Jan 07, 2020 City Council on 2020-01-07 12:00 PM

Welcome everybody to this first meeting of the Denton City Council for the year 2020. This is Tuesday, January the 7th. We do have a quorum so I'll call this meeting to order. Just a couple of housekeeping measures. I will need to leave about 1 45 for an hour. And so Mayor Pro Tem will have the gavel at that time. So citizen comments on consent agenda items. Any blue cards. Seeing none. All right. None. Okay. Okay. A request for clarification on agenda items. I've got a couple that wanted to check with my colleagues first to see if there are any requests for clarification on agenda items. All right. I've got a couple and they're sort of grouped together. They are for let's see which ones are they. I believe it's E, F, G, and H or E, F, and G. No, which ones are they, Jessica? Oh, here they are. I'm sorry. They're the first ones. I didn't go down far enough. We have B, agenda B. Agenda C, D, E, and F. A couple of questions on those. I noticed on well, first of all, it seemed like some of them went to the TIF board and then some of them didn't. And you and I talked with you earlier about some of those questions that I might have. And the primary question is how do we know which board or boards each one of these applications will be presented to? And then I have a couple of questions on specific grant recommendations. We were in a unique circumstance in these grant applications. We're in the process of transitioning from the downtown reinvestment fund to the TERS fund because we have more grants applied for than we have in the reinvestment fund. And depending on the timing at which those grants are paid out, it will determine what fund they came out of because we don't know which grant will be the first in the door in terms of receiving their check. We asked all of them to go through the TERS approval process, which is the process that we're going will be the new process going forward. That way, whichever one is paid from the TERS fund has the TERS board approval. So we asked that all applicants went through that process. Okay. So if we could just I'm just going to go down these sort of individually real quick. So then on the on B, this shows the downtown didn't tax extra financing reinvestment zone. But it went also was it before Main Street or EDP or was it just they went to the downtown Economic Development Committee, formerly the downtown task force and to the Economic Development Partnership Board for be because it shows that it said that yes, downtown tax increment financing reinvestment zone board recommended five zero. Is that is that the TIF board? That's a long name for the TIF board. Yes. The final stop was the the TERS board. Okay. And that's the same on C. Yes. Same on D. Yes. E. Yes. And F. So they all went before the TERS board. Yes. Okay. I guess my question comes on agenda items D and E. When I read the backup. Well, first of all, the on B, these recommendations from the board, as far as the amounts, was that what the applicant asked for was the $7,188.59 on B. Yes, the applicant had applied for $7,189.88 and change. Is that the same for C. They, they were requesting $25,000. Yes. All right. And then on D, what they requesting the applicant requested $25,000 and the TERS board recommendation was $12,000. Okay. Sorry. Make sure that I'm on the right one. Sorry. There's a lot of them. And they have similar addresses. We apologize. Oh, no. Yeah, I got confused on that as well. So that was my, that was my error. Then on E. The applicant had applied for $25,000 and the TERS board recommendation was $12,500. Okay. And then on F, the $25,000. The applicant applied for $25,000 and the recommendation was $25,000. So on D and E, that seems to be different. I mean, there was a request and it was cut in half. And when I read the agenda information sheet and this language was only on those two. It said during the review of the application, the board considered its current budget for the grant program and as earlier in the budget cycle, discussed additional projects that could be applying for the grant during this cycle. As such, the TERS board recommended a grant of $12,500. So I want to make sure I understand what that's saying. Somewhere in the deliberations, some people or individuals or whatever said, hey, there may be some other applications for grants. One in particular was there may be an application for this grant that was asked or that was statement was made based upon someone who is on that board that may have one of those projects that's coming for a grant application. So depending on the discussion here, which I mean, I don't need to belabor it, but I may pull this and ask that we or I might make a motion to increase that back to the 25. Because I don't understand why that one got cut in half for that rationale when the others did not. So who's on that board? Okay. Councilmember Meltzer. Yep. I think this is the case where you had kind of one project that covered more than one street address and the sort of general discussion was that, yes, it could technically qualify for two different grants of $25,000, but the board chose to look at it more as one project. My understanding is that there were multiple addresses, but really only two real properties, two buildings. That's correct. The original applications when we received them were for each individual address. The way that the grant program is set up is that it's per building, and so we had to research what addresses belong to each individual building. On this particular applicant, we combined into two applications for two buildings. So two individual buildings. Yes. So it's a $25,000 request on two individual buildings. So each one of the requests before us, not just those two, but each one of those other ones, are individual buildings. Yes. Okay. All right. My understanding, at least anecdotally, and so I wasn't there, but some of the discussion was, you know, would people do the project anyway or if it's a single person? I mean, it seems like these two grants were from the same either entity or individual. So I'm just -- I'm not quite sure. It just seems a little unusual that there were some factors applied to that process that might not have been applied to other -- and I'm not saying that about staff. I'm not saying about the board. I'm just trying to understand how we got to that place. These were the first ones that have gone before the TURS board, so there was a number of items that were discussed. What we mentioned in the agenda information sheet was that the TURS board has $100,000 approved in their budget for the grant process, and so during the discussion of that grant, they asked what would be the balance of that fund if they approved the full amounts for each of those. And so one of the factors in the consideration was certainly there may be future projects. There weren't specific discussions of specific projects coming forward, but that there may be future projects coming forward and applications, and so that was a considering factor. Okay. And I appreciate that. So then on C, which is the -- it's the gonzo athletics, which is $25,000, it was agenda item C. So that went before the TURS board? Yes. And did that go before or after the D&E? I can't -- let me -- I looked at it, but I didn't make a -- let me look and see what it was. My point is, if all these went before the TURS board, four of them requested the full $25,000. If I -- if I remember correctly. Yes. Two of them got cut in half based upon at least some of the rationale you're reporting, but it doesn't seem like that that same rationale was applied to the other two who got full grant funding. Because they all came after this budget cycle, right? I mean, did they all come after the 2030 budget allocation? Yes. And that's the point of we didn't know which of the grants would cross into the TURS fund because there was a balance out of the reinvestment grant fund that we were trying to expend first. But because we don't pay out the grants until all the work has been completed and we verify all the expenses and the receipts, that we weren't sure in the process which one would make that change. And we didn't want to move forward a grant and then have to come back when the grantee was expecting a check and then make them go back and get approvals again. So we ask that they all go through this process. Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to pull -- which ones are they, C and D and E? I'm going to pull D and E. And this presentation has been enough, so we'll just have a vote. Councilmember Armitage. I found this really interesting, so I appreciate the questions. I wasn't planning on pulling any of these, but since they're pulled, I did have a question about C. Okay. And that's the one vote on the board that wasn't unanimous. And I'm just curious if you or Councilmember Meltzer, anybody else who is there, wanted to just summarize what the objection was or, I don't know, maybe it was an abstention when the register is four to one, so. I would defer to Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah. You know, this is coming right out of the Green Tree Estates period of time, and I personally felt discomfort with funding plumbing, you know, infrastructure. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So you're the no vote. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. So I'm only pulling just whichever -- D&E, I believe it was. D&E. Yeah. Just to make sure. Yes. Okay. All right. Any other agenda items for clarification? Thank you, Jessica. I appreciate that. Very helpful. All right. Seeing none. Oh, and just to let everybody know, the light is not working to notify us if our mics are not on. We just need to be a little bit vigilant in that regard. So we'll move on to our work session report, which is Work Session 3A. Receive report, hold discussion, and give staff direction regarding the Air Quality Standard Permit for Permanent Rock and Concrete Crushers application filed by Mutual First LLC with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Ryan Adams, Public Affairs. I'm also going to have Dr. Banks assist me with this presentation for a couple slides. And this is just to give a brief update with some of the limited information that we know regarding an application for a concrete crushing facility located generally at 5120 East University Drive just outside of Denton. To give you a little background on this location, the approximate address listed in the application is 5120 East University. However, the actual parcel of land, which is highlighted in red, is outside the city limits in the ETJ. The lot is accessed from the city limits, from University Drive, through those two properties that are highlighted in blue. But again, it is set quite a ways back from University Drive itself. The property is owned by Mutual First LLC. The ownership is somewhat tied to Blue Star Recycling, and as you recall, Blue Star Recycling was responsible for the "shingle mountain" in Dallas. And the Blue Star Recycling parent company does own those two blue highlighted lots to the north. So a little bit of information about what this facility is and what the application is. The original TCQ air quality application was submitted in October of 2019. A public notice was issued on Christmas Day, December 25th, and staff subsequently received notification of the application the next day on the 26th. The public comment period associated with that public notice will last all the way through January 24th, so a 30-day public comment period. The facility itself is intended to be a permanent facility to break down large slabs of concrete for other uses. So typically concrete that is piled up after, say, construction projects, road construction projects. They are broken down and sent to various other sources for other uses as they can be. TCQ rules require this facility to be 200 feet from any property boundary, and I'll show you guys a property map here in just a bit, and 440 yards or about a quarter mile from any school, place of worship, or residence. So the map on the left is kind of the general location of where this application proposes to put a concrete crushing facility right off of University Drive. The map to the right is actually the site map provided with the application. So as you can see, you have a yellow highlighted property boundary. You have a red 200-foot boundary, so this is the 200 foot from the property line that any facility has to be set back from, and then you have a 440 yard, this is what the red circle is, radius from the use, and that's where you cannot have any school, place of worship, or residence. They did note that most of the facilities, the actual crushing apparatus, will be concentrated right here in the middle of that property, and they've also noted that you will have stockpiles of crushed or concrete to be crushed in three separate locations, two to the north of the property and one just to the west of where those concrete crushing apparatus are. They do note some other facilities, some other buildings in the vicinity, especially within that 440 yard boundary. I will note that there is a residence located here, and of course you remember you can't have any residences within that 440 yard boundary, however, it is listed as vacant and that property is owned by the Blue Star Recycling parent company, so it's entirely likely, although we can't confirm, that these are not intended to be habitated in the future. Dr. Banks is actually going to walk you through the environmental implications, Ken? Afternoon Mayor, Council Members, Ken Banks, I'm General Manager of Utilities. There are several requirements to be filled out on this standard permit registration application, and I want to walk through a little bit about how that process works. Basically, the facility is restricted in terms of its operating hours. Right now, the application states that operating hours will not exceed 50 hours per week, and then the facility is also restricted in terms of the time of day that it can operate, and so basically it cannot operate any earlier than one hour before sunrise or any later than one hour after sunrise, so that kind of gives you a general idea of when it would be operating. Potential impacts are noise, this is large machinery, there will be big pieces of equipment to move the raw material in, large pieces of equipment to break up the material, and then large pieces of equipment to put it into stockpiles. There is a potential for stormwater runoff, including some concerns from site chemicals. I will state that a facility like this is also required to have a multi-sector general permit, a stormwater permit from the state, and there will be requirements within that permit that are intended to minimize the amount of runoff from stormwater, so there is a separate process that will happen that is beyond the application that currently exists for the air quality standard permit. Obviously, an operation like this and breaking large pieces of concrete up is going to have the potential for dust, and then there will be emissions that will occur from the large pieces of equipment on site as well as the crushing facilities themselves. They are required as part of the permit application to calculate those emissions, and those emissions do have a threshold which they cannot exceed, that is a part of the permitting process. There is some other concerns that are potentials there, which would include traffic. 380 is a relatively busy road in that area, and these would be large pieces of equipment entering and then exiting the property. And then because of its adjacency to the lake itself, the floodplain that exists near the lake and in fairly close proximity to the green belt that exists, there is a potential for wildlife impact. Again, some of these issues are addressed within the air quality standard permit that they are applying through, and then others like the storm water will be addressed by a separate permit. There's a lot of details in the permit registration application. If there's any questions that anyone has, I'd be glad to try to address those. My question was about the meeting that the county commissioners had this morning. I was looking for news online to see -- I believe they met this morning to discuss it. Is that correct? I was looking online to see any news about how that went. I was not in attendance at that meeting, so I'm not sure how that went. It passed? Okay. Okay. So councilmember Briggs just said it passed a resolution objecting to the permit. Okay, that's good to know. Thanks. Dr. Banks, in the past, do we have any experience on what's been persuasive to TCEQ or kind of what they're -- obviously understanding the criteria, but do we understand how that's weighted or if there's one thing that's more compelling than others? Yes, I -- there's a couple of things that I'd say about this. With it being just a registration under a standard permit, it's a fairly routine type of an application. That being said, there are certainly elements that are going to be important to the TCEQ. I would like to take a look at the resolution that was just mentioned. I think there might be some information in that as well. Having had some experience with some other facilities, not particularly a crushing but another concrete facility, I can tell you that as a general rule, if something does come from a municipality or commissioner's court, it's going to carry a pretty significant amount of weight. There's an automatic standing associated with that. And then the TCEQ does take those very seriously. So in terms of specific points, we're still doing some research on that, and I think we can come up with some points to address as a part of a resolution if that's something that the council so chooses. Okay. And then Mr. City Manager, has anyone taken a look at the different business entities and tried to kind of understand how the application is structured, et cetera, and just have we looked at the business entities to kind of follow that paper trail? Are you talking in terms of the LLCs and who the owners are, that sort of thing? Yes, sir. And specifically because the owners of -- is it Blue Star, right? Yes. Well, they've -- they're, I think, on record as saying, hey, they're gone, right? And their attorney's on record as saying they're not responding. And so I think it's critical that we make -- draw those lines to say it's not this entity that does not have a record, but more it's associated with it. And so I just want to understand if we're looking into -- best we can. I know that's a tricky thing to do. Yeah. We certainly have -- I'll need to defer to Ryan on that in particular. But that will be one of the cases that we make with the past track record and hopefully that that gains some traction with TCEQ. Okay. Great. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs? Yeah. Can you hear me okay? I can. Okay. Was this something we did at our landfill that we recently stopped doing? We had concrete crushing operations at the landfill, but the way that operated, it was a temporary situation. We would stop pile the concrete to be crushed. They would come in and over the course of a relatively short, depending on the pile size time frame, they would crush that material up. So it is not a permanent facility like this one is. And do you think that maybe us getting rid of that allowed for this business to see an opening to come in? I can't really speculate on that. In my opinion, I kind of doubt it, there's many services out there that do this kind of work. So I can't imagine that ours would have that big of an influence on it, given the quantities. My real concern is the distance to the green belt and the body of water. That's a real concern for me. So I'm in favor of passing the resolution against -- Yeah, just a little bit louder. No, I understand. Yeah, I'm in favor of this. Do we have any basis for representing to the TCEQ that an operation of this size would have a significant impact on particular levels? Just saying just and soot could be a little, could be a lot. I think we believe it could be a lot. Do we have some basis for saying that? They have modeled emissions for all particulate matters that come off of the site. They also have modeled emissions for all of the major air quality contaminants. Prefer not to speculate at this point on a direction that we would take on that, but that information is available. And it's something we will definitely look at as part of a resolution if we're directed to bring the resolution forward. This type of facility, where would the next closest one be to this area? I'm not aware of that. I know that there's a very large facility in the city of Fort Worth, but I can't speculate on others around. We haven't done any research on that. I was waiting since I had spoken already to see if anyone else wanted to. So I'm obviously in support of this resolution and thrilled to hear that the county commissioners this morning felt the same. I was wondering if you know, and it's fine if you don't know the answer to this, if TCEQ has any track record of denying a permit based on past pattern and practice of violations or just bad behavior from an entity? That's kind of hard to speculate on, but as a general rule, when you have a permit like this, there are questions concerning past environmental compliance. And so I can't tell you how heavily that would weigh into the decision making process. It would probably depend on what those violations were and how severe, et cetera, but there are considerations. Okay. Well, thanks. And I think another factor of this that is of concern to people is the cost, the potential cost to the city if something goes wrong and they don't end up paying for it. I don't know if that's something that the city should mention in a resolution against the permit. I know that it's something that individuals have mentioned and I myself and I made my comment. But anyway, that's where I stand. Okay. So staff is looking for direction. Oh, is there more presentation? Well, let's sort of take a temperature here and see what's going on. Okay, Councilmember Davis. So the first thing I want to say is, you know, concrete crushing in general, it's a good and useful thing that it happens, but it's good and useful that it happens somewhere far away from where we live, where we play, where we have our businesses. The idea that somebody would want to put in this place either the shingle processing or the concrete crushing is just absurd. I think we're all pretty much in agreement that there's a much better place. There's got to be a better place than right here. Ultimately, the TECQ will do what they do, they'll grant the permit or not. But I'm very much in favor of a resolution that says, in whatever strongest terms, whatever most persuasive terms, whatever data we think the TECQ is going to care about, that we just don't need this right here. Okay. So we've got and I share those sentiments. I mean, I think I would certainly support a resolution to reject asking the TECQ to reject the permit. Any other comments? Agree. Okay. I would agree also, and as we were going through the new DDC and looking at how zoning went, that was our low-density residential area is what we basically planned for that area for the future. So this is not a match for that. Okay. Great. All right. I think we have direction. So appreciate that. Sorry about that, Adam, to cut your presentation short. That's all right. Yeah. Okay. All right. We're going to move on to agenda item B, which is Received Report Whole Discussion of Staff Direction Regarding Roles and Responsibilities of the City's Economic Development Department, including the staff and support provided to the Denton Main Street Association. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, Jessica Rogers, Director of Economic Development. And I will, before I start, want to acknowledge that when I get stumped up here today with a question, we have a good number of people in the room here to help me, particularly John Cartwright, who's President of the Denton Main Street Association is here. So if we need any historical knowledge or anything, we have a number of people who are here who can speak to the Main Street Association. So our objective for today is to provide an overview of the ongoing partnership between the City of Denton and DMSA, and then discuss with council possible changes to the partnership. So some very brief background on the Main Street Program. The City of Denton has been a participant in the Texas Main Street Program since 1990. It was actually the Downtown Business Merchants Association, I believe, that originally founded the program that the city is a participant in. Since 1990, and these are some pretty staggering numbers, more than 400 rehabilitation projects have been undertaken in our downtown area. That's 500 new businesses that have been started. More than $140 million in both public and private dollars that have been invested in Denton's downtown, and approximately 2,600 new jobs have been created through this program. And I say all that to premise that this is a great presentation. We're here because this partnership is working incredibly well, and we want to talk about ways that we can continue that success. We are the only program in the state of Texas that's under what's considered a hybrid model, and that it is a non-profit, membership-based organization working directly with a city staff. So we do have a long history of working together in an area where we have a significant concentration of businesses. This area is highly attractive to both businesses, residents, tourists, you name it. Downtown Denton is the place to be. Councilmember Davis and I talked a lot about it yesterday about how much fun you have. Sometimes you just go downtown and you never know what music or art or event you're going to find, and certainly the City and Main Street Partnership is a reason that it's so successful. Many of our most well-known special events occur in downtown, many of those that are sponsored by the city and brought to you by the Main Street Association. So to understand the Main Street Partnership, I put up a very simple chart that outlines a summary of responsibilities of the two organizations related to the Main Street program. The main point to keep in mind here is that we sort of divide duties. So the city is actually a contractor with the Texas Historic Commission. I provided a copy of the 2019 contract in your backup that outlines what the requirements of the state program are. But certainly our role as the city is to provide support to Main Street. We participate as much as we can through sponsorships or in-kind donations. But we're also running the downtown grant program as we discussed earlier. We're serving as the liaison between Main Street and businesses when we have items come up such as the pedestrian signal changes that we want to make sure that we involve Main Street in that process. And our department serves as that connection to make sure that we are going to the merchants and asking what they need or what they think will be most successful for them. Main Street itself is responsible for operating a nonprofit. They're recruiting memberships and sponsorships. They're planning events. They're managing website and social media. They actually run a separate 501(c)(3) organization that serves as the support for the Arts Walk of Fame. And they're supporting downtown Denton through tourism, marketing, promotion, and advertising on a general basis throughout the year. The key item to keep in mind here is that right now there are two full-time staff members that serve on our staff that have a role in the Main Street program. One serves 100% of their time in support of downtown Denton. Another employee serves about probably 20% of her time supporting Main Street. Main Street itself then has contracted employees that serve in their marketing and advertising roles and their event support and then, I'm sorry, Councilmember Briggs. Was one of those Julie Glover? Yes. Okay. Yes. All right. Thank you. So that the downtown program administrator position is the 100% position. So moving forward is why are we here? And that is we have had significant success with our downtown program. And I'm incredibly grateful that the program is here and we get to talk about all of those wonderful and positive things that happen in downtown Denton. It's incredibly attractive even when we're recruiting businesses outside of downtown to talk about the events and the wonderful things that are happening. But as I'm new to my position and we've had some staff changes, we've been evaluating what's the best way to continue to serve our mission and to continue to provide service to the citizens of Denton. So we started looking at evaluating how could we evaluate this relationship, improve the program and look for efficiencies. And so we got together with the Main Street Association. John and I have had many conversations about this. What could we do to make the program better? We know we're a great program but can we be even better? And so that's when we started talking about that staff issue that we had where we were dividing responsibilities between city staff and nonprofit staff and really creating a duplication of efforts where we had items that the city staff couldn't operate because they were nonprofit related and items that the nonprofit staff couldn't operate because they were city related. So was there a better way to divide responsibilities among the staff? So we talked about we could do nothing, which is our option A that I'll kind of go into. We think the program is incredibly successful. We would both be happy maintaining our positions as they are and moving forward with the program as is. We know it works. We would continue to serve as the lead organization. We have the 2020 contract that will be coming before council very soon to continue the program with the Texas Historic Commission and certainly maintaining that status quo is an option. The other option is going to be our recommendation, which is the hybrid staffing model. So I won't go on that too much right now. And then option C would be all of the we would move to what is the typical program in many cities across the state, whereas the Main Street program was run entirely by a nonprofit organization. And I'll go into each of those a little bit more. So why would we recommend moving to a hybrid staffing model? And in that we would fund a full time position that would be employed by the nonprofit organization as opposed to employed by the city and that it actually reduces the staffing number that we need. Right now we have to have 2.75 FTEs between the two organizations to maintain the operations because of that need to separate the responsibilities. This would get us down to two FTEs. Now in terms of time spent, that would give us 100%, the 100% employee employed by the Main Street Association, we would maintain that partial employee with the city organization. So they would still maintain that direct connection to the city, really bolstering that partnership. And so we wouldn't be losing that connection between the two organizations. This would mean that the city staff member could focus on grants, business recruitment, retention, support in the downtown area, and some of the marketing activities that we do, while the DMSA staff member could not only operate, help with the operations of the nonprofit but can engage in the sponsorships, the memberships, all of the things that as a city staff member the full time position wouldn't be able to do. And so we would hope that this model would eliminate, like I said, the redundancies and the inefficiencies that exist by separating those two positions. Quick question. On the, so make sure I understand this, so then under this model, DMSA would have one FTE? Yes. And the city of Benton would have one FTE? The way the contract is designed is there must be a program manager that's 100% dedicated to the program. That position is the vacant position that we currently have in economic development. We also have to have an assistant program manager. That does not have to be 100% dedicated to the program, but has to meet all of the training and certain requirements of the contract. We would keep that smaller position, which is about a 20% of time spent in support of the downtown program. That would be grant administration helping with special events, helping with marketing. We also host the main street of board meetings here at City Hall, maintaining the connection with the historic commission and helping facilitate projects. But instead of us having that full-time staff member, we would provide funding to the main street association in support of them having the full-time staff member. So the one that we would maintain has free time to do other things city related that aren't related necessarily to the downtown main street association? That employee serves in that position now. Okay. Great. Council Member Briggs, did you have a question? Okay. Okay. Almost done. So I just wanted to summarize sort of what each option looks like and what's changing. So this is how we kind of operate now. We have that program manager and that assistant program manager positions. We maintain the contract, we're the program participant. We operate the grant program. Events and tourism, while we serve in a very supportive capacity, we really leave that to the experts who put on wonderful events. Funding, we maintain separate funds. DMSA does all of their own fundraising and sponsorship recruitment. The city may participate in hot funds, we may participate in in-kind or sponsorship support but we're not directly involved in the operations of the nonprofit. And then we would see this moving forward if we would see a reduction in the budget impact on the general fund side and the reason for that would be simply a reduction based on where the position was in the career ladder of our human resources sort of pay scale and where it would be as we reposted it. So it would be a standard sort of reduction. Option B, you would see this program manager shift to DMSA. The city would maintain the assistant program manager. Here we have either/or. So the city can maintain the contract which is what we would likely recommend for 2020 as we would be in this transition period that the city maintain the contract. But then going forward, either the city or the Main Street Association could be the contracting entity with the state. The contracting position would not change involvement in the program. It could be still a city staff member serving in the assistant program manager position because one of the requirements of the state program is that the city maintains significant support of the program. The city would need to provide additional funding to the Main Street Association over what we provide now. We think that that would be at a similar level to what we currently budget for our Main Street program. That's both salary and benefits and some of the travel and training that we do associated with that. And then option C, obviously you see a lot of items shift over to DMSA. The downtown grants obviously staying with the city. But this could be a similar budget level to a slight increase and I will have a big asterisk on that one and that there is a possibility of exploring additional hot fund opportunities depending on how DMSA is classified. That's something that we're looking into further but at this time we don't have a firm recommendation on that and that's why we're not moving forward with that as one of our recommendations. And