Feb 11, 2020 City Council on 2020-02-11 1:00 PM

Welcome, everybody, to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, February 11, 2020. We are at 1.05, we're going to move through our work session, and we do have a special called meeting after the work session, and do we have any closed sessions? Yes. So that will commence immediately after the closed session, after a quick break. So we'll move on through our work session reports, work session agenda item one, citizen comments on consent agenda? Any citizen comments on consent agenda? I see none. Request for clarification of agenda items listed on this agenda. I have one that I think everyone got an email that was sent out from the applicant and also staff that agenda item, which one is it? Well, G, but also there's one for the Grove. It's B. That 2B, the applicant has requested that that be moved to the next council meeting on February the 18th, but also consent agenda item G is pulled as well. I mean, not for individual consideration, it's just withdrawn, pulled off the agenda altogether. Okay. Any other clarifications? Is that council memorandum? I would like to pull G about the noise variance. Oh, G, I thought you said B. I'm sorry. Well, B is for item for individual consideration, which is the Grove apartment complex that we had postponed last week to this week. And then G was pulled, which is the noise variance. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. I'm a little under the weather. And there were two more that I wanted to pull just because I think they're terrific, just wanted a little comment on it for the public's sake, B and C, if there's somebody here to speak about it, B about the affordable housing assessment and C about the mechanical chest compression. Okay. So when you say you want them pulled, do you want them pulled off the consent agenda? Sorry. Just now for comment. Oh, just comment. Okay. All right. Okay. That's it. Yeah. So I was just wondering if you could speak a little bit about what kinds of things the affordable housing assessment consultants will be investigating. The first part will be doing the information gathering, the data analysis, we're also going to be looking at some, sorry, I'm going to pull. Yeah. The proposed first phase will be information gathering, the data analysis that we're looking for, and then some resources and strategies. Excellent. Great. Okay. And data analysis, meaning what our needs are for housing at different levels of affordability. Absolutely. One of the goals from the organization is to provide us with the market analysis that's based on housing needs and geography and other aspects of neighborhoods that will help us frame that investment conversation, so also to look at the alignment of housing needs based on HUD's requirements. And then they're proposing to do a 20 year housing model for us as well as a part of this first phase. They're going to also do an opportunity index for us to look at each of the individual neighborhoods to see what that opportunity is and how we can invest in that to help benefit housing and workforce. Excellent. So I'm really excited about it. Just a couple questions. Me too. Yeah. One, when will they get started, and two, will there be some sort of public input gathering in this part of the... Yeah. So it's proposed to be completed in 150 days, so we should start right away once it's signed. And then all throughout the process, there's public input and strategies that are going to be deployed to make sure we have that commentary. Excellent. Thank you so much. Sure. Thanks. Thank you. Yeah. And also clarification. I was informed by the City Attorney that on agenda item for individual consideration, item B, which is the Grove, just to follow the proper procedures, we'll need to call that and then just have another postponement for the next week. So I wanted to just put that out there so that everybody would know. Okay. So that's for agenda items. Oh, yeah, and I just wanted to comment about the chest compression devices. Oh, yes, yes. Yeah. If somebody wanted to share a little bit about that. David Becker, Assistant Chief. Yes, ma'am. Yeah. So are these the, these are the automated chest compression devices that push on their own so that the person who is saving the life doesn't have to count, et cetera, and worry about how hard they're pressing? Yes, ma'am. These are an automated machine that they're preset for a certain speed, certain depth. They are a little bit adjustable in that depth based on different size patients, but they also work with our monitors that we use to treat patients with and in our software. So all of them will link together to give us a picture of the patient care and the outcome. Wonderful. So that's what I thought. I just want to emphasize to the public also how important this is. This will really save lives and these machines, they don't get distracted, they don't get tired. No, ma'am. Yep. So anyway, thank you so much. I'm really excited about them. It was really neat to see them in action, too. Thanks. Thank you. Good to see you. Any other clarifications? All right, we'll move on then to our work session items. 3A, receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding overview of the Denton County behavioral health leadership team and its initiatives for comprehensive behavioral health in Denton County. Afternoon, Mayor, Council. I'd like to introduce Courtney Cross, who is the Director of Mental Health and Housing Initiatives for the United Way, and she's going to do today's presentation on behavioral health initiatives that are happening across Denton County. Thank you, Denny. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Thank you for having us. As Denny mentioned, I am the Director of Mental Health and Housing for the United Way of Denton County. We have a few goals for this presentation today, like to provide some strategic or let you know about the strategic direction and oversight of our Denton County behavioral health leadership team to request a City of Denton appointee to that leadership team and to provide some insight into some recent internal restructuring at United Way to better support our collective impact initiatives as a whole. First in background, according to the National Institute for Mental Health, an estimated 163,000 people in Denton County met their criteria for a diagnosable mental health concern in 2018. While the prevalence of mental illness has remained relatively consistent over the past few years at about one in five, the occurrence in Denton County continues to rise due to population growth and the demand for services rises along with that growth. Denton County behavioral health leadership team is a quasi-governmental policymaking body focused on mental and behavioral health systems change solutions in our community. The leadership team was established based on the collective impact framework, which follows five core principles, gathering stakeholders around a common agenda, establishing a shared measurement system for reaching common goals, engaging in mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication to track progress and maintain alignment, and support from a backbone support organization. And this is the role that United Way plays for this leadership team. The vision of the behavioral health leadership team is comprehensive behavioral health for every person in Denton County. The mission is that the team will advocate, facilitate a collaborative person-centered behavioral health system to repair and restore lives through ensuring behavioral services are available to meet everyone's needs, through assessing data for continuous outcome measurements, prioritizing data-driven recommendations, and providing a continuum of care. The behavioral health leadership team originated from a truly grassroots initiative of local citizens. The Citizens Council on Mental Health was formed by local residents upon reading a United Way needs assessment in 2013, which identified Denton County as the lowest-funded county for mental health per capita in the state of Texas, and Texas as the lowest-funded state in the U.S. for mental health per capita. In 2015, the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute published a report recommending next steps for the Citizens Council to expand and continue their work. This report, which has been provided in your backup, was cosponsored by United Way of Denton County and the City of Denton, among other partners. And since its establishment in 2015, the Denton County behavioral health leadership team has led many countywide efforts to reduce stigma, increase access to behavioral health services for residents. There's a lot of history we can get into, but I'll just pick one accomplishment for this leadership team for today. In 2016, United Way was awarded a collaborative state grant under the leadership of the Denton County behavioral health leadership team to increase access to services for veterans and their families, which led to the establishment of the Veteran Community Navigator Program. This program employed two case managers to assist veterans and their families in navigating and getting connected to mental health and other crisis intervention resources. The Veteran Community Navigator Program served over 200 in its first year, and United Way sustained the program for a brief period until the fall of 2018 when Denton County Commissioner's Court voted to adopt these positions under their budget, sustaining the program indefinitely. We see this as a huge win for not only just behavioral health for veterans, but really a good example of the work of these leadership teams to really incubate a pilot, find a permanent home, and lead to continued positive outcomes. In 2017, United Way of Denton County was awarded another collaborative grant under the leadership of the behavioral health leadership team to provide military specific mental health first aid in the county, and United Way currently partners with Denton County MHMR to provide mental health first aid throughout the county free of charge to participants. This is made possible through a Health and Human Services Commission Community Mental Health Grant. More recently, the leadership team approved a strategic plan in January of this year, and we'll talk more about that in a bit. Here's the structure of the leadership team, outlining appointed member bodies responsible for governing the leadership team and workers with specific population or system focuses. In November of last year, the team voted to form an ad hoc committee to further explore substance use needs and resources in the county to better inform the work of each work group in the overall team and developing comprehensive solutions to address behavioral health needs. Here's just a graphic illustration of the many partners that are involved with this initiative, from business to government, nonprofit, education. And as we've discussed, appointees come from multiple sectors, including Denton County education, government, healthcare, housing, the judicial system, law enforcement, public health, local, state, and federal government, and other community coalitions. In October of 2019, United Way of Denton County did some internal restructuring to align both the Denton County behavioral health leadership team and the homelessness leadership team under a single director, myself. This change was made to provide additional opportunities for synergies across both collective impact initiatives with sometimes overlapping goals and population focuses. Additionally, this change lets United Way of Denton County better support each leadership team through designated work group support from a program coordinator, allowing the director to provide strategic direction in management along with targeted advocacy. Any questions before I move forward to talk about our strategic plan? Any questions? Yes. Councilmember Meltzer. This is a very fundamental one that I imagine, if I wonder, others might too. Can you just draw the distinction and explain why we're talking about behavioral health, whereas in the past you might have talked about mental health? Sure. Mental health as a term is intended to be more all-encompassing of mental health and substance use disorders. So the reason for the establishment of behavioral health leadership team is to kind of address both needs at once, realizing that a lot of the folks that are kind of high utilizers of our systems addressed to meet the needs of folks with mental health and substance use disorders often have both. Thank you, that was helpful. So the entire strategic plan for the leadership team was provided in your backup, but we'll just go through a kind of high level overview for today. The strategic goal of the Children and Family Systems Work Group is to increase awareness and capacity of mental and behavioral health services for youth. This includes efforts to reduce stigma through our Okay to Say campaign, which is, it's okay to say I have asthma, it's okay to say I have anxiety, just all around kind of stigma reduction, to increase understanding of the impact of trauma for parents, service providers, and the community through training and awareness campaigns. And finally, efforts to improve accessibility of behavioral health services to youth. This will be carried out through a few different ways, conducting focus groups with school districts, both employees and parents, to assess barriers to access more intentionally. The group also has a long term goal to acquire funding for a mental health navigator that would support families in need of mental health resource navigation. They've kind of watched the success of the veteran community navigator program and thought it would meet a community need to have a similar position dedicated to children and families kind of navigating the mental health system. The goal of the Geo-Diversion Work Group is to improve outcomes for justice involved individuals with behavioral health needs, and I'll share more about that in depth on the next slide. The Veterans Work Group's strategic goal is to increase access to veteran services in Denton County, and this work group is taking a more holistic approach to addressing overall needs of veterans and their dependents, recognizing that the social determinants of health impact overall behavioral health outcomes. Strategic objectives include raising awareness of current behavioral health programs for veterans, supporting the ongoing needs of veterans experiencing homelessness, and this is where our two leadership teams have begun to collaborate and work towards the goal to end veteran homelessness, the establishment of holistic programs to increase well-being for veterans and their families, and expanding services for disabled, aging, and our isolated veterans. Additionally, the hope is that this work group can play a role in developing and offering trainings to increase general service provider awareness of veteran-specific needs. So if an agency or an organization has a program that's open and available to the community as a whole, it's often helpful to have some veteran-specific training to know kind of what's gonna resonate more with a veteran or what to expect when serving a veteran who's coming in and seeking services. What we've come to find is that because there's still a stigma associated with accessing behavioral health, when service providers engage with veterans and lead with connecting them to behavioral health services, it often turns veterans off. It's just overwhelming, becomes detrimental to the helping relationship of someone providing a human service to these folks. And so what we've found is that by leading with a financial coaching resource or getting them connected to disability-related services is often your ticket for building rapport with veterans and makes the space for them moving into the behavioral health conversation. And then, any questions on that before I move on? Just for some context around the jail diversion work group's goal to improve outcomes for justice-involved individuals with behavioral health needs, a little bit of history, while serving as municipal judge for the city of Denton, Judge Ramsey sponsored a sequential intercept model workshop in 2018 to help develop a comprehensive picture of how people with mental illness and co-occurring disorders flow through Denton County's criminal justice system. There's a bit more detail provided in the strategic plan, but essentially community stakeholders collaborated to identify