to what we currently have to allow the council to decide right now, do we need to go forward with this or not? That's council's decision. And we did that with the rest of the items that were also brought forward. Which with very little information, just basically coming and saying we need to do this, but without any reasoning as to what is driving this. And maybe we went too far with the staff and the legal department, but we put in the information to give you all some basic understanding. There's a lot more that can be said with respect to each of these topics. We highlighted the key points for each one so that the council can understand if you want to go forward with this, what are the current standards, what is the current law, whether it's federal or state. Do you want to go forward with this or not? That's how we approached it. There wasn't, and so we felt that we had to put in some information given that the requests that were made were just blind or just a one sentence description that we need to do this. And thank you for that. And so again, I understand why that information was included. Again, we were presented with these opinions and I had read them all before we had that initial work session. But again, everything is about context. And for me, that information belonged in that previous context where we had that work session, but not in this context where we already had that work session. And now it's about did we already discuss these items before. So it's really more an issue of the content of this PowerPoint presentation and to what extent are we going to let this guide this conversation we're having today. And I would recommend that we move forward by just asking the question, did we, you know, is this something that has come to counsel before, since that is what the mayor's point of clarification was. Well, that was my point of clarification. There were two people who were not here at that time. So this, I mean, they haven't had a chance to weigh in on the question period, whether it's got any kind of narrative to it or not. So we're only, I mean, what you're talking about is something addressed to just me specifically. I was the only one that said it. The other council members, that doesn't necessarily apply to them. So that's why it's coming back. But I think it seems like what you're saying is you should be the only one to weigh in because this is clarification based upon what you said. But I don't know if I agree. No, sorry. So I'm not saying that you should be the only one to weigh in, but that this question, open to everybody who's here with us today, whether they were here at the last meeting or not, this is the question we should be deliberating. Has this come before counsel or not? I feel like it would be a break from procedure if we were to open it up again. And I understand there were two people who were absent, but what we usually do, and there are two people absent at a work session, we're just giving direction. We just move forward anyway. But now they can weigh in, but weigh in on the question to which we were all limited, which I believe should be, again, not the question being asked here. Does it make sense, even if you don't agree, does it make sense what I'm saying, my objection? It's really a point of procedure and my concern that this is inappropriate procedurally. No, I understand what you're saying. What you're saying is that my ambiguity and the question that I had, which would then arise out of that lack of clarity, which is, no, in my mind, we've already gone over this, so no, I don't have any desire to talk about it. You're trying to say that that should be the question to all of the council members, and I disagree with that. I don't think that is what the question is to necessarily the council. So, but, I mean, I'll let the council weigh in on how they want to do this presentation. If we just want to just put the four items back up there again and just have a, you know, up or down on whether we want to talk about it or not, I mean, if that's what you're wanting to do. But I don't think, I don't think that our question is limited to asking Council Member Davis, is this something that we've gone over before, and if your answer is no, then that means it's an automatic, I want to have it on the work session, or if it's yes, it's an automatic, I disagree with that. I think it sets a bad precedent then. Okay, well, all right. Council Member Briggs. So, I would, when we sat in the, in the other room in the city council hall, in the hall, and we had all the people coming up to us with all of these lists, and we said, well, that's coming back to us in a work session, we're going to talk about that. That's coming back to us, we're going to talk about that. I feel like this is our chance right now to make that right, and I do think that we have talked about some of these things, but having a work session and include some of these things for public may be a little bit bigger, and potential for other notifications that we've talked about before, like code red notices going to people within 500 feet of a well, you know, you can sign up for those text things. There's specific things that we can do, maybe getting this council to agree that we have a discussion with the Realtors Association about putting something in their form about this notification type thing. There are the outside of the box types of thinking that we could do in regards to notification where it wouldn't fall necessarily, you know, on this council to do, and I don't want to limit that just by saying no, I don't want to talk about these things. Okay, so I want to understand what you just said. Basically, what you're saying is you don't want to have it limited to the question of have we already talked about it? It's a binary choice, up or down, and then we move on. You're saying you don't want to view this discussion like that. Well, what I'm saying is, whether or not it's been talked about before, things have changed in a few years or a year, and so there may be other options on the table that weren't in the last discussion. Well, but I think the whole point here is, in fact, quite honestly, Councilmember Armature, you're getting, you're basically have an opportunity to get a lot of the things that you wanted to discuss almost out here now because if we're talking about these things, I've just had someone say, another council member say, well, there's some other things that we can consider advocating for a work session on those things, which in some sense has given more credence to the item than was when it was a one minute and a one minute rebuttal. So I think we're just going to move forward with the presentation, and we're going to take these one item at a time, and we're going to be able to see if there's an up or down on it, and if you just want to put the text up there and not read it, that's okay. If we choose not to read it, we can choose not to read it. I mean, I already know what my answers are because for me, all these things we've already talked about. And I've been on council for 12 years, and it wasn't 10 years ago that we talked about it. It's been a lot sooner than that. Make it very quick because we're going to move forward with this presentation. Yes, so I want to respond to Councilmember Briggs. So I completely, I was the one who put all these forward in the first place, so I completely agree with you that, you know, it doesn't matter to me whether or not these have come before us for. We do the budget every year, so I'm all for having this. I really don't think any of the others have come before us. But this one, I'm totally fine about. For me, this is a point of procedure because we already had a work session where we decided to move forward on all four of these. That's not true. That's not true. I made a statement that was ambiguous and said, "I don't want to rehash these things. I don't want to rehash the things that we've already gone over." And so I really disagree with that. And we're going to go ahead and wind this. To me, it wasn't a no. I did not hear a no. But you didn't hear a yes either. That's the point. And if mine was ambiguous, then there wasn't for people to move it forward. Okay. So I will have this whole work session all over again. So yes to this one. I want this topic included in a future work session. Okay. So we're going to basically do what the process that I think I just described, and that is we're going to have a chance. And if the Council votes a consensus to move each one of these forward or a subset of these forward, then we'll move them forward. Yes, Councilmember Melton. So on the narrow point, having covered it within my memory, if we have, I'll follow my memory. Interested in the topic, specifically the inclusion of renters, and just more broadly, there's a teachable moment here in that we're in a kind of newish process. When you've got a compound ask that has a bunch of pieces, I think it probably would be smart for us in the future to go, let's break it up and let's do it the first time through. That's what we're doing now. This one? That one? Yeah. So learn. Yeah, absolutely. Any other comments? So we've got Councilmember Meltzer's positive on this, Councilmember Armitter, Councilmember Briggs. Anybody else? I mean, I've stayed in my position. And I think what we decided was that to be a yes, it has to be an affirmative yes. If there's not, then there won't be. Okay, any? Yes, Councilmember Davis. My question is, is there anything else in the city that we do this with? For instance, when you buy a home, you get the lead disclosure. That doesn't come from the city that comes from federally required standards. When you rent a house, you get certain brochures, and there's certain things that are required to be in your form lease. That doesn't come from the city. That comes from state law. Is there anything else like this that the city is involved in? I would be interested in a work session that is limited only to encouraging notifications of a type that, like Councilmember Briggs was talking about, that the city doesn't have to create a system for. We don't have the capacity to create a system that is present at every sale of a home, that is present at every closing meeting where you're going through the title paperwork, that is present at every rental agreement. We don't have that capacity. Something that's about how can the city help facilitate text messages and that kind of stuff, where we don't have to set up a notification system. I'd be interested in that work session. I would not be interested in the work session that puts us at every home closing and every lease signing. Okay, so that's very narrow, and so we don't have a consensus yet on this particular request. So, I mean, if the people who are okay with that request, if they want to narrow -- I mean, I'm not trying to -- I'm just saying that was your statement. And so what you're saying is if any of these other things are included in that, then you would not want to move forward with that. Or if they are included in it, that you're okay with moving forward. Sure. My point is I'm okay with -- and I think it's a good idea to give people notification. I'm saying the city of Denton does not have the ability or the capacity to provide the notification that is present at home closings and at leasing. We just don't have that ability. So if it's very narrow in third party solutions or community message board solutions or something like that, I'd be fine talking about how we can best go about doing those kind of notifications. But as far as disclosures, home sale disclosures or lease disclosures -- Required by the city. Yeah. I can't support that. Council member. My suggestion to the gentleman from district three is that we have the discussion, and in it, you say that. You know, so like I favor these things but not those. If we're already sitting here and we don't have four folks that want to discuss that, then we're not going to have four folks that want to discuss paying the folks that are going to make that happen. What are the penalties when your title agent doesn't include that slip of paper? The penalties for not getting your lead disclosure is you can sue the folks who didn't disclose it. The penalties for not getting the right brochures at your rental signing or not having the right provisions in your lease is when your landlord tries to kick you out, you get to sue them back and say, well, I shouldn't have to pay you rent in the first place. There's no -- there's no similar provision. There's no way to do what you're asking to have happen. So that's why I'm being so narrow. It's more than just make that