then basically just a slide to sum up the advantages and challenges of each one and as I'll remind you just option B is our recommendation mainly because it reduces those inefficiencies while still maintaining that really strong connection between the two organizations. And that's all I have. Council Member Briggs. Yeah. So is that assistant program manager currently filled or would that be a new person? It's filled. Okay. So that would stay. Yes. And so I'm inclined for option B, the hybrid, but what I haven't seen is the numbers. So how much funding are we talking about? I know you said it's similar, but do we have a number? So we currently budget between salary benefits and travel and training probably for the full-time program manager position, it's around $170,000. We've worked through possible requests with Main Street. We think the request for that full-time program manager would actually be around $90,000. So it could, again, we haven't finalized everything because that would be part of us finishing a contract and agreement and what specific items would be included in that contract. But we think it would be somewhere, those would be the two ranges that we'd be looking at. So it could possibly save money? Possibly, yes. Okay. Council Member Meltzer. If the people doing the actual work are aware that there's double covering and inefficiencies, I'm inclined to let them operate more efficiently, especially if they're looking to potentially reduce cost. This is the kind of thing that I think would probably ordinarily come under management rather than council, but I gather because of the nature of the way the program's defined that it has to come to us, but yeah, I'm for people who see the ability to be more efficient doing so. Council Member Davis. I think I'm also inclined to option B, but I'm not quite sure I understand the entire rationale, so if you could help me understand it better. We're talking about Julie Glover's position, currently vacant after her retirement, currently a city employee, the position is a city position, and you mentioned the contractual obligations that we have to maintain certain positions, but can you run me through that again with a particular emphasis on the advantage to the city to having this employee no longer be under our supervision and control, but now being an employee of Main Street that we pay for? Sure. One of the challenges that we have with it being a city position is that Julie could not do anything related to fundraising events for Main Street. She couldn't handle the finances as it related to the non-profits. She couldn't solicit memberships or sponsorships. A lot of those things are incredibly important to DMSA supporting their program. What they were having to do is rely on a contract employee to fulfill those responsibilities. They had a program manager that in most cities across the state is able to fulfill that responsibility, operate the non-profits, seek memberships, understand the organization inside and out and can serve in that dual role, and they were having to contract that position out because Julie couldn't serve in that role, if that makes sense. Yeah, that makes perfect sense and I appreciate that. These are created in the limitations on having someone under the city structure. Thank you. So would that position, the FTE count, would that lower the FTE count for economic development by one? Possibly, it could. We're also looking at, I will preface that by saying that we're undergoing our comprehensive strategic planning process, and so we're looking at all positions and how the department is aligned. So I wouldn't give you a firm yes or no. Now I would say it could. Okay. Okay. Council Member Armitter. Yeah, I support option B. And I had always wondered, you know, why the head of Main Street Association was a city employee, and it hadn't occurred to me that that role hindered her from doing a number of things that at least one would think that she would want to, should be doing for her job. So option C, to me, it seems like a risk and I can't think of a reason to do that. I too, like Council Member Briggs, was curious about the numbers. It seems to me like this could come at a cost savings, but at the very least it's not going to increase costs, right, and it seems not to, and it will maximize efficiency, so to me it seems like a no-brainer. Can you, I want to talk about the structure of hybrid. Would it be something that we give a fixed amount of money to and Main Street allocates it how they want, because what gives me a little heartburn is if we expressly say this much money for this employee and if somehow that employee does something that's less than great or causes an issue, doesn't cause an issue, I just don't like that connectivity to say, then it comes back to this council that doesn't have purview over that employee, right? It kind of mixes things, so if it's their employee, they're able to manage autonomous of, in theory, other than the funding, so would it be set up just we're going to allocate this much money and then they do what they need to do? Typically what I would say is we will have some sort of performance-based structure into the agreement to say we would give you X number of dollars. Our expectation with X number of dollars is that you do certain things. None of that will be maintaining the requirement to have a full-time program manager. We would not be dictating the work plan or the job description that's actually done through the historic commission, through the program itself. We would be saying here is X number of dollars. These are our expectations at whatever amount you designate. That is the operation of the nonprofit. Certainly there would be checks and balances in the agreement. Certainly, yeah, okay, I can get comfortable with B. Councilmember Briggs and then we'll take a read on the room on option B. Yeah, so I was just going to comment on that, that I'm in favor, but the beginning of the presentation was how successful everything's been and it was the way that we were set up, so I just want to make sure that when we do go to hybrid staffing that the partnership and the communication stays as good as it's been with the city, because it's been really vital and important. I will say that that has been, as John and I have been having these discussions, that number one, before if we were going to bring this forward, that both sides came with the understanding that we have something incredibly special and successful here and we would not be putting that at risk if we didn't think that this was going to be a positive impact on that program, that neither side wants to see any detriment or loss of momentum to the Main Street program. Okay. Okay, I'll do this in the opposite, anyone who is not, does not want to give direction for staff, recommendation of option B, seems like it's a unanimous direction to go with option B. Okay, we will prepare an agreement and be back sometime in the near future. Great. All right, we'll move on to the next agenda item, which is receive report, hold a discussion. This is agenda item 3C, and give staff direction regarding the Fine Arts Theater renovation and rehabilitation project and possible financial or other incentives related to the project. Yeah, that's good, yeah, taking time. I apologize, that was a lot of talking in allergy season. Jessica Rogers, Director of Economic Development. I'm going to start off the presentation today on the Fine Arts Theater. I will say that Alex Payne and Brad Andras are here representing the Fine Arts Theater, so certainly if you have any questions, and then after I finish my brief presentation I'll turn it over to Alex and Brad so that council can discuss the project with them. So our goal for today is to provide an overview of the Fine Arts Theater project and discuss the request of the owners to form a public-private partnership. So the very brief histories and timeline, really just a summary high level that council had in your backup. The theater was purchased in 2018, the owner engaged architects to do the design and architecture services, they've remediated the asbestos and mold, developed their renovation budget, completed the renovation plans and specifications, and have obtained a City of Zetton permit, and then they also have already obtained approval of their federal historic tax credit application and are awaiting approval of their state tax credit application. In October of 2019, the owner contacted the city regarding a possible public-private partnership or incentive. After the concept was established and the renovation plans were submitted to the city, and they did provide us with a full financial pro forma that was included in your backup. And then in December of 2019, we met with the owners to discuss possible options and that's really the overview that I'll be going through today is what those options are. So it's all up for everyone. This is what's included in your backup was the financial pro forma of what the costs were, and we certainly appreciate Brad and Alex's willingness to be transparent and open with this project so that we can have a discussion with council on this. But the total project cost of about $6.4 million. And then where they are today is that their funding gap is about $2.6 million. So that's sort of the underlying basis for the conversation today. So I would say all of this to kind of put up the slide that might give you my most economic development slide, and that is we took the financial pro forma that we were provided by the developer and we evaluated it as if it was any other project coming before us. So our analysis was based on property taxes, mixed beverage taxes, sales taxes. What was the ROI basis? We wanted to complete an objective assessment of this project as we would with any other project before us. So with that said, our determination at this time is that this would be a high risk project that does not meet the city's established return on investment thresholds for incentives. And the reason for that is that the project does not generate enough direct revenue to offset any type of incentive that could be given that would mitigate the funding gap on this particular project. And I can kind of walk you through what that means in a few slides, but basically the questions for council today is does the city council want to explore options to provide financial support to the fine arts theater project? If you do, do you want to consider funding all parts or none of the gap as presented? And if you do want to provide funding, what mechanisms would you like staff to explore in terms of funding each of those? And I say that because there are different paths forward, whether it's an awesome situation of what different steps might need to be taken in the process. Just to kind of give some context for what type of analysis that we performed, we researched 20 theater redevelopment projects and newly built new build theater projects and financed projects in the state of Texas. The most common funding source that we found was nonprofit led capital campaigns. It's not unusual to see a save the historic theater in small towns across Texas. Cities do participate in these projects, sometimes in the number of different ways you'll see on the next slide, there's really no one size fits all for how to approach this, which is why we're coming to council to really talk about all the different options that are out there and that there are only a few instances where cities own or operate theaters outright. Many times it's a performing arts center that's a newer built facility. We found one historic theater where the city owned it, managed it and operated it outright and that was in Lano. This is very small on my screen and I don't have my glasses. This is just to summarize some of the theaters that we looked at in terms of which ones the city have participated in. For example, the Arcadia Theater in Temple, Texas is a total of a $12 million redevelopment project. The city's participating in a $1 million grant project. The Alameda Theater in San Antonio for a little bit bigger context is a $23 million project, but is partially TERS funded, however, it was premised on that Texas Public Radio relocated their headquarters and contributed $5 million to the project as well. The Majestic Theater is a city owned theater in Dallas. Its renovations are being funded through a bond program that the city of Dallas issued in 2017. The city owns the theater though. And another example of the nonprofit fundraising is that the Simon Theater in Brenham, a nonprofit, raised $7 million towards the renovation of the project and then the rest was funded through tax credits. So just to kind of give you a sampling, we didn't find many that had similar structures. Just about every single one of them were very different in how they were financed and I say that to say that there are many options that council can consider today. So a summary of the options would be moving forward with Chapter 380 grant or loan, certainly could move forward through the economic development partnership board, a tax abatement again going through the EDPB, a TERS fund grant would go through the TERS fund, TERS board or possibly the EDPB as well, hot fund possibilities working through the hot or sponsorship committee and then certainly two kind of options that are a little bit outside of what we would normally discuss as some type of debt issuance or a nonprofit fundraising option and then if council does not want to do anything, we will not explore any of those options any further. We wanted to give you a quick summary of the analysis that we did based on the financial performance that we were given and why you sort of had my this would be a high risk project. So we did a 10 year analysis. So I know those of you who have served on the EDPB are used to seeing we do kind of in 10 year increments. So our estimate of sales tax estimate of value of a grant of sales tax over 10 years would only be $59,000. Mixed beverage tax would be about $48,000. Utility revenues, it's a little bit of a different consideration would only be about $460,000. A cash grant or loan, we didn't put a number on that because certainly it doesn't generate enough on its own to make that. So certainly at this point it would be just a discussion point. Hot funds, we included $350,000 as a consideration. Know that there are some, again, some extra steps that would have to be taken for that to even be considered an eligible project for a hot fund grant. But that's the balance of hot funds that are remaining in the current year that can be used towards historic preservation. Just to give you some context of options that are before you. And then again abatements or a TERS grant. These are based on a $4 million valuation of the property. Again we used a pretty conservative estimate to try and get a number. The owners have said they think it might be in the $5 million range, but we used a $4 million estimate to get to our property tax abatement numbers. Sorry. >> Well, you got one more slide. Let's finish up the presentation first. >> It's. >> Yeah. >> If you have any questions. So I've got to leave here in about 15 minutes, so I wanted to make sure that I at least shared my comments. When I read this back up, first of all, I really appreciate the principals involved and they've certainly done a lot of projects and so my comments aren't really predicated on any of them individually. I was disappointed that I really don't understand why this is coming before us, quite frankly. Couple of things. On that list you had most of those that received some type of funding, not very many of them received a whole lot of city funding, were nonprofits. This is a private development and it seems like this whole project was developed, construction started or demolition started, the plans finalized. Has a permit been obtained or is it ready for a permit? >> It's ready. >> I really don't understand that, I mean, if they were wanting to partnership with the city, I would hope that that would have been something that would have been done sooner because what it looks like is that based upon budget projections in the beginning of the project and budget projections at the end of the project that there's a gap of 2.6 million and the city is, with not a whole lot of financial return as you pointed out, there's some intangible values like it is on the square and things such as that. But I don't know how the city can provide gap funding for a for-profit project, at least for a for-profit company, I don't think this is a nonprofit, I could be wrong, but I didn't see that in the backup. So I'm just really, it's really more curiosity but also I really struggle with what exactly to do in this case given that the project is this far along and the city is just now being asked to become involved because there is a almost $3 million, which I think that's about half of the budget, I mean, that's, I think the project cost was 6 million, was that it, about? >> 6.4. >> Yeah, so it's about almost half or a little bit less than half of the project cost and so to be coming at this stage of the game, and it's not even the stage of the game, it's also how do we justify funding a for-profit business on a project that projections were missed and that's my only concern and unfortunately, maybe I'll be here to hear some of that feedback but I did want to say those comments before I had to leave in about 15 minutes. So Council Member Armitage. >> So I support some form of funding for this but I did initially when I saw this was coming before us, I had a similar question and concern, you know, why should we be funding a for-profit and helping to fill a gap for a for-profit entity, you know, then I started reading about what this is and what they have in mind for the facility and who's behind it. You know, I think that if this was a Cinemark, say, or a movie tavern, Alamo Draft House, they wouldn't be coming to us for that kind of funding because they're a big corporation and they're not, you know, a local grassroots thing. I was impressed to see the involvement of local artists and supporters of the arts, people who are really doing this because of their commitment to the arts and these kinds of grassroots movement, I'm calling it grassroots movement, I don't know if that's the best term for it because it is a business, but it doesn't surprise me that, you know, when you've got a dream like that, that's the kind of thing that is not going to qualify for the kind of revenue for economic development funding that you would end up falling short. So I won't go into detail, partly because I have many questions and my mind is open about different alternatives for funding, but I definitely want to help, but, you know, I did want to say that I had those concerns initially, but it was reading about, you know, and also checking with some members of the public who knew more about this, the background than I did, that, you know, I was really impressed by what they're trying to do. >> Kirsten Meltzer. >> The fact that it comes from a gap in their pro forma is sort of neither here nor there. To me, it's more kind of what's the value to the city, and to me, it fits into a strategic context. Now, I know we've got the big economic development plan yet to come, but in the absence of that, I'd say that, you know, the three sort of big areas that are strategic for Denton have been distribution, right, like west of the city, at least aspirationally, high tech, and then the third would be the sort of regional tourism that's really based in our cultural resources. And I think it's, I think we really want this to succeed, but the parts that I think are very strategic for the city would be, first of all, the facade. There's no facade anywhere in Denton that I see, other than the courthouse, that I see used as the iconic symbol of Denton, specifically because it says fine arts on it. And so, you know, it's used almost ironically as a symbol for Denton when in fact, you know, there's nothing going on inside yet like that. So I think support for the facade redevelopment, like downtown reinvestment grants do, would strike me as very appropriate. And then also, I would see it as not so much in terms of the direct return from sales tax, you know, from its own operation, but rather as an engine, you know, to kind of supplement activity downtown. And I think where you'd hope to see the return is in sales tax from restaurants, from retail. And I think it kind of, you know, it's like a keystone in the arch, you know, fills in a place there. So I think abatements would be very appropriate here. And I don't know if that helps them or not. You know, the abatements, you'd have to have some way to monetize that to say in the future we're going to have abatements. Can that help them raise funds in the present? I don't know. And just lastly, I would say, you know, not a city matter, just an opinion. I would think it would be very ripe for community support through, you know, through creating like a foundation or nonprofit where you've got seats that can be sold, you know, nameplates. You've got naming rights, potentially sponsorship opportunities. So I think there's, you know, I just say that by way of input. So that's my initial. Councilmember Davis. So I'm going to go so far as to assume that we're all excited about the project happening. And we are all excited when it got announced that it is a historic icon and a huge asset to downtown. Even like you said, even sitting vacant, it's an asset to downtown, more so when it supports the arts again. And without getting into another agenda item on today's agenda, I'll go ahead and say now that I think downtown and even the city arts community can support three larger performance spaces. I don't think we have any issue there. I think really what it comes down to is if we're being asked to support the project, the level to which we're being asked to support it, because then that changes the conversation. If the conversation is making up the entire gap, I can't with a straight face talk about spending two and a half million dollars straight out of the city budget to a private project without some serious conversations on what we get in return for that. When I heard that number, I saw the number in the presentation, I emailed Jessica and I asked her, so what exactly is the ask? I see the gap, but what's the ask? And she said, oh, it's the gap. And I said, that's not a grant, that's an equity position. If the city were to shell out large amounts of money, then we need to be fully invested and fully compensated for that investment. That's more than tax abatements and some TERS money or depleting all of our hot funds on one project. So, like Councilmember Meltzer, I'm less concerned about the stage of the process and when they asked us about it, when the gap materialized, depending on what the conversation is. If the conversation is developing a public-private partnership, it's possible that that ship has completely sailed. That the partnership would have begun before drawings began, before demolition began, before the roof was repaired, all those kind of things. On the question of abatements, my concern there is I don't know that there are high enough margin industry to produce the kind of profit that would make abatements worthwhile. And if you just look at the chart, if you could flip to the funding options chart, I mean none of those numbers, even the one where we completely deplete our historic, our hot funds that are available for historic preservation projects. None of those move the needle on closing the gap. So I would be interested in, again, looking at our agenda just for today, we've got a bunch of grant recipients for downtown. And they're all getting about $25,000 or $1,200. No one has asked us to participate in this kind of way with this kind of project downtown, even for something as iconic as this. So I'm open to considering funding options at a very low level, similar to what we do with some of the tourist funding like we're talking about with some other recipients downtown. At the same level we would for any other applicant through our normal processes. But I'm also open to exploring the idea of a fuller and deeper partnership with the project if it's structured in a way that fully benefits the city. If, I don't know what that does to their current business model. I know that these folks took on a substantial amount of risk when they started the project. We're not here to mitigate that risk for them. But if we are able to participate in the rewards of the project, I'd like to put this in a position to be able to do that if it's possible. >> Councilmember, before I recognize, can I ask a question of clarification? And I don't disagree with that. I mean, if you're talking about some level of funding that's what we've seen similar in some of the other projects. What was presented, as I looked at the backup, and as I asked the same question was, this was, and that might be further clarified when they get up and say, when you mentioned an equity position, did you mean also some type of, because when you say equity position to me, that means some type of ownership position. And I just wanted to make sure if that's what you're referring to. >> Absolutely, ownership, revenue sharing, whatever. There's lots of different ways that could go too. >> At those higher contribution levels. >> At those higher levels, I mean, it could be a city-owned facility with a long-term concession or license to operate. All of those things, if it's structured in a way that benefits the city, I'd be willing to listen to it. >> Thank you for that clarification. Councilmember Briggs? >> So I am the same. I would like to explore more. I don't want to shut off the conversation. I believe it's extremely valuable to our city, to our history, and to downtown. And when I think about that it could have been a dollar store, I just, I'm very thankful for you guys stepping in and purchasing it. So did we give Alamo Draft House an incentive? Do you know? I'm just curious if you're- >> Only through the razor ranch. >> Razor ranch, okay. >> So no, they didn't get a direct incentive. >> No. >> Not that I'm aware. >> But the razor ranch, okay. >> So yes, I would be inclined to continue the conversation and explore. When I think about our council, the Saturday we were all together, part of our goals was to have a music venue, right? Or a place where we could do music and public-private partnerships. This actually, if we decide to invest in it or contribute, marks off two of those council goals. So that's how I'm looking at it. I was one of those who said a music venue, sort of an all-purpose music venue space. If you're looking at $2.6 million, for 200 seats, I think you probably could get. So I'm not opposed to furthering the conversation. I guess what I'm really struggling with in this conversation is when we've had other incentives that have come before this council that have brought in hundreds of thousand dollars of tax revenue and jobs. There have been people who have voted against that that are wanting us to partner with them at I don't know what level. So I'm okay with a conversation to talk about a certain level. But as far as, if it gets up into the seven figure range, that's where I'm with council member Davis as to we've got to restructure this. And it's funny because people said they're not concerned about where in the process this was asked for. Well, I mean, even council member Davis, you said that if the public-private partnership might have sailed, which is fully indicative of where this is in the process. So it's just a matter of how can, I don't want to set a precedent, whether it's in downtown, whether it's wherever it is, that private businesses can come in and begin a project and hey, the fine arts. I mean, I grew up here. I went to movies in that theater, so I understand that. But I also understand as a business person, when you take on a project and you put your performer together and your project together. If you want city involvement as far as financially, I would not want to set the precedent where you can come do that after you realize that maybe things are different than what we thought. So I'm open to a conversation about some type of assistance, depending on where that is. But what was before me in this backup was $2.6 million, and that is a non-starter with me, period. So, but I'll let those thoughts and statements stand for themselves. Council member, our turn. >> I mean, it's a big figure, and I'm not saying, yes, let's write a bank check for it. The way I see this is, and I'm not concerned about precedent because we don't have another fine arts theater. It's a very unique building, and the kind of precedent this would set would be if some other private entity wanted to come in and restore a dilapidated, extremely valuable building to the city of Denton, so we're really narrowing it down. I don't compare this to other tax incentive projects because as you said, this is not a tax incentive project. You're presenting because it's coming from economic development, so I'm not so worried about that. I want to help, and I want us to, if it's okay with the applicant, I guess I could call them that, applicant, whatever, people bringing this before us, to see if we can get a consensus on agreeing to put our heads together. And seeing what we can do to help and focus without making any promise of yes, we can't, right? We don't have to come up with a dollar amount today, is that right? >> We do not have to come up with a dollar amount today. I do know that the owners of the property are, my understanding, kind of at a standstill until this is worked out. So while it's not today, the project is on hold. >> Absolutely, absolutely. >> I do think it would be helpful to at least have some parameters today. I mean, $2.6 million is a huge gap. We've talked about equity positions. I'm not sure that even if you take an equity position, you get there, that they can even obtain financing with us taking an equity position. So I think at least some general parameters, if there's four of you that even want us to continue this conversation, we're going to need a little bit more direction from you than just keep the conversation going. Because it really gets down to, is there a kind of an upper limit tolerance for you? Is there something that we can work with then, and then sort of deal with, run the traps on issues such as putting a lien on this site, that sort of thing. Which is going to create problems for them if they're going to borrow money. So I think these are just practical implications. If you're going down the path of a grant, any parameters we can get, if there's four of you, is really important to us. >> Yes, definitely parameters. I will say, I'm not comfortable with, and I don't think anybody seems to be asking for just writing a check from the general fund, right? We're looking at various ways. One question that come to me, I mean, it would be through hot funds. I know that everything comes through the general fund, but there are various kinds of monies that have been put aside for certain purposes. >> In this case, there's not. So when we talk about this cash grant or loan, that is specifically general fund, an allocation directly out of the general fund. This project does not meet the qualifications for the economic development investment fund. It doesn't meet the qualifications of the incentive policy. So certainly, we would be looking for direction as it relates to it. >> Yeah, and- >> A cash grant. >> Yeah, so sorry, and I completely understand that. What I mean is I'm talking about hot funds, TURS, historic. I mean, this isn't on here, but some historic development fund that we don't even have. Maybe this is something that we should be thinking about creating, not just for this project. But if there are going to be future, as we keep growing and growing, then we don't want to just be like another plain old, we want to preserve what's valuable. Maybe we should be putting aside a nest egg to form public-private partnerships like this. One question that came before me, I wish I could remember who asked me this. Can we, maybe this is a terrible idea and not even possible, but I thought it was interesting. Can we have, kind of like what we have for our tree fund, developers as we grow bigger and bigger. When you take down trees, you have to put something into a tree preservation fund. Can we have a kind of a tax or something like that on new development, certain kinds of new development where we would say this certain amount of money would go to a historic preservation fund. That could go, again, not specifically for this particular project, but other historic preservation efforts. >> Jessica, you can circle back. >> Okay. >> Yeah, don't. >> Okay. >> You can get back to her with an answer after you've talked to the other departments on that particular question. Did you have another question? >> No, is that a bitch? >> I would need to talk to legal to understand the ramifications of that. >> Yeah, I completely understand that, but that's something that I would like to know about. Thank you. >> Councilmember Ryan. >> Thank you. Can you go back to slide number six? And I'm in agreement with Councilmember Davis and the Mayor that I would like to see this conversation go forward, but at a much smaller level. And where I get my heartburn right away is when I look at this slide. When I look at basically the owner's investment is a little over 2.1 between the cash equity and the permanent debt. And they're saying we're 2.6 short, and city, will you make up for that? Again, I don't have a problem with doing lower levels, but being more than 50% of, or more than 100% of what they've put in is what they're somewhat asking for, and that's where my heartburn comes in. >> Thank you, and, did you have one? >> Yes. >> Yes, okay. So let me, I'm just going to summarize so that we all kind of can zero in. My count, that's four that are saying lower levels continue the conversation forward, right? So I think that's kind of the foundation. Obviously, there's only six of us in here, so that is the majority. And so that being the case, it really is a conversation forward. We're going to hear from the owners, we can do that. But then also, the conversation really shifts to giving the city manager and staff what that lower level, defining lower level, because that's really where we are. The other, there's not a way to proceed forward down that other road. So really, it's a matter of conversation forward is hearing from the owners, but also giving staff and city manager what lower level is, some sort of range. Councilmember Meltzer and then Councilmember Davis. >> Yeah, my sort of take on the consensus is slightly different than that. So I offer for your consideration that I hear sort of a few things. One is, I definitely don't hear for doing nothing. I think there's definitely interest in going forward. And then I think there is, I've heard at least a few voices interested in saying, well, if you wanted to talk about filling the gap, it would have to be some entirely different structure. So I mean, I didn't come in with any particular desire to end up there. But I'm willing to see a proposal. So I think that there's more than one outcome. One is a different ownership structure that the city has a very different role. And then B is something smaller like you were describing. And I mean, I would view that as saying, what are all the things that are the sort of normal things we might do like facade, like hot funds, etc. And I personally don't feel that we must