existing resources along these six intercepts, or five intercepts, excuse me. Currently, the jail diversion work group is developing solutions to improve processes and protocols for pre-arrest diversion to enhance law enforcement mental health crisis response. So this is, you know, a lot of times if someone's having a mental health crisis, the first number anyone calls is 911. And we know that law enforcement aren't always equipped with the same responses to mental health crises as someone may be working for our local mental health authority would be. And so the goal of this group is really to kind of bridge that gap and realize that while our law enforcement system may be disproportionately handling mental health crises, kind of developing solutions together to help provide the tools for those law enforcement agencies. Right now there is a pilot being conducted with Denton County Sheriff's Office, Lake Dallas Police Department, Denton County MHMR and Mayhill Behavioral Health Hospital to kind of develop some more clear and defined protocols for responding to a mental health crisis call. Since the work group has sufficiently. Well, my question is about the specialty court number three, is that are those courts, how are those courts funded? Are those the ones that the drug court are they are they funded by grants or primarily? I would say I don't have a ton of extensive knowledge about that. But I think it really depends based on the community and the state, to be honest, how available those types of that type of funding is. I know there are some federal agencies that can provide specialty court funding. I know each county does it differently. Sometimes the county may elect to fund different courts. I will say that a kind of common theme in our engagement with specialty courts is, you know, consistent funding to kind of meet some of the wraparound service needs of the folks that come through those court systems. It looks really nice the way it's on the chart there because it goes straight through. And to clarify, yeah, to clarify, the jail diversion work group is really focusing on intercepts zero and one to start really identifying, you know, what's the process for engagement with the local health authority or other crisis services, when and how law enforcement is engaged really before anyone is ever arrested, charged, anything like that, really kind of taking it in bite-size pieces. Once the work group feels like they've sufficiently addressed the first two intercepts, they'll move on kind of down the line. >> Councilmember Davis has a question or comment. >> Quick comment. Just a little bit on the funding for the specialty courts. The backbone of the funding in Denton County is borne by the county. It's judges, support staff, prosecutors, defense attorneys, it's a normal judicial process, and then probation officers do a lot of the heavy lifting. And then each of those courts individually or together apply for grants, sometimes really big grants, sometimes kind of small stuff. And then there's lots and lots of community support from the wraparound services that you're talking about. A probation officer who's kind of a caseworker for someone going through the court can turn to those services and get bus passes and job referrals and all sorts of cool stuff that way. So kind of the meat and potatoes of running the court is borne by the county. >> You trying to take my job? >> A job I used to have. >> Yeah. That's what we find as well. And really the capacity of the county and courts to be able to go after those grants can sometimes be limited just because, like we've discussed, having a probation officer kind of oversee the operations of that court, there's just a lot that kind of gets piled together. >> Okay. Any other questions? >> City of Denton has been a collaborative partner of the Denton County behavioral health leadership team from the very beginning. Currently the seat reserved for the city is vacant and we are seeking an appointee from the city. Current appointments from other municipalities include council members, city staff, and law enforcement representatives. Okay. I have a question. >> Okay. Councilmember Armitage. >> I have a couple questions. >> Sure. >> Also, right, the next slide is the questions. Hi. >> Oh, yeah. Here we go. >> So a couple questions, and before that just a statement. If we do decide that it would be a council appointee, I would love to volunteer for that role. But we can discuss that later, I'm not sure if you need the date, if you need that by today's date. >> Oh, not today. >> The timeline is. >> We can work with staff to confirm. >> Okay. Yeah. So we can decide that later. So two questions. One, can you speak to the extent to which you plan to be working with existing entities that provide mental health care and also they wrap around connected services such as MHMR. You mentioned Mayhill working with the sheriff's department, with the county, but also entities like solutions which deal with addiction treatment. >> Yeah. Basically, if anyone is in this space, and we haven't already interacted with them, we're actively seeking their participation and collaboration. We are very involved and engaged with St. County MHMR through jail diversion efforts, through mental health first aid, through the entire work of this leadership team. Solutions is engaged in our jail diversion work group and they're actually, we're hoping to engage them even more through the substance use ad hoc committee that I mentioned earlier because they are the local expert on substance use needs and resources in our community. I don't have the full list of worker members and rosters, but I'd be happy to share that with you. >> Oh, yeah. I would love to see that. I'll mention that one of the things, you mentioned how successful the veterans groups have been in doing this kind of thing. Solutions is also, as well, and I think one thing that both groups have in common is they rely on a lot of peer support and that trust is established by people who, in the case of veterans, are veterans themselves. In the case of Solutions, most, if not all, I think maybe all people working there who are dealing with people are addicts in recovery themselves, and you probably know how much evidence there is for how the peer model works in so many ways. So I would encourage that. My other question was about the intercept one, the jail diversion. If you could speak a little more to -- are you imagining that if, say, somebody calls 911 and says something's happening with a friend or family member, I don't know what's going on, I think they might be off their meds, whatever, and they have -- posing some threat of physical danger to people, would a mental health provider arrive on the scene with law enforcement? Is that what you're imagining? >> Since we are still on the pilot stages, we're really kind of at the point of mapping out what happens currently, and then from there, we're going to start to identify possible improvements or solutions. So that's why we're working, starting with Lake Dallas. They volunteered because they are such a small agency to let us kind of document what their response and what their process is now, and kind of our short list of things to analyze or evaluate, or at what point a mental health crisis intervention staff person from MHMR would be engaged, at what point a sheriff's office mental health deputy would be engaged, and all those sorts of things. So yes, that's in the kind of running list of improvement opportunities. >> Excellent. Wonderful. Well, I'm really supportive, and thank you for the presentation. >> Thank you. Any other questions? Yes, Councilmember Davis. >> Super quick comment. I have kind of anecdotally seen a really good, improved response from law enforcement and first responders. I think we are seeing fewer people just going straight to the jail as opposed to seeing some of the mental health intervention. Sometimes it's really hard to tell as a police officer, like you said, where you're supposed to take somebody or where they really need services, and it seems like, at least in the City of Denton, our law enforcement officers are really doing everything they can to figure out where those lines are. I'm sure we need improvement. I'm sure we need more training, but it seems like they're doing a really good job. >> So I'll have one comment to that, which is we, through the same grant that is helping us fund mental health first aid, it's funded through House Bill 13, which is a community mental health grant. And so we've kind of got a lot going on under that umbrella, but we are partnering closely with the sheriff's office, but also kind of all local law enforcement agencies to not only address some of the things that you mentioned, but also address the rate at which people return to jail, primarily for mental health reasons and that sort of thing. >> So I just want to make one quick comment about the specialty court, the drug courts, the two drug courts. I've been able to -- humbly have been asked in the past to speak to both of those courts on different occasions to the participants and have attended most of the graduations. And it is unbelievable the impact that it has on those people's lives. And it's not easy. I mean, that program is not easy at all. But to see the difference from the photos when they come in, to the photos when they leave, and just to hear their stories -- and I know we're not, as a city, that involved in that, but I really do appreciate the Denton County Courts, United Way, Solutions of North Texas, and all the different various attorneys and counselors who help really get those people who have really struggled to a very, very different place in their lives. And if you've never gone to a graduation, I would encourage you to do that because it's quite a moving, moving experience. So thank you for also bringing that to our attention. >> Yeah. I'd say similar to our work as a community in homelessness solutions, we hear quite frequently in speaking with other communities and just kind of comparing what's worked, what hasn't, and solutions that we've tried. Because of the support we have from local law enforcement, municipal agencies, and court systems, we really are light years ahead of other communities. To be able to have, you know, like a Denton PD be engaged and willing to, you know, address any mental health concerns within their agency to our county court systems to kind of turn the traditional court model on its head and employ a more restorative approach, it really does set us up for success as a community. And to Council Member Briggs's point, it really comes down to those wraparound services a lot of times. So that's kind of one of our focuses through our continued collaboration is how do we increase training for providers responding to folks in these programs and resources to provide those wraparound service needs. >> Okay. Fantastic. Any other comments or questions? Thank you very much. Thank you, Courtney. >> Thank you. >> Great presentation. Thank you, Gary. Moving on to agenda item 3B, this is a received report, hold a discussion, and provide staff direction regarding the alignment of an east-west primary arterial in the southern edge of the city. >> Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. I'm Preet Tamdeshmukh. I'm the deputy city engineer. And I would like to continue our discussion with the mobility plan, particular focus in the southern area of the city, and talk about an east-west primary arterial connection. I think once I get into the details of this, you'll find out why this is so important as we move forward with the mobility plan. >> Okay. So questions. So this is also -- because I know I've been through the backup. We've been having these meetings on the mobility plan. >> Correct. >> And so this is the one for this area. But this also is going to address the Brush Creek Road and the alignments and all that. >> Correct. >> Is that going to be the major thrust of this presentation? Okay. >> Thank you. >> So the major thrust is that once we get that alignment nailed down, then we can move forward with the rest of the mobility plan because it has severe impacts on the way the entire mobility plan is laid. So that would be the crux of it. >> Oh, okay. So this is sort of a linchpin of how we move forward with other components of our mobility plan, what we -- what's eventually determined here. >> Correct. Todd Estes, city engineer. So next week we'll be bringing the southern section of town, which hinges on all of this discussion. >> Gotcha. Okay. >> But we have to know council's direction on what components of this to bring into that so that we can bring it forward for discussion. >> So this is specifically for this one? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> So start with the area, the southern area as defined here is the -- this section of the city that's under the Y. So 35W on the west side, 35E on the east side, and the entire city segment, which is a very small portion here. I've covered a larger area just to give you a context. So there is no -- currently there's no connection. There is no east-west connection between 35W and 35E, all the way from the merge, which is within the city limits, down to FM 407, which is an argyle. So there is no east-west direct connection, and there are some natural boundaries or natural restrictions, barriers in this area, and that's primarily the reason, but there is a need and there are no connections. So current patterns, the existing patterns, people that live in this area or this area that want to go across tend to travel north and then travel south. So what is happening is it's attracting traffic into the city of Denton that could have stayed away and had that connection, and then moving it away from the freeways and this congestion up here. There's obviously growth in this area. You've seen the growth in the southern part much faster than the rest of the city. Along Ryan Road, Hickory Creek Road, several parcels are currently in construction, I think, not just development, developing plans. And moving forward, where can we place an east-west connection? So as I mentioned earlier, I don't know if it's really hard to see that, there's a bluish area here that's all floodplain. There are creeks that are coming. This is primarily Hickory Creek, and then there are tributaries that join in, and there's a large floodplain area here, and that's our natural barrier as to having that connection. That's why there's currently no connection or a road that exists that goes over. Other constraints in the area are railroad. This is UPRR, close to 377, and then there's another branch, there's KCS out here. So there are other barriers in the area besides natural barrier. City boundaries, I'm not sure if you can really see. This is Hickory Creek Road down here, Brush Creek, all red. The boundary goes in and out, it's not completely, pretty much the majority of the city ends here. There is a little bit of city on this side, close to 35W. So as you can see, there are some city boundary restrictions. We cannot go in other jurisdictions and construct further south or within this area. Some of the areas are unincorporated. What are the alternatives looked at? As I mentioned, the area that was in the previous slide, the area that was really important to consider as far as a connection was this area in this region. Alternatives were selected within this area. Alternative A is Hickory Creek Road. As you can see, this is Hickory Creek Road from FM 2181. It traverses over, that's 1830, if you can follow a little bit of this. This is Brush Creek portion and then goes into all red. This is alternative A. Alternative B is taking the same section of Hickory Creek Road, going past over the flood plain and then staying on the west side of the flood plain. So what happens if we have an alternative that goes and stays on the west side and then connects into Vintage all the way? So this is Vintage, if you can follow, and then to 35W. Alternative C then looks at an alternative that is on the east side of the flood plain. So continue on Hickory Creek, goes on the east side of the flood plain and then connects to Vintage. And then the last alternative is alternative D, which actually uses the alignment of Ryan Road from FM 2181 and then goes over the flood plain and connects to Vintage. Those are the four alternatives that we're focused on to have the east-west primary arterial connection. Before I jump into each of these alternatives, a brief