presentation as part of the conversation. It's existential to the conversation. I don't think it -- I don't think the conversation can take place. Okay. Council member. So I was wondering if it would be -- if I could amend the -- if it would still be enough kind of on posting because we're still a version of this item, to amend this item so that we could get, you know, council member Davis' approval. You know, what if it said, you know, request that -- what if it was about, say, you know, once a year, homeowners who have not previously been -- of addresses that have not previously been notified, you know, get the notification that your house is within 500 feet of a well site. The same would apply to renters. And then we can add on any other details to that. You know, maybe somebody -- people will have suggestions about, well, maybe when you sign a, you know, a lease -- not a lease, a mortgage, whatever, you know, that if -- that that information would be sent out to all the companies and they would have to see if that's in there. You know, we could have -- discuss those details later. But what if we kind of keep it broad enough that just once a year and just making sure that it's not redundant so we don't keep telling the same people every year? I'm just wondering what it would take and maybe you -- if there's some way that you would be okay with home buyers being notified if it didn't have to be, you know, right there at the signing. Well, let me say one thing, though. Councilmember Armitage, you really said a lot of things in the beginning of this work session talking about process and staff. You sort of attacked staff. You sort of attacked -- I did not -- point of order. I didn't attack staff. But what I find very interesting is the very thing that you wanted to happen is happening right now. Because we are talking about it, you're wanting to make an amendment based upon what somebody has commented on to try to get -- to move this forward. That's a work session. So I hope that you recognize that as we move forward during this presentation that you're basically getting exactly what you wanted. So -- I wanted procedure to be followed, and I personally -- and I know that everybody else does, too, but I just happen to believe that this sets a bad precedent. And, however, since we are moving forward with this, I had two choices, just leave the room or participate in it. I'm participating in this for what it is, but it's not about what I want or not to get as a result. It was about the process. So I'm participating in a process that I don't really approve of to, you know, just go with the flow and try to get along. But I'm not -- anyway, it's a point taken, but I don't agree. >> Councilmember Meltzer. >> Yeah, I mean, we could bid to, you know, get you up to whatever the fist to five thing is, you know, that we modify this to say discuss options, notification options, all the rest of that, using existing systems. >> I think I can get on board with that. It's that notification options, I think, needs to be a little bit more -- so right now the item is home buyers, leasers, those kind of folks. I'm fine with talking about notification items like full stop, or even, like you said, I suppose, notification methods using existing systems or existing processes. I think we're just really selling people short. People are not dumb. They know what's behind those big walls and those trees and their neighborhoods. You can say that they don't -- every time I talk to somebody, I ask them, do you know there's a gas well? They're like, yeah, I know there's a gas well over there. I hear it. So like Keely mentioned, for instance, red alerts. When something's wrong, you get an alert on your text message. I'm fine with that. You know, patronizing our folks and handing them a piece of paper to say, don't you know that you shouldn't buy this house? Don't you know that you shouldn't live in this apartment? I'm just not buying that at all. Okay. But notification options using existing systems. Yeah. I think we're going to -- I want to make sure that I -- because we got into this place because of me, which was a lack of clarity. So I'll accept that. So I want to make sure that we don't fall down that same path again. Because what I thought I heard you say was notification based upon third-party opportunities but not originating from the city. That's what I thought I heard you say. Now, code red -- code red is for emergencies. It's not just for notification of, hey, this is where you are. It's for -- if there's a gas well explosion, if there's a tornado, if there's a flood, if there's -- whatever it is, people can sign up for that. They already have the opportunity to do that. So I want to make sure because what I thought I heard you say was you're open. But the narrow part -- it's narrowly tailored to things that are outside of a city requirement, that it's outside of the city saying you have to do this. And I could be wrong. I could be reading something into that. So I'm just trying to get clarification. No. What has happened is the conversation has shifted from the item that's on our screen, which is contacting, you know, notifying home buyers and renters. It's something that I've said I don't think is feasible. And it's turned into the broader question of notifications. If the question is just straight up or down, am I in favor of a work session on the item as presented on this slide? No, I am not. If the question is, am I open to talking about some notifications and some things we could do better to keep our people safe that aren't this item? Sure. But that may be another one-minute pitch. So I may have overcomplicated it by offering a different -- a different take. But if the question is yes on this particular item as it's word on this slide, then no. Okay. All right. Okay. Any other comments? Okay. So based upon at least what I've heard or not heard, there are three requesting this and that there are four who have not requested it. If that's not what I understand, if somebody sees it differently, then feel free to speak up. Okay. Next item. Would you like me to review it real quickly or? Council's pleasure. I want to just move through these questions and we don't -- all right. So item number two, request that line compressor stations should be addressed in the gas well ordinance. I'm interested in hearing more about it. Okay. I don't know much about it. Yes. Yes, I think we should have a work session. And this is just asking -- this is just a work session. What you say here doesn't mean you're voting yes for it. That's why this is confusing because it feels like direction for the item and it's actually for a work session, which means that you can change your mind when you see the other information. And so I don't want to get -- that's why this is confusing here. I am willing to and would like to see this in a work session item because people are asking us why we don't. I would like to know why we don't. I know that Fort Worth has it in theirs and when they amended it, it was just to match their setback requirements to the tank batteries. It wasn't to take it out of the ordinance. So they are still doing it. And I would just like to know more. Councilmember Davis. So we have ISRs on this. I don't think we have the slide that explains it very well, I think. I don't think we need more information. Fort Worth has left it in their ordinance, even though this is completely and totally preempted. They've left it in their ordinance and I think they've done so irresponsibly. And if you call up Fort Worth today, they'll tell you they are not enforcing their provisions as regard line compressors because as soon as they do, they will get sued. It is still on the books in Texas. Well, I won't give you examples because you can find them. There are plenty of laws on the books in Texas that have been found unconstitutional, that are not applied. Go look at the state, the case Lawrence v. Texas, and you'll find that the law that is overturned in Lawrence v. Texas is still on the books in Texas and nobody enforces it. It would be irresponsible for us to go and do the same thing and stick an unenforceable, preempted piece of legislation into our ordinances. So I don't think we need a work session. We've got the ISR that lays all of that out. That's Councilmember Bromwell. Yeah. Let's see. Can you go back to the slide? Sure. So obviously I'm for this. Again, as Councilmember Briggs said, this is just about having a discussion on it. Just agreeing to have a discussion on it. The first bullet point line compressor stations are heavily regulated. I think that's subjective judgment that heavily, I would just scratch that and say regulated by federal and state government. Plenty of people think that what the Railroad Commission does is really insufficient, especially who's considering who's behind the Railroad Commission. So about the Fort Worth ordinance, it could be that they haven't been sued because it hasn't been enforced. But then what that means is that they have the law and they haven't been sued just for having the law. Whereas we, in the case of the fracking ban that initiated HB40, and I'm just bringing this up as a point of comparison, we were getting sued even before we had the opportunity to even enforce it. So it's pretty hopeful to me that they haven't been sued. And I think it's pretty important, also considering that HB40 is, again, I invite everybody to read it. It's a really short law, and it's pretty ambiguous, and there's a lot of wiggle room. So I don't think that it's clear. I understand why, precisely because it's so ambiguous, just about anything could be said to be in violation. But I don't think that it's clear that this is, and I think it's a discussion worth having for public safety. >> Anybody else, any comments? John just left. Okay. Were you going to say something before and I didn't recognize you? >> No, no. >> Okay. I'm sorry. >> My position was clear. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> All right. We probably need to wait until Mr. Ryan gets back, because I think right now it stands. [ Inaudible ] We'll come back to this one. >> Okay. And just for completeness, there is a small section on this one that we have not reviewed. It gives the city attorney's opinion as to whether or not we are preempted by HB40 on the regulation of compressor stations. >> Right. Okay. Let's go to the third item. We'll come back to this one. >> Okay. >> Because there wasn't four, I mean, either way, so we've got to get it forth anyway. Okay. All right. Let's go back to number two. >> All right. >> John, Councilmember Ryan, right as we were fixing to wrap up item number two, you had stepped out. So you didn't say anything, so I wanted to give you an opportunity to be silent or to -- okay. All right. So I think we've got three who want to -- I'll just phrase it like the request is presented. We've got three who want to request that the line compressor stations be addressed in the gas well ordinance. And four that have been silent on it. Councilmember, I'll return. >> So you don't want that to go forward even though it's not rehashing old topics? >> Oh, no. I remember talking about this. >> Okay. >> Absolutely. I mean, it's directly in HB40 as a preemption. I mean, it's directly -- and I've read papers on the Fort Worth ordinance after HB40 talking about it. They knew that it was preempted. They're just going to leave it there. They hadn't been challenged. So I mean, no, I've talked about this. >> So you had said no the first time, and I didn't understand that in the October 22nd work session. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. All right. We'll go on to item number three. >> Okay. >> Okay. I'm sorry. Councilmember Galser. >> Actually, the first part of my comment doesn't actually pertain to this item. But in general, the fact -- or the opinion that things are preempted by HB40 doesn't necessarily to me mean it's not good that it comes before the public. People are asking -- or some people are asking about these things. So actually, even the fact that we're discussing it here and saying the reason we're not talking about it is because it's preempted, yeah, that serves a public purpose because people want to know. >> That's my point exactly. >> Okay. >> So we've had a work session. >> So we're kind of doing half of it. >> Yes. So we're having a work session on the top. >> Sneaking it in. Yeah, in a way. All right. And on this one, I am interested in -- I question whether this is sort of the only solution. So, you know, at this cost. And whether this is sort of oriented toward something that meets TCEQ standards or that kind of thing. Our purposes might be different than what that level, you know, of execution might be for. So I think there might be other ways to go at it that are worth discussing. So I'm for it. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Along those lines, yeah, that was -- so what I didn't like about the way this slide was done and had I expressed it the last time to -- was that at least privately to the city manager. Google Earth, for instance, you know, they do air monitoring for, as I understand it, for free for some cities. So -- and they can do this all over the world. And now, of course, it would have to be on their terms, right? This assumes, you know, the ask from DAG was not -- or that came from me, you know, was not and have the city pay for it 100%. It was just let's talk about, you know, request for continuous air monitoring within 500 feet of a well. What are the various ways we could do it? This is just one way. And, I mean, I don't know what it would cost. So that estimate might be right if we paid 100%. But so even reaching out to Google Earth and saying, you know, is this something that y'all could do for us, that is kind of ruled out the way this slide is framed. So I would just encourage people to think that this, you know, if we agree to have this discussion, it doesn't mean 100% subsidized by the city that was not part of the request. And it's not how -- it has to be done. All right. So you're in favor? Yes. Okay. Councilmember? Yes, I'm in favor. I think our air is really important. I think there's other ways that we can do it. We've seen that there's the smart system, the smart lights, a future work session, including how we can do this, ways we can do it, creative ways we can do it. It's really important to monitor our airs. We only have the one out there, and it's -- we're in a nonattainment area, and it's critically important. Knowing what is in our air can help us determine all kinds of other policies. It's not just for this, but I think it's really important, especially now that we have gotten rid of the 500-foot setback and we're back to 250. This is even more important to me, and it says that the city north TCEQ can pass on the cost to the operators. I disagree with that. Maybe TCEQ can't, but in our DDC chapter 632, it says the contractor may be retained by the city to perform such inspections and cost of services and charges assessed by the third-party contractor shall be borne by the operator. And if I'm reading that incorrectly, then somebody can approach me that later, but I would love to see a future work session on this, mostly because our air quality is a topic of discussion all the time. All right. Anybody else? It seems like three to four. Yes, Councilmember -- Mayor, I'm curious if there's something that you liked, you know, last time. You said not some things, but something that led you to vote. No, I said I don't want to rehash things. The things that I've seen so far -- I mean, before the last slide of requesting continuous air monitoring, we voted on the contract for air monitoring. I think it was two weeks or three weeks just prior before that request was made. I know it wasn't very -- it was very close in time. It's like we had an opportunity to talk about that when we were approving the contract for the current provider. Was there some component of what was discussed, you know, the first time this list came up before us that you did want to talk about? No. All right. No, no. I mean, we've talked about soil testing, and I'll address that, but no. So I've totally owned it. That was my lack of clarity. Yes, Councilmember. So about soil testing, so what I didn't like about this slide was that -- and I understand -- and the city attorney and I have discussed this. So I understand how testing the soil on the private property of a gas well operator, how that would be -- could at least potentially be in violation. However, what I had asked was, when we had the conversation about it, was, well, what about testing the soil right outside of that private property in the public right-of-way? We have the right to test our soil, and, you know, parks has tested soil to, you know, make sure there's not too much sulfur in it or whatever, test the soil health. So we have every right to test our own soil, you know, and that -- this kind of -- by not including that as a possibility, I would like to -- never mind what's wrong with the slide. At the very least, I would like people to understand that that is possible. And as I recall, Mr. City Attorney, you had said to me, well, it depends on what the motive is of testing the soil, you know, and I had said, what do you mean? And you had said, well, if you're testing with the intent of proving that the soil is polluted and that that could be potential violation of HB40. And that confused me because I didn't understand why the intent of testing our own soil should matter. Also, even if it did, the intent would be to find out what's in it, you know, actual testing, not with -- you know, maybe you might have a hypothesis in mind, but you don't have the conclusion already in mind that's not scientific testing. In response, the information that's on the slide is very little. I think the AIS really goes in more detailed description as to what -- about soil testing, especially about adjacent property use -- protected use properties. I think the conversation we had was, what is the purpose of doing the testing on adjacent protected use properties? Is it to indirectly determine whether or not a adjacent gas well operator on a pad site has contaminated their land? Was it being used as a mechanism to site the operator for the -- polluting the property or to serve as a private cause of action for the protected use property owner to sue the gas well operator of that adjacent pad site? Those are the questions because depending on what purpose is being sought to accomplish, you may end up back in House Bill 40 or you may not. That was the point I was making. Well, so -- and thank you. So, yeah, I would say that it's -- you know, just everybody keep in mind that it could also be on public property. So what you're saying does not apply to public property, correct? We have the right to test our own soil and we have -- there's mechanisms in the state law for us to file a civil lawsuit against an offender that we would bring the city under the name of the city, but that's for the city's property. And not -- I mean, the request was very broadly worded that we're trying to narrow down exactly what was the purpose of the soil testing. And that's -- we tried our best to try to come up with the various ways or various types of testing and to try to find out what is really being requested. And thank you. And that's why I had tried to point out -- or earlier, after this slide had been first given to us, and then we had this conversation and I said, oh, it could also be in the public right-of-way. And that's why I was surprised to see -- I mean, I'm surprised we're having this conversation to begin with, but I was surprised to see this same slide come back, you know, without any changes in it. But anyway, now that it is what it is, knowing that we can test on our own property and that I certainly, you know, don't want to -- you know, if it means we have to test this many feet away to comply with the law, I'm fine with that. So request for implementation of soil testing that complies with the law, as close as we can on public property. I'd be curious to know if anybody, you know, disapproves of that and why testing our own soil to see the quality of our own soil that our kids play on, again, the air that our, you know, kids breathe. Now we're talking about soil. I'm assuming that means you're in favor of this request. Oh, absolutely. Okay. Yes, I mean, I feel like we could soil test or have a work session on if we decided to do that, how that would be done and what that would look like. And I'd also like to remind this council that HB 40 does not supersede the federal Clean Air and Water Act. Councilmember Davis. I'd be fine with an ISR on this topic to look at costs. That's one thing we haven't really heard much about. We've heard a lot about air monitoring costs. I don't think we need a whole work session at this point. It's not very clearly defined. I don't think really what that work session would be about, what chemicals we're looking for, all that kind of stuff. I'd be fine with an ISR that told us, here's the kind of soil testing that's possible for cities to do. Here's what some of our existing contractors can provide. Here's how much it costs to do that. And then at that point, I'd be willing to consider whether we have the wherewithal to do that. To just have a gloves-off conversation about let's test soil without more information. I'm not there yet. All right. Councilmember Nielsen. Reading the tea leaves, I'll weigh in in support of an ISR. And also, I just want to note, I asked about this some time back, and the city attorney discussed whether soil testing was a below-the-ground kind of operation. That that was sort of a pivotal issue. I don't know if that's still your view. If it's not, I'll just forget about it. You're talking about subsurface activities on your house before? Yeah, yeah, yeah, which I think is, if that's still a concern, I would say, well, I think that's kind of an interesting reading. They're really talking about below-the-surface related to drilling. No, the concern that I expressed was with soil testing, if you were requiring the operator to do it, that would violate House Bill 40. I totally agree that the Texas Clean Air Act and the Texas Water Code gives the city the ability to do testing on its own dying. I've never, we have been consistent since 2012 with the gas ordinance amendments, that the city has that ability to do that. Okay, I should clear that. And it's not related to House Bill 40. Again, the way the request came, there's so many different ways to interpret it that we had to come up with at least what we thought was being requested. But certainly, we can test our own property. There's no issue with that under the Texas Clean Air Act and the Texas Water Code. Okay, thanks for clearing that up. All right, anything else? Okay, all right. I don't think there was a consensus for that request, which was implementation of soil testing. There was a proposal made for an ISR on it, too, people that agreed to that. So I just want to give -- okay, ISR? Okay, so we, yeah, ISR, all right. But we need to understand also what that ISR, the scope of that ISR needs to be, so we'll figure that out. Okay, item five, request to have Dr. Hildebrand present to the council. Yes, Councilmember Davis. How was that Dr. Hildebrand's presentation for DAG? I thought it was very informative. I thought it was very helpful information to have. I'd also point out that it's available in other places. It's available on the Internet. If and some of the other experts in this field has been presented at this council, their information is also available. I don't know that we need to use council time, staff time attending us while we listen to the presentation, and then public time watching us streaming, listening to the same presentation that we have the information from. We know Dr. Hildebrand's conclusions. Regardless of what the property rights are, you ought to have 2,000-foot reverse setbacks and not have anybody living within a big radius of a gas well. That's well known. We don't need to spend our time or Dr. Hildebrand's time, frankly, coming in to give us a presentation on that. That was considered. His information was considered in conjunction with our 500-foot reverse setback conversation. We have that information already. We don't need that presentation from him. Councilmember Amherst. I know we're not going to get consensus on this, but I'm going to state my view anyway. Obviously, I'm for it. We had today about a two-hour presentation from a private developer who wants to put homes 500 feet from gas wells and schools and have kids play actually right around the -- even closer to the pad site. So I find it unfortunate that people don't want to have this presentation, which has come recommended by -- this wasn't my idea. It came from the Denton Drilling Awareness Group. We're not beholden to them, but I certainly will listen to whatever they request. And then we got a number of -- or I did anyway -- emails asking for this. It sounded reasonable to me. So I think it's important that we think about what our constituents would like. And I -- because of the emails I got, this is something I would like, too. Okay. Councilmember Bruegge. I'm not going to talk directly about this one because I know what everybody already feels. But I will say that I have a potential solution coming forward. Stay tuned. But I also am a little disappointed to hear there's not consensus on any of these things, especially after the reconsideration. So I would just like for this council to grow up here and start protecting our residents and stop using HB40 as an excuse to do nothing. Eventually we're going to have to take into consideration the safety and talk about -- just talk about them. We don't have to make any decisions. We just need to talk about them. And I'm just upset that we're not even allowing us to do that. Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah. I'll just distance from that last comment. I don't want to be associated with that. Grow up here is a little insensitive. Councilmember Armitage. Yes, I would like to make myself as close as I can to that previous comment. I concur wholeheartedly 100%. Councilmember Briggs' comment, that is. Okay. All right. Well, I mean, that's unfortunate. I will agree with Dr. -- with -- I just want to say Davis -- with Councilmember Davis' assessment. I read the articles. I've read the articles that were -- I've read every study that has been sent to me that talks about these things. And I think I made some of my views known in the work session. And we're going to -- we've talked about setbacks often, often. And there's nothing that precludes Dr. Hillebrand from coming and talking to this council. I mean, every meeting we have the opportunity for people to come and talk to us via public comment or an open mic. And so that's not a total prohibition. So it doesn't sound like that we have consensus on this as well. So dinner is ready. Let's take about a five- or 10-minute break. And let's move -- and then we'll -- gosh, we only got -- that one is the -- that one is the seven-minute one, right? Yeah. Well, we just had the person that made the request leave the council, at least this room. So let's just go ahead and grab something to eat. And then we'll -- and we don't have a closed session. That was a placeholder. So once we get through, we'll be done. I'm going to start over. My mic was off. Welcome, everybody, back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, December the 3rd, 2019. It is 537 p.m. We're back on our work session reports. Agenda item 3F is to receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction on pending city council requests for labor contract minimum wage criteria. Good evening, mayor and city council. My name's Stuart Birdseye, assistant to the city manager. I'm here for our standing work session on pending council requests. Just a reminder of how we got here and the process. So we'll review one request tonight. And the staff will introduce each request. And then the elected official that made the request will have one minute to present the item. And then each other council member will have the opportunity to respond and indicate support for that. Tonight, as I said, we have one item. It was requested by council member Armator and it's labor contracts minimum wage criteria. On the screen and in your backup is the council member's request. And then we did provide just some other information that contained kind of what other cities it was part of a previous work session. Thank you. So it's a pretty simple request. Right now, our standards for taking bids for outside labor, temporary labor, people who clean our toilets, clean up at city hall after we go, is a lot like a text dot. And we go with the lowest bidder. And that's not good for labor because it means it generally means they're paying their workers less. And it can also sometimes lead to not such good work. Now, I'm not saying the latter is the case here. But I want to be clear, make sure that people have read this, that I'm not talking about non-competitive bidding situations where we only get one bidder. I'm talking about competitive bidding situations. I'm not saying it has to be $15 or any amount minimum wage. But that we go with the people, whoever pays their workers the most, the closest, the highest wage, most livable wage. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Davis. So earlier this summer, we added to the information that we collect and the information that's shared to the council about these contracts, the wages of the people who work and different jobs they do within the companies that we're contracting with. We, I'm sure, we go with the lowest bidder 90, 95% of the time. We don't go to the lowest bidder all the time. When we look at the, we get bid tables for each one of these contracts when we review them and we have to approve each of these contracts. I'm satisfied at this time with having that information. Councilmember Armitage, you voted against some of those contracts because we had that information to vote against. So right now, I'm satisfied with that level of information that we receive and factoring that into my decision on whether to award that contract or not. So that's a no to the new work session. Okay. Councilmember. So I wouldn't mind seeing a work session on what that would look like and if we could find a rubric or if there were more than three bidders. If that just is starting to take into account on the weight of that score. I would like to maybe potentially look at that. Instead of just saying, just having it a separate item over here and saying, oh, well, they don't do that, then I'm going to vote no. If it's weighed into the score, then that will help us look and help choose that one and we could say, okay, well, that's the one I'm going to vote for because that's included here. Okay. Councilmember Nelson. I'd be interested in a conversation on what our policy might be. As far as the role of wages in the contract vetting, I wouldn't say we should only have a discussion on that particular recommended solution, but the broader discussion I'm interested in. Okay. Anybody else? Hearing no more comment. Yeah. Okay. There didn't seem to be four people for this particular request. Yes, sir. Okay. All right. We do not have a closed session today. Well, it's a placeholder for if there are any questions on the competitive financial matters about the purchases and risk of wholesale energy supply and existing power purchase. Does anybody have any legal questions, legal questions or competitive matter that they want to address in closed session? Seeing none. All right, so we won't have a closed session. Therefore, I will adjourn this segment of the work session. And it is five forty two p.m. And we will adjourn and then reconvene in the council chambers at six thirty p.m. Everybody to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Tuesday, December the third, two thousand nineteen, it is six thirty one. Our first item on the agenda is pledge of allegiance. Please stand with me if you're able to pledge allegiance to the U.S. and Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state under God, one indivisible. OK, we've got one proclamation. But before we get to that, I wanted to recognize the thirty fifth class of leadership Denton. If you all raise your hands here. Welcome. Welcome. We'll see if we can't have a really robust council meeting for you here tonight. Thank you all for taking your time to be a part of that class and really learning about Denton and serving the community. So thank you very much for that. OK, Police Appreciation Day. Who's I'm going to take a guess of who might be here for that. Come on down. Whoever wants to join us. Who's going to be the spokesperson to tell us a little bit about police appreciate? OK, we got it. OK, then that's it. All right. What I want you to do is everybody introduce yourselves and I'll give you the mic. And you just sort of tell us a little bit about what we're celebrating. I'm Vern Bassett and Bonnie Bassett. Mary Beth Cottingham, Wayne Grissom, Clarice Luce, Larry Luce. Stuart Morehead. Peggy Perot. This is our 24th year. Jim Perot. Debbie Ishii. Alan Wartink. So tell us about Police Appreciation Day. Each year, the members of the CPA, we go out into the community and we beg, borrow whatever we can do to raise money, to raise food, to raise gifts. And on the usually the third Thursday in December of every year, we have Officer Appreciation Day. That day, we feed the entire police department breakfast, lunch and dinner and the civilian employees at the police department are welcome. Also, we have door prizes we give away and we have all kinds of little gifts that we try to give up to give to the officers. And we try to make it so every officer gets something. And we do this once a year and it's a lot of fun. We really enjoy it. Well, I really appreciate how you serve our the men and women of the Denton Police Department. Thank you so much for that, because I've been involved in several of those throughout the years. And it's a it's a wonderful testament to your love and care for those men and women who sacrifice their lives every day as they protect us and provide us protection. And it's it's especially appropriate because I've shared some of this with with some of you, but I went on a ride along Saturday night. I think Councilmember Briggs did one recently as well. And I met I met Officer Doug and and oh, yes. Oh, yeah, that's right. We were. Yes, yes, absolutely. And it was it was quite a wonderful experience to see the professionalism, the dedication and the compassion that these officers have for those that they're they're interacting with. And just the commitment they have to their job of keeping Denton safe. So thank you so much for your support for them over these many years. Thank you. So this is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton. Whereas the city of Denton Police Department has more than 200 dedicated police officers, administrators and staff who daily serve our citizens. And whereas the upcoming holiday season will call for added efforts on the part of our police department that result in greater safety of our city. And whereas the Citizens Police Academy alumni has chosen the date of December the 12th, 2019 to honor the police department with a daylong reception of appreciation. Now, therefore, I, Chris Watts, mayor of the city of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim December the 12th. Everybody make a note of that December the 12th of 2019 as Police Appreciation Day here in the city of Denton and urge my fellow citizens to show their support and appreciation to all the men and women in this community who have dedicated their lives to the field of law enforcement. Thank you all so much. You know, one aside, my niece was a member of the Denton Citizens Academy and she went on to become served her rookie year as a police officer in Houston and is now serving on the police department in Plano. So, yes. So thank you all so much. You bet. Yes. Yes, I will. Thank you. Our next agenda item is presentation from members of the public. If we could review the procedures for addressing the City Council, please. The Denton City Council has adopted rules of procedure, including a code of conduct that applies to citizens as well as council members. These rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum. Here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizen reports. Citizens will have four minutes to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes to give an open mic report. There will be an electronic bell when time has expired. If the remarks are not concluded by that time, the citizen will be asked to stop speaking. If the citizen does not cease and a second request is made, the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chamber. Citizens are asked not to approach the dais. If a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council, please let the city secretary know in advance. For scheduled citizen reports, the council may initiate discussion or questions following each citizen report. For non-scheduled open mic citizen reports, the council may listen to citizens speak. However, because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance, the Texas Open Meetings Act limits any deliberation or decision by the council to a proposal to place the item on a future agenda, a statement of factual policy, or a recitation of existing policy. Citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member. Please refrain from making abusive, personal, impertinent, profane, or slanderous remarks. Anyone who violates this council rule of procedure may be immediately removed from the council chamber. Thank you in advance. Copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary. >> I