be compelled to figure out the full gap. Because the private contribution kind of element of it and sponsorships hasn't been discussed with us anyway. We don't know what that potential might be. So I don't know that we're the only option for this to succeed. >> Okay, Council Member Davis. >> I want to kind of clarify my position a little bit, especially as it relates to developing a consensus. My comments about a lower level of funding primarily revolved around the fact that there is not a lower level of funding that is appropriate under our current structures. They don't qualify for the traditional economic incentives. They don't qualify under our policies for many of those things. The only thing that really this kind of fits directly into is either the TURS grants are the kind that the downtown development grants that we've already talked about. Or a straight grant of cash money outside of any kind of program, outside of any kind of criteria, any kind of vetting process. The other economic incentives we have available are not available for this project. That was what part of the presentation was. Here's the difficulty and the precedent of just opening the city coffers to a business because they're iconic, or because their property is valuable, or because they are well situated, any of those things. This is not the only historic property with high value to the city that is under development right now. We had, I could count just off the top of my head, four or five businesses that were doing major facelifts, major renovations on historic properties. Around the square, all at the same time, all of which generate higher sales tax revenue, not to mention sales tax on alcohol and food and all those kind of things, than this business would generate. Some of which will actually may have qualified for some of those tax-based abatement incentives and other investment policies. This does not qualify for those things. We have right now a developer at the top of the Wells Fargo building developing a signature event space. It's going to be a huge draw for the city. They've got some issues they've run into getting their property finished out. If they came before us asking for a cash money grant from the city, no matter how iconic their project, it would not be appropriate without something back to the city. If they're going to get money from us outside of our normal processes, if it's going to be that unique a thing, to me, it's going to have to have a unique structure. To me, it's going to have to be more than just the city appreciates the project and there's going to be some economic impact to it. We have programs for that. We have tax abatements for that. They do not qualify for those programs. My comments were, if they want to get into a full on, more than a handshake, public-private agreement, public-private partnership with the city, I could be on board with that conversation. But I'm not okay with cutting a check to any private business outside of our established programs. If we want to have a conversation about establishing a new program, I think that's a completely different work session topic. But if we're going to give them taxpayer money after a budget year where we just went round and round about items that we all liked that were only $20,000 to $25,000 a year. And some of those didn't make the cut because of good fiscal management. Then we can't then turn around and say, how many millions of dollars can we turn over to a private project at the outset of a budget year? So for me, it's kind of an equity position or something else. >> Councilmember Armitage and then Councilmember Meltzer. >> Can we hear from the applicant to answer questions? >> We are here, if Mayor Britten wants to recognize them. >> Councilmember Meltzer, you want to speak before or after? >> Yeah, let me just chip in a little bit. >> Okay, yeah, so we'll hear from them then, Councilmember Meltzer, thank you. >> Yeah, I mean, just in terms of trying to hone the consensus, I think you have heard multiple places that nobody really wants to just cut a $2.6 million check. So I think you could safely rule that out as being what's supported without any structural return. And also, when we hear definitively it does not meet the requirements for existing programs, I think we heard, and I'll wait until I get Jessica's ear on this. I think that we heard a $2.6 million grant doesn't meet the criteria. But I haven't heard that the sort of back in number. Jessica, this is ultimately kind of directed to you. Or in other words, there is a stream of benefits. In fact, there's a study in here that says there's $20 million of economic activity over the next number of years. But for the activity that, or for the return that it could generate, can we back into what would be an amount that would qualify? In other words, yes, I get it, $2.6 million is too risky, doesn't meet return thresholds. But the returns are identified. So is there an investment amount that would match off appropriately to the modeled returns? Do you follow what I'm saying? >> Yes, so the owner performed an economic impact study that demonstrates direct and indirect benefits. We do not know the background data that was provided or the modeling that was used to come to that conclusion. So without doing some independent analysis on our own to model that impact, then I would caution against at this point using that as the basis of the discussion without letting council know that I think there's some risk in inherent in economic modeling. That if you miss one assumption, you have a consecutive sort of domino effect. >> I want to clarify my question to you. We've heard it characterized that, and you characterized it as high risk doesn't meet our criteria. >> Yes. >> What doesn't meet our criteria? A $2.6 million investment doesn't? >> Right. >> Or anything, okay. So is it possible that given whatever you see as the returns, that there is a level that would meet our criteria? In other words, might not solve their entire problem, but that there might be an appropriate level for which you would not say too high risk doesn't meet the criteria. >> Yes, so what we looked at specifically was the economic incentive policy that the city council has adopted. Under specific thresholds in capital investment or job creation that have to be met to be included under that policy. And under that policy, we could conceive of, if we accept that it's going to be a $6 million capital investment, 5 million is our minimum. We could come to a number, but know that that's sort of the minimum. And so our conversations with the owner is getting to the finish line, not getting to 1% of the finish line. And so, certainly there is a number that I can come up with that would say, given the information that I have. I can come up with, that's sort of what you had in that table is given the information I have, this is where I can get to. It didn't solve the funding issue, and so that's why we wanted to continue the conversation. >> So I'm definitely interested in us explicitly acknowledging here is a number that does meet our criteria. And if it doesn't solve the rest of the problem, then that's kind of on the applicant to say, are there other avenues? What does the sponsorship contribution, what else can be brought to the table? Because I don't feel that we necessarily have to solve the whole deal. >> Got it, well no, Paul asked them to come up and then went into it anyway, so I'm going to let them speak. >> No, no, I asked you if you wanted to speak before they came up, nevermind. Go ahead, thank you. >> Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for your time. My name is Brad Andrus, I'm with Axis Realty Group North Bridge Consultants at 212 South Elm Street here in Denton. We're really excited to be here today, and I can appreciate the discussion that's been had so far and the concerns, and we want to address them. We want to give you a little background about where we've been, why we haven't been in front of you before, and why we're here now, as well as what we're so excited about, what this project can be. So, and this is, by the way, we've heard from numerous of you, and you asked this a year or a year and a half ago when we first announced that we bought it, is there anything the city can do to help? And we thought, there's probably going to be something, but we didn't really know at that time, and so that's really why we're excited to be here today. Alex and I were, and he'll introduce himself, but you all know Alex. Alex and I were hired by the McBride family in late 2017 to sell the property. And so we went, took it to the market without an asking price, and looked at just had, hey, market, here it is. Here's this property, what do you want to do with it? What offers come to the table? We had numerous parties interested for a variety of uses. You mentioned Dollar Store, that was, in fact, something that came up. But apartments, certainly people that wanted to restore it for a theater or some sort of multi-use venue. Ultimately, we entered into a contract with an individual that had that plan to, we were really excited. She got near, close enough to where they wanted to be on price, and was going to restore it for a multi-use venue. And so she spent three or four months in contract doing due diligence and working on different plans, and ultimately was unable to secure financing to close. And as we talked about with the owners, the next steps in taking it back to the market, we had heard in that time just an overwhelming number from a number of people that this is what the community wants, is to see this restored. And of course, those like the mayor that had been there for movies in their childhood, and others that just recognize the iconic nature of this building and its location. So we just kind of said, this needs to happen, and nobody else is stepping up to do it. We're going to do this. Now, we recognized at the time, we didn't have it all figured out. And we knew that there would be certain steps to take in order to kind of figure it out. So before saying that we want to take on this type of venture, we explored who's doing things like this. What are other options? Are there operators or other individuals that would want to buy it and do it? Is there somebody else that's doing something like this? And that's where we stumbled upon Jason Reimer and Barak Epstein, and they'll get a chance to talk. They are operating in a venue very similar to this, what we envisioned for this for the community of Denton. They're operating in Dallas at the Texas Theater there in Dallas. And so they'll tell you more about that. But they had looked and talked to the McBrides over the years about buying it. They couldn't come together on price. They were struggling with offering anything more than a dollar for it. And so ultimately, as we approached them, we said, they're not selling it for a dollar. It's not leaving the McBrides' hands for less than this amount, that purchase price. If we put our heads together and work on this, and it's going to take time, would you be interested in partnering with us in figuring it out and ultimately helping us operate it? And they know how to operate this. And so the answer was, yeah, if we can figure it out, we'd love to operate it. We know what needs to go there. We know what would work for the community. And so we did, we formed that Fine Arts Theater of Denton in May of 2018 as a for profit entity. Just for the purpose of closing on it and starting to kind of figure this out. We had recently, before that, completed the renovation of our offices down on South Elm Street. And had it, between that project and others that we've been involved in, had a pretty good feel and understanding of what it would take, what it takes to restore a historic building. If you're really wanting to restore it and salvage some of its original glory, what it takes. And the first steps are, in this case, was we needed to remediate all the asbestos and the mold, abate the asbestos and remediate the mold. At that point, it was a matter of kind of doing selective demolition so that we could see what is the structure like. There had been a fire in the 80s in it, we've got some pictures of, you've seen them in your packet, but it was in terrible shape. The roof was deteriorated, we didn't know the extent, the total extent of the damage to that roof. But there were all these things that needed to be figured out. And along the way, we knew that we wanted to restore it as close as possible to what it was originally. So we selected Architexis as our architect, as I know the city is working with on City Hall West as well, as the most capable architect to help us through this process in order to restore it to what it was, in order to qualify for tax, the state and federal historic taxes, tax credits, which we have done. And so that's been, honestly, it's probably the biggest reason why you haven't heard from us before now. That we needed to go, we felt like, and we can argue and debate whether we should have or shouldn't have, but this is what we felt like was the appropriate path at that time. That we needed to go through this full demolition and plans drawn up, get a new roof on it which has been done so that we can save it from any further deterioration. And at that point, turn this full set of plans that is approved and ready to be picked up at the planning office, turn that over to a general contractor, we've selected to work with Tim Beatty here in Denton on that. He has been and sent it out to all of his subcontractors. We have now definitively determined how it can be restored, what it can look like, and what the costs are. So that's really why we're here now, is we know what that is. As we back that, you know, put that against the backdrop of what an operating entity can look like here, we see that there's just going to be a shortfall. Now this isn't, we are open, and this is the conversation that we want. It's just a conversation of what type of approach is the city interested in, if any. And we don't see how to make it up. It's not that we went into it totally blind and wouldn't do that. We don't normally do those types of things. But at the same time, you can't know the cost on a project like this before you pull it apart. And so we have mentioned to Jessica and when we met with Todd, maybe it is a true partnership where the city owns part of it. Or maybe it is, we have an idea of a historic preservation, you know, fund that could be established. And maybe part of it, I don't know where the initial funding comes from, but maybe we can charge, and essentially a surcharge on every ticket that's sold that goes back into that historic preservation fund and can help future projects like this. And so we're wide open to ideas, we're not coming in saying give us 2.6 or nothing or, you know, and it's got to be a for-profit business. We're open to turning it to a non-profit. Ultimately, we care about seeing this being restored for the community. And as they talk about what they do and how they make it a true community venue, I think you'll feel that as well. This is the opportunity here and it's a really exciting one. We're just here to brainstorm with you, not tell you that it's got to be this or we're out of here and that it's got to be necessarily a for-profit venture. I want to turn the time over to Alex. I know he's itching to talk. Well, I think Brad did a great job of covering most of what we wanted to lead in with, but I think more than anything, I think I just want to reiterate. It was never our intention to say, hey, we for-profit real estate guys want to go purchase this property and see how we can make a lot of money. It was our ultimate intention to see it restored and be operated in the form and fashion that these guys know how to do. How we got there or how we were going to get there was a little unclear, but we just felt like put the right people at the table and we'll figure out how to structure it. Now, when we do any other type of real estate partnership, it's the same scenario. Oftentimes, we can't go ask our bank for a loan or go ask an equity partner for a partnership until we really know our costs. And essentially, that's where we are today. I mean, we do know our costs now and we do know the funding gap. I think presented the way you receive this information, the funding gap is 2.6. If you guys came here today and said we'll cut your check for 2.6 million dollars, sure, we would take it and we would get started. Did we anticipate that to be the outcome today? No, but we were hopeful for and looked forward to this opportunity to come before you and explain where we are. Hopefully, you understand our plight, know more about the way in which we envision this facility to be operated. And then just to let you know, again, we are open to any kind of structure. We are open to a true partnership. I've told Todd and Jessica in a meeting if the city wanted to own this facility and we entered into a long term operating agreement, at least with our partners that are qualified to do so, we could look at that. We're not married to any one scenario. We just know, hey, here's what it's going to take and here's what it's going to cost to operate the facility in the way in which it's been designed. And I think I want to just turn it over to Jason Barak to talk through what that would look like. Thank you. Thanks for your time. I'm terrible giving speeches, so I'll be quick. My name is Jason Reimer. This is my partner, Barak Epstein. We are the operators and owners of the Texas Theater down in Dallas. And the quickest timeline I can give you is my involvement with the fine arts actually started about a decade ago. There was a small group of us that were doing movie nights in Denton, mostly out of Dan Mojica's place. And I'm one of the only people to ever booked an event at the fine arts before you couldn't book events there. Back then it was still not being used a bunch, but it was still functioning. They still had the church on the weekends, but it was not being used for the other six days of the week. So a few of us in about 2006 or so got the idea we should at least try to use it for something. So I've been trying to use that among many other people trying to use that building for a really long time. So when we didn't do that and we kind of moved on, I ended up moving to Dallas in 2008. And I ended up literally getting the keys handed to me of the Texas Theater in Dallas. And the reason why that's significant is these theaters are incredibly rare and incredibly hard to operate. And they're just not normal businesses. There's no stretch of them being just kind of unique architecture. They're just very, very specific places to operate, and they can only operate in a community sense. We didn't know any of that stuff when we started doing it. Someone literally handed me the keys and said, I don't know what to do with it. It's one of the most famous buildings in Texas. It's where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. And this guy that was the chairman of the board invited me to be part of it and literally gave me the keys. And I just started doing events there like I'd done in Denton for a decade before. That's how I met Barack. It just so happened. Luckily, Barack had a business plan for a theater like that and knew something about it. So in 2010, we had a building that was similar to the Fine Arts, but in a little better shape. But it hadn't had a CEO in many, many years. It had been closed for about 20 years. So we went through all the process of raising a little bit of money. In this case, there was a nonprofit that had it in the late 90s that got it going, a neighborhood foundation that did some of the things that had already been talked about and raised a bunch of money to try to get it up to CEO level. So it could be inhabited. And then the big search for someone to operate it started. The big myth that I want to help maybe clear up is that there's companies out there that are just moseying around looking for places to operate theaters. They just don't exist. It's not a restaurant. It's not a normal business. It can only be operated by people that have a strong community bent. They want to see it used for the community. You can't make millions of dollars off these things. It's not an Alamo Drafthouse. It's not a Cinemark. It can only exist if someone, either nonprofit, city oriented, or someone's driven by the emotional aspect of it gets involved to make it possible. What we formed was a business that could at least keep the lights on. There's no one in our group that's making tons of money, but we know how to make a profit with something that's very difficult. As it turns out, after 10 years, we figured out a way to do that. And now people ask us for advice. So it kind of went full circle when they reached out. And the dollar comment that was made before wasn't meant to be a flippant thing. It's just that we know that it's not worth what you think it is. It's not worth millions of dollars. I'd been dealing with McBride family long before I met Brad and Alex. And I'd offered them before the roof caved in, I'd offered them a million dollars cash. And they turned me down. I mean, they thought it was worth millions of dollars. And maybe it is to some people, but it just isn't. It's only worth what the community puts into it. Once you get it operating, which costs millions of dollars to the state that this current theater is in. Because keep in mind, between 2008 and when they came back, the roof has completely collapsed. It's no longer usable. You can't walk in there. It's complete death trap. There's an enormous amount of money that has to be poured into this. So there's no way, like a normal business, that you can do the projections these guys normally do. They can only do their best due diligence to talk to people like us and lots of people like us to say, how can you use this building because it can only be used as this one thing. It can't be anything other than it was meant to be for 100 years. So we feel very lucky to be involved with it, but we could probably clear up some of the questions you guys might have. But let me introduce Barack real quick. Yeah. Hey, Barack Epstein, I just wanted to reiterate most of what Jason said. But I actually went to school here at UNT. And when I was going to school, I had this plan to start this movie theater. And our whole thing was a place that would show independent movies, show classic movies, show, have music events, have all sorts of things. Fast forward, we were able to make it work in Dallas at the Texas Theater and figure out a way for it to be sustainable over years. And we've able to increase revenue year over year and going all the way back to how the Texas Theater was funded before I got involved. There was a city participation, city grants and incentives and whatnot. And we still work with the city to this day on our ongoing improvements. So we're very familiar with the concept of getting as many organizations involved and municipalities involved to make things work. But I'm sure you guys have a bunch of questions on how to do something real quick that might interest you guys. So as I said before, when we got to the Texas Theater, it was in a little better shape. But we wanted to show you where you guys have already seen the fine arts, where it is right now. It's completely empty. So part of the discovery process when you spend all that money to get something figured out of what you can do with the space is that maybe some people in this council don't even know that we found murals that have not been seen in 50 years on the walls that have been in there. Forever. We're desperate to show off things like that. But when you come to a building like this, you want to design it, you more or less figure out ways you can showcase what it kind of was and what it could be. So is it go down? Sorry. So what we more or less the best way to operate these things is a two screen theater. And when I say theater, I don't mean only movies. That's the big mystery, too. It means any number of things, things I can possibly project that your community will want to use it for. Movies is part of it. Love music is part of it. Like comedy, any number of live events that I couldn't even count. We've done everything under the sun, any kinds of live theater. And I could go on and on about how the things you you can do in it. But the main key to that is you have the downstairs, the big open areas, about 200. And then you put a second film screen on the second floor that we've already been approached and then for the black box theater to take over and rehearsals and any number of things. But you see it about 50 people upstairs and about 200 downstairs. And the kind of versatility of those two rooms endlessly being used is kind of the only way these things stay alive. The kind of weird thing about our Texas state is we have one screen in our world that is crazy that we can exist. There's there's almost no way a single screen theater can exist these days. But we've figured out the ways to do it because the community use you in ways you can't you can't predict. So people would do any number of things that just require a microphone or you do film events. But these things are large drivers for people. Someone was talking earlier having people visit Denton. These things drive people to want to come to Denton to see things they can't see anywhere in this region on top of bringing people that would never visit here normally. There's no reason for me to come to Denton to visit a strip mall. There just isn't like I don't need to come here to see things I've seen every other part of the country. This is something that's super, super rare, and it's not just a normal business. So what we think we're going to do with it, if we can proceed, is do these two levels here. And then I think yeah, definitely do the outside. You can kind of see all the projections for that. But you guys have seen plans a million times. It's kind of a fun direction, I think. I think that's the only thing we have in there. Anyway, I'm sure you guys have maybe questions. So what I want to do is try to get succinct questions for the owners at AL and then allow them to sit down and we can finish the deliberations. But while they're here, let's take advantage of it. But again, to the point questions so that we can get to direction. So with that, Council Member Meltzer. >> In your experience, and I realize you can't totally say, but how much potential do you think there could be towards solving the gap out of it like a neighborhood foundation? >> The only reason I couldn't say is I don't, I mean I spent a decade here as an artist. I don't know what the financial raising abilities are. I know there's people with money that are out there that care. Generally speaking, they'll only give money and buy seats and all the things that I think you mentioned earlier. We did all those things, the nonprofit did all those things at Texas Theater before we were there, and they raised around 1.3, I think, million. So that's kind of a dent in question. I don't know, I think those people are out there. And I think once people know, think that something's gonna happen, then they feel inclined to be part of the success. But there's such an, understandably, a deep cynicism when you've seen something sit vacant for decades, like who in the world could turn that into something? Well, we kind of know how to, but they're really, really hard to do. So I don't know if those donors are out there. I can only assume they are, in some level. Maybe a million, let's hope. >> Thank you. Councilmember Armatron and Councilmember Davis. >> Yeah, and I do think they're out there. I'm thrilled to hear that you all are interested in, or at least open to the possibility of becoming a non-profit. That was gonna be my big question, and I was a little afraid the answer might be no. I'm excited that the answer is yes. I was wondering if you have put any thought into fundraising events or coming out with maybe a kind of a matching thing where having a certain amount where we raise this amount and the city could give this amount, what ideas you had about fundraising. By the way, it's fine if you're still at the beginning stages with that. I'm just curious. >> I think I can address some of that. >From the onset, I felt through my research, it looked as though a lot of these projects were funded my way of non-profits or neighborhood support, those sorts of things. The challenge that we saw is that we wanted to pursue the federal and state historic tax credits. Those are awarded to for profit companies. And so we had to have a for profit entity to qualify for what amounts to about $1.6 million in our capital stack. And so that has to exist as a non-profit, at least in some sense. We don't particularly want to run a non-profit, and we don't have a non-profit. These guys know how to operate a theater, but they could still operate a theater for a non-profit at some point in some level, or for the city, something of that nature. We looked at lots of grant opportunities, a lot of those grants we don't qualify for because you have to be a non-profit. So we're kind of stuck in this, how do we solve the issue of, well, we've got $1.6 million that's waiting for us. But we have to be for profit to qualify for those. And then do we just align ourselves with an organization like GDAC? We have had some discussions, and they're open to those ideas of raising funds for the purpose of the theater so that we have some beneficial use of the theater, and then therefore we could use their fundraising arm to try and raise some funds and secure some gaps. But again, same thing, if we know, A, it's important that the city plays a role in this, and we know how much, then we know how much then we still need to raise, right? So kind of while we're here, we felt like the city, based on the reaction we got from council members and other people, that it was important. I mean, it's one of the first times, as a real estate person, I've experienced the city staff or council members coming to me asking how can we help, and so it was encouraging. And so we didn't want to ask the wrong number, we didn't want to speak too soon. But I, for one, knew we would be having a conversation, so. >> Thank you, Council Member Davis. >> So first of all, I want to thank you all for taking this project on. The reasons that you've kind of walked us through why this is a difficult business to be in, why the transaction almost didn't take place, and I want to thank you for taking the risk on it. That I think everybody that walked by or drove by wanted to see it brought back to life, and you've taken that on. My question is, if we're looking at public-private partnership, you all know better than I do the qualifications for some of the tax credits. And you also know some of your funding mechanisms, your loans, and the debt that already exists, all those kind of things. Is it possible, based on all those kind of factors, would it be possible to operate in the way that you're hoping to, with city ownership of the property, a long-term lease or concession to operate, like a bill to suit lease, where you would still be able to qualify for some of the tax credits as a, just call it a bill to suit. I don't know what else to call it, and long-term operation of the theater under y'all's management, or the company, the LLC y'all formed together, is that a possibility? >> Yeah, I can speak to that, and in fact, after our meeting with Todd and Jessica last month, we did prepare and send over a scenario in which a structure like that could exist. And I referenced it to them, and I will to you, the NCTC facility that's now opened in downtown is actually owned by a non-profit entity that has a long-term lease with the college. For 25 years, I believe in that case, you can do 30 year leases in which, and it's a financing lease. And then, in the case where the theater could work is that the theater could be operated a long-term management agreement with Jason and Barack's company. But then, it becomes property of the city at the end of that term, or they can buy it after ten, or it could be structured in a way in which the non-profit, once it's on its, obviously not, well, the operating entity, once it's on its feet, and it's sustainable, maybe it comes back onto the tax rolls, those sorts of things. So, I mean, yes, something like that is doable. We're open to that idea. I know how those kind of things can be structured. It's certainly something we can dig further into and provide more information on. >> I don't know if we know the tax credit. >> I don't know how. Now, the model that was provided to Jessica and to Todd was, if we went that route, then the tax credits go away. All the funding comes through that form, through these revenue bonds versus a tax credit funding. But it still equates to what the business can sustain, the revenue that can be generated through ticket sales. There's still going to be some amount of backstop needed to carry it for a period of years until the business can sustain itself. I mean, that's ultimately what we're talking about. We're probably talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of $150,000 to $200,000 a year. >> Okay. >> We have that. We actually asked our bond council to review it. It's substantially more expensive than going the typical city ownership geo or CEO route. We didn't think that it was an option to pursue at this time. So- >> By all means. Yes, sir. >> So this is for the investors. If that were an option, does that option cash you all back out? Or would you just have the three quarter million that's already into it, cash, that's gone. Goodness of your hearts, you've brought a theater back to downtown, congratulations. >> I mean, I think, in theory, if we were going to go the route of just outright selling it to the city, we'd probably like to recoup the amount of money that we've got into the property. I mean, beyond the $760,000 in cash, there is a loan that's been incurred into basically almost $1.8 million between the two numbers. So for the purchase of the property and all the renovations done to date. And for all the plans for architects and MEP engineering, all that sort of thing, so. >> Got it. Any other questions for the, okay. If I may just say though, it would be nice to get that back. But we don't need to make a dollar on that. I mean, we'd like to. I mean, obviously, part of what we do is try and invest in real estate to make money. But we're not trying to, this is not that kind of situation. So we'd like to work together to kind of further this. >> Just to be clear, I told Brad not to buy it. When he called me, I told him that there's no, it's not what you do. You're going to make a bad decision. But it really is from the goodness, I mean, the reason why I would have never, Brock and I have looked at lots of theaters. There's only one we've done this with. Because I vetted them for, I mean, there's all kinds of developers that think these things are worth tons and tons and tons of money and waste everyone's time. They just aren't. These guys are deeply emotionally driven to see this thing that they see out their window every day come to life. Which I'm sure lots of people in this room and town are. >> All right, briefly. >> So my question was, outside of federal government grant opportunities, are you aware of any nationwide or regional organizations that are committed to saving these species on the verge of extinction of local theaters? I imagine that such entities exist. And if they do, what kind of funding opportunities are there to help us? I don't mean instead of city funding. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Getting other people involved. >> Everything you're saying is what they've already done with the national tax credits. That's the national program. >> Yeah, so I understand at the level of national tax credits, but I mean outside of government. >> Any grant we've been able to think of, in a very broad stroke, because I know you briefly. Very often these theaters are saved by private, very wealthy donors. >> Individuals. >> There is many, many theaters I can name, Majestic is one of them in doubt. There's usually someone behind it that has enough money that says, I just want to see it live, and gives it money, and then figures out a way to fix it. We've approached anything even remotely close to that for the last two years. And these guys have been digging for two years to do the same thing. We haven't qualified for any of them as of yet. >> I wish I was a millionaire, I'd go ahead and check right now. >> We've asked some millionaires, it just doesn't work. >> Well, thank you very much, appreciate it gentlemen. >> Thank you. >> And so that takes us back to the city manager's position. And we're going to wrap up, if there's anyone that, I'm not going to twist arms. If there's anyone that wants to speak to a range, do so. Otherwise, I'll summarize the best we can, and then we'll just move on. So if there's anyone, go in once. Counselor Marmotori. >> How about, I'm just throwing this out there, as a start to see what possibilities we could find to get to half of that gap. And then to see kind of moving on from there, where we could go. >> Half of 2.6 million? >> Mm-hm. >> Just to be clear, okay, got it. Council Member Davis. >> I'm trying to think of the best way, I was a little surprised by that. I'm trying to think of the best way to put this. So when you're asking for direction on a range or money, it has to be said that we're talking about a cash money grant with no strings attached. And no criteria, no approval process. We're talking about just a line item on the budget from the general fund. The thing that I was saying earlier that they don't qualify for is that they don't meet the capital investment criteria. They are under the $5 million cap, or excuse me, minimum, the floor that we have to qualify for our economic incentives. They may dispute that. If it was proven to us through independently verified means that the capitalization of the project is going to be over that threshold, then we're back into the economic incentive. There's a whole other process for that. That's an EDP thing. The conversation we're having right now is line number four, general fund cash money. My dollar amount there is zero. I'm not prepared to open up our pockets, the tax payer pockets, for a private business. I am very open to the conversation about an ownership stake with the city and bringing the thing back to life and having it in city hands to be preserved for perpetuity. And letting somebody operate a concession out of it that makes them some money too. I'm fine with that conversation. A cash money, cash grant loan, general fund dollar, budget line item, my number is zero. >> And if I could clarify on that, it could be no strings attached. It also can be performance based. It can go in, it would still be a chapter 380 grant for economic development purposes. And it could be tied to specific incentive, or specific performance criteria of the project. So there are some parameters and some things that we can build in protection wise so that it is not. So there are options there. It could be a no strings attached. It could also have performance based requirements. So there's a range within that range. >> Sure, I guess in an effort to be brief and I was kind of being a little flip with no strings attached. What I mean is, this would be outside of our normal economic development process. We would be making exceptions to our existing rules and our existing processes. So right now, all we're talking about is dollar amount. We haven't talked about performance standards. And the reason why we have those rules and those processes is because they contemplate a business that can meet those performance standards. A business that's going to be bringing in a certain amount of revenue, a certain amount of margin. This business does not meet that criteria. And if we want to talk about capital investment in the project, we just heard these are not worth millions of dollars. Everyone thinks they're worth millions of dollars and they're just not. We heard that from their mouths. >> Can I clarify my position because I feel- >> No, I'm going to go to Council Member Meltzer who's been waiting and then we'll come back around. >> Okay, thanks. >> I'll be brief. I'm much more open than I was coming into hearing what the terms might be of a city ownership operating agreement kind of structure. I would give direction to explore what that might look like for us to consider. It's a strategic investment. It's not a cash thing. It's about positioning debt. So it might merit a different approach than economic development. >> Okay, Council Member Briggs. >> Yes, so I'm in favor of exploring a partnership. I'd like to have that option come to us. And there's just the regular downtown grants, the $25,000, that's not near enough. That's not going to work. But for me, I value this, the theater and the community values it. And I've even had people comment, where's the GoFundMe? And you may want to start getting that started out. And people are really wanting to donate and help this project get started. I mean, in the meantime, I would like to have this conversation come back to us on ways that we could have a partnership, or ways, or things that we could, the standards that we could put in if we did do some kind of loan. >> Okay, Council Member Ryan. In agreement with Council Member Davis that I don't see a way forward with a cash grant loan type situation, but these other items I'm open to. As far as what the value of the project is, is it $4 million, is it $5 million? I go back to slide number six that it's only showing them doing a $2.1 million investment. Yet they're gonna end up with a $4 million, and what type of gap are we covering? I'm in favor of processes that is not money coming out of the city coffers. It's just money that never got put into the city coffers to stay with them. >> Okay, and Council Member Armitage. >> Yeah, so just to clarify my position, I probably wasn't entirely clear. What I meant when I came up with a, when I said, see what we can do to get to half, using what we have at our disposal and coming up with other measures. I just want to be clear, I do understand that this doesn't qualify for economic development incentives per our rules. And that even if we did, it would be such a low amount. And so I completely understand that what I meant was a partnership, and I'm mentioning this just so that it's clear for the minutes. And as far as what we understand where each council person stands. I'm for a partnership with the city and us being really creative to see what we can do to, I mentioned that amount because nobody else was throwing an amount out there. I'd like to set that as an aspirational goal, at least to begin with. But I definitely didn't mean to imply that I thought that it could come from incentives or from just a cash loan or grant. >> Okay, so Mr. City Manager, so I'll leave that. I don't want to, I could summarize, but I normally get in trouble when I do that. So I'll leave it for you to review. But I will say this to add my comments and close it out in summary. I think I fall in the lines of basically redirecting the ownership and applicant to you to have a follow-up meeting to your first meeting. I think I've told many people in the community that you have the best read of the room that I've seen. And you have an ear for kind of guiding applicants through this process. And so I think that is the best approach, having flushed out some of the thoughts. For me, I think it works, but I will tell you this, where I hang up is I don't think we can fight two historical wars on one front. So we need to either make a decision or have some pooling of resources, especially on the same street. So I've always been hesitant down the street, and so we come up the street and I have the same problems. So we've got to, as a council, kind of give some guidance and direction on what we want to do, and we've talked about management. And so maybe there's, if we also lean on that expertise between the owners of the Texas Theater, Barack and, let me get their names right, and Jason, there you go. If we could lean on their expertise, maybe there's some pooling of resources. Arc of Texas, all names we're familiar. So that's kind of my look at it, is whatever kind of makes financial sense based on staff's analysis and digging into the numbers, understanding the ask, kind of how it applies universally to the city is really where I'm going. I just don't think it's prudent to compete against each other, especially for the same dollars. At that point, we have a building, so it really is a matter of making sure the project fits with overall vision for downtown and for our city. And with that, Jessica, do you have anything you want to add? >> I don't have anything else. >> Okay, very good. Well, thank you very much, and great, great insight, great conversation, and okay, very good, thank you. I'll call the next, well, let's take a break. We're going to be at two hours, so at 212, we'll take a ten minute break and come back. Welcome back to the Denton City Council work session. It is 223, and we are now to our next item. But before that, I want to give everyone notice that item E will be delayed until the mayor gets back per his request. So that item is the City Hall West item, which is E193E192840. So we'll delay that till he gets back. But the next called item is 3D192369, receive a report. For discussion, give staff direction regarding a proposed development for property located in the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction. >> Good afternoon, Council. Richard Cannone, Development Services. What I wanted to do is just give a little introduction of this. It's essentially going to be a two part presentation. Haley's going to kind of walk you through some of the general details and give an overview of the project. And the applicant is here to really go through a little bit more detail of their proposal. Just to give you some initial background, this project initially was submitted around the first of the year. So prior to the new code being adopted and we've been working with them on a number of development scenarios for this site. And got to a point where we wanted to bring it in front of the council today. We've had a couple different discussions with them which we'll go over after sort of after the presentations. But there's essentially three ways this project can move forward. One, it has the ability to develop in the ETJ and do what they want or something even more intense. It is not governed by a non annexation agreement. Another option is to do a annexation development agreement that's governed by Texas Local Government Code. Currently we only have one of those in the city, that's the creek side that was done. A little bit different of a scenario, but that is one annexation development agreement that we have. The third option is really to follow the normal annexation procedures that we have and then seek a rezoning. The second and third either would still require public hearings. But just wanted to kind of frame it in that regard and have Haley just kind of walk you through some of the details. >> Good afternoon, Haley Zagurski with the planning department. So as Richard mentioned, I'll just give a brief background overview of the project and then the development team is here to give you more details on what they're proposing. So the subject property is outlined in yellow on the map, it's located on the south side of Allred Road, west side of the very southern end of Bonnie Bray, and also along the railroad tracks that are above Fort Worth Drive. Total, it's about 146 acres, the vast majority of that, 135 acres, are in the ETJ, a very small portion of it. Ten acres were involuntarily annexed by the city many, many years ago as part of a strip annexation down 377. As Richard referenced, it's currently not under a non-annexation agreement, so development could occur in the ETJ. Current uses on the property include agriculture, a single family residence associated with that was on the property. And at one point in time, there was a gas well on the site. In anticipation of this development, that has been plugged. Looking at the zoning and the future land use map for this area, again, the 135 acres, the majority of the property is in the ETJ. About ten acres here along 377, and the railroad is currently zoned R6. The future land use map for this area is a mixture, about two-thirds of the property is designated for rural uses. The portions closer to Bonnie Bray and 377 are designated for neighborhood mixed use. So it's kind of an odd transitional zone for more intensive commercial uses or high multi-family uses perhaps along 377 to rural, which is the five acre parcels. So what's proposed is, if you could say kind of a medium in between those two very opposing future land use designations there. They're proposing single family residential, 491 homes are shown on this plan. The density would be at about 3.36 units per acre. As it's shown, they do have 6,000 square foot minimum lot size, so they would meet the R6 standards if the existing zoning along 377 were extended across the property. Some of the benefits that we've talked with them about over the past year or so as we've been working through this would be right of way dedication for Brush Creek Road that's an arterial on the mobility plan that's currently drawn diagonally directly across this property. So we've worked with them on a potential alignment for that. They have offered as part of this development to build two roads to better the access to their site, because all red's a bit of a rough condition today to have primary access for the site. As part of this, they've been working with the railroad company to eliminate this crossing here at Bonnie Bray, which would be another benefit to the city to relocate that crossing down to Brush Creek. As I mentioned earlier, they did plug the gas well in anticipation of this development. So that would be on an HOA lot here in the northern part of the site. The area shown here below Brush Creek would be potential parkland dedication. A portion of it is in flood plain, so it could be used for kind of a regional drainage facility. But they've also offered to construct trails through there as well as a trail system through north south through the property that would connect to the future city park just north of here. As Richard alluded to, there are three options for how this could develop. I'll leave this for now when we can come back to it at the end of the presentation to walk through what those are. And at this time, we'll let the development team come up and take you through more of the details. >> Good afternoon. My name is Randy Rivera, I'm a land planner with McAdams in Louisville. I'm here today with Rob Bettenker from Zana, our developer, our client that has been looking at this property for over a couple of years now. He engaged us last fall, 2018, to look at some options on developing this property and it's still in the UTJ at that time, it still is. And so we entered, we came into a pre-development conference with the city and talked about our desires. And we are grateful to be in front of you today, finally with the opportunity to share this project with you all. We've done a lot of work over the past several months. So why are we here? The contract that our client has to purchase the property, he has been engaged with those landowners for over two years, or right about two years. And part of that condition to acquire it is that it's entitled for its intended use. The land is in the UTJ, we understand that. But the, we prefer, our client prefers that the development be brought into the city of Denton corporate limits and annexed. And Haley did a really good job of kind of giving an overview and I do not want to be redundant by any means. So I'm going to try to be synced in my presentation as well. Here's the location of the property showing the kind of the doughnut hole where the UTJ area is on this side of 377. In yellow there, across all red from Southwest Park and along 377. The property's about 3,000 feet wide and from east to west and about 2,000 feet north to south. Again, just zooming into that location, the aerial, it generally falls the slope on it from north to south, where the floodplain is along that south side. And there is some significant trees on the south end of the property in that floodplain area. But for the most part, it's treed with the mesquite trees predominantly and for agricultural uses. And this slide also shows the school district location, 377 is the breaking point between Denton ISD and Argyle ISD. And as you can see, the site is about a quarter mile from the intersection of all red and 35W. And Haley talked about some of the areas highlighted in red, the gas wells plugged. We got approval from Union Pacific to relocate the crossing at Bonnie Bray, down to this proposed crossing where Brush Creek is going to come across. And this is showing the floodplain in the southwest corner that's 14 acres there. And this floodplain extends from Lewisville Lake up into the Hunter Coal Ranch development. Looking again at the city zoning map, R6 is in the front. And what we're proposing, Haley just hit that spot on, to extend this R6 zoning for the rest of the property. And what we're adjacent to with R7 and the public facility of the park next to it, we provide for an appropriate transition to the intensity of the uses along 377 that could happen in the future. So, project details, here's the layout, I know you all have seen this before. When we approach any land development from a planning standpoint, what does the land give us? What opportunities are available on the property that we can work with? And the floodplain was definitely something that we were going to preserve, but for the most part, there wasn't a whole lot of significant environmental features on the property. And so, we wanted to create out of the development this north-south connection from the floodplain area where it's a natural linkage, a greenway throughout the city's drainage ways and roadways to get to Southwest Park. And so, we created this curvilinear boulevard that will have homes fronting onto it. We worked with the parks department, with engineering, and with planning on what this would look like as it goes through the site, but to provide more of a direct connection for pedestrians. And I want to talk about the public benefits that the amenities and the open space of our project along with the improvements. So, the first one being the open space, there's 15% of the development is in open space areas. And this trail that I'm going to show you in a little bit more detail is 10 feet wide. It'll connect Brush Creek Road to Southwest Park. It'll be in a public pedestrian access easement. So, the public will be able to use the trail as they traverse through the site. We're posing to dedicate the southern portion. This is 18 acres. The floodplain is 14, and then there's four acres out of the floodplain here that we would dedicate to the city for land dedication there to meet that requirement. And then we're also proposing there is a pond. There is one feature that is worth preserving, and it's this pond here in the southeast corner where we're going to focus our amenity center and pool and clubhouse. So, here's the street section of what this trail will look like as it goes from south to north up to Southwest Park. And, Randy, if I could, I'm going to take a question here. -Is that okay? -Oh, I would love, yeah, questions are great. -Councilman Briggs. -Yeah, so on Brush Creek Road, how wide is that? How many lanes is that supposed to be? -Is it four in a turn lane? -It's four lanes. It's a 120-foot right-of-way we're proposing. It's about 9.2 acres of land, and it's four lanes divided with bike lanes on either side. Okay, and so I see how you plan to get from the neighborhood up to the park, but how do you plan to cross safely from the floodplain to the neighborhood across Brush Creek if people are going down that road really fast? -Pedestrians? -Yes. Is that what you're saying? Okay. There will be a protected crossing here where the trail system that is going to be proposed on the south side of Brush Creek, the pedestrians will be able to cross at this point. We haven't designed what the components of that crossing would encompass, whether it's the flashing lights or something like that. We haven't gotten that far in that design, but we understand that the importance of it being protected in some manner for pedestrians to cross. Is that Todd? Todd Estes, City Engineers. Part of what we had discussed was long-term we had worked with the developer to have this entrance, which was originally closer to, which will be a signalized intersection at 377 and that Brush Creek intersection to move that further back so that there could be in the future either a hock signal or a signal, fully signalized intersection if needed, so that we could get the pedestrians across the street safely. Okay. That's going to be really, that's going to be important. Thank you. Todd, don't go far. Council Member Davis. Sorry, Todd, you're handy, so I had a question for you, and it may be a tag team, but I have a question about the Bonnie Bray alignment and the crossing being eliminated. So in the 2015 mobility plan, I think we still had Bonnie Bray moving the crossing, but tying it in still to 377, you'd cross the tracks on Bonnie Bray back to 377. In our current draft mobility plan, we have Bonnie Bray alongside the new park, but not crossing over to 377, so to get to the new park from 377, you'd need to get onto Brush Creek and come back up around to all the way there. Or come across Vintage and go south on Bonnie Bray. The intent here is you have a very steep crossing and a very sharp angle to go over the railroad track, so it's an unsafe crossing. Historically, there have been cattle farms and, or cattle ranches and farms, so you didn't have much traffic, and it just served that purpose. Every now and then, somebody uses a backdoor shortcut into North Texas. Today with the increased traffic we're anticipating with development going on in that area, we have asked the developer to help us work with UP in taking that intersection offline with the railroad in favor of a quiet zone when this road's built to cross the railroad tracks there to the south. So we would have a fully arm-actuated signal at the crossing itself, and then it would be tied into a signal that is already set up to handle that kind of traffic at 377. So under this plan, kind of the draft mobility plan, Bonnie Bray dead ends at Allred Road? Correct. Thanks. Any other questions before we get back to it? Okay, thank you. Yes, of course. Okay, again, I think I was here at this cross section showing the minimum 10-foot sidewalk. And the variable width median that goes through the property is a minimum of 37 feet, so that we can have adequate plantings that people aren't just walking in the middle of a grassy area, but that we can do some shade trees and enhance landscaping. I wanted to show some highlights here of the pedestrian crossings at the internal intersections of Sagebrook. This is the southern intersection down on this part where it connects into Brush Creek. We would come in from Brush Creek and then cross the residential street and cross this portion to get into the median. And this crosshatch represents a raised intersection, enhanced pavement, and there's also enhanced landscaping here so that motorists understand there's something going on, there's something different, I need to slow down. And again, it's right next to the intersection with Brush Creek, so it's only 120 feet there from that intersection. So we don't anticipate speeding, of course. This inset here shows the middle intersection and showing the 10-foot trail, how it crosses the intersection there by staying in the median, staying on the enhanced pavement, that raised, that tabletop intersection that we're proposing there. And that would also be protected. Again, just highlighting the open space areas, about 20, again, 15% of the site is open space. And this is the proposed trail connection that could be extended from the Hunter Cole Ranch development and allow a linkage from that site, those areas over there, to go down this greenway and then get up to Southwest Park. And I have a larger map to show that and a broader picture to see that this direct access is very beneficial for the residents and the neighbors in the community. And the private open space, we touched on the pool and the cabana next to the existing pond that we're going to enhance the trails and the enhanced landscaping and the screening walls. And again, the public open space is the 18 acres. This slide shows the zoning comparison with R6, again, just anticipating extending R6 zoning across the property. And we comply with the R6 standards. The one just difference is that the front yard, we're proposing a 20-foot front yard instead of a 10. But we would develop this site in four different phases. And it's basically each quadrant is a phase. And feel free to ask any questions at any time. I'd welcome that. Now I want to talk about some public benefits other than the open space and the trail, but some of the improvements from an infrastructure standpoint. We just touched on with Todd the Brush Creek extension being 9.2 acres. And on this plan, I'll try to point to it with a mouse, is these two lanes of Brush Creek, which would adhere to this required street section would be built by the developer per phase to provide access into Sagebrook and the connections to be made in the future going westward. And here is the street section, we pulled this from the bond package presentation of what this would look like with 120-foot right away in the four lanes and the bike lanes on the street. And it's just showing a larger map of the connection, again, about 3,000 feet of road that we, the right of way that we would be dedicating the two lanes that we'd be building and how this ties into the city's thoroughfare planning and helps create a link and a connection to extend this over to 35. And eventually, the motorist would be able to go from 2499 all the way to 35W, so it will be a significant traffic carrier in the future, as you know. Again, we did work with Union Pacific to get the approval of the railroad crossing removal relocation, I should say. And we are working on preliminary engineering agreement and getting that executed with the city's approval to prepare the engineering design of what the crossing would entail and what it would look like. Another infrastructure-related benefit is the site, to get sewer to service to the site, it's about 3,000 feet away down Brush Creek here to the graveyard interceptor next to the golf course. So we would extend a minimum of a 10-inch sewer, we would have to oversize as necessary, and our agreement that we're requesting talks about that oversizing and what we are requesting the city to participate in at that time. But this would be extended across to service our site for 3,000 feet and then, of course, through our development, it would be extended to our west property line to allow for connection as property west of here develops in the future that they have an opportunity to tie into the sewer as well. And here's what that looks like going through, going down Brush Creek and then through our development. And again, with Sagebrook being 146 acres, the sewer basin that this line would serve is really about a 580-acre area. There's a greater benefit there. The trees that we're preserving were consistent with the city's requirement of 30% that we're preserving the canopy here shown in green. And then Richard said this kind of at the outset that our first application we made in December of 2018 and here's the submittals that we have been through with city staff and we've had numerous meetings and they've been very attentive, responsive to those meetings working through this because this isn't just a standard development. It is unique in that it's in the ETJ and so we've had those discussions and like I said, that's why we're here today to get direction from council on how to continue to move forward with this. And through that year-long or so process, these are the items that we've completed. We've done the TIA, water, sewer and flood and we've done a market study as well. And so just the land use, I want to touch on that briefly and then I think that that will probably wrap it up. Haley showed this to the future land use map for the city of Denton and this is rural areas, which is the five acres and being in the ETJ, I can understand why that rural area designation was probably given here. And what we would propose is the development that we're proposing, the 3.36 units per acre, the 6,000 square foot minimum lots, is an appropriate transition of density as you go from the intensities in Hunter Coal Ranch to 377. So we feel like our development will provide a gradual transition instead of this abrupt land use change that exists today. And so that's what we're proposing and it's appropriate and it's best practices and planning. This also shows the connection with Brush Creek there. A broader look at the thoroughfare plan and how we fit in and the linkage there that this would provide the connection and the opportunity to get the Brush Creek improvements underway sooner. That's showing that the bond program that was approved there at that location. And when we looked at this we wanted to look at how it does it fit into the what was approved with Hunter Coal and again talking about the transition going from an R7 based zoning to an R6 is very appropriate. And what we think is interesting on this plan too is showing the linkages of the green belts, the greenways that they're proposing in this master plan community and how over here it ties into Sagebrook. And then how when we provide an opportunity for the land dedication to be to the city, trails to be built in the future. What a great way to get pedestrian connection up to Southwest Park, which is a regional park there. And this is what this is showing just kind of that that red arrow connecting over down the Brush Creek alignment and then through our site into Southwest Park. This timeline there's a lot of dates here and I'm not going to go through each one of them but really one of the reasons we're here is those three options that Haley had up on her presentation and the you know when you develop in the ETJ. It like I said it's unique and the process is is somewhat different than if we're in the city. All development has risk associated with them. And when Rob approached us about this being in the ETJ and with the city. Over the course of this the last several months. It has been our impression that an agreement with the city was the appropriate, the appropriate appropriate opportunity to develop the site in the ETJ and then and then at that point once that approval of the agreement was granted, then the site would go through the annexation procedures. And so this this schedule here just really is showing what the steps would, we would have to go through, if we were to go through the normal process of, which is another option on Haley's list of annexation zoning preliminary plat. Our client has to close on the land before the end of April. And this timeline here outlines those steps that we would have to take in order to get there with that option. But we do we're, we prefer the third option on her list. And this is what this is saying there that the annexation agreement again is something that we've been again going through for the last several months, and it is the most mutually beneficial option for both parties. For, for the developer and for the city, we're able to talk about the oversizing of utilities the land dedication for the right away. And then it also helps the developer, bring something to the city that's that would be consistent with the transitional type of land use. So we're, we would request that the staff that the council sorry the council give direction to staff on how we should move forward with what option to bring to get the site developed and entitled, so that our client can close on it. No problem is that's in your presentation. That that's the end. Yes, sir. Okay, very good. Yeah, Councilman altar. Can you speak to the starting, starting price and high range that you're thinking of for these homes for the homes, yes we can Rob do you want to touch on that. Hi Rob Bettencourt was a land development price points in this area based on development costs really is the driving factor of that so we would see probably in the low 300s would be starting point. I don't know that we can reach the upper 200s but if we could we would love to kind of depends on the builders which we have not finalized yet as well so. And then, in that range we would probably see $100,000 swing so you could easily say three to 400. Thank you. And then, Richard did you have any other. Okay, okay, very good. Well, if any other questions for the applicant while they're here was the podium. Thank you very much. Just wanted to provide I guess a little more context into these into the into the options. Obviously we know what the voluntary annexation and zoning processes. That's how it how it's typically done. First they go through the annexation, then then zoning and plotting, which is approved by PNC pre annexation is a little bit different. The development agreement. Essentially what that does is it provides for interim regulations. And so there's assurances for both, both parties. You know they had expressed some concerns with annexing into the city, and then not not receiving the zoning for it for their project, or a different zoning. Contrary to that if the R six was approved straight zoning. It does allow for other uses other than are then the single family there's duplexes triplexes. So so there's there's there's pluses and minuses for both the annexation development agreement obviously provides provides an option for the city to just kind of lock lock it in as as as it moves forward. Legal did have some concerns with with that as it as it relates to contract zoning there. It is authorized in the local government code we did include those provisions in the new DDC. But again that that that that concern is there, and whether or not it, it's challenged or not, who knows. But but those are really the, the two options to move forward on on this project and really seeking counsel's direction on, should we look at an agreement or I guess I would add to Richards, I know there's probably some confusion why this is here to you today. You know, I think the applicant because of the time constraints, I mean, they have a legitimate point to get held up with their submittals that are, you know, in the process to put the new code in I mean it was, it's been a long process for them and they've got a closing day at the end of April, but I was not in support of the pre annexation development agreement and still not. And primarily because I didn't, I