overview or a quick overview of where are we with the Hickory Creek project. Because three of these alignments primarily use Hickory Creek Road, so I wanted to quickly touch on that. We're currently, InDesign will be going out to bid in a couple weeks for this portion of Hickory Creek. This is by Kroger and between FM 2181 Teasley and 2499. It is that last remaining portion of Hickory Creek Road that needs to be widened and this intersection signalized. So that will be going out to bid in a couple weeks next, in a couple weeks. This is under construction, the red segment, which is between River Pass and FM 2181. We are wrapping up the utility relocations and we'll be getting underway active construction for widening it to a four-lane facility. This yellow segment, all the way from River Pass to FM 1830, is currently under design. We are moving forward as fast as we can. We're closing in on 60% design and that would be a bridge over this floodplain area. It would also replace this curved, unsafe section of Hickory Creek Road. And A, just to give you a quick idea of what this is, the colors mean something, anything red is all the roadway segments that are reaching capacity. So we looked at the volume, what are the projected volumes in this area in the next 20 years, and we looked at the capacities of these roadway segments. As you can see, our freeways are getting congested, including some of the frontage roads. If we don't plan for that, 377 will be congested in the future, just given the amount of traffic that is trying to travel north and then go south. So you can see that this system is already constrained. If we don't have some of these relief valves there, there will be issues and we'll have to spend more dollars to fix that. If we go with alternative A, you can see, even with providing this connection, there are certain roadways that are strained. Everything green has a level of service A and B, anything yellow is C, and then D, E, and F. D is our city's threshold of acceptable level of service. So D and F is all red. So you can see some of the systems will start getting under constraint. This is alternative A. You can see Brush Creek will function as a level of service A or B with the proposed widening. In alternative B, when you have that alternative that goes along the west side of the flood plain, you can see Brush Creek will not be widened. It will remain as a two-lane roadway, which is currently what the condition is. And if that happens, this becomes a congested area. It starts congestion. It does attract some traffic, but it is over capacity. And then some of these effects, we're already looking at Ryan Road currently with the development is already there, but the infrastructure is not present. So you can see this intersection will be at or over capacity in this alternative. And then the next alternative is similar. Now you can see in this alternative, alternative C, where you're on the east side, all the systems that come in, 1830 Country Club and Brush Creek, all three, you can see that they're more constrained at this point, just because most of the traffic that wants to travel in that direction. And this, the capacity enhancement that are needed are not made through this alternative. It avoids it and then takes it via Vintage Road. And then the last alternative, alternative D, is this connecting Ryan Road to Vintage. If you just go with that alternative, as I mentioned earlier, most of the people are trying to travel north on 377. You can start seeing the entire network getting constrained, 1830 as well as 377. So a lot more people will be pushed to use that if this lower level connection is not achieved. So those are the four alignments and the level of service for each of those, just to get an idea of what's the volume to capacity of the network and how it impacts the choices that are made or the alternatives that are chosen will impact our network and the mobility plan, as we mentioned earlier in the start, and that's why we're talking about it right now. I'll get into a focus comparison of each of these alternatives, really focusing into this area where it crosses the flood plain and it crosses using Brush Creek. So these four will get into what are the right-of-way impacts, what are the construction costs, does it provide regional connectivity, and what happens to Brush Creek with all these four alternatives. Alternative one, this alternative, or A, is widen Brush Creek. This is the segment from FM 1830 to 377, and then this is already a connection. As I mentioned earlier, we're already working on the design for this connection to come in at 1830. So there are existing -- it utilizes the existing alignment for Brush Creek. There are potential residential housing units that are currently here that will be impacted. There's a golf course. In the next slide, I'll go into the details. And then the proposed alignment considers that the northern boundary, which is a lot of these parcels in the majority of the residential units, to remain the way they are currently, and then the future expansion or the widening will happen on the south side. And as you can see on the next slide, if you see on the south side, this is all vacant parcel right now. This is the golf course. And only this area has current residential units and a golf shed, if I zoom in into this area. I really wanted to provide that information because you can see this. There's one house here and another house here, and a shed. These are the only properties that are currently existing on the south side. Yes, sir. I don't know where else to interject this, but I received unsolicitedly two emails from, I presume, those two property owners. And they both said that one pretty specifically said they have no problem with what needs to happen, and the other one said they -- so the two properties there were in support of this alignment, understanding what those potential impacts would be. So that was news to me. And so I wanted to share it with you all, and, of course, we make copies of the emails and distribute them to the council, because I just -- I printed them off right before I came here. So for me, that's helpful to know that, because I think that's one of the things that's been one of the major concerns is that particular issue. So it seems that, at least on its face, that that's -- might have been mitigated somewhat. Thank you. I just wanted to touch on -- Oh, Councilmember, I had a question. I'm looking, and I see the houses, but I also see trees, lots of tree stands along the road. Correct. So how far in, and do we know how much of those we'll have to remove for the widening? So there are a couple things. Currently, there are two -- right now, the way we'll approach this, if this alternative moves forward, is the long-term plan is to widen it. It's a 20-year plan to minimize impact, and it won't happen overnight. It will be a process where it'll be widened as necessary, so it's a phased approach. And in the short-term, we currently have enough right-of-way -- I'm sorry -- if you look at it or zoom in, there is currently enough right-of-way between these fences to actually -- it is between 80 and 100 feet to actually accommodate a four-lane segment with sidewalks, with all the necessary drainage improvements and everything within that particular footprint. As far as trees, yes, there may be some trees that might be displaced, but with any of our corridor projects, what we tend to do is when we design and move forward, we'll try and mitigate those and have them at the appropriate location and make sure that we don't -- we put back what we take out, because there might be some that will be impacted. I wouldn't say that all of them will not be, but there are some that will be impacted. Todd is coming in. I just wanted to also mention that, as with any projects that we initiated from the planning phase going forward, just as we had stated a couple of years ago, that we would make sure we did going forward was tree surveys are part of the design contract, so we identify all of those larger trees, anything over what the development code actually specifies, we must categorize, identify, and then we'll, of course, work towards preserving as much of that as absolutely possible. He says that way better than I do. All right. So any questions on this slide? All right. So alternative -- I do have one. Because it says to widen to a four-lane facility, but you're saying that's short-term, but overall the plan would be to make it six lanes? Correct. So if you look at our proposed mobility plan, it says as a primary arterial, our primary arterial is defined anywhere between four and six lanes, and it all depends on what is the demand. So if in 20 years the demand is, yes, we are at a three-lane section or a four-lane section, and we need to go to a six-lane, yes, we'll move to a six-lane, but primarily it is more addressing in a phased approach, we'll first have that four-lane section in place. And if we reach the capacity and have a lot of congestion, then we'll think of moving to the six-lane section. And funding as far as -- because I know that the main difference between this alternative and the rest are some potential participation of regional funding. It's coming. In the slides? It's in the slides. All right. So next alternative, it's this alignment along the west side of the floodplain. And as you can see, I've shown some of the challenges here. Not only is it the creek that you're crossing the creek a couple times, it's actually three times, four times you're crossing the creek here. And there are some transmission lines going on. So you have to make sure that your height and clearances match with the transmission lines. So there are some challenges with this alternative. It does impact 25 acres, will require 25 acres of right of way. It has severe impacts on the drainage system here. We'll have to mitigate some of the drainage here. And then obviously it doesn't fix any congestion on brush creek with this alternative. Go ahead. How many bridges? Four minimum. One, two, yes. Minimum four bridges. Alternative C, it's on the east side of the floodplain. One of the challenges with this alternative is this transition here, it will be really difficult. It will be a 90 degree because of this railroad coming in. We'll have to really re-engineer this. So that's one. The second issue is the location of the cemetery. I do want to point out that we don't want to get into going through this area or around it. So we'll have to actually move into the floodplain that impacts the floodplain more. And then we go back and cross the creek a couple times here. Yes. Paul, go ahead. Just with respect to the right angle, everything's money, but couldn't you conceivably do an overpass over the railroad at the bottom and, you know, merge in not at a right angle? So. Right. Start there and go. No, no. Coming down the yellow. So this angle, right? Yeah. Couldn't you go over the railroad with an overpass and not end it up? Correct. So this will be an engineering -- that's what I'm saying. This will be an engineering challenge because you'll not only require the bridges over the floodplain and then you'll have to think about bridges over this area and how you tie in. So that's a challenge I mentioned. There's engineering-wise there are challenges and it may increase the cost. We've not looked at over-crossing the railroad, but obviously that's an option. Impacts of right-of-way, this option alternative will require over 31 acres of right-of-way. To make this happen, you have to avoid the transmission lines. There are several issues within this alternative as well. Alternative D, we looked at connecting Ryan Road, which is on this side, to Vintage, which directly connects to 35W. This has minimal right-of-way impacts just because majority of the portion is in the floodplain. We have some city-owned property, but the challenge is how do you tie it in here? So there are considerable higher cost issues here just because this will be grade separated at the railroad and the connection at Ryan Road in 1830 will not be direct. So we'll have to look at alternative designs to make this alternative work. So these are the four alternatives getting into what you pointed out, Mr. Mayor, earlier. These are the cost estimates. We looked at the entire corridors. For all alternatives, the corridors between 35W and FM 2181. And as you can see, alternative A is $155 million, all-in-all cost. The current cost estimate, and these are planning level estimates, for alternative B is a little over a quarter billion dollars. Alternative C is a little over $180 million. And then last alternative is $148 million, just under $150 million. Just want to quickly summarize in summary, talk about connectivity. And this is where you had touched on the funding, please. And I'll go down the table and then talk about the funding letter. But connectivity, you can see direct connectivity with alternative A, and then alternative B is indirect. You have to go up and then go south again, so that's an indirect connectivity as far as the regional connection goes. Parcels impacted, I know there are a number of parcels impacted on alternative A are higher, just because they're really smaller parcels. They've been broken down, that's why the number is high. And that's why I had the next row of things that actually tells you the acreage that's needed for each of these alternatives. So you can have a comparison, it's not just the parcels, but the amount of land that we'll have to acquire in order for these alternatives to work. The next is construction cost, we quickly went over that. And then finally, I do want to touch on the funding. We had a detailed discussion with NCT Cog and Michael Morris and in discussion with them, they have made their independent assessment. We submitted all our alternatives and analysis, they looked at their models, they looked at an independent assessment of projected volumes in this area, projected connections in this area. And based on that, they selected option A as the option that they would support as a regional connection, given that it will attract a lot of traffic, it is a regional connection between two major freeway systems, 35W and 35E, that they will be willing to look at possible funding partnerships with the city. And as you can see, once we get the regional partners involved, typically they do match 80%. So this is just to give you an idea of what kind of funding the city may have to take on if we go one alternative or select whichever alternative we want to move forward with. And this is the letter that we received. Is your next slide a question slide? Yes. Okay. We're taking questions, Council Member. Go ahead. Yeah, there you go. Could you go back to the previous slide, please? Absolutely. So, you know, I'm not sure what I think yet. I'm looking forward to, you know, hearing the deliberation and participating in it. But just regarding the funding, I just want to comment. Mr. Morris can be an extremely helpful person, but I just want to clarify, he is not a branch of government himself. He's staff, right, to regional transportation council, and is accountable to a representative body that we're on. So if we had a very compelling case to bring for something different than that, wouldn't it be true that it's not impossible to have a further conversation? I mean, we feel a very heavy thumb on the scale right now, maybe in the right place. I mean, anyway, I don't know, but, you know, is that not true that we have every course if there's considerations that we would want to bring to bear for another alternative? We asked Mr. Morris to evaluate all four of those options, and we're clearly told that they would not support anything other than option A. It doesn't mean that's the only option we could consider, but his recommendation is weighed very heavily. He's an expert in utilizing federal dollars and the direct connectivity between $24.99 and I-35W is what he was weighing. So we asked that question. It's highly unlikely that they're going to overrule him and force him, force Cog to participate if he doesn't recommend it. Looks like you have something to add, Mr. Mayor. Well, I mean, I served on the Cog board for a year, and just as here, you know, at this level, we rely heavily on staff and recommendations, and I'm going to say that you would have to have one heck of a compelling argument for that body to move against a recommendation by Mr. Morris because he has been doing this for so many years. So if he's saying