don't see that we have any scheduled citizen reports for tonight, but we do have two open mics. Our first open mic speaker will be Mr. Willie Hutzpeth. If you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. >> Mayor and council, my name is Willie Hutzpeth. I live at 623 Newton. Officer Carr, when I came in, frisked me and put me in a headlock and started laughing about it. And he said my son told him that we'll deal with you later. Anyway, I've done really good by my children. Gerard has produced four wonderful grandchildren and I'm about to be a great grandfather in a month. He's done a great job. And I have all of my daughter-in-laws are excellent. His wife is just the best. But mayor and council members, when he was seven, I had my chance to get rid of him. And I missed it. Now I'm stuck with him. That's another comment. Anyway, would you show this right here, ma'am? I have helped -- Keely and Deb, you will identify this with me because you know we've been in the trenches for a long time. There are homeless behind my house. I just have a heart for the homeless. I just do. And I'm trying my best to help them. So I said, look, the city and the people in the city will leave you alone if you just clean up. Keep your area clean and I'll fight for you. There are 28 people over there now camped out, 28 camps. There's one that has seven to eight people in their tent. And there are eight people who are hoarders. I mean in the worst way. All of you people are planning to be something in city government. Tomorrow, meet me here. We're going to walk through that here. Yeah, I know you're going to walk through. You wouldn't come over there for anything. Anyway, after the rain, it was horrendous over there. I went over there to just check and see what was happening. It was bad. There are eight that will not clean up. They will not clean up. I saw them hauling in stuff today all day long, like little ants, just moving stuff. Lots of it, just packing it in there. And they won't clean up these eight. You won't believe what's there and how they live. Eight people ruined it for the other 20. Well, I've given up. They got to go. They have to go. I see what people go through when they have people moving in like this. You just want them to go somewhere else. You don't know what else to do. I feel for them. I tried. But they are just awful. They mess up big time. And this is what got me to the point where I'm speaking to you now, saying, "Get rid of them." No. Move them to somebody else's property. This is a lady who's in the camp, and this is what she said about me. And all I asked her to do is help me to help clean up the area. And she wrote this about me. I can't see it, so if you can read it, just read it yourself. So in the Bible, God talks about helping the homeless and widows and orphans. I know what he's talking about. I just can't handle that stuff that they're doing over there at that place. So I'm asking you to see about moving them out. And by the way, I hadn't heard from any of you that said anything about the statue downtown in Denton. So if you don't say anything, I assume you agree with it. That's just the way I wrote it. Thank you, Mr. Husband. Councilmember Briggs, this is an open mic, so there's restrictions on what can be discussed from the dais. And I'm just going to read it. "Acts to limit any deliberation or decision by the Council to a proposal to put an item on the future agenda, a statement of factual policy, or a resuscitation of existing policy." So I ask that, yeah, those comments be restricted to that. It's just a question if our staff knows of this location and if our street outreach team has been to it. And if not, if that could be we could be followed up with that. OK, yeah, I think that yeah, I think you can ask the question, but I don't think we can follow up. OK, thank you. All right. Councilmember Armitage, did you did you withdraw your request to speak? OK, all right. Thank you. OK, we'll move on to the consent agenda. I don't believe we pulled any of the consent agenda items, so chairs looking for a motion. Councilmember Ryan. Oh, I'm sorry. We got one more open mic. Sorry. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. I'm going to go back to that agenda. I apologize. Renee Hardeman. Sorry, Renee. You should have taken something and thrown it at me. I'm still back here. So I apologize for that. Yes. Yes. If you'll state your name and address, your time will begin. Yes, I'm Rena Hardeman and I am a resident of Northlake, Texas, and I bring greetings from the people of Northlake, Texas to our our neighbors to the north in Denton. And I am told that I'm not allowed to speak on any specific agenda item, but I would like to read some comments in general from the people of the town of Northlake that they asked me to deliver to you if you don't mind. My feeling is that the development should be placed on hold until Argyle and Northlake commit to public water and sewer. Further, no approved development until TxDOT has a concrete plan for the rebuild of I-35W with a committed, reviewable timeline for completion. And another, I agree, we cannot continue to add to already toxic congestion when we have no ironed out plan for the traffic. We haven't even seen the full effects of this other development, which isn't near finished. This would be nothing more than a money grab and no considerations for the current residents. And still another one, please do all you can to stop this. We cannot handle any more density. And another, I understand the growth, but do you have any say about the size of the lots, et cetera? Yes, the roads around here are not equipped to allow the added traffic. I agree those things need to be addressed first before building more neighborhoods with many, many homes, apartments, et cetera. And another, I support all efforts to stop this reckless development without infrastructure to support it. Please also stress to the Denton City Council that high density residential directly under the approach to the Denton Airport is a terrible idea. As an active user of the Denton Airport and having come from a community that did exactly this, I can speak to the toxic relationship that forms between the airport, the city, the council, and the future residents of the community. The council may disregard its airport now as small and economically unimportant, but as the city grows, its airport will as well. If this development is built as drawn in Denton, we'll have an unending fight between city and residents trying to shut down the airport. And another, my apologies, I have huge concerns and would love to voice it. We do not have the infrastructure to support such significant developments so close together. And the others mention specific ones. But the general idea is that we would ask you to please seriously consider any future developments in Northlake as you are our northern boundary. We join at Ropes and Ranch Road. Many, many of our residents live on Ropes and Ranch Road, down Fault Road, down Florence Road, and all the other roads in Northlake. But we would ask you to please seriously consider the impact from both a traffic standpoint, from a tax standpoint, for the people who will live in these districts, these new districts that you all create. And to please consider the whole of the region in terms of traffic and infrastructure and things of that nature. And if you have any questions, we have it answering. But I appreciate so much your time. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, now we'll move on to consent agenda. I believe we pulled any items. Councilmember Ryan? Move approval. Mayor Pro Tem? Second. Let's vote on the board, please, for the consent agenda. Consent agenda carries 7-0. We'll move on to items for individual consideration. Item 5A. Consider approval of a resolution casting votes for membership to the Board of Directors of the Denton Central Appraisal District and providing for an effective date. Good evening, Mayor and members of Council. David Gaines, Director of Finance. This item is intended to allow the Council to place votes for appointments to the Denton Central Appraisal District Board of Directors. The next term for the Board of Directors starts January 1st, 2020, and each board member serves a two-year term. So we have until December 15th to make our nominations from the city. And I have a timeline on the next slide to show you how we got to this point. Each Denton submitted our nomination for Rick Wolfolk earlier this year. And in total, there are 5,000 votes cast for DCAD Board of Directors members, and Denton has 174 votes. Those votes can be cast for one nominee, multiple nominees, however the Council sees fit. So you can see October 15th nominations were submitted by each, and then the Appraisal District sent out those nominations to each entity. And then prior to December 15th, the city must submit our votes to the CAD. Here is a list of those nominees for the ballot. I will point out number two there. Michelle French has withdrawn from consideration. So at this time, the resolution is ready to be written as it needs to be based on your votes. Okay. Council Member Meltzer. I move that we cast all of our votes for Rick Wolfolk. Okay. Council Member Riggs. Yeah, and I just have a question, because some of the ones listed up there have already been nominated from another town or entity in our backup. These are all the nominees, all nominees that have been submitted, so now it's just casting the votes for the nominees. Okay, for these that we see here. Correct. Okay, all of them. Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Thank you. Council Member Ryan. I'll second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item 5A. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 7-0. Agenda item 5B. Receive a presentation of an ordinance of the City of Denton amending the City of Denton Code of Ordinances, Section 2-29, Council Rules of Procedure, treating all matters ending in a tie vote as a denial, providing for severability clause, etc. Well, that's why you're here tonight. Okay. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Rachel Wood with the Development Services Department, and Mayor, if I may, the presentation I'm giving tonight is actually on items B through F. Okay. Collectively, so I don't know if you need to call each of those items before I present. I will, I will call them. Yeah. Slowly, so that people want to move, move on, then they can do that. Thank you all for coming. Seriously. Thank you. Alright, so I'm going to call agenda items 5C, D, E, and is it F? All the way through F? B through F, yes. Okay. But we'll vote on them separately. You'll give a presentation on them corporately. Okay. Alright, agenda item 5C is receive a presentation of an ordinance of the City of Denton to amend the City of Denton Code of Ordinances, Section 2-29, F4D. Agenda item 5D is receive a presentation of an ordinance of the City of Denton amending the City of Denton Code of Ordinances, allowing up to seven members of the public to address the body through any combination of prior registration and open mic. Agenda item 5E, receive a presentation of an ordinance of the City of Denton amending the City of Denton Code of Ordinances, Section 2-29, requiring boards, commissions, and committees to establish a regular meeting schedule, etc. And the last one is 5C, receive a presentation of an ordinance of the City of Denton amending the City of Denton Code of Ordinances to revise the absence provisions for board, commissions, and committees. You know, this is going to sound crazy, but I guess I don't remember. So on these postings where it says receive a presentation of an ordinance? Yes. Are we voting on these? No, under the rules of procedure, you have a rule that requires that a proposed ordinance first be introduced and then later adopted at the second meeting. So it's a two reading requirement, so to speak. Okay. So since we called them, she's going to give the presentation corporately. Since there's no action, then that'll close out those agenda items after discussion. Exactly. You'll be able to look at the proposed ordinances, make any changes, propose changes. Okay. All right. Great, if you want. Great. Yep. So this presentation is really a continuation of the conversation that we had at the September 24th work session. If you recall at that work session, we brought forward eight different proposed revisions that have been requested by council over the course of the last year. Of those eight, we were asked to either provide clarification or propose revisions to six of those items. And those are listed here, excuse me, five