didn't believe the council would be or the plan commission without that route. We had a similar situation take place with Creekside, which is down south of Ryan Road near Forest Ridge. A few years ago in the plan commission was not kind to staff not very happy that they, that their hands had been tied under that agreement when the development came through and we heard similar concerns from council so I did not support the third option and. You know, my, my stance on this has been that we need to vet it in front of council. I see no problem taking them through the regular annexation zoning process letting the public way in. I think the one thing that's a little different here is that basically there's some concern that there's an annexation petition is submitted. You know, could the city essentially capture the property and what I have told them is that I would certainly support to make the recommendation to council that if the zoning did not go down as they need to close on the property and make their business case that I would be supportive of recommending to the council that we not forcibly annex them in. That's their fear. Going, you know, developing in the ETJ provides, you know, does not provide us the level of control and say, you know, to hold this development to our standards unnecessarily that the regular process does. But that's, that's why we're here today. It's the discussion that's been going on. I really wanted to get them in to talk to you to make, so I could take your temperature and make sure that I was comfortable with where you were. But that's just a quick analysis, and it's a lot of it's being driven by how long they've had to wait to get through our processes, but I definitely felt like this was worthy of your time, and I wanted you to know the conversation and especially with protein is it pertain to the annexation if things went really the other way with the planning and zoning commission. And, and what I'll do is, so no one's up yet so that's at your discretion. And then Councilmember Briggs has stated that she would prefer the normal process. I think there's a couple of Councilmembers we need to recognize. I just wanted to expand on what Richard said about the contract zoning the, the issue that we had was to actually specify the actual districts in this agreement without going through the zoning process. That's been taken care of with my conversations with the developers attorney. We've also discussed about how the voluntary annexation and zoning process works. We both agreed that the, the actual notice of publication for the zoning, the initial zoning, which is the establishes the jurisdiction of the city to begin the initial zoning process begins when that first notice goes out. And that can only occur after the annexation has been complete. And so we've at least discussed that and how that operates. We can't do it simultaneously annexation and zoning because zoning only applies when the land is in the city, not before it actually is in there. We'd be happy, I have also extended that we would be happy to review those documents in advance if they're filed. We just can't publish it in the newspaper and send the notices to surrounding property owners until the annexation is complete. Council member Armitage, I think I saw your name. Yeah, so I also support just them going through the regular process. I'm sorry they had to wait so long and the city was going through some really important changes that we had to, had to make for the city's sake. I'm, I have all kinds of concerns about the annexation that can come forward as part of the, the usual annexation application process. So you're saying, is it number two? Yeah, I'm for number two. And you know, I have some additional concerns that if it comes to that, I can, I can state that at that time. Thank you. Council member Ryan. Have there been any, any neighborhood meetings on this and on other developments, we generally require a couple of those. Yeah, I don't believe that they have yet, but yeah, if somebody wants to speak to it yet. Yeah, sure. Yeah, you bet. Yeah, you bet. No, sir. There haven't been large or overall neighborhood meetings, but we have gotten letters and feedback from the immediate adjacent neighbors that are in support of this. Okay, thank you. Any, any council member Davis and then council member Meltzer. I want to start by saying I appreciate the way this project has been brought forward and kind of make our mea culpa to the developer for the, the time that it's taken. To get this far in the process, the extent the city is responsible for that and the project as it's presented. I mean, if we were in a normal kind of zoning case, I'd probably have some more in depth questions, but as presented, I don't have any glaring issues with the project. However, when it comes to annexation, I don't think I could be more wary of the process we go through and the decisions we make. We have about 6000 acres we got to figure out what to do with because we've annexed them and right in this neighborhood. So I want to make sure that we do everything by the book in the way that our citizens expect when it comes to annexation. I don't want a future PNC or a future council to look back on this council or this PNC and wonder about the process that we undertook. So, you know, from a permitting timeline standpoint, it's not our job to kill deals because we don't get things done in the proper time frame. But it's also not our job to rescue real estate deals by changing our processes or doing things outside our norm, our comfort level. I'm sorry. Which option, if any of them, are you? Normal process annexation. Especially when we have a process that has built in public input. I think you'd need a pretty extraordinary reason to prevent the public from having that. I'm for two. All right. Anybody else? It sounds like. Have you weighed in? No, it's moot. At this point, my read of the room, but I will say I'll echo what Councilman member Davis said. I do like the presentation. I like the connectivity of it. And I'm absolutely sensitive to the timing, especially such that, and I appreciate the city manager kind of being transparent in that way, that there was a lot of transition, et cetera, that led to the delays. And seven meetings as they presented, obviously those aren't back to back, so that presents challenges. So my ask would be, regardless, because we're leaning, because the kind of the lean is option two, I would ask that we're just sensitive to that. Because there is a lot at stake to that date. And so it's such that we can be diligent on our end going forward to help. That would be important to me. And then two, I do have a question for you, Richard. That development, I think it's at PD, it's at the very bottom of Haley's slide, but it's southwest. What is that, how many, in the very bottom left corner there, I think is where it is, in the green. What's generally, you think, the read on those houses? Is that R6 as well, you would guess? Because directly across streets, R2, and those are, I mean, those good sized lots, and so I'm just curious. Right, we have the R2 in this area. Right. There's actually an application to rezone this parcel. This one here, if you recall, they had actually withdrew their application. Right, yes. No, I think the one, yes. I'm sorry, this is Country Lakes. Future phase of Country Lakes. Well, there is a residence down there, so I'll give you an address, and maybe somebody can help me. I think there are four R6. Okay, thank you. I didn't really state my opinion on it as to which way to go. From what I've seen, I don't think that there's going to be any issue with it going forward through the natural process. It would have been nice if there had been a neighborhood meeting prior to this, so they could have known kind of what their, if there was going to be any opposition, but I would say probably number two would be my choice. So it seems that option number two is the direction of the council, and then with sensitivities too, let's make sure we try to do it in a way that takes in mind the timeliness of all this. One other thing just to add, if you recall in 2017, House Bill 6 kind of changed a lot of the annexation rules. This last legislative session, I'm sorry, Senate Bill 6, House Bill 347, I think it was, changed the annexation laws again and repealed a lot of what Senate Bill 6 put in. However, this will most likely be what's called a C3, so I think it actually provided the ability for us to even shorten the number of, we still have our hearing requirements per the charter, but I think it has lessened a meeting as a requirement under the local government code with this latest change. So I'm sure you discussed it during the meeting just so that I understand, because I haven't read the backup. So if we do the annexation, voluntary annexation, as expeditiously as possible, and that we can't do any kind of zoning quote unquote hearing or things such as that, until that takes place. Is there a timeframe such that we could do all that prior to, apparently I've heard that there's some termination date or something with the contract. Is that a timing that we can work within? It'll be tight. We have to look at it. One thing we even talked about is they still have the ability to plat, file for a preliminary plat in the ETJ. So as they annex in, they would still be vested under that preliminary plat as long as it's valid. And I appreciate that. So moving forward, if there's an opportunity or possibility for staff to take a more deeper dive into the annexation laws to really figure out what is a reasonable timeframe, and then sort of map it out and pass that along to sort of give them far enough advanced notice of, hey, this may be doable, it may not if we see it right away, and then y'all can move forward from there. Okay. Any other questions, comments? All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. I understand y'all just were coming back from a break, so we don't need to take a break. Is that correct? All right. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem for standing in for me. Appreciate your courtesies in that regard. Yes, sir. All right, we'll move on to agenda item 3E, which is, this has to be one of the shortest captions I think I've read in a long time. Receive report and hold discussion against that staff direction regarding City Hall West. Let me find it here. Nope. Rachel, do you know if it's up here? It should be loaded. Not only is it the shortest caption, it might be the shortest presentation. It's not here. Let's take the next item. Not a problem. It's those computer gremlins every now and then they get hungry and decide to trip things up a little bit. Okay. All right, well we'll find it. We're moving on to agenda item 3F, and then we'll come back circle back around to 3E. Receive report hold discussion to give staff direction on pending City Council requests for. And then there's three. I think there's three. Yeah. Ethics ordinance revision tree ordinance revision and tree survey. Good afternoon, Mayor and council members Rachel Vother at Mendoza assistant to the city manager, going to introduce for you today, our pending request for information. Just as a reminder, staff will introduce each request and the elected official that made the request will have up to one minute to describe and justify your request remaining elected officials will then have up to one minute to provide feedback and indicate their support will respond to all requests where consensus consensus is made. First item is the tree survey requested by Councilmember Mozart. Well, if we had known that we had really valuable trees and we would have done something different but they're cut now. And the suggestion is not that we do this $93,000 satellite confirmed, you know, comprehensive thing, but just where we have a pretty good idea that there might be significant trees on public land, including DISD, that we identify those and landmark where appropriate just so that we're not caught wishing we had done differently. Okay. I strongly support this, and I hope that it would lead to a work session eventually on having a process on identifying these kind of trees. We'll go Councilmember Davis and then Councilmember Briggs. I think your hand is up. So I really appreciate staff's information on this slide, because it kind of lets us know the process we've gone through before to find. We need to start the clock. Thank you. Little extra time for me. But I'm very supportive of the intent behind this and my suggestion would be made there. There might be consensus around a citizen tree identification drive where we would kind of crowdsource it. The kind of the way that Texas A&M does with their trees, they can't survey the whole state. They send out to communities, tell us where your big trees are, tell us where your landmark trees are. Most of us could name off the top of our heads 456 landmark trees that we know of in town. If it could be crowdsourced in a way organized by our urban forestry folks that we could identify these in a way that doesn't cost us a whole bunch of money. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Briggs, I'm in favor of this. Okay. I believe that's got us to four. If I'm not mistaken, that correct, I'm sure you're okay with this. Yeah, I think what I said would would work into a work session and staff could present what the options are. Very good. All right. Next up is our tree ordinance by Councilmember Briggs, I wanted to call your quick attention our apologies but the exhibit three that was included as an attachment is inaccurate because it was the old tree code. So my apologies there but that was inadvertently put in as the attachment instead of the current version. Did you have a question for that clarification on that. Okay, go ahead. Could someone speak to, I thought we were going to narrow these larger topics, I thought we, we got sideways with that before. Well, we can come back with a policy discussion on that if we can. I mean, if it's too broad, then each council member has opportunity to say, I'm not going to support if it's that broad so we could have a maybe revisit that policy discussion to get a little bit more clarity but as far as the particular item I'd like to stay with. The process if that's okay mayor pro tem. Okay. All right. So, I left it broad because I know that this means something different to each council member, and some of you are not here when that was created so I left it open so you could, if it came to us you would have room to discuss what matters to you and what issues you have. So I did request this to come back before us because before the implementation in October when we originally passed it there were questions and concerns about loopholes and some tree species that was supposed to come back to us before implementation this year and it never made it back to us. And so I want to talk about those again, and also look at real life projects that have happened since the code has been implemented to see if it's actually accomplishing what it's intended to do and what this council wanted it to do. Councilmember Davis, always for my time this time. So I'm supportive of having a work session on this item. I understand your concerns about it being broad, we might be able to, as staff works up the agenda item maybe we can narrow it with specific concerns that individual council members have heard or we can let staff know the things that we're most concerned about. Since it's been implemented, and Councilmember Briggs is correct, I wasn't here for that conversation, but my concern is having talked with lots of folks in the community that we have less of a tree preservation ordinance and more of a tree mitigation ordinance. And, you know, my, my developer friends cringe when I talk about this, but we've got to have some strong protections in place for landmark trees. I understand there are times you have to have the trade offs there are times you have to replace caliper inches with new trees on the property and that's just the way development works. But there are also times that we could be more proactive in our design. Before we find out that our favorite stands of trees have been destroyed, we can work together to do better. Yeah, I support this work session and I agree that the focus of the ordinance, the better than the, its predecessor is more focused on mitigation and preservation. And we've got a different council now slightly different and I look forward to having this broader conversation and doing a wellness check on how the ordinance is doing so far. I'm supportive. Yeah, I'm going to say I'm supportive with an asterisk. First of all, I don't know about totally new council we got one new council member I guess. But I'm, I hear what's being said but I will again say the balance is balancing private property rights with those of the community and when you're telling people that they can't do this or do that and it dramatically affects their ability to develop. And I really, I'm seeing a pattern where we're adopting things and we're coming back six to eight months later, and we're wanting to make changes, which I think if we want to put it on a time frame where we come back and look at it a year later. And that's just a policy the council wants to do that's fine. But I think once we adopt something, we need to give it a chance to work. Because I can tell you right now that was not adopted with much hesitancy it was very thoroughly vetted, and all these issues that are being discussed right now also came up then so we can always talk about it again, but that's what's been implemented. So I think we have enough to do that. Last one for today, Councilmember Davis. About the ethics policy. So don't think I need to refresh very many recollections about the practice we had last year in deciding polling places and different council members ability to be a part of that process under our current ethics code. After that kind of dust up we asked our ethics board to come up with some revisions to conflict of interest. They brought forward kind of some ideas we haven't been through that whole process yet. But there wasn't a lot of stomach on the council it didn't seem like for making big changes to our conflict of interest provisions. So what I have here is essentially a red line after much thought and deliberation. I've been thinking about this for over a year y'all much thought and deliberation about the best way to red line the code and fix the problem that we had in that in that dust up last year. So what I proposed is a very specific red line of the code. And that's what I'd like to have a work session about. I'm open to having a work session. I'm open to having a work session if something has been vetted by the ethics board in advance. That's my armature. I was going to say the same thing. I've been having a work session I would like to go by the ethics committee in advance and I know that they're talking going to be talking about what is a pending matter. And that's related also to this issue. I don't remember this fracas but I'm open to having the discussion. We really talked about this I think it was. I think Councilmember Meltzer you brought it up not in one of these formats but hey, make this change and I'm going to stand with what I did at that time and that is number one. I think it's challenging when the people that this affects are the ones asking for the change but number two we definitively put in a process to ask the ethics board to give us some changes. So I'm okay. I mean I probably don't have any issue with the substance of it but I'm struggling with the process and would rather it go before the ethics board and have them discuss it and even if it comes back as just one change before they get everything else finished then that's okay too. But just to really let them vet it out because that's why they're there and that's what we charge them with. So I'm okay with giving it to the ethics board to bring it back and then it probably will come back for another work session. So if we can have that one step in between I'm okay with that. And as the requester I'm totally fine with that. I believe they're meeting here pretty soon. Okay so I just want to maintain the integrity of this process because it could get out of hand pretty quickly. So what I'm hearing is that instead of it coming to council first as a work session to submit it to the ethics board to have them vet it and then to move it forward to the council either with or without additional changes to the conflict of interest/pending matters provision of the code. If it needs to come as a stand-alone bring it forward. Very good. Thank you. All right. Now do we do we have the the the missing presentation. Okay. All right. Do we just need to take a little five minute break. Let's take a little five minute break while we get this loaded up. Welcome back to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Tuesday January 7 2020. That reminded me of a skit but I won't go into it. We're on agenda item 3E, which is our, I believe our last work session report. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding City Hall West. Yes, thank you Mayor. Sarah Hensley, Assistant City Manager. I'm here again today to talk to you a little bit about City Hall West. If you recall I was here in front of you on October the 7th. It seemed very appropriate to be back in front of you on December the 7th, I mean January the 7th. I'm already losing time. At that time when I was here before I talked to you a little bit about the City Hall West and its current condition. I talked to you about the history, the background, and certainly the shape that it was in. I mentioned to you at the time that we were working diligently to replace the windows, which is almost underway. We had to do a little contract negotiating, but we are having them starting in the next week. And you gave us some instructions about coming back and looking at funding, proceed with funding options to go ahead and restore the building. But look at the current or the committee's recommendation that they gave as far as how it would be used. So today we're seeking direction on whether we want to move forward in securing some funding for design and renovation. We have options at the end of the presentation for you to consider. Just a little bit of a reminder and in your packets, I believe, where you can see on your laptop there, that the features of the original design were an auditorium with a balcony, a fire station, which had the operations, and a multipurpose room. And then there was some office space. After some renovations of the building, as you can see, we had a current floor plan that didn't come out very well, so we just wanted to share with you the challenges. I think you've all been in the building and seen that we had made several renovations that sort of cut the building into different levels. And so it has a disjointed floor plan, basically a stairway that doesn't go anywhere. There is no auditorium or multipurpose room at this time. And there are very limited historical architectural features in the interior of the building due to the renovations that have occurred over time. I did want to share with you, though, as a part of the committee's recommendation and the site plan, they talked a lot about bringing back the landscaped terrace at the main entrance, coming up with some type of event courtyard with some parking, having a loading zone area, and then looking at the public sidewalks and some landscaping to really improve the exterior of it. And that certainly with the windows will help. This, just to get you a little oriented, McKinney Street is... You may try to stay behind the microphone. To get you oriented, McKinney Street is up here. So the front of the building is really over here where you would enter in the building and then loading areas would be back here. And so that is just your outside conceptual design. And again, I want to mention this is conceptual. This does not mean this would be what it would look like. But this is what some of the things that the committee recommended. The lower level, this was where the event facility that they talked about could happen. And it talks about the opportunity to have the fire truck that could be used and go. You could have that as in. It could be in there permanently or out. And that's why I need to make sure that you can see that event space here and I won't go over there. But it would look at some kind of lease space if applicable, an accessible entry. Obviously, you'd have to have restrooms that were accessible at this time. Our restrooms in that facility are not accessible except for one or two in the building as a whole. So you'd want to have accessible restrooms in areas where you would have the majority of individuals coming in or staff. There would need to be a service elevator for loading and unloading. Obviously, there are some spaces that were identified as storage. And there are several areas that have identified it for mechanical purposes. But depending on how the development of the building would be constructed, you may not have a need for a mechanical area, particularly in one of the elevator areas that was in the building. That's all come out later as far as the design. The main level, main entrance level, level would be an area for offices for the management or staff. It was discussed at the last meeting in October about would the city not be appropriate party to use this building because of the need for office space. The answer to that is yes. And so we looked at the possibility of having offices, not necessarily just for management, for a department or two. The performance hall lobby, the area that could go for flexible seating, and then, of course, a backstage area and those things are something that could be considered. It may not be 200 to 250. It may have to be smaller or it may be that per input and your ideas that something like this may be only for sort of practice space and not necessarily for performance coworking areas. And then, of course, maybe a studio area for lease space. And again, I mentioned the restroom facility because that is important that we have accessibility accessible restroom facilities on the floors that will be used by by the community as well as staff. When you get to the second, which is considered the upper level, it's a very small space, and just enough for maybe an office or a studio area, a shared conference room and a break room and then again, the restroom situation. So when you think about the building, depending on the use, it doesn't have a lot of room for a hordes of offices, perhaps depending on what was selected. It could be up to 22 to 24 offices. But if it was more for if it was more for shared space with others or for offices, you might not you may not have as much space. And then the final top level would be a balcony area and then would really just be your sound and projection area. That's really the only viable option there. And this is all based on the conceptual design that was worked through with the committee at the time. The citizens worked to make recommendations here. If I could just interrupt you just for a moment. I wanted to recognize Councilman so I think I know you're not feeling well. So you, I think, wanted to maybe go home and put you wanted to at least share your inputs. I wanted to give you the opportunity. Thank you. Yes, I'm fading, fading fast. I am for option three and I wanted to go ahead and put that out there before I left to weigh in. I feel like the project's just going to get more expensive if we keep waiting. Okay, thank you. And so I'm going to move real quickly then and just go right down to the meat of this. And that is really what what could be house in the multipurpose room. Yes, there's a variety of things. It could be a rotating exhibits. It could be special events and board retreats. The fire truck can go in and out. It could stay permanently. We could even have the fire truck in that bottom area and still have an area that would open up into a patio area for events. And somehow with some kind of creative architectural feature, the fire truck could be incorporated. There are so many different things that could happen there. When you look at the options for who could use the space, the answer there is without giving specifics because we don't have that at this time. There are departments that can utilize this space and we have departments that have those kinds of numbers that would be helpful for us and not using rental or leased space. And then is there a department internally that could help manage this facility? And the answer is yes. We currently have a department who manages and oversees the operations of the Civic Center. And that's our friendly Parks and Recreation Department. What is the estimated cost? The original projected budget, as you know, would be about $5,352,000. But with the estimated cost of inflation and then, of course, if you add in contingency, this is what the cost would be approximately today. And then how could it be funded? Due to low interest rates, and I worked with David Gaines on this right now, it's at 3.25%. We could do certificates of obligations or the council could decide to put it on a future bond proposal. So the options you have before you today are take no action at all. Fund design and development, which would be an estimated cost of $500,000. Move forward to pursue the funding for the entirety of the project, which would be designing construction. Go straight in after we do design it. We work with council, bring it back, public engagement, and do construction through the certificates of obligation or take it to a future bond proposal. That concludes my presentation. So before I weigh in, a question. So the interest rates are low for certificates of obligation. And I know we can't predict what they're going to be, but I also know that there are people, and I'm not one of them, who make these kind of projections. Any word on what's expected, like say this was to be put forward for a bond next fall? We've basically used about a 4% outside range right now in the next two or three years of the bond package that was just completed. So we feel that we're in decent shape for the next year, so a year to 18 months, somewhere in the threes. Okay, so a year, is it, so a bond election, if it did come to that, that could be within a year. We have enough time to set the process in place. Possibly, it just all depends on how the tax rate implications would be explained in a referendum and what commitments are made out there. >> Okay, well, so I'm for either of those, funding with certificates of obligations, certificates of obligation. Or a place on a future bond proposition, but since I feel like certificates of obligation, that could come sooner. I'm partial to that one. I would definitely want, I'm glad you mentioned that public input is a big part of the process. I also want to, I understand that the City Hall West Committee has disbanded, right? But people put in a lot of time into that, so I want to make sure that they get invited to come back. And just as members of the public, I'm concerned about using it, so much of it, for city office space. Because I know a lot of the support for the project had to do with public use. Obviously, any city department serves the public. But anyway, that's where I stand. >> Council Member Meltzer. >> Yeah, a couple questions and a comment. If we were to go with option two, what would the source of funding be for that? Is there a budget for that? >> There's no budget for any of this, but we've got cash to handle that, number two. Three, obviously, we would need to issue COs, but two, we would scrape together the cash for the funding. >> And then, thank you, and then for three, what would the carry cost be approximately for doing the COs? In other words, that's going to have budget implications too. >> Yeah, I'll defer to David on that. We can certainly have that ready to go. I don't want to give you a number off the top of my head, but I can ask him to get that for us. >> Okay, that's the one question I should have asked in advance. >> It's not going to be significant. We typically issue that over a 20-year period of time. So you could be looking up to a third to a half a cent on the tax levy at some point if we get into that position, if needed. So that's on the outside. >> Okay, tax levy or within the existing budget is an important discussion. >> Probably, at this point, I definitely wouldn't want to make that commitment to you, given how we continue to tighten up the budget the last few years. >> Yeah. And then just a comment, as I recall, the sort of title of the way it came back from the committee was that the desire was for it to be a multipurpose cultural center. I don't know if I'm remembering that right. But it's hard for me to imagine any execution of that that wouldn't include a performance space. So to your question about would it have to be a performance space, could it just be a rehearsal? I don't have a baked point of view that it's got to be 200 to 250 seats. Maybe it's 199, but anyway. And then just lastly I'd say, sure is feeling like part of some existing planning process we're doing, probably the economic development one. If I want to look comprehensively at all the different structures that would comprise us being sort of an arts destination. Like as we talked about one earlier today and this one and got a role in GDAC. It feels a little piecemeal. It might be helpful to say, yeah, what's a comprehensive plan that makes sense for a city that wants to be an arts destination? If that's true, then we do want it. >> Depending on the decision today, Councilmember Meltzer will work, obviously, with the economic development department and what they're trying to do there and making sure that this is not a single siloed effect. This is something more looked at more holistically. >> I would say one thing. I think Sarah's drummed home this point numerous times, but we talk about carry costs, that sort of thing that's obviously very true. I think the cost that we're seeing with the escalation of construction costs right now far outpace any interest rate concerns, anything like that. So I just think it's, well, obviously you have the direction you want, but that is probably a bigger variable than anything else we're talking about. >> Yeah, and just this first direction, we've been kicking the can down the road a long time in this. We know, I think we have consensus that we want to do something. So I'm inclined to three, and obviously you're going to have to come back to us with more information about it. >> Councilmember Meltzer, just to mention also that not just in the fact of the actual escalation of cost, but the cost of maintenance. This is a building that is not going the right way for us. We don't want to lose roof and other things that we're seeing from other buildings. And so I just mentioned that the windows, we are really struggling to, we'll have to get that done because of some rotten things that were occurring. But there are opportunities there that if we wait longer and longer, we'll have other issues to deal with that will make the cost go up even higher. >> So, and I think a couple of our council members were on that committee, I believe. Councilmember Ryan, is it Mayor Pro Tem? >> Yeah, Mayor Pro Tem. If I remember correctly, when it came back to us, they might have had a title on it, but they really just were looking at a floor plan as far as the uses and things such as that. >> That's right. >> They weighed in some on it, but that wasn't really necessarily part of the recommendation. So I'm okay with option number three, and we can decide on the uses. But what I don't want to do is wind up in a situation where we're paying $400,000 a year for office space. Is that correct, what we're paying for lease space? >> That's more than that. >> Over how many year lease it was originally? >> It was initially, I think, 10. >> Well, that speaks for itself. So I'm certainly okay with having a combination, but this is a growing city. And if this council or future councilors are not wanting to create a new city hall that consolidates a lot of these and really brings them together and we're going to have them more piecemeal out there, then I think it would be financially imprudent not to understand that we need to also have this use for some city offices or for some organizations that we're paying rent for right now that might could. So that's an open-ended question, but I think we do need to move forward with the remodel. And I am certainly for the performance space. I think just the architectural features that it will allow people to have. And this was the same amount of seats, I think, that was with us beforehand. >> That's correct. >> And you know my situation on the fire station? >> Yes, I do. >> Well, I'm talking to my colleagues and the public. For us to be so historically centric to let one of our vintage fire trucks remain in the possession of the county when we have a place where it can come to rest in the place where it was, that would sure seem an opposite to that kind of approach. And I think we can find a way to work around, we can still generate income in those kinds. So I'm obviously for option three. I do have one question though, the $7.5 million, the parentheses, the parenthetical after it in the previous slide said that included the contingency fees, is that correct? >> That is 7.5, and I checked this number with our staff and facilities, that is with contingencies in there. Because the cost that was derived from the committee was around 5.3 to do this sort of this model. Now, depending on, again, because of the cost of construction steel and all the other stuff that happens, this is an approximate cost. And so it's estimated all in. >> No, no, no, and I understand that. So my goal is not to get a hard number like this is what it's going to be. My only thought was when you look at a 30% contingency, even if you took the 30% off the 5.3 million, that's 1.5 million. That almost puts you up to $700,000. Or if you put the 30% off the 7.5, well, then you're below that. So we're really not, I mean, the contingency seems to be the majority or the largest part of the price increase from the 5.3 to the 7.5. If my understanding is correct to that, 25 to 30% is in that figure. >> Yes, you're correct, and that is because of the unknowns that we're going to encounter in this bill. >> So when it comes back to us for more details, I'm assuming that we will have a much better handle on an accuracy of those hard costs, as far as as close as we can get. Because I know we've done that with the street projects. >> Yeah, we've changed the way that we're kind of estimating these building funds. We started that with the last bond package as well with the police departments. And so we've got a couple firms right now that we will go to to make sure that our budget numbers are correct. I believe that this is probably a number we got from them in the last two or three months. >> Yes, that's correct. >> Yeah, so we'll get it nailed down as we can. >> And I just want to say, first of all, I appreciate my colleagues for this, because I think this is something that's been a long time coming. And I think that this building, I mean, I know we see, as was reported in the article, a lot of people use the courthouse square, because obviously it's architecturally appealing, it's beautiful. But this is the city of Denton's building that's over close to 100 years old. And I really think that this could be a benchmark as well for our city in how it's presented, how it represents the historic purpose of the building, which represents, I mean, can you imagine that the fire station was in this building? Can you imagine how small the city must have been at that time? And the police station was in this building, and the jail was in this building. So it's really represented just the lifespan of our community in a lot of ways. So I think this is a very important part of this community. So I think I'm hearing, correct me if I'm wrong, a consensus to move forward with option three, obviously with much more detail. Sure, absolutely. On costs, on use, floor plan. There's been some talk of, you know, let's keep the performance center. We still have the fire truck thing we've got to figure out. But I think by giving you direction to move forward, at least we have something that staff can tangibly work on, and we can iron out those details as they come forward. Is that what I'm hearing? Has there anybody that hadn't spoken yet that wants to speak? Okay, let me go down here. Yeah, I'm sorry, Councilmember Metz, I just wanted to. Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, no, I just disagree. I think we have to establish what the use is before we allocate funds to it. And the other stuff, the council, pardon me, the committee was clear on the fire truck by majority. And if we want to, I get it, by majority they did not want it. And we went round and round about it several times. So it was very thoroughly vetted by those. And I can't support any mechanism. I know that the community wants it. And so I can't support any mechanism that does not require a vote. So if we're talking a bond of some sort that requires a vote of the citizens, then I'm willing to stand corrected. But until that time, based on the feedback I've received and just kind of my core beliefs, I cannot support just spending 7.5 million or any number without voter support from the city. And I'll point anyone that's listening to scripture street that was supposed to be up and running, no problem. And we get into it and there's just life happens. And so before we spend that kind of money and get immersed in a project of this type that is absolutely going to have pitfalls, I just cannot support that. So that's my hang up. And the point about what it's going to be used for, if we turn loose a city owned building that's paid for without clear direction on what's going where, then we're going to have that fight. It's either we either do it before the building's available or after, but if we do it after, it's just not going to be organized, it's just not going to bode well, I think. Thank you. >> What's the scripture project you're talking about? >> The roundabout. >> Okay. >> We got in the dirt and then life happens. >> Okay. Councilmember Davis. >> I guess I'm a little less concerned about moving the process forward because the next stage would be design development and figuring out some of these exact questions. And for me, I'll say this, you all haven't heard much from me yet on this project. It's one of the reasons I'm here sitting with you on council, to be frank, and the process that this building went through and the fact that the city let it get to this point, because that's the thing we've got to remember, too. Not casting aspersions on the way we had to put our departments together and the way we had to house them in the past, but this is our home that we let get into this state. And we carved it up in this way and we left it in this state. And the longer we leave it, the more we are neglecting our home. And I'm going to go ahead and echo the mayor here on the fire truck. The more that we leave our thing out in the cold as kind of a vagabond artifact, the more at risk that is. And that particular artifact was rescued once before. I don't want to have to leave it in that position again. I think there can be a home and a very flexible home for the fire truck in this building. So if we are concerned about programmatic things, how the building is programmed and the space is used to give staff just a little bit more direction for me, and I don't know if this builds to consensus or not. My preference is that we do use the space for our outward facing community focused city functions. So some of the space that we lease on behalf of Keep It Beautiful, I've heard that mentioned. I think that's a fantastic idea, space that we help support CVB in occupying. I think that's a fantastic idea. There are things that we do that are community facing more so than, you know, planning that used to be in there that would be actually uses that historic building. So I think it's now, the time's got to be now. Otherwise, as we said, construction costs continue to rise and it just costs more later on down the road. Thank you, Mayor. I'm in agreement with all that was said. I will say on the fire truck, it was a split vote. You had 27 people on the committee and rarely did we have more than about 20 that would show up. I don't know that we barely made quorum the night that we voted on the truck. So there was only about 14 people voting on it. I do think that the best use for it is office space that currently we are paying for other entities to rent space, Keep It Beautiful, CVB or our two prime examples of that. I know that CVB is running out of the chambers running out of space where they're at. So if we could bring the CVB back under our wing to some extent and it's in close enough proximity to the chamber that it would work very well. I think the term Council Member Davis used was community facing. I think it's a really good thought to introduce to the thought process. It's a property that's near the square. So it should have that kind of public feeling, not just some people that could be housed sort of anywhere. And then on the fire truck I was pleased to see in the presentation that an option is some way that it can be sometimes inside and it can be moved outside so the space can be used otherwise. It is on wheels. If that's actually really doable without putting that artifact at risk, I think that sort of splits the baby and is worth considering. Just to add on my agreement to some of what's been said, adding on to what I said previously. I agree with Council Member Melter that performance space is key. It was really important to the committee for what Mayor Pro Tem said about the fire truck. That's my understanding too. Doesn't necessarily contradict what Council Member Ryan said, just two different ways of looking at the same situation. But from what I understand that a majority in that committee was against the fire truck. I was excited about the idea of having a fire truck there at the beginning. And then I started hearing about some of the complications and then I heard the committee was against it. So anyway, we can kind of, maybe if a majority on council wants to bring that back, then that's what a majority wants. But I agree with Mayor Pro Tem that to me it sounded like that issue had been decided already. And then I also agree that whatever part of that building does get used for office space should be community focused, like keep getting beautiful as you mentioned. I'm not against any office space in there. I just was a little worried when I saw the presentation about this. It's just a matter of balance. So I want the whole building to have a feel of this is for the community and part of the arts and culture on the square. Also, I wanted to add GDAC. Our partnership with GDAC is really important. And I don't know if they're interested in actually being partly housed there, but they should have a role in it too. All right. Okay, good. Go ahead. Yeah, so just to reply to what I've heard. One thing for staff, if you'd note, I've been passionate about the Veterans Hall of Fame. They're currently in Golden Triangle Mall and doing well. And they've kind of, sweat equity, worked their way up to where they have a one-year agreement there. And so that's a key component for me. And then I'll just note, we have a fireman's museum. And so all the fire artifacts are in the fireman's museum. That's my look at it. And then there was one other point. I'd like to -- the county owns a fire truck. Can I get staff to email me to say that we have access to -- before we go down that road, I mean, it's just -- I'd really like to understand who owns it. And so if you can email me to -- and then I can deal with that offline. But I think that really is step one. I don't even think the county has it. I think it's in a private individual, and he restored it for the county, so we'll -- access to the fire truck's not an issue, I don't think. So -- and to address your point, Mayor Pro Tem, I really don't anticipate that there's going to be any vote to spend $7.5 million until there's some very strong guidance and decision-making on what it's going to be used for. I understand that you may -- so I think your needs are going to be met. I don't think that we're going to come before the council and say, here are the plans, go spend $7.5 million with absolutely no idea who we're going to put in there, how we're going to program it. So I think by the time we get to that discussion, at least I hope that's the case, because I share a similar sentiment, I just feel comfortable with giving direction to start the process and we can get there. And I want to go back, because my recollection of this committee was that, number one, they weren't considering any city office space. And quite frankly, this council is the one that ultimately decides what is the process on things that happen in this city. So we have -- we had committees for advisory committees, and oftentimes we take what they say and we massage it a little bit and we try to meet as many interests as possible. So in no way is, if we decide to do something slightly different than what the committee suggested, that we said we've wasted their time or somehow they've not been valuable. That's -- there's nothing further from the truth in that regard. So I look forward to the discussion, because I think it's a discussion worth having. And again, I don't believe this council, nor even city management, is going to say, let's go out here, design a building, because to design a building, you have to have an idea of what you are going to use that building for. So I feel very comfortable that by the time we get to that point, we will have had these discussions and we will probably have about 80 to 90% of those questions answered that will, I think, help bring some light to this discussion. So it seems like option three, given the discussion we've had here with what, you know, the questions and the how to come back and what we -- the further questions that we have and the deliberations we're going to have to have moving this forward. Okay. Thank you very much. Fantastic. We will keep you posted. You bet. Thank you. This concludes our work session reports. Where's my cheat sheet? Do we have one more? Yeah, I'll go ahead and just figure it out. We will now convene in the closed session at 3.58, pursuant to Texas government code section 551.071, consultation with attorneys, Texas government code 551.072, deliberations regarding real property, and I believe that's it. All right. We'll take a five-minute break while we prepare the room for executive session. Welcome, everybody, to this meeting of the Denton City Council on January the 7th, 2020 to 632. This is our first meeting of the new year, so thank you all for being here. Our first item on the agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. and Texas Flag. Please stand if you're able. 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. 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. 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. 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. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, one nation under God, one indivisible. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, one nation under God, one nation under God. We have one proclamation tonight, and that is to celebrate and pray tribute to Millie Giles' life and memory and contribution to the City of Denton. So, anyone who would like to come up and stand and accept this proclamation if you'll come forward? If you'd like to introduce yourself, and if you had some words you'd like to say, you're certainly welcome to do that. I'm Pam Hawkins. I'm Millie. I was Millie's caregiver and friend for many years, and she would be very proud for this. Thank you. And I wanted to open it up if anybody else, I think Councilmember Melcer, you wanted to say a few things as well. Millie and I worked together every Wednesday afternoon at Salvation Army Food Pantry. I was very stunned at her loss. Millie was such a giving person and a fun person to spend time with, and curious about so many things. I just enjoyed spending time with her. When she wasn't there, she was volunteering at Ruth's room, and she worked on the Public Art Committee. She was just a really engaged, giving, cool person, and I miss her. Fantastic. Oh, yes, come on up. So, beyond Millie's service to the community after her retirement that Paul attested to, she was an artist, she was an educator. She was a faculty member at UNT for many years, along with her husband, who was also deceased prior, Rob Erdl. She conducted a critique group for the Visual Arts Society of Texas for many years, for 25 years, in fact. And so Paul said, after her retirement, she served as a volunteer for the Salvation Army Habitat for Humanity, Ruth's room, Board of Directors. But the greatest honor of her life was designing the 30-foot Corotan Steel Firefighters 9/11 Memorial Bell Tower for the Denton Firefighters. She worked at that with great passion. She was my mentor, friend, and she was a vital and wonderful, knowledgeable person. And we will miss her, those of us who are here. And there are a few of her students, one who came from out of state back there for many years. And thank you. And we've got we've got a little video we want to play, and then I'll read the proclamation, and then we'll have a moment of silence. So if you'll just direct your attention. This is a proclamation by the mayor of the city of Denton, whereas the city of Denton wishes to pay tribute to Millie Giles after her passing this year. And whereas Millie Giles spent many years volunteering her time to the Public Art Committee, as well as contributing to other efforts that have greatly benefited the city of Denton. And whereas Millie Giles, who resided within the city of Denton for many years, was a retired art professor with the University of North Texas. And whereas Millie Giles took it upon herself to honor the history of Denton's new fire station, talking with personnel and getting a feel for the service that the fire department provided to the residents of the city of Denton for decades. And whereas in many years volunteering her time to the Public Art Committee, as well as other contributing to other efforts that have greatly benefited the city of Denton, which assisted her in creating the bell tower design that stands in front of the Denton fire station, as you saw here in this video. Honoring the fire department while harmonizing with the old fire bell and architecture of the fire station. Now therefore I, Chris Watts, Mayor of the city of Denton, Texas, do hereby declare and proclaim today, January the 7th, 2020, as Millie Giles Day here in the city of Denton. And I can request all citizens to take a moment to reflect and honor the city's patron Millie Giles by visiting the city fire department and seeing Millie Giles artistic contribution, artistic contribution, excuse me, in the bell tower. Let's have a moment of silence as the bell from the bell tower rings. Thank you all so much. And thank you all for, for bringing this to our attention and because we, what a wonderful honor that she gave to our city in this bell tower so thank you so much. Thank you for that. Our next item on the agenda is presentation from members of the public. We will now roll the review of procedures for addressing the city council. The city council has adopted rules of procedure, including a code of conduct that applies to citizens, as well as council members. These rules were enacted to promote an orderly process and to preserve decorum. Here is a brief review of the rules that apply to citizen reports. Citizens will have four minutes to give a scheduled citizen report and four minutes to give an open mic report. There will be an electronic bell when time has expired. If the remarks are not concluded by that time, the citizen will be asked to stop speaking. If the citizen does not cease and a second request is made, the mayor will request to have the citizen removed from the council chamber. Citizens are asked not to approach the dais. If a citizen has papers or other materials to hand out to the council, please let the city secretary know in advance. For scheduled citizen reports, the council may initiate discussion or questions following each citizen report. For non-scheduled open mic citizen reports, the council may listen to citizens speak. However, because no notice of the subject of the open mic report has been provided to the public in advance, the Texas Open Meetings Act limits any deliberation or decision by the council to a proposal to place the item on a future agenda, a statement of factual policy, or a recitation of existing policy. Citizens are asked to direct all remarks and questions to the council as a whole and not to any individual member. Please refrain from making abusive, personal, impertinent, profane, or slanderous remarks. Anyone who violates this council rule of procedure may be immediately removed from the council chamber. Thank you in advance. Copies of the rules of procedure are available from the city secretary. Okay, we do not have any scheduled citizen reports, additional citizens, and I didn't see any blue cards for open mics, so we don't have any additional citizen reports as well. So we have concluded agenda item 3. We'll move on to agenda item 4, which is the consent agenda. And it's my recollection that agenda consent agenda items D, E, and P, believe, will be removed for individual consideration and then so we'll take up the consent agenda items that have not been pulled at this time. Council member Ryan. Move approval of the consent agenda except for items D, E, and P. Council member Davis. Second. We have a motion and a second for the consent agenda items except for D, E, and P. Let's vote on the board please. Motion carries 6-0. We will now take up those agenda consent agenda items that were pulled as items for individual consideration. So we'll begin with agenda item D, which is considered adoption of an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Denton, Texas, approving a grant application from Scott Brown Properties, Inc. From the downtown reinvestment grant program not to exceed $12,500. I was the one that pulled that I do not need a staff presentation. I think we had enough of the discussion and work session to satisfy that for me, and I don't believe anybody else was requesting a presentation either. And since I pulled it based upon that conversation, I would at least make a motion that on agenda item 4D that the $12,500 or $12,500 be increased to $25,000, which was the original request of the applicant for that grant. So I make a motion to change the $12,500 to $25,000 and then we'll just wait to see if there's a second. Councilmember Armitter. Let's see. So we're not taking D and E together. So I don't know for me that would depend on, you know, whether you plan to do to kind of console. Are you thinking that they'll be consolidated into one or no, no. Do you have to deal with them separately? Yes, ma'am. Councilmember Ryan. I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Oh, Councilmember Meltzer, you. Yeah, just just to say that I think I know how this will go. I'm happy that they'll get it. I'm going to be voting consistent with the TIF boards recommendation just because I'm on that board and want to be consistent with the decision that we made. But okay, how it goes will be fine with me. Thank you. All right, let's vote on the board, please. And I will then move also for agenda item for eat, make a motion to amend the 12,500 and eat to 25,000 as well. Councilmember Meltzer is this from a previous. Yeah. Okay. So I have a motion there and Councilmember Ryan, a second. We have a second. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion ties, so we will move that to the next agenda item when we have a full Council. All right. Thank you. And agenda item P. Consider adoption of an ordinance authorizing expenditures of previously budgeted funds as earlier discussed in closed session for outside Council and other trial expenses in the litigation style of Michael Graham and Jim Maynard versus the city of Denton, Texas pending in the 68th judicial district Dallas County, Texas. Mr. City Attorney, is that you? Yes. Mayor, I just wanted to give the council notice that an amended ordinance has been placed before you in each of your individual seats. We have filled in in that ordinance 300,000 is the amount that was discussed in closed session. So any motions to approve this should refer to the amended ordinance. Okay. All right. Mayor Pro Tem. Move approval of the amended ordinance that we were provided. Councilmember Ryan, a second. We have a motion and a second for agenda item for P. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries six zero. We'll move on now to our items for individual consideration agenda item five a consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton amending the naming policy guidelines for city buildings facilities land or any portion thereof. Good evening Mayor City Council Gary pack and Dr. Parks and Recreation. Happy New Year. Today I want to talk to you about our proposed naming policy amendments. We've had some discussions over the past few months actually since last February in regards to updating the policy policy was originally drafted last updated in 2012. It was obviously an existing policy and we've had a number of public hearings to gather feedback. Since our last meeting in November a public hearing we did make some adjustments to the policy. We took the naming rights section as proposed and moved it to the acceptance of sponsorship and donations policy for clarification purposes we added a definition of commemorative naming. And we specified that naming will be assessed for potential conflict of interest in alignment with the city's missions and values so that was added and then we removed deceased for five years and no convictions of class a or b misdemeanor from individual naming criteria. Over the weekend we had some additional feedback and we have an updated PowerPoint that we've provided to you for both this and the next agenda item. So on your council agenda item for tonight is the naming policy option a would be to leave that as it's currently proposed or option B would be to remove city halls from the list of available buildings. Originally we took that off for the naming rights version. So someone if they wanted to sponsor I think what a burger city hall was an example. We took that off and took that off and we moved it to the naming section over into the sponsorship and donations. We did leave it on there in case it wanted to be in case council decided it wanted to be named after from a commemorative standpoint named after a person someone that did something great in the city locally nationally globally. So that was left as an option after some discussion we wanted to provide an option to city council if you would rather have that removed so city hall is more pure it's city hall city hall and it's never changes in that aspect. So we wanted to provide an option for you for option a would be to leave the policy as currently presented or B we could remove city hall we could bring that back in a future meeting for an item of individual consideration. We had also received some feedback and desire to document our buildings and who they're named after. So Carl Young Park Emily Fowler Library you know who they are who are those people and what did they do for the community to make sure that generations down the road know who those people are. So that's something we'll add to one of our work plans for future future future project. Okay. That was the presentation for the naming force for this item. Okay. Now, on the your question was, do we want to remove city halls from the option for commemorative naming. Because right now at any facilities in there so it could be a city hall can be named after a person. I'll just use Mayor Todd as an example so Todd Heilman City Hall. I thought you said Mayor that was going to go there but okay I would have been more excited. Or if it was the service center could be named after, you know, a former public works director that type of thing. So the question was to remove city hall to leave that more of a pure government historical entity. And where would that so I'm looking at the, the ordinance, and I see commemorative naming. So, it's, it's, where would that go in the actual ordinance. Again, I think this what is this three Roman numeral three, a where it says naming after an individual is intended to all intersection be satisfied with considering the naming of a city facility, building land or any portion there after an individual, is that where you're saying that that's where that exclusion would be located if, if Council so chose to incorporate that. Right. And when you say city facility, or city hall you're saying, which buildings with that actually be any of the three city halls, East, West, and the main one. Okay. And then any other iterations of those as you know time moves forward is that yeah. Yeah, so I'm ultimately the process is there would be an ad hoc committee that would address any naming, so it have to filter through that group. Okay, it's appointed by city council, and then it goes to city council so there's still there's a number of processes it has to go through an order. Even if it was named after if it was proposed to be named after Todd home and doesn't mean it's going to be automatic. Yeah. So, it's there's still opportunities for discussion along the way. I'm sorry I'm really refraining from making my comments so I'm just I'm going to be quiet. I don't know what kind of mood I'm in tonight I'm sorry. Councilmember armature. Yeah, so, so I myself. Definitely prefer the option be that city halls, be removed from the naming policy so I appreciate that there. I was confused about where the line is drawn between a sponsor and a donor who gets naming rights I had thought that these were two distinct things so I'm okay with. You know this building is so and so or this work of art is sponsored, you know, by this even business, whatever the businesses, but there's a part of the ordinance that talks about sponsor naming and that's where the line starts getting blurred. You could kind of speak to that. I would definitely want more clarity in an ordinance before I'd feel comfortable voting on that on where where what the differences between sponsor and naming, but ultimately I don't support a naming a public. Facility after a private business but I do, but I am fine with a private sponsorship by private I mean a business of a public building and of course I'm fine with you know naming after somebody who's contributed to the community. So the, the, the current naming policy that we're discussing. We took out the financial transaction to that kind of like the naming after a business that would pay pay for a term. We took that out moved it into the donations and sponsorship so this one is primarily all commemorative naming after someone for somebody or something or an organization or business that did something positive and there's no financial transaction to that. The, the second policy that we'll discuss next is where the financial contribution would be. Okay, okay so I can because I'm combining these two to get together so thank you for mentioning that. Councilmember Davis. So, I'm okay with option A, and I know I'm not trying to be controversial or anything I don't think anybody really is proposing at some point in the future. The main City Hall would cease to be called City Hall be called you know the Todd Howman Memorial Government Center or something memorial. Yeah, there's a waiting period. But for instance City Hall East, there, there's no particular historical tie to calling it City Hall East it's not a particularly artful name. There's probably someone out there right now we could think of pretty quickly who's worthy of naming City Hall East out of after, so I'm okay with City Hall's remaining in there and leaving it to this council and future councils to decide if it's appropriate to commemorate someone with a with the building. Councilmember Meltzer. Same position. You know if it's going to be packing hall. Instead of City Hall East I think that'd be okay for some future council to decide. I, I think I prefer option be only because I don't know if it's named. How long does that name stay in place. And I understand the rationale for City Hall East because it was the old Moore's business forms building, whereas City Hall West what we call City Hall West now has a historical marker on it. And so I'm certainly, I can't support that and also this so I'm okay if it's City Hall and then City Hall West just because of that. I'm inclined to just make it include City Hall East to just not because I don't know if I'm going to use the building itself as the determining factor of that but because I just don't know if it's renamed if it's a commemorative commemorative name, then how long does it stay there, and that that's, that's my concern for that so I probably lean towards option be in any. And let's face it. Okay. Any subsequent council could could change this. They could change this ordinance to reflect something different. If they wanted to to to rename one of those. So, go ahead I'm sorry that was a question that brought up during this process was renaming a park or building that was already dedicated after a person. And we added Section C on page two of the document that talks about honoring prior city councils to, you know, to leave that name in place, and obviously council, if they decided by a supermajority of three fourths vote, based on the policy, they could change it. But it's written in there to try to discourage constantly changing things after people unless something changes more interpreted. Some other issue comes up after the fact. Quick question on that. You mentioned the supermajority requirement. I'm scanning this again to see where that is because I see the renaming after an individual in order to honor the decisions of where where's that. It's first page, section one under general. It's the, I guess about the fifth or sixth line city council may choose to waive any part of these guidelines by three fourths vote and the entire city council. Okay, and that's supermajority is was in there previously as well. No, that's three fourths that that was in there that was the direction from the city council that was in that was in the prior 2012 or that's okay. So that means any of this, whether it's the commemorative naming or. Okay, any of it. Yes. Okay. So does that mean if the ordinance was going to be changed. If they wanted to do a change of the ordinance, not a waving of the current guidelines, but a change of the ordinance itself like let's say somebody, let's say we hypothetically said, we're going to exclude city halls. Ten years from now, council