option A, I'm not going to, especially given some of the other factors, I would not necessarily want to roll the dice on that one, but also they have participated, I believe, in the Mayhill connectivity and also with the Bonnie Bray alignment for the school. Obviously, he's been involved in all of those discussions, so I've put a lot of credence in his recommendations as the expert for that particular body. So sorry to go out of order on request, but I just wanted to respond to that. Let's see. I think it was Councilmember Armitage and then Councilmember Davis, and then Councilmember Ryan. So the cost to the city include the cost to purchase the rights of way and properties that includes those costs also, so the $31 million for option A, yeah. So obviously, and I look forward to hearing what colleagues have to say into the conversation, when it comes to costs, there's the one option that is much less expensive because we've got other partners helping out, but when we're looking at impacts, there's some other concerns that arise, and I got those same emails that the Mayor got. I think they went to, I assume they went to Olive Council, excuse me, from the two property owners who, one or both, whom have homes there, and they're happy to sell their property. I also heard from one who I assume went to Olive Council, who lives in the area, who said, don't freeway our country road, and I don't know if that's the same person or same family who came to speak to the bond committee one day when I sat in. I wasn't on that committee, obviously, but I sat in and somebody who lives further up that road was speaking, very concerned about it. So anyway, I look forward to hearing the conversation, but I share those concerns about what the impacts would be and hoping there can be some kind of perfect solution worked out. Council Member Davis? I don't know about a perfect solution, but I kind of have my own thoughts that I'll loop back to a little bit later on after the discussion progresses, but my kind of initial question is, is the COG and the regional transportation council's interest in the project solely the connection between East and West and making that regional connection, or does it depend upon kind of the level of service and lane miles available to that connection? I mean, we could make the connection relatively easy pretty quickly, especially since we're already aligning, realigning Hickory Creek, and then we also have, already is reserved with the developer, or is their funding contingent on a level of service with that connection and you have to have, like, are they interested in the four lane road or nothing, or are they interested in making the connection and making it what I would think appropriately? I think they're interested in the, not just the connection, but the capacity that goes with the connection. Because it is a regional connector, the capacity is really important, and that's their primary driver, to have that flowing capacity from one main regional connection, which is the 35W to 2499, which then connects to 35E. So they're really interested in the capacity enhancements, not necessarily just the connection. And when they think capacity enhancements, are they thinking a project that is complete at four lanes tomorrow, or in the five years, or when it's built, or are they thinking that we, are they interested in a project that has capacity for growth in the future, even if we built a facility that's not, you know, four lanes tomorrow? Correct. They have worked with us in the past with a phased approach, and we're doing that currently on sections of Bonnie Bray, sections of Mayhill. We're moving forward with a four lane facility, but in the future, we'll go with a six lane. So it's not necessarily that they want a full blown six lane, or a four lane tomorrow. It's more of the, let's have an alignment figured out, and let's have a city's mobility plan that they can use, and use that for a regional mobility plan. And once that's in, funding and supporting becomes easier for him as far as federal dollars. Thank you. Council member Ryan. Thank you, Mayor. And as the representative on the RTC, I was in on the conference call with Michael Morris on this, and it was all through a logical process to get to option A. Option D was not something they were interested in, but was something that they thought should be remain in our mobility plan. In anything on mobility, you're going to have steps. You've got to have it on your mobility plan, then you can get it into your tip plan, your transportation improvement plan, and then you can go to the UTP and move on up. It's not like we decide today and tomorrow they're going to have bulldozers out there widening this road. The fact that we do have enough, from what I understand, enough right away, right now, to do four lanes without any issue, that was part of the conversation with Mr. Morris was that Ryan Road, our bond package, only increased it to a three-lane road, so it was not going to have the capacity that Hickory Creek, that we're already widening, is going to have. All these things add up together, and I mean, as a member of the RTC, I see different projects like this from all throughout the region on a regular basis, and this is the way that these things will come about, and to me, option A is the best option. If you've ever driven in that area and you were using a Waze or some type of system that's going to tell you how to get from one place to another, it's going to take you across Brush Creek Road, even though it's not improved right now. That traffic's going to be pushed across there regardless, so the best bet is to improve the road to where it can handle the capacity for the future. - So when we look at all the options like this, do we factor in fiscal analysis, fiscal impact, like maintenance, ongoing cost, rebuilding? Is that something that we look at as well when we're choosing options? - It's certainly a factor, and of course, any time that you put in a roadway to replace a roadway, it's a marginal increase because we're already maintaining pieces of roadway that exist today, so it's a marginal increase as opposed to creating a brand-new roadway where one does not exist. It will add to the maintenance costs because you're still maintaining the old roadway, and I've added a new one. - Council Member Baxter. - So building on Council Member Davis's question, what is the, from the RTC's point of view, what is the imagined timetable? Is this a 40-year plan to get to six lanes, or rather, I'm sorry, not 40-year, 2040? What is the expectation for the intervals along the way? Has it to go two to four to six, or can the gradations vary and can the time intervals vary and still meet their vision? - So typically when we're projecting some of these traffic and forecasting, it's 20-year horizon. Currently, the cog models are 2045, so by 2045, some of the growth in the area, some of the regional traffic and connections require a sixth lane to go in place by 2045. Some of these growth areas, some of the growth happens slower, some of it happens at a faster place pace, but the way it is, is once we have on the mobility plan, as Council Member Ryan said, that gives us a chance to have a phased approach to get to the sixth lane. Now continually, we'll be tracking and we'll have, okay, first thing, at certain points, we'll continue to evaluate and in five years or seven years, if we feel the necessity to go forward and enhance this to a four lane, then we can move forward with it, but it has to be on our mobility plan in order to move forward. So currently, these projections are 2045. - Okay, so they don't need to know that it's gonna hit goalposts at any particular point. It's when the man's there. That's helpful. - Any other questions? - Yes, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, I'm good with A, only because I think, first of all, it provides us, otherwise we can't do it. I mean, we're not gonna spend $148 million to get an alignment over to Ryan Road of city dollars when there's so many other needs. Secondly, it has probably the minimal, the smallest impact, yeah, the number of parcels but the acreage is about the same on the low cost one. It's not gonna be done tomorrow, which is some of the concern I think I've heard of people, but also the right of way outside of the two houses, the maintenance shed and some of these other, we're already within the right of way for a four lane highway. So a four lane road. So I understand the concern, I do. My house is on Bonnie Bray. It was a two lane road. It's going to four lanes and right after my house and my neighbor's house, everybody south of that is getting cut off or they gotta go down to Rose Lawn and come back the other way. So it's unfortunate that sometimes these things do have impacts. But in one of the emails that was sent was, it was a good observation, said, here's an opportunity for us to get ahead of the development, to get ahead of the curve, whereas right now what we've been doing for the last decade is catching up a lot of development has been going in on these two lane roads and now we're catching up, which then creates even more issues as you're trying to work around all that additional traffic. So I'm okay with a only because I think it's not going to happen in the near future of a couple of years. It gives people an idea to begin to see what's gonna happen, gives the region a chance to continue to develop, and it may materialize where you need a six lane and it may not. But it's very difficult to say when we have a need, we've identified a need to get across. I mean, whether it's regional or whether it's just for the city. And to say that we're going to choose something that is a hundred million dollar partnership. Now if they do that, that still maintains a city road. Is that correct? Correct. So that is a city road. Do they typically, would they build those out of asphalt or concrete? What are we doing now? We're going, our preference and choice will be asphalt for regional connector arterials. Okay. All right. And that's just policy from the engineering department and just the recommendation from the engineering department. Correct. And traffic. Okay. So I would say with the associated understanding that it's a phased approach, that what I'm hearing you say, it just needs to be in the mobility plan. And that's really what this decision is, is which one of these do we put in the mobility plan? And once it's in the mobility plan for something this big, it's going to be very difficult to begin to change that three or four years down the road should something develop there. Oh, well, we should have gone with A if we go with an alternative. Okay. All right. Council member Davis. Council member -- yeah, I didn't see who -- yeah, who chimed in first. I think there's a, you know, kind of community conversation need, just if we're going to be fair about representing community sentiment, the only two parties that I've heard express, you know, kind of moderated support or not objection, you know, ironically maybe are those two. Well, I've heard the opposite from people. I've heard people express the resistance. Yes. You know what I'm talking about. But I do, you know, share the sentiment, you know, express that it's because of the feeling like this is coming now and there's no feeling of certainty about it. And, you know, I think there should be an opportunity for people to express to us in public, you know, their concerns, but also to hear somewhat more concretely what the likely timetable would be, because their vision of the future is pretty unpleasant right now, but it might be different if they -- also if we had some greater ability to make commitments. I mean, obviously it's going to be based on need, but we can also make forecasts about when those needs would hit. You know, I think that's an important conversation to have, not to make people feel, you know, sort of unheard and not represented. Council member Davis. So first of all, I'm really glad we're having this conversation today separate from the mobility plan in total, because it's -- like you pointed out just at the beginning, it is a linchpin for the rest of this region of the city. But I'm really concerned about a couple of things in this area, and in part in reaction to some of the community sentiment, and then in part just having driven this area and watched this area grow over time, I'm really concerned about induced traffic. I'm really concerned that as soon as you put together a connection that doesn't currently exist, in part you're alleviating some traffic, because like council member Ryan said, some people are going to be directed to make that connection anyway. They're going to find whatever dogleg they can to make that connection, and they're going to overburden Brush Creek. Whether we connect it through Allred or not, they're going to make their way. They already are making their way down Brush Creek. But at the same time, you know, if you build out four lanes where currently we only need a couple of lanes or maybe improve and widen and provide some options, the next thing you know, that's the easy flow. That's easy connection. And maybe that's from an engineering perspective, maybe that's what we want, is to go ahead and let people make that connection. But right now, again, not being a traffic engineer, but I don't see a huge demand for people needing to go from the exit off 35W to, you know, an exit onto or an onramp onto 35E. It's folks who live and work in neighborhoods and businesses needing to get out, maybe make three quarters of the distance and not half the distance. The other thing I'm really concerned about is, at this point, when we're talking mobility plans, we're talking 50,000-foot view, our constituents are talking five-foot view. When we put a big red line across a map, they read that as a primary arterial, and they read that as six lanes in my backyard, and it doesn't really matter if it's going to happen 30 years from now or if it's going to happen tomorrow. They don't want six lanes. I'm not personally convinced we need six lanes across Brush Creek. So I put this in an email, and I'm going to go ahead and kind of read into the record because my colleagues have seen it also. I would like to see a both-and. I would like to see both A and D in the mobility plan as secondary arterials, and I don't know what that designation would do for the southern leg, the Brush Creek leg. I don't know what that would do to NCTCOG and the funding, but I currently don't see a need for us to be worrying our folks with the specter of a six-lane highway, of a primary arterial on what is currently a two-lane highway. So I'd like to see both alternatives in the mobility plan, A and D, as secondary arterials, and then start working our way down Brush Creek, just like you've been talking about as the phased approach, and I think what I said in my email that makes a lot of sense to me and to some of the people in that neighborhood are a travel lane in each direction and then a turn lane. The other big concern that has not been addressed yet in this conversation is property access. Some of these folks are not city of Denton residents. Some of these folks are not going to have access to their driveways if there's a six-lane controlled highway running through, or if, like we have on barrel strap, this is not so far-fetched, on barrel strap, we've got sound walls right down the road, and there's access limited now to parcels of land. So anyway, that's what people are worried about happening, and if we only say today we're doing lines on the map and tomorrow we figure out the details, that's not sufficient. They have to know what's on the way. Councilmember Armitage. Yeah, I like Councilmember Davis's suggestion, and I support that for the peace of mind of the people who live in this area. Again, I understand that the two other property owners who would be selling their property or part of their property are okay with it, but I don't think it'll be comforting for people to know that this possibility is being prolonged at some point into the future. I think they would rather know that there are both of these options, and to circle back to what Councilmember Meltzer said, having public input, you know, something in writing, I would like to see in the mobility plan about when this happens, that there be public input from the people -- everybody who lives in that entire area, because it is likely to really change that area. I'll also throw out there, you know, 2030 plan concerns. I know a 2030 plan doesn't have much teeth to it, and we're going to be looking at it again, but one of the things I really like about it is its commitment to preserving our rural peripheries and having more density, more to the center of town. It's kind of like, you know, traffic engineering is kind of like water maintenance or water direction, and it's like opening up, you know, a place for all this traffic to come in, in a currently dry-ish area, but I'm thrilled, of course, by the improvements that are going to come for this -- come with this, but that's why I support that proposal. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> So I also think the connection is really important. What I'm not really in agreement with, as Councilmember Davis said, is the size and the intensity of it, and creating this large, speeding highway-type thing in this connection. So I would be in favor of the connection as it is, but not as wide, not as large. >> Well, it's going to be interesting five or ten years from now, depending on how this goes. I mean, I don't know if I'm opposed to secondary arterials, but I think we've got to be really careful because we're doing that to try to assuage some kind of sentiment today, when if in five or ten years from now we decide, whatever council is sitting here, with cog money, that this thing needs to be four-lane -- I cannot agree to doing a two-lane with a turn lane because we know what construction costs are doing. If we have funding available, let's just do it. This is how we've gotten -- we've all lamented about Sherman Drive. We've all lamented about all these developments that are coming in on these farm-to-market roads. And if you think that this part of the city is immune, look at I-35 from Fort Worth. It's coming straight down, and this area is not immune. So I don't -- let's have the public input, but let's also understand that we're planning for community growth. Now, if you all want to stop growth, okay, that's fine. But here, if you want to have two options, fair enough, but I can't go along with a two-lane with a turn lane. If you're going to do something and you've got the money, do it because we are facing right now the results of when we don't do that, when we do say, well, we're going to try to not rip the Band-Aid off, but kind of just peel it off a little bit at a time, and that's difficult. So I don't need a six-lane road there, necessarily, but what I don't want to do is tell people you're not going to have a six-lane road, and then 15 years from now, oh, you guys want a six-lane -- we need a six-lane road. And then you've created a heck of a lot more concern, and quite frankly, you've sort of misrepresented -- I mean, you've set people up for a much bigger fall than saying, hey, this is the potential. We don't know if it's going to happen, but this is the worst-case scenario instead of saying we're going to mitigate it a little bit, but we may need to in the future. Honestly, that doesn't help anybody out. And as far as access, I don't know the streets you're talking about. I'll have to go look at that. But any time these projects have happened, people -- you know, things shift, and that's unfortunate. But I think we've all experienced when we've had to grow, we've all sort of had to bear some impact on that. So how are we classified in the mobility plan as long as you guys are okay with what the potential is? Because whether it's a three-lane or a four-lane, that's a decision not to be made by this council. That's a decision to be made somewhere down the road once that funding comes into place or that partnership begins. Is that correct? Yes, I mean, staff's recommendation would be to leave them as primary arterials from the standpoint that as development does occur, whenever development does come in, you're preserving the right-of-way that we will need for the ultimate roadway. Now, any individual project that comes forward will still have to come back before council. The conversations will still have to be had about is it a three-lane, is it a four-lane, is it a six-lane. Those conversations will still have to be had. There will still be public meetings tied to all of those as they come up. So it's not a one-shot and done. There's absolutely no intent not to let this develop organically, but it is preserving the intent of what those corridors are, which they are primary arterials as we see them today. So I want to make a clarification. So when they say, because I know Councilmember Davis said, leave in A and D as secondary arterials, and Cog said they don't have an issue with D being in there as well. But from staff's perspective, are you saying that A would be classified as a primary arterial and then D is? Probably secondary. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. That's an interesting concept, though, about preserving the right-of-way, because if it's a secondary and it develops and we need to go in and do a primary, then we purchase that right-of-way. Okay. Councilmember Ryan. Yeah. Well, I've heard a couple of my fellow Councilmembers mention that if you build this bigger road, you're going to have more traffic. Well, you're going to have more traffic regardless. The cars have to get around. Right now, because Hickory Creek is at Country Club is so hazardous, that's the reason why we had to put traffic calming devices through Thistle Hill, because that's the route I take. I go down Hickory Creek and turn up River Pass and cut through the neighborhood, and a lot of people do that stuff. So unless you build where you want to have the majority of the traffic going, give them a place to go. You are going to just push people to do cut-throughs through neighborhoods, and it is really about preserving the right-of-way. I mean, how long has 377 been on the plan to be widened? About 30 years, and it's just now finally getting done. It may be 20 years. It may be 30 years. It may be five years. It just depends on how the growth comes in through there, but once we put that bridge across on Hickory Creek, people are going to go straight across Brush Creek, whether you want them to or not, just because that's the easy alternative. That's the neighborhood cut-through, if you want to call it that, but you're going to find the easiest path, and most drivers will over time. So just for clarification, I'm okay with staff's recommendation of A being primary arterial and D being secondary arterial. Council Member Crespin. I'm okay with staff's recommendation as well, and I think not enough has been made about the land values and that component in the right-of-way, because if we take the other staged approach, my concern is succinctly a developer or land purchaser swoops in and buys the land for the express purpose of an investment to wait us out, and then the price spikes, and you're telling people where you're going, and then we purchase a smaller amount knowing there's a potential for a larger amount. If I'm able, financially, I'll swoop in and buy that stretch and wait, anticipating the growth, because we've already said the growth is coming, everyone kind of -- we forecast where we're going, and so that kind of pricing issue is significant to me, and you look in town for me, for those that maybe don't travel south as much, look no further than McKinney. We need to widen McKinney, and it's going to cost a large, large amount of money to buy the right-of-way we need, because it developed right around us, and that's going to be a major impediment to that happening. Had we had the space and had people had to buy in or dedicate that land early on, it would be a much easier process. So for me, I'm okay with staff's recommendation because the alternative is punitive, I do believe, one, just from a fiscal dollar standpoint, and then, two, the investor's kind of standpoint. You're kind of projecting where you're going, and we've seen what the numbers are and then the numbers when the city's trying to buy the land. Thanks. So a couple of things I think are important to remember as we're talking this through. We have the right-of-way now for four lanes. That's been established. Four lanes is the lower threshold of our primary arterial. If it's a question of maintaining right-of-way or reserving right-of-way and all of that, we've done that. We have that for a primary arterial at four lanes. If we're saying we need to go to six lanes, which I fundamentally disagree with, then that's when we have to have the conversation about reserving more right-of-way, getting involved with developers and reserving as they come along and all that kind of stuff. Right now, and then, to your point, Mr. Mayor, about the turn lane option, the three lanes, one being a turn lane, we could build, potentially with regional money, a four-lane surface that is striped to one lane each direction, a center turn lane, and substantial fog lanes. Sure. At some future date, when these folks all experience the traffic that we expect will happen, right now, they do not see the volume of cars, even with our car counts. They are firmly opposed to even the car counts we have based on computer car counts. They don't believe them. They don't see them. If we build this facility out and we see the traffic we expect to see, this will be a different conversation in several years. This will be a different conversation when the new neighbors out there are the homes that are being developed and all that. That is why I proposed my compromise as a phased approach, but I think it is important to leave it designated as a secondary arterial because primary arterial means six lanes. That is just, in people's minds, that is what it means. It means the potential to be six lanes, and I fundamentally don't think we need six lanes in that part of the world. My perfect example is Windsor. We are at two lanes on Windsor. There is not some huge stack and we are going to get into a whole other engineering conversation a totally different day on a different posting about Windsor and its expansion. Windsor is an excellent connection between 77 and Bonnie Bray, two very busy facilities, but you don't see some massive flow back and forth along Windsor. It is at two lanes and it is doing just fine. So I think the phased approach is not to put our marker down for a primary arterial. I think the phased approach is to today it is a secondary arterial and then in our next mobility plan ten years from now, maybe then we up it to a primary arterial, but today I don't see the need for it. That is what I fundamentally disagree with because I think what you are doing is you are setting up the community and those people who buy in that community, you are not giving them a clear representation of what may happen. If it is a primary arterial, that doesn't mean that it has to go to six lanes. There is nothing -- that doesn't mean that the city's objective is to build six lanes out. So really it is just a difference of approach. You are saying I want to label it a secondary arterial so that it sort of caps the perception of what could be coming down through there which is I think a secondary arterial is what, four lanes? Four lanes, yes. Four lanes. Whereas I am saying I don't want to hamstring us in the future. I would not want to come back in ten years if a primary arterial is needed and have that conversation because then you will have people saying, well, wait a minute, this was a secondary arterial. You all had this big conversation and the whole point was this instead of going, this could be this and we need to plan for that but doesn't mean that it is going to be that. That is just a difference of approach on how we approach this particular thing. I want to make sure something is verified in the right-of-way comment that you made. We do have the right-of-way currently for four lanes, correct? Yes. We have the width for four lanes. If this were a secondary arterial in the mobility plan and if developers begin to come in and purchase large tracts of land to put in residential subdivisions, you know, strip centers and things such as that, then because it is labeled a secondary arterial, we already have sufficient right-of-way so they don't, there is no right-of-way dedication, is that correct? Let me point out, as mentioned in the slide, we have anywhere between 80 and 100 feet and it depends on the cross-section you are looking at throughout this entire length. So our secondary right-of-way requirement is 110 feet just to give you an idea. If anyone new comes in, make sure to go to 110 feet. That is my point. You will make up whatever that right-of-way parameter is with under a secondary definition. One other thing to just throw into the consideration is that since the mobility plan of 1998 and thrown all the way through the 2015, both Allred and Brush Creek have been primary arterials on those mobility plans as well as what we are proposing going forward. They were designated as primary arterials all the way as far back as '98 in the mobility plan. So then what are you recommending that is new? We are not recommending primary arterial and that we are going straight across. And it has been primary arterial for both of them and just making that connection somewhere, that little dotted line. So we would not be downgrading if we go to a secondary arterial with a new mobility plan. This is the mobility plan existing. You can see it is red as primary arterial. Council Member Briggs and then Council Member Armitage and Paul. So can you help me with the Hickory Creek Road part? Is that also going to be an arterial primary? Because McNair Elementary, and I sent an email and I received an email, I saw a lady comment in the newspaper article about it, and is very concerned about that going very wide and high speed with a school there and children crossing. So that's another big concern of mine as well, and can you remind me the max speed limits from primary to secondary? There's not a maximum speed limit on either. It's truly based on what people with those speeds, we intend for them to be the target speeds Brian has been talking about. Typically you see them at 45, but that doesn't mean it can't be reduced down. And you do that through a wide variety of areas. It may not be a 12 foot wide lane, it might be an 11 foot or even a 10 foot lane. The more you shrink down that, the width of the lane, then people don't feel as comfortable driving so fast. So one of the examples that would be like Teasley, where they built very wide lanes, TxDOT did when they built the four lane segment of Teasley coming south of I-35, and people do go fast because they feel comfortable going fast. There are other alternatives for the school as well, and that would be some other physical barriers, some other things that don't exist today, because as I understand it, those conditions occur today, which is having our traffic folks look at that scenario and say how do we make that not be a problem today as well as understand what we do in the future to make sure that's not a problem. All right. Well, just one last comment is that I'm really concerned about that. If it's a problem today, it's certainly going to be a bigger problem with the plan here going forward. And just because something has been in the plan for years and years and years and years doesn't mean, I mean, that's what we're doing today. We re-evaluate and we look to see if it makes sense, right? And so, I mean, that's why we're continuing to -- And understandably, I'm not advocating either way. This is purely your discussion. I just want to make sure you have all the facts on the table. That comment wasn't necessarily for you. Okay. I'm just saying overall, generally, I mean, we have these discussions and these plans and we review them over and over again to make sure that what we say is, you know, what we -- And anything we design, to your point about the school, anything we design, that's the Vision Zero concept. These are all issues that we have to take into account regardless of where we are, what type of roadway it is, what type of facility it is. We're very concerned about those issues. Let's -- we've been going for -- let's take about a five-minute break. We'll come back with Councilmember Armitage and Councilmember Meltzer will be up. Make sure we've got a quorum. Welcome back to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Tuesday, February 11, 2020. It is 3 -- no, 2 -- 53 p.m. We are on agenda item 3B. Up now is Councilmember Armitage for comment and question and then followed by Councilmember Meltzer and then Councilmember