of those items, and those are listed here. That includes tie votes, public hearing, public comment, leave of absence, which we'll get to in a moment, actually converted into more of an absence provision, and then motion for reconsideration. So tie vote, which I believe is item B in individual consideration. As a quick reminder, the current state, with the exception of the Planning and Zoning Commission, matters ending in a tie vote for boards, commissions, and committees are actually treated as a pending matter and are placed on each subsequent agenda until the tie is broken. The proposed revision that we heard from you on September 24th is to treat all tie votes for boards, commissions, and committees as a denial, which is consistent with Robert's Rules of Order. Questions on that proposed revision? And that committee doesn't refer to council committees, correct? None of this refers to anything as far as council organized. We have subcommittees for council, so I think I know the answer to the question. I just want to make sure I get it clarified. I believe it would actually apply to the city council as we've currently proposed it. If city council wanted us to make a revision, we certainly could to exclude the city council from that requirement. I don't know if Stephanie Neal helped us draft this ordinance revision, so I can ask her for assistance. Okay, so let me make sure I get clarification because I know that right now if it's a tie for a council decision, that it goes on to the next agenda where there's a full council. Is that correct? So we're changing that back to a tie is a denial. I don't remember talking about that, but I guess we did. Is that what we decided? I don't remember deciding that. I remember making it apply to the zoning board, to the zoning commission, to P&Z, but I don't remember saying that, so I'm wrong. No, no, no, you're right because it would just, my understanding of the conversation was it would recycle at this level. For planning and zoning. Oh, at this level. Planning and zoning, it moves forward after I think two shots at it. Here, it just recycles in perpetuity until. Right, but what I'm hearing is the recommendation is to make that if it's a tie vote at council, that it's seen as a denial instead of. I finally, Mayor. Yes. I finally was able to load up the proposed ordinance so I can answer your question. Sure. The way this was drafted is, or before I begin, your rules procedure are written for this body. Right. And then we have another provision that makes all these rules applicable to this body to your boards and commissions and committees. So the way the amendment is written under the exhibit four to item five B is as follows. Matters voted on by the city council, which end in a tie vote, shall be considered a denial. So that means that not only boards, commissions, and committees, but also the council. If you wish to treat that differently, this is your opportunity to make that distinction and staff and Stephanie Neal can make that correction for you. Yeah, and I guess my comments were just simply. I didn't remember us as a council deciding that, but my memory is not the best sometimes. So if that's the recollection of everyone else, I get it. But Councilmember Briggs or what? I've got people. Mayor Pro Tem. You got a request to speak. Yes. I don't recall that conversation. And so maybe someone can refresh me on the date and I can go back and update. But no, I would not want to see that as a denial just because a particular member of this body is absent and then that makes it a three, three vote or something like that. I think we just owe it to those that come before us to make a decision and not because that's punitive to the tune of round number six months in that instance for them to come back in some instances. I wouldn't be. I wouldn't support that. So I'm going to go because I think I recall saying Councilmember Briggs your request to speak and Councilmember Armitage. So John, I'm going to come around because somehow they got so Councilmember Briggs. I believe you were you were first. So I want to recognize you. Yes, I recall the conversation about planning and zoning and how we wanted that to round up and give them another chance to go. And then if that was still a tie, then it would come to us as a denial. I don't really recall the conversation of the first high vote on this body going as a denial. So I was with the same process apply. So it would come back the next time that we allow likes for PNC. We allowed them to go. Would it be the same procedure here? That's not how the ordinance that we have proposed is drafted. You can certainly make a revision, as Aaron stated, if you wanted us to make this specific to boards, commissions and committees and not apply to the city council. But as drafted, it would treat even with city council. A tie vote as a denial. Okay. Councilmember Armitage. Oh, did you have a follow up? Okay, Councilmember Armitage. So when I saw this on the agenda, I didn't go back and, you know, watch the video. But it made sense to me. And so I hesitate to say I remember us having that conversation because I don't remember the details of the conversation. But I must have just assumed that this would apply to city council if we're also extending it to our boards and committees. So it definitely made sense to me. It didn't occur to me that we may not have discussed it, if that makes sense, until this came up today. So I would have been fine with it, I guess that is to say. But if it's true that we didn't have that discussion, then it was just an assumption that I had. But anyway, but I do understand why it's there. So thank you. Councilmember Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. I recall the conversation, but I don't remember consensus from council. And I think one of our sticking points at the time was the tie vote caused by a recusal or by an absence. And I don't know if there's any way to clarify that in our rules and procedures. Because if it is a recusal, it would continue to just stay the same. Yeah, okay. Councilmember Meltzer. I think I might be the only one. I actually do remember that conversation, but at some point, I imagine staff will like spin it up and show us that little piece of tape. And as I recall, the basic discussion was it follows Robert's rules. I think that's like the standard in Robert's rules that ties with denial. I pose that as a question of city attorney. Is that not correct? You pose that to Larry Colister. I was not at that meeting, yes. Oh, so you remember the conversation, but you don't remember who was at the meeting. Okay. I'm kidding. We look alike. No, but I actually was asking, is it not correct that that is what Robert's rules say? Yes, and under Robert's rules, a tie vote is a failed motion. So, I mean, to me, basically, as long as we all agree on the rule before we go in, this is not a huge issue to me either way, as long as we all agree on it. And I'm fine with it. Okay. I guess we need to give feedback if we're not fine with it, then we need to state that as far as at the council level. Council Member Briggs. So my suggestion and feedback would be, depending on recusal or absence, if it's an absence to allow the item to go to the next agenda, if it's a recusal, then it would be denial. I agree. I would agree with that. I mean, that's what I was going to think to do as well, because, I mean, it's one thing to have a tie vote and it moves from a body to go to the next, ultimately, the body that ultimately decides the circumstance. If you've got one council member absent, that means that if it's a tie that somebody's suffering because of an absence, and we could put a time, we could put a number of meetings on that, or just instruct people that if you've got something that you want the whole full council to consider, we need to make sure that they have an opportunity to reschedule that if it's been posted on the agenda. I just don't want people to have to suffer because there's maybe an absence that is unintended and unavoidable. But so I agree with your suggestion, Council Member Briggs. Let's see, Council Member Davis and then Council Member Armitage. I agree with that also. I think one of the reasons why we have the rule as it is now is that denial from us has legal consequences. You know, you can't reapply for things. You've got timelines you have to abide by. It's not the same as, you know, some other body that may be under Robert's rules that you may have the motion come back up later in the same meeting. We can't do those things. So I think that's a good solution. That recusal, that's not going to be cured. It's not going to change. That mix is always going to be a tie. But absence has the ability to change, so it goes back on the next agenda or a subsequent agenda. Council Member Armitage. Yeah, and I'm fine with that amendment and I want to thank you to Council Member Meltzer. And now that you remember giving me more confidence in my memory, I still don't trust it until I watch the video, but I'm fine with that addition. Yes, go ahead. Those that want to follow the suggestion by Council Member Briggs, is there, with respect to absences, do you want to put in a number of absences that can be carried over like only one time, two times, or just not say anything at all? And just let it, if somebody's absent on one day, we just keep postponing it. So if we have four or five consecutive meetings and one is absent, that's okay with you all. Just keep postponing it, whatever your decision is. Council Member Briggs, you were the one that. I would say not put anything on it. And I'm coming from a council member who would want to speak on that item if I felt really ill or something and it meant a lot to me. Going forward, I would like to have that time. And if you put, you know, one time only and then so you're coming in here really, really sick, you know, that's not necessarily good. So that would be my preference. Mayor Proctor. No, I'm the same. I mean, because the thing about you say four votes, that's a month, you know, because we meet weekly. So I think it gives an opportunity to cycle through. Council Member Davis. I agree with that, either personal illness, death in the family, there are lots of things that could put you out for longer than a couple of weeks. Okay. All right. So is that clarification up, Mr. Chair? Yes, thank you. But that's only applying to council. The other, as the ordinance is written outside of that, we're saying that if it's a tie vote at PNZ or any other board or committee, that it's a denial. That's my understanding. Not at PNZ. PNZ has its own special rule. Their role is that if there's a... Mayor says with the exception of planning zoning. Exactly. Thank you. I'll read the board. I should put my glasses on. But if you don't want to extend this new proposed rule to your boards and commissions and committees, now is the time to say that. No, I'm okay with extending it to the boards, commissions and committees other than planning and zoning commission and the city council. Okay. And that's what I think I've heard from those who have expressed a sentiment of agreement. Okay. All right. Okay. So then item C pertains to public hearings. On September 24th, we heard that there was at least a desire from council to consider a revision to the rules of procedure, allowing public hearing speakers to have the opportunity to provide a rebuttal after the applicant provides their rebuttal. Under the current rules of procedure, speakers may only speak once. So our proposed revision is allowing those who provide initial feedback to provide a single final rebuttal to the applicant after... I'm sorry, to council after the applicant provides their rebuttal. I will note that you have some revised ordinances at the dais. The attachment included in Legistar for this item did not specify a single final rebuttal. So we made a revision today just clarifying that the rebuttals provided by speakers, there could only be one. And so that's the only revision. But that is what you see at your dais is just clarifying that it is a single rebuttal provided by speakers. Okay. I do have a question on that. Because I know when we talked about it in work session that the rebuttal from the public could only pertain to the new information brought up from the applicant on rebuttal. I don't see that in here. So I'd like to have some limiting language of that. I know we talked about that. Whereas you can't go back over the exact same thing you said before. You have to address what the applicant addressed. Does that make sense, Mr. City Attorney? It makes sense. Or do you understand what I'm saying? No, no. Well, it