wanted to come along and say, we don't think that's very good, you know, instead of waving that we just want to change that to X. Does that change subsequent change require a supermajority or is it just if you're waving the current procedures of the ordinance that requires the supermajority. In that sense is it's you're waving any part of these guidelines that are set forth in here. And so what you're talking about is is bringing forth an amendatory resolution to change the name. I change something in order to change something in this. It would amend this, you may not want to amend anything in the policy, I'm sorry, you may want to amend something in the policy but not choose to waive anything as far as naming an individual who may not completely comply. That sentence would allow you to waive any restrictions that would prohibit or kind of prevent you from naming. So I think that's only when you're taking an action. If you're amending this, I don't think you need a three-fourths majority according to that sentence. There's a distinction. So just to make sure I'm clear, what I heard you say was that if you're trying to waive a current term in the ordinance that's effective, that's applicable, then it's a three-quarters of a majority, a three-fourths supermajority. We change a definition. We want to change a definition. We're going to amend the ordinance. You're saying that based upon that read it would not require a supermajority. That is correct. I look at it, the waiver part, as you said, only applies when you have an application in front of you and for some reason there's a provision in here that the council wants to waive in applying in its analysis. So what would you think about, because that's a -- you could -- somebody could artfully craft a -- I mean, I know what the term waive means. But to really make it clean, would it be best if we put something in there that -- we've addressed waiver of the current ordinance, but then we do have a standard in there that is different than what we typically have on ordinances. Do you think it would be redundant or inefficient or not needed to put something in there to clarify, however, if there's an amendment or a change to the ordinance itself, the supermajority requirement is not required? I don't have an issue with the redundancy because we don't know what a future council or the public or staff may interpret. If you make it very clear and add that extra sentence, I think it's fine. Okay. Thank you very much for that. I appreciate that and appreciate you helping me with that. Okay. Any other questions or discussion? Mayor Pro Tem. I'm going to move approval of item 5A, adopting option A, leaving City Hall in. I think it's -- I mean, it becomes beyond confusing and it -- when you have multiple City Halls, you have City Hall West. It's not really City Hall that may be an entertainment venue at some point or -- you know, it just gets where the council needs to have an ability to give people clear direction. So I'm going to move approval, item 5A, option A, and I will adopt the additional sentence that Aaron suggested. And if you want to put that on the record, I'll take you up on it versus me trying to summarize what you just said. Something along the lines, any amendments to this policy shall require a three-fourths majority vote or council vote in order to effectuate something along those lines. Well, no, it's an amendment to the policy. I thought you said it wouldn't require a three-fourths. It would require -- Or a simple majority. Simple majority, right. A simple majority. Any amendments to this policy would only require a simple majority of council. Agreed. And that's what you're -- okay. Yes. Council Member Meltzer. I'll second that. All right. We have a motion and a second with the appropriate request of changes to that one sentence. As enumerated by the city attorney, let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries, 4-2. We'll move on to agenda item 5-B, consider approval of a resolution of the City of Denton amending the acceptance of sponsorships and donations policy, providing a repealer, and declaring an effective date. This is regarding the sponsorship and donations policy. So some of the changes -- this was adopted in June of 2019. So we're asking for some amendments to that based on the fact that we'd like to move the naming portion -- the financial naming portion that was in the prior policy that we just discussed and the naming rights over to this document. And we did add for clarification purposes definition of commemorative naming, solicitation plans, and sponsorship naming. Based on additional feedback received over the weekend, we asked council to weigh in on the following. We did provide three options. Option A is to leave the sponsorship and donation policy as proposed on the agenda. Option B is remove any reference to naming or naming rights in the policy and replace it with sponsorship opportunities for city facilities, amenities, and features. That would specifically be more in the line of North Lakes Dog Park presented by ex-business as opposed to Petco Dog Park. So there was some concern of losing that geographic identity of where that place is. So if Petco went out of business and then we changed it to PetSmart, that people were like, well, Petco used to be here, where's PetSmart at? So you kind of lose that geographic reference point in the historical reference of it as well. And then option C is completely remove the sponsored naming section, which is section seven from the policy. The concern with that is that we remove the ad hoc committee from that process, and we feel that's a valuable step of getting community feedback when we're looking to name something of that significance, that it's a good process for us to go through. So we actually would recommend that's probably not a good direction. Additionally, staff would like to add some clarity to the commercial perception section, section six. Some proposed awarding sponsorship opportunities will fit one of several predetermined sizes or signs per city specifications. So what we would do is any agreement, developer agreement that we would put together with that business, we clearly identify how that's going to be recognized in a signed design as part of our signage plan for our parks and recreation department. So all those details would be itemized in a developer agreement that would come back to you for approval ratification. And then additional feedback we received with recommendations in regards to perpetuity of if no term is defined. We have some facilities like that, and the Goldfield Tennis Center is a good example. That was a donation of $7,500 in 1987. There was no term to that. So that's technically until council makes a decision if they want to change that or until the facility goes away. So our recommendation is just to have a term for anything that we have in regards to a financial sponsorship, whether it's five years, 10 years, 20 years, there's always a term. Now, obviously, there's going to be a lifespan of anything. So if a playground is removed, that name would go away unless there was a decision to retain that by council. So if a term of 20 years for a playground and after 15 years it's replaced, that name would go away with that playground because it's a new playground. So that would kind of start over. Now, if the playground lasted 25 years, then there's kind of an exception where you get an extension to that agreement. And then the last section was concerned was raised about sponsor donors being required to be forthcoming about concurrent planning, permitting, procurement applications, and we put in there based off of recommendation from our procurement office. We recommend leaving that language in there just so they're forthcoming. So we know it's clear that if they're in a process for a contract or purchasing that they're forthright with that information. And that's part of our ethics policy. All right. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, so I really appreciate the opportunities, the options. I could see scroll back, yeah, the A, B, and C. I definitely don't like A for the reason why I mentioned before, in fact, that blurring of the boundaries between sponsorship and naming was such that I accidentally spoke about the sponsorship issue when we were discussing the naming ordinance. But I just need a little more explanation about what exactly option B would entail in moving to sponsorship opportunities, then it's no longer naming, right? So it's not a naming section anymore. It's an opportunity section. Yeah, so the difference between the naming and sponsorship is, and I'll use North Lakes as an example, Petco Dog Park. They're naming it after they have that dedicated name for it, whereas opposed to North Lake Dog Park presented by or sponsored by Petco. So that I completely understand. It's just my mind thinking, you know, if we remove the naming section from the policy, would that prevent the possibility of having a sign saying sponsored by or presented by? Or are these just two different ways of trying to solve the same problem? In other words, I like both B and C. I'm trying to figure out what's the difference between them, so I know. It's very similar. The downside of C is you remove that ad hoc committee and that subcommittee that's going to go through and vet out that process. And that is really the only difference. Hi, good evening, Heather Gray, Parks and Recreation. Just with the sponsor naming section that was added to the policy, there are a lot more specific rules since those deal with facilities or amenities that apply to that. So if you do option C, it takes away all those specifics, which does include the ad hoc committee. And then otherwise it defaults to all the other sponsorship opportunities, which are meant more for programs and events. And then the sponsor naming section, if we change the wording to sponsorship opportunities for facilities, it's just rewarding that, as Gary mentioned, to take away the business being named after that facility. Thank you so much for explaining that. That makes sense. In that case, I like B, and it would just be the sponsorship opportunity section. Obviously, it's no longer, so we would still be without a sponsorship naming section because any reference to naming would be removed, right? Section seven gives a little more detail to that process, and we think it's a good step. Excellent. So I like B then. What about having, you mentioned that the sponsorship opportunities will fit on one of several predetermined sizes. In addition to size, what about continuity of format to some extent? I mean, obviously each business will want their own logo on there, but to say the margins, and I would not be the one to determine that, but it should be this big, the background should be white or blue or whatever, so that there can be a certain kind of look, like how when you have a plaque, a historical marker plaque or something like that. So a few things on that. We're working on a city hall sign, and that is part of a family of designs that we're working on for our entire park system as well. So there will be continuity. We do have some continuity within our facilities. City facilities overall have different signage, but from the park system, we have a plan that we're putting together as part of our master plan, subcategories, our signage plan that will outline all of our signs from our park entry signs to our metal ball field signs. So there is same colors, same fonts, and all that. So that would be part of an exhibit in the agreement that shows this is how you're going to be recognized with our sign, with your sponsor's name, the business's name on that. Excellent. Excellent. Well, great. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Davis. So I prefer option B. I haven't heard really anyone in the community in support of Petco Dog Park. I've heard plenty of people who are okay with Dog Park brought to you by Petco. However, my problem with B as it stands right now is naming rights and sponsorship opportunities, there's a distinction for us because we know the conversation that we're having. But if we don't spell it out, this means you cannot call it the Petco Dog Park. This means you must say the dog park sponsored by Petco. If we don't make it very clear, it's very open to interpretation. So I think we need some really clear language on what that means, that there's a difference between naming rights and sponsorship opportunities. If you ask the average person, someone who might end up in one of these council seats one day, what's the difference? They're not going to know. What's the difference between sponsoring a ballpark or naming it after your business is the same thing. So I think we need a little more clarity there. I like your clarification there on the bottom of this slide. I also like the maintaining the language on the slide number. I guess it's the one you've got now. On the bottom of this slide about being forthcoming, about applications in front of the city, I think that's key that we know if somebody wants sponsorship, they're not also putting a zoning case in front of us right then. But the question about the term, it seems like if the concern is it defaults to a perpetual term unless we put a term of years in, it seems like the recommended language makes everything a perpetual term. Unless there's something outside the norm. So I kind of prefer that the default is we're expected to define a term, and if we foul up and don't do that, then it's perpetual. Not that the default is a perpetual term until something else comes along. I don't know if that made sense. I hope it did. I'll have to watch the tape. I like the language as it stands on the term. The council will set the term of the sponsorship. That's part of the MOU and the resolution. The one downside of the secondary naming, so North Lakes dog park provided by Petco, if we wanted to find a sponsor for a playground, so we got to figure out how to word that. So we'd have to say North Lakes playground, North Lakes park playground sponsored by X or a dog, a playpen within the dog park. How we would name that. So we're going to have to figure out how to, if we have that opportunity, figure out how to uniquely work that process. Could I ask a follow-up? Sure. Could we not, I thought about this in the context of pavilions. You wouldn't say the pavilion brought to you by Classic Mazda, but there's nothing to say you couldn't just put a sign on the pavilion that says nothing about identifying the item. It just says sponsored by Classic Mazda. Provided by. Exactly. So you wouldn't have to say the playground. It sounds like an apartment complex, you know, the Waterford brought to you by anyway. Exactly. Councilor Orenter, go ahead. Oh yeah, I just wanted to add a word of support for Councilmember Davis just mentioning. I agree that the business about in perpetuity and defaulting is confusing. I read it several times. I had a hard time with it. I think that that's a good, what he suggests is a good solution. You know, there might be other possible solutions, but just something to make it really clear. A couple questions I have. So, it almost seems like the naming rights, per option B, that are in quotations, and the sponsorship opportunities. The real distinction is simply, well number one, I guess my question is, was a naming right something would be placed on the facility like let's say if it was a building, that it would be on the building, whereas a sponsorship is a standalone sign or plaque. It's not necessarily attached to the building that's on the grounds of whatever it is that the sponsorship is the subject of. Is that what I was thinking, or does sponsorship also entail attaching that kind of description in sign form to the actual, let's say if it's a building or something. I think the primary distinction between the two was the sponsor being given the right to the naming of the facility, as opposed to being sponsored by or presented by. So, Petco Dog Park, as opposed to North Lakes Dog Park, sponsored by Petco, and having their name on it. That's the true distinction. I think in regards to how it's worded, we could work through those details in a developer agreement that would come to council in regards to, here's how this is going to be presented, here's how we're going to show it on our website, here's how we're going to show it on our media guide. Sure. So, and as far as the items within, like on a building it doesn't necessarily apply, but in a park or a dog park if there's kennels or certain play pens or something like that, I don't think we have to be redundant and define the actual facility. I think based upon the discussion, it's like pavilion sponsored by it. People are going to know, hopefully they'll know where they are. Now, on this one, so before we had the exclusion of, there was a proposal or a request or something, an option where you could exclude city halls. Now, I was looking through here, does this particular ordinance, the sponsorship/donations policy, does that apply to any city facility, whether it be a structure, like a city hall or a fire station or police station, and then also parks? I was looking for sort of the parameters on that, it refreshed my memory and I wasn't seeing it, so instead of me continuing to look. Sure. In Section 7A, the very first guidelines for sponsor naming rights, it states that they will not be sold for city administrative buildings such as city hall or the service center, but they could be sold for specialized city facilities, amenities or features. It kind of gives you a little more description. I appreciate that. Okay. I guess when we see city administrative buildings or fire station administrative buildings. I would say yes. Okay, I would try to figure out a way to tighten that definition up just a little bit so that we don't we don't have an issue with that later on. Trying to see here. I noticed in here that the city manager can approve these under $50,000, and then it comes to city council for over $50,000. I can't say I struggle with that, because I don't know if I do struggle with it. But if there's some way that there could be some kind of heads up to council in case someone had an issue, and I look to you but I mean this is going to be something that, you know, probably surpasses, you and I as far as being here but so that that's sort of wrestling with that that it's really sort of it could be a pure unilateral decision without any kind of disclosure or anything like that to city council so I don't know me because I don't want to burden city council with having to prove everything but there should at least be some type of. So is there something there says it will be notified she's got something there that's showing me. Yeah. So, so on that we have in the policy and be talking about or 49. Those are limited to nominal amenities or features so they wouldn't be for a building. It would be for something like a shade structure or a pavilion. Okay. All right. Special event. Okay. You know, and I appreciate that. I just totally looked over that when I read this before, I think what would be helpful is maybe in that sentence to say, I mean it's saying that it's only for these things, but to also put specifically in there, what it's not for in other words, you know you could almost repeat the language that's in a, because you just never know. I mean, it's probably the attorney I mean it just I mean I just, I'm just one of these redundant people that is really like clean stuff to where it just because it's all scar tissue. I mean, if we miss something then somebody's gonna have to come back and change it so that would be my only suggestion in that regard I mean it's not that critical I'm not going to vote against it because of that but I think that would be helpful. Okay, I think that's, and I agree with the terms that we need to tighten that down that we should be forced whether it be a city manager who approves the agreement or city council, that it should have a term in there, that it shouldn't be left to a default. Okay, that's all the questions I have a council member armory had some more comments. Yeah. Just to say that, you know, I would be okay with those, you know, city manager approved sponsorships coming before council and the consent agenda, kind of like how we do with, you know, grants that are small grants that are awarded by various committees, because it's a consent agenda you can just look and see who's being awarded and vote. Yes, all at once. And that would be, you know, be an opportunity for extra publicity for the sponsors to have it, you know, that way people who check the agenda will see even if they never go to that shade structure or whatever. That program. Sir. All right, so everyone buckle up. So it's long, so I'm going to move a move approval. First, I prefer personal, I'll explain. Personally, I prefer option a, and I'll read to you why. Because I don't know anyone that has a problem with the animal shelter and on the city website it reads adopting an animal, the Linda McNatt animal care and adoption center is located 3717 North Elm Street. So I think unless I'm a saying I'm saying we just continue this policy. And if someone wants to come back and say hey let's amend that building and others, then we'll have that conversation but understanding that the what we have in place currently, I'm going to move approval for option a with the noted change to the term to where city council must provide a term. Or it is set in perpetuity just kind of reversing that the adopting staffs recommendation about the sign size adopting staffs recommendation maintaining the forthcoming requirement. Adopting Mayor Watts suggestion about administration buildings being clarified. And lastly, specifying the minor structure to incorporate a reference to section a. And I think I touched on everything. Councilmember Ryan. Second. All right, Councilmember Meltzer. First of all, I appreciate Mayor Pro Tem tracking all that. I have a question about Linda McNatt shelter is that a kind of commemorative naming or a sponsorship. I cannot answer no it's no they that it was a paid naming right. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then, second question I guess this would be for city attorney, since I think there's more preference expressed for be we'll see how, how it goes in the vote, but if, if this fails to pass with a, do we have another opportunity to vote or is that just up or down. No, you have the opportunity to vote again. Okay, the motion is very specific with these conditions. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Yes, I just want to make the point that the keys of the Linda McNatt shelter, you know, regardless of whether or not it was, it was paid or not and it was paid. It's a naming issue, not a sponsorship issue. And so, that would, you know, that applies to the ordinance that we just discussed again I myself had gotten confused by the blurring of the boundaries but in my desire to want to tighten up that distinction. I would unfortunately have to vote no to a policy that would, you know, leave it so wide open such that there's such that we've got naming going on in this, the sponsorship policy I just, unfortunately you see too much room for you know, it just just being too loose and kind of exploding and you know unintended consequences, but I'm sad about that because because otherwise I would be able to happily, you know, vote, vote yes to it with, with B, but I just can't with a for that reason. Councilmember Davis. I'm in the same boat and I think Mayor Pro Tem drew a good example. In that, in that case, the McNatt animal shelter, and I'll go on record saying we can name anything we like after Linda McNatt, I hope she's watching. But the difference to me would be that person is also a person who would qualify for a commemorative, like an exceptional service can include philanthropic service. It doesn't necessarily have to be a direct connection between a big check cut for something and naming to that particular thing and the McNatt's are on on record as being very, very generous with city facilities and other things. So for me the difference is, leaving it as it is opens us up to the Whataburger splash pad and all that kind of stuff and I just, I can't cotton that. Okay. So, I don't know if that might have been because we didn't have the sponsorship done I can't recall I do remember when Lynn McNatt Animal Care and Adoption Center came to fruition. That was a financial contribution whereas that what we've discussed here today. Consider the naming portion. There wasn't financial remuneration in that that if somebody is going to pay for some type of, whether we call it naming or sponsorship depending on how the vote goes. This is the, this is the ordinance that would apply to that. Is that correct, or. So, the way Councilmember Davis explained it, I think that is, that's a specific commemorative just happens to be a financial donation associated with it. This is if somebody wants to sponsor it, probably more geared towards business, or if they weren't, you know, they could just move here and be a new resident. Maybe they didn't do anything great in Denton, but they want it to be named after their family, they could sponsor that facility. So that's how that would take place, or if it was a business and they said we want a car dealership to sponsor the dog park, they could do it that way through this policy. Okay, so I'm a little confused. So, let me make sure I understood what you just said. This one we're considering is geared more towards businesses and not individuals. It's individuals to it could be. Yeah, so I don't know how, if, if someone let's say the adoption center hasn't been named. And Linda Jim McNabb come forward and say we want to provide a donation or we want to, whether you call it a donation or sponsorship, the city's receiving money for, you know, this naming opportunity, or we're paying money for this sponsorship opportunity. So, I think that I get real confused by that. So you're saying, it depends on if an individual comes forward and says, well, I want to donate this money, and we want to have this name on it, as compared to, we want to sponsor this, and we want this name on it. I mean, it's probably just me, but I'm, I'm sort of a little confused on that. I see that situation in regards to someone that's done a lot for the community, where you want to commemorate them, they just have to be giving a financial contribution towards that facility as well. That could be run through the commemorative. Would that be so it totally understand that I guess both of these require an agreement, or do they not the naming requires an agreement, and the sponsorship requires an agreement. So, help me understand the difference between in the naming agreement and I'm not trying to get in the weeds or be critical or argument if I'm just trying to understand. So, in the naming agreement, if they say we want to name this, and we're willing to donate X amount of dollars, if that occurs, compared to, we want to sponsor this with the same name, and we want to give so much money for sponsorship. Is it just a word distinction? It could be simple as outlined in that agreement, basically saying this is how the building is going to be recognized as opposed to the North Lakes Animal Shelter donated by McNatt family. Okay. Yeah, I guess it's the difference between if you're classifying as a donation or sponsorship, which I get that I get the differences, but it's still a receipt of money. Okay. All right. Just trying to understand. I think there's always going to be some sort of kind of opportunities that we'll have to overlaut, but ultimately the developer agreement should address any of those details that need to be summarized. Okay. All right. Mayor Pro Tem. Gary, can you give me an example of where since how long have you been with the city? I forget. It all runs together. 18 months. Yeah. So over your 18 months, give me an example of where we had a problem naming wise that you've encountered, because we're trying to avoid something, and I don't understand what we're trying to avoid. So I'm trying to pinpoint when it's happened maybe over the past year and a half that you've seen, or it crept up that I just don't understand what we're trying to avoid. We haven't had any opportunities to date for that situation. We've been working on this since I guess early last year, so the majority of that time we've been trying to get this finalized. Yeah. So if there are opportunities, we could go out and start looking for them. Right. So year and a half in the making, at least, and no issues. We have a current existing building that I'll open the floor for if someone, I don't think anyone has a problem with the naming policy of the animal shelter, but if someone wants to go on record as saying that that's a problem from them, that then would be an instance, but I just don't know of an instance of what we're trying to avoid. And I'm okay if it adds to our community. We want a second splash pad, and we don't have the money for a splash pad, so it could be Jack in the Box, it could be Payway, it could be Panda Express. Regardless, it's a splash pad in our community, and to me, and I just may be myopic in my viewpoint, but I think that's an addition to our city. So my motion, I think, is steeped in just facts on the ground, experience over the year and a half, my understanding that the Jim and Mary Horne building used to be Foodline. You know, it's okay. So that's my thing. And correct me if I'm wrong, option A does not prohibit council from restructuring the name, right? So it doesn't have to be Linda McNatt Animal Shelter, and even under option A, you could say the animal shelter sponsored by, it gives you both options. Right. Yeah, so it doesn't prohibit anything. So I just wanted to make sure I understood that right. Thank you. So were those your culinary preferences? Yes, sir. Okay. All right. Good deal. Okay. Councilmember Davis, and then we're gonna we're gonna go through these requests and then we'll go ahead and wrap it up for a vote because I know the motion has been sitting out there for a while. I appreciate Mayor Pro Tem volunteering to approach the good folks at Payway about the splash pad. I'll join you. So a couple of things. We're using the McNatt example. I think it's a good one because in my understanding, somebody correct me if I'm wrong, I think that money was actually given to the Animal Shelter Foundation and not to the city. I could be incorrect there. So I think it's still a commemorative naming. So here's the two different scenarios if we're just going to run through the McNatt scenario. One, a donor gives money, no strings attached. I want this project to happen. I feel strongly about it. Then we as a council in recognition of that later on say, you know what? At the unveiling, they're going to be surprised we've named the building after them. That's a commemorative naming. A sponsorship is the McNatt family comes forward either in their business capacity or as individuals and say, you know what? We're philanthropists. We'd like to have this thing named after us. That is a sponsorship. If they ask for it, it's a sponsorship. If we do it because we're commemorating their contributions to the community, that's commemorative. So we have two different policies, the naming one we've approved and the sponsorship one that we're talking about. To me, I understand some people have a different tolerance for it than I do. I don't like the commercialization of our city facilities. I like the sponsored by for a set term of years and then you know if that term of years expires, that business goes under and the signs sell up, we all have a good laugh about it. Um, but I, I like it as a temporary thing that we do from time to time as we need to get customer, right? And you'll have the I don't say the last word, but okay. Well, I agree with Mayor Pro Tem for the reason being that as we set this policy is someone who's been in business. The sponsorship opportunity is not as good as the naming opportunity. It's going to go through the city council at the time. We'll appoint a seven person panel to discuss it, look at it, vet it and then send it on to the council again. A future council could go ahead and change these rules anytime they wanted to. You know, Gary comes in and says, Hey, look, I've got somebody that's willing to give us a million dollars for a rec center. You know, but they want it to be, you know, uh, sports academy rec center. You know, would we turn that down or would we not? And that's something that I think future council should have the opportunity to look at themselves on a case by case basis. I don't think that this is going to get carried away. Uh, again, that future council could change the rules for three vote. Okay. You had the last word. Council member Ryan. So we have a motion and a second. Let's vote on the board, please. As motion as enumerated by Mayor Pro Tem with several adjustments. Uh, motion fails four to two. Council member Meltzer. So I'd like to move approval, uh, with, um, option B and all the other details that Mayor Pro Tem so helpfully captured before. So Mr. City attorney, do we need to go back through those individually for this motion? If we do, we will. We'll figure it out. But, um. I won't remember them without help. So I think just so that we have on the record, because staff and Stephanie Neal will have to write all this after, after today. So Mayor Pro Tem, do you have those written down? Yeah, I'll read them before I vote. No. So it's, uh, that's very, I appreciate that. You could have said, no, y'all figured out yourself. Thank you. So it's, uh, so it's, um, regarding the, the, uh, term, it's reversed so that the term is set by the city council, uh, at the time at the appointment time, the sons, the sign size is adopted as suggested by staff. The forthcoming, uh, requirement is adopted as per staff's recommendation. The administration buildings, uh, prohibition language is, uh, uh, rebolstered or strengthened. And then the, uh, not for, uh, uh, um, primary structures is, uh, references section A to add specificity. And if you need, if you need some assistance, uh, they can also just go back and, because I think he added some specificity on the administrative buildings to, to add some definitions to that a little bit clarity and so forth and so on. So we'll do that. Um, council member, okay. So council member Meltzer, do you agree with, uh, those conditions for your motion? Yes. Okay. Council member Armitter. Okay. So I have a friendly amendment to make, uh, and then a question or kind of an uncertainty, and maybe you, council member Meltzer can kind of explain. I'm not exactly clear about what that, the, uh, the part about referencing section A. I didn't quite understand that. It was actually the point that you, uh, okay. That's, that's what I was wondering is, was that my point or was that, um, and, and then about the kind of, uh, council said that this is where I think I'm going to make a friendly amendment unless this was another misunderstanding. Um, you know, I think there should be a consistent, um, what are we calling it? Uh, you know, a period, a period, uh, that, that it, a term, thank you, that it lasts, um, rather than, if I'm to understand it correctly, was being suggested, uh, that council deciding on an individual basis. So, you know, I don't know if you can clarify on that in which case I wouldn't, I would withdraw my amendment if I'm misunderstanding. I just want to make sure that I understand exactly how the terms are being, are being set under, uh, you know, the mayor pro tems. If you have a response. It's my understanding, it's my understanding that the terms would be decided on a case by case basis at the council, at a council level or the city manager level. Is that correct? So the recommendation would be primarily based on the lifespan of the product. So if it was a playground, it'd be the lifespan of the playground, which is typically 15 years. If it was a bench and it's 10 years, then that would be the term that would be recommended. Gotcha. Okay. So, so kind of for perpetuity, this is, is that the same as, as long as the thing exists, right? I think the city attorney has- That was the staff's recommendation, but the condition, as, as I understood it from mayor pro tem was to actually set a set term that the council would apply. And if not, then it would be what, uh, Gary Packin has suggested. Okay. Is that, is that correct? Yeah. Okay. Yes, sir. That's my understanding. Yeah. I feel kind of funny about that, but I, I'm not quite sure if that's a deal breaker for me. I'll wait to hear what council member Davis has to say. Okay. So you don't have a- Yeah. I'm not going to quite yet. Maybe. Okay. Council member Davis. So I, I very much want to put this, uh, this policy to bed. I think we're, we're so, so very close and we've developed something like a consensus. I worry though, if we have the motion tonight that only says with option B that we haven't tightened up the language, the sponsored by as opposed to like the, the difference, the semantic difference between naming rights and sponsorship opportunities. I don't know that there's a difference between those two things, unless it's the one that we've inserted to our understanding tonight. So my preference would be that we tighten that language up and define what option B truly is other than just a word swap. Um, yeah, I don't know if we can do that in a succinct way. I've been trying to go through the red line and find a way to do that. I don't know if I've come up with anything helpful. So you're, you're not offering an amendment to say simply that we would tighten up the language of B to clarify that it's the case of sponsored by Petco, not Petco. If we think we can insert an example, you know, parentheses, EG, and then we list it out, then I'd be fine with that kind of motion. Is that acceptable? Well, well, I hate to do this, but I, I agree with you and it may not pass, but I believe a motion to postpone, uh, takes precedent over motion on the floor. And the only reason I say that is we've recommended for at least three or four distinct textual changes that I think to be done on the fly without seeing things actual, because what we're saying is if we approve it tonight, y'all will make the change to the language and the ordinance is done. And I think we've made some, I don't know if I'd call them significant, uh, substantively, but we've certainly made several that I would rather see, um, the actual language as it's presented, especially with the option be naming and sponsorship. And I mean, it could come back at the next council meeting. So I don't think that so anyway, I'll make a motion to postpone and it has to have a second in order to have a vote. So I will. Yes, Councilmember Davis will second that motion. Okay. All right. Okay. So we have a, uh, motion to postpone in a second. We'll get the board all cleared up. Um, just to make a quick comment to say that, um, I'm going to support the motion to postpone, but, um, I have every anticipation that, you know, if, if these changes are made and, um, you know, then this business about the in perpetuity can be clarified that I, I hope to be able to vote. Yes. So I'm, uh, I'm pleased that the future opportunity to vote. Yes. Is how I feel right now. Councilmember Meltzer. Yeah. I just want to understand if the motion to postpone passes when it, when the item returns, will the motion on the table still be the motion on the table? No. Under Robert's procedure at the end of the meeting that that dies. Okay. And I've gotten word from city attorney that, um, I will amend my motion to a date certain of January 28th. Is it January 28th? Does the second or concur with that? I'll second the amended motion. So the amended motion is make a motion to postpone until January the 28th. We have a motion to second on that. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries five to one. Let's take a five minute break. Five to seven minute break and then we'll come back and hopefully move through the rest of our agenda. Welcome back to this meeting of the Dent City Council on January the 7th, 2020. It is seven 52. We'll move on to our agenda. Item five C. Consider adoption of an ordinance approving an agreement between the city of Denton. And the Denton Chamber of Commerce regarding economic development partnership and providing an effective date. Good evening, mayor and council. Jessica Rogers, director of economic development. Tonight I'll be presenting on the economic development program agreement between the city of Denton and the Chamber of Commerce. And just before we get started, know that we have three representatives from the chamber board here this evening. Jill Jester Clark and Marty Rivers are all here. So if there's something that I can't answer, they will gladly step up and answer the questions for me. So our objective objective this evening is to just provide a brief overview of the updated program agreement and seek council consideration and approval. Some very brief background this was provided in your backup, so I won't go over it too much. But know that over the past two years, we've been working to really strengthen the agreement to define metrics, clarify the roles and responsibilities between the two agencies and really work towards what we what we have in this agreement, which is a fully developed work plan of items for the chamber in the city to partner on through the partnership. So the 1920 agreement sort of how did we get here. We had new leadership both at the city and the chamber and we came together to review the existing agreement. We also looked at agreements from communities with similar arrangements for ideas best practices, what's happening in other places that we think might be interesting or applicable here in Denton. And we focused our discussion on resetting expectations, evaluating the relationship and developing a functional partnership with shared goals and objectives. We thought that it was really important to not simply have goals and objectives that weren't tied together, but goals and objectives that both sides were working together to be successful on. We also wanted to foster a sensor sense of trust transparency and openness and develop a shared understanding of the division of duties and we thought that was very important to the success of the partnership. So the agreement before you tonight is a nine month work plan. The reason that it's a nine month work plan is based on the new leadership and staff changes in the fact that the city has funded a strategic plan both sides we wanted the opportunity to come back. If this is approved in June of 2020 to discuss an amendment or changes to the agreement based on that strategic plan so we both sides agreed that we thought a nine month term was the was the optimal solution. And we both want to be able to have the ability to reevaluate the contract at that time. So what is the 1920 agreement include more enhanced definitions goals key activities and reporting requirements I'm not going to go into detail on each of those sections unless there are specific questions. It does develop an actionable work plan which is slightly different from previous years as opposed to certain deliverables and metrics we actually put together a work plan. The funding request is emissions nine months only and the focus is in three primary areas marketing recruitment and private investment. And so just a brief overview of what's included in each section and the marketing goals includes the development and promotion of a debt and brand. And with that we tried to tie the marketing goals more specifically to our economic development goals so you'll see more references to marketing directly related to our targeted sectors. Recruitment goals again we wanted to tie this back to our targeted sectors and so you'll see a refocus of the recruitment efforts efforts specifically on the targeted sectors and a focus on generating new avenues for prospect development. We've been having a lot of conversations recently about different types of attraction different types of businesses and why they might want to come to denton and we've been trying to think outside the box of how do we attract up and coming industries and industries that might be the new and next thing to come to denton. And then we included a private investment goal as you know the chamber of commerce raises private funds as part of the agreement in this agreement we are asking the chamber to raise 75,000 and private funds those funds go to support and enhance their ability to carry out the work so that goes towards marketing trips to marketing and advertising that are outside of the funding provided by the city. We also again wanted to focus on the partnership. And as you'll see the funding request from the city is higher than the fundraising goal for the chamber but this is an effort to try and rebalance that partnership, making sure that both sides have a significant stake in the partnership and also included in your backup, you'll know that we hired tip strategies to complete an independent review of the proposed contract, their key findings. What we found out was that the new agreement was an improvement over previous agreements, that there was a, the addition of more targeted metrics that focused on core activities was an improvement and that those metrics are now better aligned with the outcomes that both agencies have agreed to. And so tonight before you you have three options to approve approve the agreement as presented approve the agreement with any changes, or to not approve the agreement, and I will stand open for questions. And then Roger. So I approve this agreement but I still have questions. And I also want to say on a sentimental note that, you know, I feel like you're continuing this work that that Caroline booth had had started and set in motion and so I see this is just part of that process I was even hearing, not looking at you just looking there for a moment, I thought it was her voice so, and, and I'm happy to look and see that it's you because you're really filling those, you know, big shoes really well so one question I had about the, the $75,000 goal. Does that include money raised through membership or is that exclusive of membership fees. So it's, it's a, I wouldn't call it a membership it's it's an investment level that in private investors joined to participate in, if that makes sense. Okay, yeah, separate from the chamber membership. Okay, separate from the chamber membership. Am I saying that correctly. Okay, yeah, so it's raising money in from investors. Yes. Okay. And, and then, can you speak to. So you mentioned that, that the, that the goals are being targeted tailored to be closer to the economic development target goals. You know, can you give an example of under the previous, or I guess the current agreement, you know, have there been cases when when that was not the case, or is it just about, you know, clarifying and getting more consistency for the for the future. Right, it was about clarifying and being consistent in the language before we didn't say we wanted necessarily marketing trips to align with the targeted sectors, we might have said we want you to focus on the targeted sectors but that wasn't a requirement of the agreement we put that now as a specific goal to delineate that and say we want the marketing efforts to focus on these targeted sectors so it's really clarifying it wasn't necessarily an issue, but we thought we should say what we mean in this agreement. And so that that was our goal is, let's be very clear on what our expectation is. Yeah, that makes sense into the, what the targeted sectors are. Is that how often does that usually do it off the top of my head but aviation aerospace advanced manufacturing renewable energy information technology research and development supply chains for primary employers and significant users of municipal utilities. You missed one. No, just kidding. Awesome. Okay, thank you. That's all. Councilmember Messer. Yeah, what I especially like about this is the more tighter connection between the metrics and the strategy. And that's why I'll move approval of the agreement as presented by staff. Councilmember Davis. I'll second approval. Let's vote on the board please for agenda item. Let's see. Carries six zero agenda item five DS consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of didn't a Texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager execute a contract with. These are the, these are the same company but two different are these two different RFCs for D and E. It's two different RFCs for two separate services although I've combined them. Okay, let me go ahead and read the other one that will vote on them separately and then you can make your combined presentation. Agenda items five E is considered option of an ordinance of the city of didn't a Texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the city manager executed contract with less enterprises LLC DBA impressed graphics for an amount not to exceed $2 million. And then we'll take a separate vote on them once the presentation is completed. Yes. Mayor and council Ryan Adams public affairs, and this item are really both of these items I'm going to start by presenting you the background of our Reaper graphics operation. Lead you into a summary of our RFP process and RP results and provide staffs recommendation and also our timeline for implementation if these two contracts are approved by the council. So a bit of background on a reprographics operation as a mouthful reprographics is our city's in house print shop. They are staffed at 1.75 full time equivalence or one full time staff member one part time staff member. And historically they've been responsible for two key service areas are print services which is essentially printing projects so we have a something needs to be printed into a booklet or a mass mailing. They would perform that function and for a long time they would manage our copier so our fleet copiers within the city. Recently on November 19 council approved a contract for that a new fleet copier contract and that was subsequently moved away from reprographics and detect services. And we're recommending award to an outsource vendor for print services after an RFP and evaluation process for print services but also since we combine the presentation for large volume and our regular mail services. So as we started to evaluate our reprographics operations we we noticed there were several challenges and several trends that we, we really couldn't look away from one of the big ones was that our city. In the last few years had really been steadily not utilizing our reprographics function for a lot of the print jobs, starting in fiscal year 1578% of our print jobs were run through reprographics up until our current most complete fiscal year fiscal 19 where that dropped down to 40% of all our print jobs run through reprographics, the remainder of being sent to external print service providers impress being one of those. The reasons for this are that the reprographics operation can't really leverage economies of scale for large or complex print jobs, due to a lack of equipment and personnel and by personnel, I mean that if there are times of high demand they simply cannot push through enough print jobs and don't have the staff or the equipment to do that to meet the deadlines if you have a lot of work come at you at one time whereas larger print operations could. And then for large jobs a great example is some of our mass mailings they do throughout the city, our resident update citizen connection. These are our large scale print jobs that we simply don't have the capacity to print five that are probably 55,000 copies, and then mail those out while attending to all the other jobs that we have some other concerns that were coming in on the horizon are the maintenance of our printer fleet and the replacement of our aging fleet we have a lot of equipment that is nearing if not within the end of his useful life, and those would have to come up for replacement very soon. And then the costs because reprographics does charge departments for the jobs that they do the cost that they charge departments in order to recover what they spend in actually performing those services. It's not competitive with the private sector and we found that out through the RFP process. So, to see what the private sector could provide in terms of print services we did issue an RFP request for proposals for print services and included a representative representative sample of print jobs from across the organization so we didn't want them to process everything we print, we just said here's a good sampling of what we do. Give us your prices according to the sampling we use that as a basis to know if a private sector printer is more competitive than reprographics. And what we found was that impressed graphics was a very competitive private sector provider of print services, more competitive than our own reprographics division based on the prices to perform those sample print jobs that were part of that RFP process. And what we concluded from this RFP is that our personnel and equipment costs are likely to rise as they do. Reprographics recovery costs are not competitive with the private sector. So again, private sector companies can do the same jobs for less cost to our city departments than reprographics could and that departments are increasingly opting for private sector printing because of those large and complex jobs such as citywide mailings. And that they really appreciate that fast turnaround that a private sector print shop can offer during times of peak demand. And so what staff is recommending is a council approval of a contract with impressed for print services as lowest cost qualified vendor at an annual amount of $500,000, which is about what we have been spending in total print costs up until this time. Repurposing the basement space that they currently occupy and then relocating the one full-time staff member to another department and eliminating the one part-time employee. And we did have a timeline and I regret that I did not update one day that should read January 7th, not December 3rd, but we hope to, if approved tonight, be fully implemented with impressed by the 21st of January. January 31st would be the last day that reprographics would operate and we hope to have all the assets properly disposed of by March 31st. And since this is a presentation for both these items, one thing that was not included in that print services RFP was mailing. So if we have a large job that also has a mailing component, we didn't include that in the RFP and so we sent out a second RFP for that service and we actually combined that with our normal mail services that impressed actually provides for the city currently. Picking up our mail from the web from the post office, dropping off our mail at the post office. So those were included in that second RFP. Impress was also the lowest bidder on this job and so we're recommending that the large volume mailing services contract also be approved by council tonight. And I'm happy to answer any questions that the council has. Councilmember Armitage? Yeah, can you speak to why do you think that there were just four, did I count that right, four responses to the RFP? Or what were the terms of the RFP? I think that, you know, we did have two local firms and that was UNT and Impress. We had, of course, Rico, who we do have several printer contracts with currently, also propose on it. And there were a couple that we determined to be non-responsive. They didn't respond correctly to our RFP and by our purchasing law we had to rule them out. We felt four was sufficient that we wouldn't need to delay or restart the process, particularly that they were, ended up being also very competitive. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I was just curious. I know that, you know, I know the name because the city had, you know, for a long time been doing business with LESEC, at least as I understand it. And I know it would show up on a number of people's, you know, campaign financing reports. That's how I remember seeing it. So they've been doing a lot of work for the city. I just wanted to make sure that, you know, that was really my only concern that there was a fair bidding process. It was fair and, you know, it makes sense to me. Of course, I'm always, I get sticker shock at the cost of how much we spend on mailings, but then when you consider we serve the entire city, as long as we're trying to avoid waste and, you know, anyway, it would be interesting to see kind of where we can, where we can cut down. But I think that that's happening anyway, you know, to see if we really do need to print something out on paper versus electronic communications. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Council Member Ryan. Move approval of Item 5D. All right, we have a motion for Agenda Item 5D. Do we have a second? Council Member Davis. I'll second. We have a motion and a second for Agenda Item 5D. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-0. Agenda Item 5E, which was a combined presentation, so Chair would entertain action. Mayor Pro Tem. Move approval. All right, we have a motion by the Mayor Pro Tem for Agenda Item 5E for approval. Do we have a second? Council Member Ryan. I'll second. All right, we have a motion and a second. The second was from Council Member Ryan. Let's vote on the board, please. Okay, did somebody miss? Do we need to do that again? Because there's only five. Council Member Armitage, did you? Okay, we need to recalibrate the vote, so let's vote again, please. Motion carries 6-0. Moving on to Agenda Item F, consider nominations, appointments to city boards, commissions, etc. Any staff presentation on that or we just got the slate? Chair would entertain a motion. Mayor Pro Tem. I move approval. Council Member Davis. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second for the nominations. I believe it's from Mayor Pro Tem. Is it Michael? How do you pronounce it? Is it Swigert? Yes, sir. Okay, all right. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-0. Moving on to Public Hearing, Section 6A. That has been postponed to the February 4th, 2020 Council Meeting. Do we need to take any action on that to postpone it? No. All right, thank you, Mr. City Attorney. Moving on to Agenda Item 6B, hold a public hearing, consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, amending the Denton Development Code Subchapter 5 Use Regulations Related to Table of Allowed Uses and Use Specific Standards for Administrative, Professional, and Government Office and Medical Offices. Uses in the R7 District. Good evening. I'm Julie Wyatt, and I'll be presenting DCA 1923 to you this evening. So the request is to hold a public hearing, consider a proposed revision to the DDC, specifically for the Administrative, Professional, and Government Office and Medical Office uses in the R7 District. This is a staff-initiated code amendment to remedy the creation of some non-conforming uses and structures with the adoption of the 2019 DDC. Just a little bit of background, you probably remember when the 2019 DDC was first begun, part of the intent of that was to streamline the code and make sure that it was really clear in the zoning districts. As part of that, some of the 2002 zoning districts were folded into broader districts. And that was the case for DR1 and NRMU12, that those were folded into the MN District. And the MN permits a wide variety of higher density residential and commercial uses. But as we were applying those districts to the map, we realized there really was a gap. There was a need for one more district, and that was how the R7 District was born. It bridges that gap. It's not full residential, and it also is not fully mixed use. It adds a little bit of residential districts and some targeted limited commercial districts. The intent is to provide more dynamic areas, to increase walkability, to provide that variety of residential uses, but some of those low intensity commercial types of uses like offices that you typically find near residential areas. The transition table was also adopted with the 2019 code, and R7 combined the NRMU12 and the DR1 districts, as those were most closely aligned. As we've been implementing the 2019 DDC, we came to two uses that were affected by this R7 District, and that's why we're here tonight. The first is the administrative, professional, and government offices. These are typically real estate offices, law offices, insurance offices, and then also medical offices, doctors, dentists, pediatricians. We'll talk about how the 2002 regulations treated those uses, and then the 2019, as it's written, treat those uses. The administrative, professional, and government offices in NRMU12, those were permitted, provided that they were under 10,000 square feet of gross floor area. They weren't permitted in DR1, that was more of a residential district. 2019 limited that use so that that use requires a specific use permit and the no more than 10,000 gross square feet of floor area. Medical offices were permitted like administrative offices were permitted in 2002, that they were limited to 10,000 square feet. In DR1, they were not permitted like the general offices. And then in 2019 code, it doesn't permit medical office at all in R7. There were some issues that resulted from this. First of all, existing legal medical offices that have been in those locations for sometimes many years have now become nonconforming. Nonconforming uses may not structurally alter their buildings or expand into additional structures, and if more than 50% of the gross floor area containing that use is damaged or destroyed by natural causes, they cannot rebuild. And then existing legal administrative, professional, and government offices without an approved SUP are not considered nonconforming per subchapter one, but any redevelopment of the site, if they wanted to modernize their facilities, they would require having to go through the SUP approval. And this is now affecting 54 parcels in the city by our land use analysis. It really, it wasn't staff's intent to make these uses nonconforming or to limit the ability for them to modernize their facilities. So we're proposing a text amendment to the 2019 DDC to rectify this issue, to first allow administrative, professional, and government offices in R7 with use specific standards. First of all, and then we would amend those use specific standards. The first being to revise section 5.35K to remove that R7 from that language and add the following language, that uses greater than 10,000 square feet would require a specific use permit and approval from city council. And then we would treat medical offices the same way in R7, that we would permit them with that use specific standard allowing the SUP over 10,000 square feet. And as we were looking at this and looking at the 2002 code and the effect on properties and how it would be corrected, we first looked at the R7 district. And R7 district is a distinctive district. It could fit under many future land use designations. It is one of those transitional districts that you often find near those primarily single family areas, but not quite to the mixed use districts yet. So it really is often used in a transitional context. The proposal would allow for more vibrant development, but with constraints. So that SUP, the limit on size is a constraint to make sure that any development would be harmonious with the adjacent residential development. We also felt like this was the most targeted approach. So we could look at a potential rezoning and a change to the map for all of these 54 properties, but we felt like that would introduce additional uses in those areas, potential new incompatibilities. We felt like this was the most limited approach. It really is getting those areas back to what they were permitted to do in 2002. And then just office uses, both medical offices and general offices, those are typically low impact. Daytime office hours don't generate a whole lot of traffic. So we didn't feel like there were going to be incompatibilities when permitted in R7. So the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval of the request, and staff recommends approval, and I'll stand for any questions. Any questions for the staff? Councilman Ryan? Thank you, Mayor. Julie, I'm looking at the red line of the, now my computer's going haywire, on the medical offices. If I can get my page back up here. And R7 is a lesser restrictive, or a more restricted use than MN. Correct. Correct. But yet, the way that this reads in R7, once this passes, uses greater than 10,000 square feet would require an SVP. But in MN, uses are limited to no more than 10,000 square feet. So we are actually making it where you can do more in the R7 with medical offices than you can in the MN. Is that just a...? Well, and I'm glad you brought that up. So as we are starting to implement the 2019 DDC, we are really finding some areas where we need to tighten up that language, especially in the use-specific standards. So additional code amendments are going to be coming forward. You know, it may mean, MN is typically found in those mixed-use areas, often on arterials, and 10,000 square feet may be too limiting for that use in that area. So we're going to be coming back with additional code amendments as we're implementing the code, as we're looking at those use-specific standards, to see what we really need in order to make sure that we've got compatible uses adjacent to each other. I guess this would be a question for legal. If we wanted to put the R7 and the MN together on that red line, such that they both could do over 10,000 square feet with an SVP, that would save us from having to go back through, or is that something that has to go through PNC? It's going to have to go back to PNC, plus this item has only been noticed as an R7 change, not an MN, so you're actually impacting something other than what was noticed as well. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Armitage. I just want to say I think that that's a good point, and I would support that going before PNC. Okay. All right. Any more questions for staff before we open the public hearing? All right. Thank you. We will now open the public hearing. We have a card. Pam, is it rule? If you'll come down and state your name and address, your time will begin. Hello, I'm Pam Burley. My husband and I own some property, 3490 Teasley Lane. It is a dental office. We've been there since 2001. It looks like a house. We like that feeling, but our office has become one of the not 54 non-conforming properties that she was speaking of. In the current zoning, the medical and dental offices were kind of left out altogether, and I know that's something that generally needs to be in neighborhood-type areas. Our property on Teasley has been affected by the widening of 2181 or Teasley. We lost the first 25 feet of our property to the widening of the road and the utility improvements. This change, whether it was residential or medical dental or whatever you want to call it, is not very safe for a home to be that close. That's why the people that sold it to us did that to begin with, just because nobody wants to have small children that close to a busy six-lane road. It's already busy now, and it's going from two lanes to six lanes. We quite often, if there's an accident on 35, which is at least once a day, we'll see Teasley back up to traffic just literally sitting there waiting for the lights to go on. It's an extremely busy road, and it's too busy to have a home right there on it. I wouldn't want to have a home where children are trying to be back in and out of a driveway, so I don't think it's really suitable for a home. It is suitable for a small business. Our patients, our particular property, like I said, we've lost the first 25 feet of it and had plans to build a newer office building. It does look like a house. We like that residential feel. I think it would fit in nicely with the residential area. Our patients are laying down. Their feet are going to be 20 feet from the front of a six-lane divided road, so it's really not very safe. They are laying down. They're not looking out the windows, so it's difficult to get up and go down. If you look at the fences on the other side of Teasley, you can see that quite a few of them have been replaced, and that's due to accidents. It's just we see cars flying through fences. We see cars hitting guide wires and flipping upside down. It's a very busy road, and it's not safe for us to be that close. It's not safe for our patients to be that close. It's not safe for a home to be that close. We were in the process of doing the designing and engineering and had to stop because the construction crew that was hired, I don't know, by the state or the city was laid off or let go or disappeared. I don't know what the case is, but they quit, and so we had to quit because we can't do any of this without a sewer line, and so the delay on our property has caused us to become nonconforming, and so we are just asking that you kind of look at us as one example. A dental office, a medical office, we have families that are patients. Most of them are families. Kids ride their bikes, walk all the neighborhoods around there. It's easily neighborhood accessible, and I think it would be a good fit in with a neighborhood and a home development type area. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Council Member Armitage. I just wanted to thank the speaker for speaking and say I'm concerned about traffic on Teasley, too. I think many of us are, and I believe all of it is at Texta Road, but that doesn't mean we're not concerned, but I'm glad that we can at least help you out in this way. But anyway, my heart goes out to people living and doing business on Teasley. It's dangerous, and traffic's a pain. Thanks for coming out. Thank you. And this is a public hearing. Anybody else wishing to speak can come down and state your name and address. Your time will begin. You don't have to have a blue card. Anybody else wishing to speak? One more time. Seeing no one, we will now close the public hearing. Council Member Armitage. I move to approve. Council Member Bryan. Second. Motion is second for Agenda Item 6B. Let's vote on the board, please. Motion carries 6-0, including items. Council Member Armitage. I just wanted to thank the folks that came out today. We're standing here in the hallway to support an equality ordinance coming to council. I wanted to let them and the public know it's my understanding it'll now be coming to us before us as a work session to council in February. Is that correct? And do we have an actual date for that? Well, I don't think it's comfortable. Agenda Committee still needs to figure out the specific date. We'll mail that down tomorrow, but it's one of the later meetings in February. Okay. So sometime late February? Yes. Okay. Anyway, but thanks for coming out. Anybody else? Concluding items. Seeing none, we will stand adjourned at 828.