Ryan. Okay. So two things. So, number one, so what we had been talking about before we went on break, others had mentioned the fact that the mobility plan, you know, dating way back, sees this as a primary arterial road. From my perspective, I see that as an inconsistency between the -- our long-standing mobility plan and the 2030 plan, which I see -- I see the 2030 plan as superseding the mobility plan because everything falls under that. So when there's an inconsistency, I would -- I myself would turn to the 2030 plan anyway, if that makes sense. I think that the goals of the 2030 plan and its vision for Denton don't foresee this as a primary arterial road regardless of what's in the mobility plan. So that was one thing. Second, questions about the funding. If you could go back to the funding slide. Where it has the different options in the -- let's see which one was -- yes. So the last -- the last two rows -- excuse me -- possible funding from regional partners. So that includes -- so as I understand it, that includes text.cog and also private developments that we know will be coming to this area. Well, that may come to this area and fill in that area. We do know of some that are interested in that area already, not who continues to fill out development of the area. We don't know yet. Okay, so it doesn't -- so it's not -- so it had been my understanding that it was -- not because anyone initially told me specifically, I just assumed based on what I heard, that these were developments that had already been plotted and permitted and whatnot, but not necessarily. There are permits for a variety of places on the west side of 1830 that have already come through. On the west side, there are developers that are coming in having conversations with us that would present an opportunity to put in some of this roadway by the developer coming in and constructing it. And so this -- and those possible funding sources are included in this total of $1.4 million for A. And so are the -- and TextDOT, you mentioned that they're -- they have committed to the intersections, if there's a connection, and that COG would be filling in the gaps between the -- is that correct? Correct. And they help us find that funding avenue from other sources, federal or state. So my question is -- so I guess I don't understand then why it's zero possible funding for options B, C, and D, when -- or never mind even B, C, and D, but for -- if there can be another solution where I guess we could call it E, let's say the solution would be proposed, but it's more of a D, where we have that connectivity all the way through, but have it as a secondary -- primary arterial road -- I'm sorry, as a secondary arterial road, wouldn't TextDOT still be -- couldn't we presume TextDOT would still cover the funding for that -- for the intersections if they've already committed, and wouldn't the developers, regardless of what goes along that road, they have to -- they have to pay impact fees for whatever ends up there, right? And the intersections, yes, TextDOT would still be that partner. Now, once you get into the floodplain, which also coincides with ESAs, those are going to be areas that are -- they're going to be very off limits to the development community, which is why you see a zero. I mean, if you're right, I mean, we could add in an estimate for TextDOT at those intersections. It might account for $10 million of that delta, but private development most likely will not be contributing to those areas, because there's no real area for them to develop adjacent to it. So the development contribution usually comes in the form of they develop adjacent to the roadway being built, much like you see a lot of residential developments being built on the north side of a road or a south side of a road, and they build their half of the roadway. In the cases where we'd be going through the floodplain along Hickory Creek, alternates B and D or B and C for sure, you're not going to have that same kind of development partner. Same with the Ryan Road connection. And what about D? D is that Ryan Road. Oh, the D. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I guess I would like to -- I mean, I still stand where I stood before with preferring the alternative that Council Member Davis suggested, but I would like to see those numbers come back, the zeros with some -- We could definitely put the $10 million estimate in for the intersection. Yeah. Yeah. Because it does say possible anyway, so that covers a lot, so not necessarily zeros. Thank you. Council Member Meltzer. I think, you know, there's probably consensus in general towards A in some form or fashion. Most of the discussion -- your room for discussion is around pace and what steps and what goals. And while, you know, I like -- I really like being both decisive when the conditions are right and it's the right thing to do, but it's not obvious to me what's driving the timing on all of that, and I'd suggest that we're a little out of sequence for at least three reasons that I can see. One is we're guessing how the local community will feel about what we say now, what we might say in the future, instead of actually engaging in dialogue. So it's not obvious to me why we have to do this before doing that. Secondly, we're assessing regional mobility needs, but not assessing local public safety demand, and how does that map onto it in terms of where communities are, and might come out exactly the same way. We just have had zero assessment of that. And third, you know, it's kind of posed -- it's been posed in this conversation that it's either you're going to have growth or not, and I think the challenge in Denton is to grow in a way where we're going to like the final result, and, you know, personally I think that it's important, as was expressed in the 2030 plan, that along the way we preserve some natural areas, some rural areas. I don't know exactly here or where, but, you know, it's kind of growing compatibly, so we like the whole master plan. I understand the desirability of growing in the south, obviously, because, you know, it's closer to Dallas and more work. But if we're going to redo the comprehensive plan with any sense of integrity at all, then I think we can't make it a foregone conclusion and tell people, well, you know, you can talk about this, but we already planned a -- it's a plain highway that's going to go in here. That's where the growth is. You know, that's just doing an end run around the community. So my personal belief is, like I said, we're probably moving toward some form or fashion on A, but we should assess local public safety needs, we should develop the comprehensive plan as a community, we should have the local neighborhood community conversation and then come back to, you know, kind of polishing up the how much, how fast discussion. I don't -- unless I hear something different than I've heard so far, I don't see why, you know, that must be decided in a work session today. >> Councilmember Ryan. >> Thank you, Mayor. I'll try to keep my questions in line with where you're at on the slide right now. That $155 million on option A, that is for the entirety from 2181 out to 35, is that correct? >> Correct. >> How much have we already invested in what's under construction right now and what we plan to spend on the bridge that was approved in the bond package? >> We have roughly 31 million listed here, but it's actually $34 million that's in the 2019 bond to the construction from River Pass to 1830. We have 3 million currently that's already in the initial planning phases and design, full design of this connection between 1830 and River Pass, plus some monies in there to allow us to go start acquiring right away in that segment between 1830 and River Pass. Then we currently have under construction the stretch from River Pass back over to 2181, it's about $8 million, $8.5 million total project costs involved in that one. >> Okay. And part of this -- part of Brush Creek is still county land, is it not? >> Yes. >> It's not incorporated yet? So we've been in conversation with -- let's see, that would be Commissioner Reddison -- >> Yeah. >> -- District. So there's -- part of that potential 124 is from there as well. >> Right. And pretend there is that $8 million that's going from River Pass to 2181 is actually RTR funds. >> Okay. All right. Can you go back to slide 3? It's kind of the current plan, current mobility plan, which that's what we are doing right now is upgrading our mobility plan and as I look at this I see where Hickory Creek was going to kind of come up and not really connect and so what we're doing is we're doing a better job of connecting and having a straight through shop as opposed to having to do that hop through a neighborhood type situation, we've got to make 15 turns. The other major thing that pops out at me on this is everything on the other side of 35W is coal ranch, hunter ranch. That's all being developed most likely in this next 15, 20, 30, 40 years. So to say that there's not going to be growth on this side of the highway when there's that much on the other side doesn't really make sense to me. We had a secondary arterial, I kind of know the answer to this one, and we went to the RTC and asked for funding. Would they say oh, yeah, or would they kind of laugh at us and say why would we want to help fund a secondary arterial? >> So we have not had that particular discussion with them so I don't know the direct answer to that. >> I do want to point out in this letter that they're referring to a specific volume and referring to a specific need which means the capacity has to reach there in order for them to actually support it so it's not just based on random thoughts. They have a traffic model, they have a model for future and it predicts that there is a demand and that capacity would satisfy the demand for regional traffic in the area. So yes, just based on these numbers we can say we can confirm exactly six lanes versus four lanes but the numbers tell that there is a need and they're referring to that. >> And currently in the RTC's 2045 plan, what roads in Denton are on that plan? >> I can't answer that one. >> I can answer that one. The only thing that's on there is loop 288 on the west side and I was very saddened to see that we -- and what I kind of question it is because of the way that our current map has this up and down, there really wasn't a thoroughfare going through that they could get behind that unless our mobility plan was updated to include those types of things, it was difficult for them to be able to help us out in any way and so this is really kind of straightening it out, getting in a good place with cog and such and right now is also an opportune time because Andy Eads, our county commissioner, is the chair of the RTC so if we want to get something on to the TIP plan, get it in the works, this is a really good time to be working on that. >> That covers all of my questions. >> Thank you. >> Councilmember Davis. >> Two quick things, I've said my piece, a quick word on growth, one of the things we're kind of leaving out of our growth conversation here is density. This is an area that we're not going to expect to see as dense as say Teasley trails or even parts of coal in Hunter Ranch, the part that we're talking about is adjacent to a country club and a flood plain so I don't think we're going to see in homes that are -- if they are in the city of Denton we call them R1 and the ones that are in the city of Denton are mostly R1 so I think there's a density conversation we're leaving out also that we're not going to have as dense a concentration of rooftops in this area. The other last thing I'll say is having regional money available weighs heavily in favor, I think Councilmember Meltzer put it, has a thumb on the scale in favor of a certain course of action but that does not provide a sole justification, we don't need to build a road just because someone at the regional level said we would support a road were you to put it here, it has to be a fit for us. I'm not convinced that primary arterial is a fit for us and when we say, Mayor I agree with you that we have kind of a difference of approach but the fundamental difference I think is I would like to see it capped at four lanes, not at six, that is my preference for this area and I think it's appropriate for this area. I think there are alternatives, alternative routes people can take even if we're fully built out on both sides of the highway and inside the triangle. So that's just where I'm at on it. I would prefer to see the two secondary arterials like I talked about earlier. Yeah no I don't even know if we have that big of a disagreement, I'm just simply saying that you want it capped out at four, but even if we did four, let's say we do four, based upon this letter, at least this letter, which says they're in favor of option A and at that date of February the 5th, 2020, option A is presented to them was an arterial road. So we're probably, I mean that's an unanswered question but based upon the letter, that's how I'm interpreting that letter, I'm simply saying you're the one that made the comment that well if we come back in 10 years it needs to be an arterial, we can do that. I based my comment on your comment. So what I'm hearing you say is that you want it capped at four and you don't want to come back and that's fine, but that's really what we're talking about here today is we can talk about growth. Councilmember Melser, you mentioned something about the comprehensive plan and that somehow we need to do the comprehensive plan before we do this. The comprehensive plan is through 2030. Are you talking about the mobility plan or are you talking about the 2030 plan? The redo of the 2030 plan because that's budgeted for this year. To redo the 2030 plan, to then make it a 2040 plan. It's updated. In several parts of the 2030 plan where growth has occurred more rapidly, we're already getting development pressures and the mobility plan and thoroughfare plan did not even anticipate that we'd be growing that fast that far north. So I think that's a good example of these sort of long range, high elevation plans. They're sort of a template, but that doesn't mean that number one, that's how it should actually develop, it's sort of a goal. That doesn't mean how it's going to actually develop because sometimes it will do something other than that. I hear a lot of people jumping around trying to figure out, let's have a neighborhood conversation. But in the end, this body is going to have to decide, is this an arterial on the mobility plan or is this a secondary, what do you call it, secondary? Arterial. Primary arterial. I'm sorry, primary arterial and a secondary arterial, and that's really what this whole discussion is about. So we can put it off for six months, a year, or whatever people's appetite is, but it's a little disingenuous to say that, well, we're here to change these things and therefore, if it's been a primary arterial in the plan since 1998, it really makes no sense to me why all of a sudden we'd come along where this is the main area of growth that's going to occur. And if people say there's not going to be growth here, look at Sherman Drive, look at Locust Street, I mean, and I'm just simply saying, if we're going to plan, we don't have to necessarily say it's going to hit that plan, but to do otherwise, if we sit here and shortchange it on capacity, and we can push the can down the road because another council is going to be dealing with it. And so I just want everybody to know this is where we are, and I don't care where you are, if you're at secondary, that's fine, but there's a consequence for limiting it, whereas the consequence for saying it could be this, that doesn't mean it's going to be this. If you say it can only be this, that doesn't mean that it's not going to need to be something different. Or you're going to have to have a whole different -- so we've had enough discussion. I'm going to let you talk very briefly. We need to get some direction to staff, which we don't really have, quote-unquote, a consensus, but I think we have probably some direction that is either even or there's one that's more prominent than the other. So council member, and if you could go ahead and state your preference in wrapping up your comments. >> Well, so what I was going to mention was it sounds to me like we possibly have a consensus on capping it at four lanes. >> You mean making it secondary, ulterior? >> Yes, secondary, ulterior, and