makes sense. It's going to be up to the council to decide. I totally understand. But under that scenario, this is why we recommended a revision is that such a scenario could allow multiple rebuttals by members of the public. Because if the speaker, what we're trying to avoid, and I don't think it's council intended in the way it was drafted, I think it was kind of like absent what you just suggested, Mayor, was that a person would have one time, somebody who spoke and then heard the applicant address whatever concerns they had, would have the opportunity to provide a rebuttal. I saw it as a one-time thing. But the way it was written or drafted, it didn't really say that. It could create the possibility where you might have the rebuttal going back and forth between a public speaker, a citizen, and the applicant. And so there was nothing really, it wasn't crystal clear as to whether you wanted to limit that or allow that. Okay. No, and I appreciate that. And so I need to make sure that I'm providing some clarity. However many rebuttals we give, if it's one, I'm okay with the one, but that the rebuttal has to pertain to the new information that has been brought forward by the applicant. So whatever amount we decide, okay, but whatever the rebuttal is, the substantive aspect of it is limited to the new information brought up by the applicant that the rebuttal is for. Okay, so we're going to go down the list here. Councilmember Armitage? Yeah, so I like the single rebuttal solution. I mean, I'm thrilled people finally get a chance to respond to the applicant so that letting the applicant have the last word. I'm wary about limiting the content to only information, to allowing them to rebut only information that speaks to whatever the last round of information that the applicant brought forward. The reason why, and I understand the principle of that, but it would seem to create kind of a murky area where it could be said that something that a member of the public has started to say is not relevant to this new information. And it could, whereas according to somebody else from another perspective, it could be perfectly relevant. And also sometimes, and again, I think that the single rebuttal takes care of this problem. If the applicant says this creates a safe traffic situation after members of the public have come forward and said this is very dangerous, it allows a member of the public to come forward and say that no, it's very dangerous, but we don't get an infinite loop of I know you are, but what am I, I know you are, but what am I. But it does allow them to say that no, I still stand where I stood before and that's my answer to this new information. All right, Councilmember Ryan? Thank you, Mayor. I recall when we had this conversation that there was some discussion as well about the amount of time that the rebuttal could be, could use. And since it was on, we had decided on new information provided that we felt like the four minutes was longer than necessary. And the way this reads is they get four minutes unless there's multiple, then we as a council can take it back to three. I'm just thinking that that's a little long if we're just dealing with new information. So I want to ask you, because in that comments, make sure I don't misunderstand, as far as limiting the rebuttal to discussion of the new information, now if the applicant just restates things that were presented in the original discussion, obviously they can say exactly, you know. But are you saying you're okay with the rebuttal being limited to new information as disclosed or reported by the applicant? Yes, I'm okay with that. And I'm also looking to my fellow council members to think about the additional four minutes per person as opposed to, because if we have a spirited discussion with 30 people who speak and 30 want to do another rebuttal, the amount of time that can be added in there is quite substantial. Okay. So your recommendation would be what? I would recommend three with council being able to take it down to two. Okay. All right. Okay. Council Member Davis. I agree with that. I'd honestly be fine with just having it be two to begin with. But I actually agree with Council Member Armenter on content. I think it just gets really difficult to enforce from the chair's seat. I could see, well, you know, you just hear Willie now. You're supposed to be rebutting something, not saying the same thing you said before. Well, in rebuttal, I have this to say. And you just restate. And I think Council Member Armenter makes a good point about, from a certain perspective, you're saying, I've listened to the information, and my point is the same. My position is the same, even considering what I've heard. So I'd be fine without having any kind of content requirements but a two minute. Okay. The other thing, too, is in the draft ordinance, we have it in the bullets here on this screen, too. It doesn't actually have a spot, a bullet, for citizen rebuttal. And so we have like letters A through H in the ordinance, how this procedure is enumerated. They're exactly the same as I can tell as the A through H that we already had in the code. We just need to add, we just need to add in another letter for, and then citizen rebuttal after the applicant rebuttal, because our intention was to give citizens the final word before we go. So that's after F. I think F is, the applicant will be given an opportunity to make rebuttal comments. I believe that's correct. Before the city. And then the next one is, yeah. Okay. So what I'm hearing you say is that you're okay with no restriction on the content but you'd like it to be two minutes. Yep, that's right. And I can go along with that given, I mean, I don't, that's fine because it balances the need to not drag a meeting out because somebody's saying the same thing over and over again, but that it does give them opportunity to speak. If they want to say the same thing over again, they can. Okay. All right. Council Member Briggs. So I'm, I'm in the same camp. I'd like to take the new info part out of it. Leave the rebuttal in and make it a one time rebuttal, so that they get the last word and, and if it was something information that they just learned that they didn't know and wanted to speak about it, I don't know that two minutes would be sufficient. If they were just learning in how to think through the process, unless there's, we can ask them questions again, back and forth, or we can. Will there be communication with counsel and the speaker on that rebuttal or or not. Are we limiting that or is it. I don't recall us limiting that I would hope to think that council members would take into consideration not to, if we put a time limit on it, not to ask a bunch of questions just to extend the time of somebody wanting to talk because I think what's going to have to happen is the chair is going to have to be much more active in controlling the dialogue because the whole point is to give people an opportunity to rebut what they've heard, not to go on, not to answer a bunch of questions that maybe don't have anything to do with the rebuttal information. So as far as. So what I'm hearing you say is you don't like the two minutes because that's not enough time to respond to new information. But that gets us back into this sort of catch 22 of if we make it four minutes, but we don't restrict the content that you see them saying. So I mean, that's not to say one way or the other. I just want to make sure that I understand the possible implication of that. I prefer not restricting the content. And if that requires a less time to speak, then that's all right. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, I'm good with the two minutes, but I have a question. Hypothetical, there's eight speakers that speak on a particular topic. The applicant then speaks. Are we saying those eight individuals that spoke elect a person to represent them or those eight come back again? They opt to. Those eight can come back again. My understanding is those eight can come back again now. Now, the only people who can speak at rebuttal are those who have already spoken. If you didn't speak at rebuttal, I mean, if you didn't speak originally, you can't come back and then speak on rebuttal. Yeah, no, that's that's hard for me to support. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. You bet. Okay, Councilmember Ryan. Yeah, I'm fine with the two minutes and not the restriction on the content because I can see how that can be very subjective. My question would be because you normally do a kind of a last call on a public hearing. Is there anyone else wishing to speak? Is that last call going to take place before the rebuttal? And is that does that follow the law? Well, let's think about the process. So the applicant speaks, then the public speaks, right? Then typically, I think it's my understanding that the applicant has, if the rebuttal typically comes, it comes during the public hearing unless there's questions asked after the public hearing is closed, then council is simply asking the applicant questions about the project. Usually the rebuttal and a public hearing comes as a result of the public speaking to either correct information or to add new information and things such as that, which would still be in the open public hearing. But we could, if we needed to, is once the public has spoken, we can maybe create something procedurally that acknowledges sort of a timeline or a benchmark or a stopgap that says, okay, anything past this point, if the applicant rebuts some of that comment, only those who have spoken before that stop period can speak again. So we might have to decide something procedural because what you're saying is if it's an open public hearing, then people can come up and speak. It doesn't matter. We don't put a condition on that. But now with us putting in this new procedure, I think that's a very good point that we need to find a way to create a boundary in that regard. So we might have to do a little bit more work on this particular ordinance, but I think you're right. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Councilmember Davis, are you up again? Yeah, we could add in after item E, which is the council receives input from the public with potential questions, etc. We could we could just make your your kind of traditional altar call part of the procedure. You know, when you at the end of public comment, you typically do ask that question. It's become part of the way we conduct public hearings under your tenure as mayor. We could simply make that part of it. The mayor asked if there any additional public comments and then moves on from that point. Right. But I think we have to have something procedurally that gives the public notice. And I think it probably needs to be in the ordinance that says if we do that after this, after item E between E and F, as we obviously relabel these that once the applicant has had their original presentation, once the public has had their original opportunity to speak, that we find some language that sets a benchmark. And if I say, hey, anybody wants to speak on this originally, please come forward. Otherwise, you will not be able to speak at rebuttal. And we just need to make sure that that's codified. I know where to put it. There is for the majority of cases that this council hears at a public hearing are your zoning cases. And so in the rules of procedure under public hearings, there is the actual step by step procedure that we follow. And so first, you know, of course, you read the caption, staff presentation, city staff presents the facts, applicant presents his or her case with questions asked to the council. Then the council receives the public input with the possibility of the council asking the public speakers questions. Then the applicant has the opportunity to make rebuttal to what has been, what the public has spoken. And I think the next step after that would be the rebuttal portion of citizens who have previously spoken in the open hearing or the public hearing to come back and rebut. So I think we would take 2G and renumber that to H and so forth and create a new G, which would be the rebuttal. >> But is this in, you're looking at different ordinances? >> No, this is 2-29. >> Okay, okay. >> These are your rules of procedure, so we could make the change there so that you have that procedure. Because technically, the mayor closes the public hearing or continues it if the council, if there's a motion to continue upon the conclusion of all questions and answers. >> Yeah, so we're going to count on you to figure out the words to do that. Okay, all right, so I think you all have some direction on that. >> Okay, public comment, as a quick reminder of current state citizen report, up to four speakers may pre-register. They have to pre-register by noon on the Thursday prior to the city council meeting. And then up to two speakers may register on the same day as the city council meeting for the open microphone. Both citizen report and open microphone have four minutes to speak. The proposed revision that we discussed on September 24th was to allow any combination of up to seven speakers to speak for up to four minutes. And so that could be that we have seven citizen reports sign up, and so the seven slots would be filled by the citizen report. Or it could be any combination of open microphone and citizen report. >> All right, Councilmember Armitage. >> Yeah, I really, I love this, and I wish we could have done this even sooner. Because just as I was coming in here, there were two people leaving. I know that one of them had come from Dallas. And this was a day where we had no scheduled citizen reports. And so if we had already had this rule in place, then they could have spoken. But they couldn't speak because we already had two people sign up for the open mic. So I think this is really reasonable. >> Okay, all right. Any objections to that as presented? Seeing none, all right. >> All right, we got one. Okay, so leave of absence. This, as I mentioned earlier, has migrated more into a conversation about absences. The conversation really started around concerns around boards being able to achieve a quorum. So as a quick reminder, under current state, boards, commissions, and committees actually do have the discretion to determine if an absence is excused. So the feedback that we received on September 24th is that you would like for the city council to have that sole discretion to determine if a board, commission, or committee member's absence should be excused or considered unexcused. So that's 19-2848, which I believe is item F in your agenda. After talking to the city secretary about quorum concerns, we also proposed a revision to the rules of procedure that will require boards, commissions, and committees to establish a regular meeting schedule. Rosa did some informal polling of board, commission, and committee members who had regular absences. And the infrequency or unpredictability of the meeting schedule is what they cited as their inability to attend. And so we'd like to recommend having, to the extent possible, boards and committees adopt a regular meeting schedule, at least prior to the start of each calendar year. Okay. All right. And so that was E. That's E. So E and F. F is 19-2848, I believe, and E is 19-2847. Any objection to recommendations as presented by staff in the draft ordinance? Seeing none, that's three. And just as clarification, on September 24th, we were asked to provide, the city attorney's office was asked to provide clarification on if a motion for reconsideration could be placed on the same agenda as the motion was made. So the city attorney's office confirmed that that is the case. And then to further clarify that, the city secretary's office has placed a note that's right before actually the Pledge of Allegiance on each agenda, clarifying that any item is subject to a motion for reconsideration on the agenda. Okay. So just so I understand, you decide something, you get towards the end of the agenda, somebody could make a motion for reconsideration based upon the rules of if they were part of the prevailing party and so forth and so on. And it could be considered at that time during that same agenda. Is that correct? The motion would be made. The motion would be made, yes. And placed on the next agenda. Yes. Okay. It wouldn't be, the motion for reconsideration would be voted on, but then the actual hearing it again wouldn't take place until after the agenda. You were not going to take it back up again within that same agenda, or could you? This is where Robertson's only, I see Stephanie wants to answer this question. So, Aaron gave me a look, so I figured I had to come up here. I don't see the looks he gives me when I'm out there. So, we believe that it could potentially be a Tomah violation if it was motioned and then actually taken up for action again in the same meeting. I did do research to see if there was case law or if the AGs ruled on a similar situation, and I could not find anything on point. So, it's all we could say is that there is a possibility that it could be a Tomah violation. So, our advice is just a recommendation erring on the side of caution to avoid any potential Tomah violation. And I understand that because people who would have been here for the original agenda item could possibly have been gone and left and then all of a sudden it pops back up. I get that. That makes sense. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Mayor Pro Tem? I can't support this if we're going to leave the 14-day. I don't like it as is, but the 14-day addition if I'm looking at potential revisions, is that? This is actually not a revision. This is just clarification that was requested. Okay. So, here where it says potential revision that the 14-day, because in the chart, you? So, the chart is from September 24th. That was just an attachment just there for reference purposes, the matrix that we provided. There's no proposed revision now. I believe that matrix you got on September 24th and that's one of the eight recommendations, but we got feedback that night that we just wanted clarification and so that's all we have tonight. There's not a proposed revision and there's not anything on the agenda specific to. Perfect. Thank you. And then so for me, I still obviously don't, for the reason that it's, you lose, if we were changing it to where you could only do it during the public meeting that same night, then I could get on board. But where you lose me again for the record, we have a public discussion, we have a public vote, someone has private reconsideration that we have, this body has no look into. Someone goes home, talks to whomever, meets with whomever and then comes back and says, I've changed my mind. And that to me flies in the face of all transparency and I've talked to as many people as I can and I can't find anyone, one that either knew about it or is okay with that. And so for me, I just, I can't, unless we come up with some mechanism where we know where someone was and who they talked to that entire time when they're not in the meeting to then have some kind of conversation with someone yourself, individuals, developers, planners, whatever, and then come back and change your mind is problematic for me. Council Member Ryan. Just a little bit of clarification that I need on this is the way I'm reading the new note that's going to be on here, that means that the motion to reconsider could be done up until we don't have to get it done before posting time. We don't have to send an email in saying it needs to be reconsidered on the next meeting, but at the next meeting we could make that motion and it would be put on the next posted. Because if it's a Monday luncheon, it would be too late to get it on the posting for Tuesday, so it would have to be on the following week. Is that the way I'm understanding this? No, I do not believe that that's what was intended. I think what Stephanie had described earlier is that after you voted on an item, let's say on tonight's meeting, and before the end or during concluding items, you were on the prevailing side and you had a change of opinion and want to have this item heard again. You could make the motion for reconsideration at that meeting. However, if you voted in favor to have it reconsidered, formal action on that item that you already voted on would not be until the later meeting. So what we've done here is we've taken, backed up from the way the rules of procedure currently read, is that after the meeting in which you take a vote, then you have until the next, the Friday before the next official meeting in which to make the motion for reconsideration. All we've done is to allow you the opportunity to make the motion for reconsideration at the same meeting that you took a vote on. That's all we did. Okay, this may need some wordsmithing then, because the way I read it, it says start of the second line reconsideration at the same time during the meeting or after the meeting, up until the next succeeding official meeting of the council. Because that follows the whole timeline from that meeting in which the vote was taken up until it should be the Friday before the next succeeding official meeting. I think what Council Member Ryan's example was, we have a Monday luncheon. Somebody asked, let's just go follow this paragraph. Somebody wants a motion for reconsideration on that Monday luncheon and it gets approved. This says that it will be put on the next succeeding official meeting of the council. If we have a council meeting that following Tuesday, that's the next meeting, but I think what we can do is clarify that the next one that conforms to the Texas Open Meetings Act. That's really, I think, what he's saying, is we want to make sure that, because we can't put it on the Tuesday meeting, because it's not posted yet, we don't have to notice. So it's got to conform to the posting requirements of the Texas Open Meetings Act. Right. In the way that I'm reading this, it says that you can actually make the motion up until that meeting as opposed to having that line about the Friday before, or in this particular case, the agenda was posted on Wednesday before. You're talking about the commas and all that. Yeah. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Council Member Briggs. Yeah, so I'm okay with it. I'm okay with it as written. There was a motion for consideration yesterday and there were four people who voted for it. So, I mean, it's happened before and our process has been fine and it's working. I must have read this differently because I read it, I wasn't reading it as an agenda posting. I was just reading it as the amount of time you have to make your motion for consideration. No, I'm not saying that's an agenda posting. I'm saying that. So I think what Council Member Ryan is saying is there's a comma there and you could read that. It may be subject to any schedule, blah, blah, blah, to at any time during a meeting, that meeting, or after the meeting, up until the next succeeding official meeting of the council. So I think it just, some of those, just, yeah. Okay. All right. So go ahead. Was that the last one? That was the last one. So intended next steps. I was hopeful we were going to get through all five and they were going to be perfect. And we're going to come back on December 10th for you to vote on them. But we have some work to do, so we'll talk about timing and then we'll bring them back for you to consider. I'll have the pleasure of representing these items, discussing them one more time. Then you'll have to take a vote at a separate. So I really want to ask you, you really thought that all five of these would just go through with no modifications? Ever the optimist. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Okay. I believe that concludes our items for individual consideration. And I believe that the public hearing items, do we need to call those and postpone them or does this, do we need to call those meetings and officially postpone them with a council action or this suffices? That suffices, Mayor. Okay. All right. So then we do not have any public hearings from what I'm reading here. So concluding items, Council Member Armitage. I just want to congratulate the members of Leadership Denton who are still here. Congratulations. You're the king and queen of Leadership Denton. Very proud of you. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem. And so there's, as Dr. Wilson mentioned, Geyer and Ryan High School Playoff Games is Saturday at the Star. That's 1130 and I do believe 230 respectively, I believe. And then the tree lighting is Friday. For those that have not attended that or plan to attend that, that's a great event to go to. And then Constable Johnny Hammons, he's Constable Precinct 1, has a kind of a meal donation thing that he does of kind of a food drive that he does there at the courthouse on Carroll. And that's tomorrow and that's a really dynamic event. And then lastly, this Saturday is the holiday express for the DCTA train. So they ride back and forth to Louisville and that's always a great event. If you've never attended that, that's a lot of fun. Council Member Davis, I thought that's okay. All right. Seeing no more concluding items, we will stand adjourned at 734.