that is obviously where I stand, but I feel like we've got consensus on that. >> Secondary, ulterior? >> Secondary, ulterior? >> No. I'm for -- >> So you're not picking one? >> I think it matters that the sequence that make a decision and then have the community conversation, make a decision and then have redo the 2030 plan, to me is the wrong sequence. So that's my input. I think we have to know what the goals of the community are and then suit those. That's my input. >> Okay. So the answer to that question is no. You're saying you're not going to choose a primary or secondary. You want the community conversation in this review of the 2030 plan update before we do that. >> Yes. >> Okay. Mayor Pro Tem. >> So I'm for staff's recommendation for the reason you touched on in that future councils will make this decision. As the staff pointed out, it will come back to us to design it, and I think it's misguiding to say to make a promise in 2020 that then won't hold water. And I would encourage anyone. I mean, let me just have one second to stress. If you're an advocate for citizen input, and if I had the ability to go back and broadcast widely, the way the 2030 plan is upheld and lifted up on this pedestal, I was on that committee. And it is the most force-fed, consultant-driven, ignorant to any input from anyone in the community, so much so that it barely limped across the finish line. And to have someone hold it up as though the community decided this is egregious, and so I was there to see it live. I'd encourage anybody to go look at the number. Just do the math. From the beginning of the committee to the final vote. Just take a look. You'd be shocked. So I'm for staff's recommendation because it gives the -- one, it holds the line. It has increased, and so we're saying, hey, at a minimum, let's keep it what it was. And then two, we'll have that conversation for future councils to then enlighten whoever owns a property at a future date. >> Councilmember Briggs, I think you -- I thought I saw you. >> I'm not in favor of this current recommendation. I think -- I don't know about capping, but I do know that the idea to build out the floor and then have to restripe later on is a pretty good idea, and that matches what I feel like we are for now. But I would like to see, before any decision is made from this seat, what that would cost, because we don't have that in -- without the RTC going forward, and so it would be -- I couldn't say yes or no to one thing without knowing what that would actually be to cost. >> Is the construction cost here, 155, is that full build out of six lanes? >> That's full build out of six lanes. >> Okay. So she's wanting to cost what it would be with four lanes, and then if they're not participating, that's our cost. Yeah. Okay. >> Yes. >> Yep. >> I think I've been pretty clear that I'm for option A with keeping it a primary, keeping option D in the mobility as well. I might even add to on that alignment that we need to look at country club to avoid issues with the railroad, that we can possibly move it further north in such a way that we get far enough distance away from the railroad tracks, that it's not an issue with that, because I know right now that corner does warrant a stop light, but we can't put one in because of the -- trying to get the railroad to tie us into the tracks there or the signal there is the issue, as well as on the other end of Ryan Road, just based on the life span of manufactured housing, again, this plan is probably going to be 20, 30, 40 years down the road as we continue to look at this, but where Ryan Road dead ends into the manufactured housing community to potentially look at routing that so it connects to Robinson, so we have a secondary on the north end and a primary on the south end. >> Councilmember Davis, I think you're clear. >> Yeah, I would say that I think we do have consensus around the general alignment. It's a question of how we build up the facility and what it looks like, so I'm for option A as far as the alignment is concerned, as far as it being a primary arterial, that's where I diverge from the staff. >> But I think that's the purpose of this discussion. >> Oh, I understand. >> I mean, that's -- and so this is what's interesting. This has been labeled a primary arterial for how many years? >> It's gone over 20 years now. >> 20 years. Rush Creek Road, All Red, this whole kind of thing. This is the first time that we've sort of had this kind of discussion about, well, there's people that are opposed to it, which we can have a community conversation. I'm certainly not against that at all. And I will tell you, the 2030 plan, I think the final vote to approve it I think was -- I think the committee started out at 40 and it ended up at 11 or 14. So there just comes a point -- and I'm for A because I think for me it's easier to scale something back but already have it available. You can always do that because it gives people the absolute worst-case scenario and they can plan around that, but it doesn't mean it's going to happen if we -- so we can talk about capping it at four, we can talk about building three with a turn lane but making it four lanes. But without giving you what the -- I don't want to say label but what it's designated as. So help -- because I don't -- I hear consensus for the alignment. I don't hear any -- I hear some objection to that. I think the apologist wants to have some input and he wants to have the comprehensive plan. >> I said I'm okay on the alignment. >> So it's the alignment. >> So if I could just remind council, the pathway going forward here, you are -- the alignment helps us define the conversation about what this entire south sector looks like. Just to remember, as we've discussed in previous discussions about the mobility plan, we're going through these sectors of town with council to get feedback and then we will be going right back out to the public for multiple conversations on these same areas and get their feedback. >> Community feedback, yes. >> Right. >> Mr. Mayor, you had a comment? >> So I'm just trying to distill everything I'm hearing. So basically what we're asking, cog, whether if this is downgrade to a secondary, if that takes funding off the table. Secondly we're pricing out the connector between country club and 377 because we're starting to see that knitted together. The question is option D as well as that staying on the mobility plan as well as an option to show both A and D long-term. >> Yeah, I don't have an issue -- I mean, I don't have an issue with D staying on as proposed by -- staff didn't propose D staying on, did they? >> Our recommendation would be that D would stay on the mobility plan and we would recommend it as a secondary. >> And we pushed cog pretty hard about whether they would fund that. We knew that some of you were more interested in that and the answer was no. So basically, okay, so we've got our direction on D, the gap on A and classifying the secondary arterials and seeing where we are with cog and then we move on the conversation. That's where the majority of council is. >> Yep. >> Is that right? >> Yep. >> Okay. >> So at the next meeting where we do the southern part in general, I'd like to either schedule that when we have the answer to these questions so that we can sort of present that all at once. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> And I would say one thing about the 2030 plan, I'm not trying to pile on here, but this is the only state I've ever worked in where the comprehensive plan is not a legal document. In most states, you adopt a comprehensive plan by referendum and you adhere to it in your zoning decisions. Texas is not that way. And there's been many times, regardless of the process, it's used -- the council just ignored the 2030 plan. So I think we just need -- I think that's sort of an interesting thing. We're trying to update. We're trying to show developers, the council where, you know, future thoroughfares could be and that sort of thing is critical from a transportation planning perspective, really. But things change and no comprehensive plan in Texas is ever going to keep up with growth. No community can afford to go through that process. You see how long this is taking us with the mobility plan. So I just wanted to kind of throw that out there. As far as this discussion and whether it's a primary or secondary arterial, this is exactly how it should work. We don't care. I mean, but we wanted on the record, this was your thinking. We've got COG very clearly on the record stating what they would like to see. But at the end of the day, it's your decision. So if we decide that we're going to keep them four lanes, fine. We know how to plan and what to tell the development community. So I just wanted to be clear. I appreciate it. We're not really that clear on COG because we have this one outstanding question. We've got one question left for them. Yeah. We think we know the answer, but we're not sure. Okay. And then to fill in the number gap. Yep. Of if we build it or the community builds it or if COG helps with that. Yep. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right. We'll move on to agenda item 3C. Yes. Sure. You bet. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. No, that's fine. Yeah. We'll move agenda item 3D up. And then we'll come back and get C, receive report, hold discussion, and give staff direction on pending city council requests for. Who is presenting that? Are there? Yeah. You want to just take a couple minutes, yeah, to get somebody in. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. We'll take a break for two or three minutes until they get ready. Agenda item 2D. Oh, welcome back to this meeting in the city council. It's 3/27 on Tuesday, February the 11th, 2020. We're going to switch work session items 3D and 3C. So we'll take work session item 3D up right now. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction on pending city council requests for and then by the presentation. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Rachel Botther at Mendoza, Assistant to the City Manager. I will present for you the pending request for information. Just as a little bit of background, up to seven requests will be reviewed and I will introduce each request. The elected official that made the request will have up to one minute to describe and justify and then the remaining officials will then have up to one minute to provide feedback. We'll respond to all requests where consensus is made. Item one, Council Member Davis, appropriate zoning land use incentives for developing areas near capped gas wells. And there's a little bit of background for you. Sir, when we start the call. Okay, whenever you're ready. So actually, Council Member Meltzer has been gracious enough to not object to kind of tagging this on to an existing work session that we have coming up. My request is to discuss in a broader sense something we've already discussed for one part of the city and that is offering incentives for developers to actually either purchase or organize the rights to gas wells within their developments. And if they were to plug those wells to make them inoperative and abandon those pad sites, that we would offer an incentive in terms of more dense zoning. So you could go from an R2 to R4, R4 to R7 within that recaptured land that's now available for development and offer some financial incentives to move production out of housing areas. Council Member Meltzer. Definitely interested in hearing some staff analysis on that. Okay. Council Member Briggs. I would also be very interested. Okay. Council Member Bomers. I support incentivizing the capping of the gas wells. Not so sure if density should be the thing, but I'm looking forward to having the conversation and I'm open to density. Sounds like there's four to add that to the upcoming work session. Okay. Great. So we'll amend Council Member Meltzer's request from December to reflect the new information and include that. Sure. Okay. Thank you. Sure. We have a request from Council Member Briggs to produce a request for qualifications for study on public health impacts of gas wells. And we just included a kind of sizable set of documents as background. We had several ISRs and a former work session from last year included in that for you as reference. So my request is that we put out an RFQ so that we can actually get a study here in Denton City. We have talked about it and it has been asked of us. We've used another city study. And when that went in for the setbacks, we got a request to do our own study from many different people. And so this is just the $2 million has been thrown out there, but we really don't know what all that would entail and how much it would cost for us to keep saying no. So I just want to put something out there, see what comes back, and then we can have another discussion on it. Okay. Council Member Armitage? I support this. Okay. Oh, sorry, I didn't give it. Council Member Meltzer? I'm curious to see if there are entities out there, whether it's universities or public interest groups that might have an innovative way to execute it to achieve our goals for less than $2 million. Okay. Council Member Davis? So everybody's looking at me anyway. So I feel like it's fair for me to say something on the subject. I don't support the request, not because I don't support the spirit behind it. But I'm satisfied with the body of science that exists. That's helped me reach my decisions already regarding gas well setbacks. I'm comfortable with the status of setbacks and reverse setbacks in the city at this point. So I don't see a need for spending more city money for additional science that I already believe in. Okay. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you. Yeah, there's only three. So that request failed. I don't know. A better word to say. All right. We'll go on then to Council Agenda Item 3C. Thank you, Council Member Armitage. I hope you get to feeling better. Receive a presentation and hold a discussion regarding the water and wastewater cost of service and rate design study. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council members, Nick Meltzer. You know, we need to start putting this - we need to start starting the class. We need to start putting this - we need to start starting the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this - we need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this - we need to start putting this - we need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. We need to start putting this in the class. So in the fall of 2019, the city contracted with Raphtelus to update the city's cost service study for the water and wastewater department. Since that date, staff has been working with a consultant to send them operating budgets and capital budgets to update and then put into a financial model for us to use throughout the year. And the last study was updated in 2015. These studies are updated every five years. And the current period will take us from 2020 to 2025, so a five-year period. I do want to point out these studies are basically meant to identify the revenue requirements for the different customer classes within water and wastewater. So simply how much revenue do we need from residential customers and commercial customers to recover the cost of providing them service? We are using principles identified by the American Water Works Association, also referred to as AWWA. This organization is used by several municipalities, water utilities, and wastewater utilities to benchmark with similar people around us. So the cost of service and rate design process is broken down to five simple steps, as you can see in this triangle. Steps one through three we currently are working on. So gathering information, allocating that cost. The reason we are here in front of you today is we wanted to talk to you about the pricing objectives that are currently identified in both the cost of service and rate design study to take that forward to finalize the study and bring it back to you this summer coming up, so the summer of 2020. I'll review those with you here shortly. We do anticipate the study step number five being completed this upcoming summer, so the summer of 2020, coming back to city council for presentation from the consultant. This diagram here outlines the various elements that go into identifying the revenue requirements for the different customer classes within water and wastewater. You can see the O&M budgets, we have been sending these budgets to Raftelis over the last couple of months for them to update their financial models. Also the capital costs, the five-year capital plan for both water and wastewater. Any transfer to reserves that we may have in the budgets. Key factors we do consider are interest rates and inflationary factors, so since our capital plans are developed over a five-year period, we do account for some inflationary factors as far as construction prices and materials increasing. Financial policies, we do consider our debt coverage ratio on water and wastewater and our fund balance policies, those are both considered. We do take out any revenues in water and wastewater that are non-rate related revenues, there are a few of these in both the utilities that we do take out. So the current price instruction objective is the main reason we are here in front of you today. We do have a tiered pricing structure in both water and wastewater that incentivizes water conservation and we also establish rates that are cost-of-service based. So this model allows us to go in each year as we develop our operating budget, plug those costs in and establish rates that are cost-of-service based. I kind of wanted to show two examples for residential customers for wastewater and water. You can see wastewater up here at the top, there are two components that go into a wastewater customer's bill, the first one being a facility charge about $11 a month is the current fee. This is a fixed fee, most of the fixed costs do reside in this $11 per month. The volume charge is $380 per thousand gallon. I do want to point out that for residential wastewater customers, this is a non-metered service, so since it is non-meter, we do work off what's called an average daily value or average daily usage. This amount is established here in the month of December, January and February. If a customer does not live in a household during that time period, so say for example, they move in in June, they would use a minimum of 5,400 gallons. If you recall about a year and a half ago as part of the budgeting process, we actually reduced that minimum from 6,000 to 5,400 as part of the budgeting process when we looked at historical usage for customers on the wastewater side. Water, so similar for water, there is a facility charge of $16 per month, this is a fixed fee. I am showing a 3/4 inch meter, this 3/4 inch meter is the most common for residential customers on the water side. Volume charge is a little bit different for water customers, we do break it into two different blocks based on the time of the year that people are currently using water, so you can see winter and summer. Winter is consistent, people tend to irrigate their lawns less during the winter, so the rate is consistent across the block. In the summertime you can see it increases as water usage increases, so from 0 to 15,000 gallons you can see it is 415 per thousand gallons. Over 50,000 gallons is $10.90. I also kind of want to show where the majority of the customers fit into this pricing structure currently. You can see 2.7 billion gallons, I know this says 2.7 million, this is actually in thousands. Current revenue in this first pricing block is about 17.4 million. So the majority of the customers are in this lower tier, I'm kind of showing that water conservation. That's a lot of water. That's a lot of water. This is a yearly kind of? It is, this is yearly. Billion, 2.7 billion. So next steps, we are going to continue to work with the next couple of months to continue to sell our operating budgets, our capital budgets, and work with these two pricing objectives we identified today to finalize that model. We do anticipate coming back to the PUB in June, or in the summer, so June or July time period with the final presentation, and how we're developing the rates for this next five-year period. Formal adoption of those rates will be in September along with the budgeting process, and that comes back in September. Yes, sir. I'm okay with the current pricing structures that we just went over. I like the summer as well, like the more you use, the more you pay. My question is, what about water loss? Is water loss going to be factored into the study, or is that something that's completely taken out and separate? I know that we said we were going to hear a presentation on it coming up, but that was several months ago, and so I'm not sure. But I would just like to know how is that factored into this study. So what we do, and I can ask Frank to come up and speak to this, probably be the best for water loss. Good afternoon, Frank Pugsley, water and wastewater director. Yes, we are currently working on our water loss audit right now, so we do expect a work session forthcoming in the next month or so. And I think last year, you know, we continue to experience a relatively low water loss in comparison to our peers based on the Industrial Leakage Index, the ILI, which the theoretical minimum on that one is one. I think last year we were around two, and this year we're around 2.5 approximately. We're trying to do a little bit better job of calculating loss from actual main breaks this year. So is any of that factored into this study? It is. So we are calculating our costs to produce all of the water that we send to the system. So the 2.7 billion gallons in the lowest tier there, we're actually sending around 6 billion gallons to the water distribution system. This doesn't count commercial use or firefighting or leakage. So we are calculating the cost of that 6 billion gallons that we're producing. But we don't expect for our rate payers to pay for that water loss, right? That's not factored into the rate system. That's part of the cost of service, because we have a fixed cost to produce the water, and some loss is expected, so we have to cover our costs there in some form or fashion through rate revenue. So the answer to that question is yes. There's no other way to deal with it. Every utility that produces, whether it's electricity, water, waste water, there's always line loss. So it has to be built into the cost of production. May I clarify something, Mayor? Because I asked this question before in a conversation and was told no. Say so, there's a street, right, and a water main ruptures, and thousands and thousands of gallons of water goes all over the street. So the area there, right, those, the people who are affected, their water gets turned off, they're not required to make up for that water loss in their water bill. No, no one's directly billed for that water. It's spread out over the whole rate base, yeah. That's right. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that we're talking about -- Yeah, it's spread out through all the meters. If we had a situation like that that, you know, resulted in somebody's, you know, line break that resulted in somebody's water bill getting high, I'm not sure how that would happen, but if that ever happened, we would adjust that. You're going to lose most utilities planned on 8 to 10 percent? Correct. That's a really good operating utility, a tight system. You're going to have those losses that you just have to build into the rate base? I'm looking forward to that conversation. Now, if it's on private property and if it's a -- because I've had to -- this happens and we get constituent calls that if there's a leak like in a toilet or something that's above ground and you just don't fix it, you don't see it in time, then you are going to be paying for that water. But if it's a sprinkler system that's underground or something, typically they will -- you can apply for a refund based upon averaging or something like that is my understanding. We will consider that. Yes. All right. Fantastic. Any other questions, comments? All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. What we're going to do now, instead of going into closed meeting, we're going to go ahead and do that at the end since we only have one. So at this time, I will -- after the completion of the work session, I will now call this special called meeting of the Denton City Council to order at 342 on February the 11th, 2020. We just have a few items to take care of. Yes, Councilmember Briggs. I move approval of consent agenda items except for item G, which was been pulled and withdrawn. Okay. Councilmember Melser? I'll second if they haven't opened that yet. Yeah. Well, I'll go ahead and open it. Yeah. We're on the consent agenda. We have a motion to approve the consent agenda except for agenda item G. We have a second by Councilmember Melser. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries unanimously. All right. We'll move on to our items for individual consideration. I hope we didn't touch that. Agenda item 2A, which is consider adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton prohibiting on-street parking on the south side of East Windsor Drive from Glenwood Lane to Hanover Drive between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. Mr. Mayor, I'm recusing on this item. Okay. And so he'll have the proper paperwork. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Davis. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, Brian Young, traffic engineer. So we're here to talk about something we talked about a couple of weeks ago, and that is some safety improvements proposed at Wilson Elementary. I'm going to preface this. I'm breaking the discussion into two pieces because while they're linked, they're not dependent upon each other. We've got the item for action today is a no parking consideration, and then I've also got an informational report on the pedestrian safety portion of the improvements to kind of disclose the direction we're headed with that. So and I'm going to try and do it while he actually is not here. I was going to say I'm trying to do this without Todd having to stand up. So so the first part is the no parking request. It's been brought to our attention by the school and the school district that the existing conditions on Windsor in front of the school have become very hectic. Specifically, the south southern curb, which is kind of an indentation. It was originally designed as a queuing lane for the school and has become parking, which then forces the queuing vehicles waiting to pick up and drop off into the through lane on Windsor. And any cars that want to go east into either the center left turn lane or the opposing westbound through lane. So I went out we got a couple of pictures I want to show you exactly what we're talking about. This is the traffic on this is looking eastbound on Windsor so you've got parked cars this white cars is parked in legal parking space. And then the through lane, which is the immediately adjacent lane is now cute cars waiting to pick up and drop off in this case they're waiting to pick up children this is an afternoon. And then you've got cars have nothing not associated with the school they're just on Windsor traveling either in again this this shows a vehicle that's kind of half in the left turn lane at half out. Here's a picture of a learning center bus that is actually in the in the westbound through lane, trying to avoid the traffic that's congested now and clogging eastbound Windsor. And then this is the final shot you've got a car that's that's clearly in the opposing this is westbound lane you've got so much happening at this intersection this is looking west at Hanover and Windsor. You've got the cars that are turning into the driveway of the school and you've got the second line of cars that are turning into Hanover. And this forces the traffic out into the opposing lane of the westbound lane on Windsor. So our proposal is to no park that southern lane open that back up to the queuing activity associated with the school. And then by by doing that freeing up the through lane for non school traffic or traffic that has picked up and is exiting and wants to continue eastbound. So while it will be impacted by the school construction this is an activity that's happening today and it has been happening for some time. We're simply trying to clear up a little congestion by reverting that parking lane to a queuing lane as it was designed. So that's the that's the action for if you want to take action or if you want to wait till I go through the second part. I know that was a significant concern. We'll hear that we'll hear the whole presentation. And so the part the second part part two is the pedestrian safety plan. And if you remember last time we had the school district had indicated a desire to close the sidewalk adjacent to the construction part of the zone. We were going to move the pedestrian traffic across the street on the north side with some kind of a barrier system. And then we were going to do some other improvements with always stops and another crossing guard to bring them back across. So here's a shot of our one of our biggest concerns. And that's the this is a construction zone that little red triangle rectangle rather is the where the construction entrance is located. Here's a better picture. This is the if you could go back to that and show this in the just the presentation just before that that parking lane is that is that that lane is that you see that red square. Yes. Is that that lane right there that you're saying is going to be the queuing lane instead of the parking lane. Correct. OK. So and that's another issue with the with parking in that lane on that curb is that potentially a car can park in front of the construction entrance and significantly hamper that activity. So OK. And so this is just a shot of the current use of the sidewalk. That's the construction entrance and the original intent of ISD was to close this pedestrian traffic. We're going to move across. We've got several crossing guards out there. The city city crossing guards are there three in total and the school district also has some staff that assists in crossing. So we've got we've got an existing crossing guard here at Bristol. We've got school staff at Hanover. We've got a crossing guard and staff on the on Hanover on the southern portion there. And then we've got school staff on Emerson and a city sponsored crossing guard at Emerson and Glenwood. So our proposal for the pedestrian safety plan, we're no longer moving that we're going to try and keep as much status quo as we can. And to ensure the safety of the students that are going to be using that sidewalk adjacent to the construction zone, we're going to move the crossing guard that we're going to place along fellow and Windsor directly in front of the school to assist at that construction entrance. So if there's any construction activity, we'll have a crossing guard there to stop the kids before they cross that crossing guard can also assist with either the intersection of Hanover or the intersection of Bristol if needed. So we're we're trying to do with people what we were originally planning to do with barricades. So real quick question. So the hours typically where children are arriving by foot pedestrian access or being dropped off and they're walking down the sidewalk. That time frame is from what to what. So there's you've got the morning peak is probably seven thirty to eight. Okay. And then the afternoon starts at two fifty three o'clock and goes to maybe three thirty. So I think it and I don't I don't have a need to make it a policy on this, but I really would encourage I hope the school district would really make a concerted effort to say why don't we just try to prohibit deliveries of big supplies. I mean, people can come and go, you know, if they're if they're but to really restrict the amount of traffic, vehicular traffic across into that driveway for that very small short span of time. I know that would be difficult, but yet because any time you have I mean, I know you've got somebody there, but it just would be helpful. I think if somehow they just put out the word to the contractor, could you really just ensure that deliveries happen either before that time or after so that we can really mitigate the interaction between a crossing guard, young children and large vehicles, large delivery trucks of all kinds. But certainly we can we can we can visit with the school district. We have two opportunities. One, we can have their on site contractor simply close that gate or we can ask them to do that. The flip side is that they very seldom have the ability to completely control those deliveries. So we can take away the opportunity for them to enter the driveway, even if we can't control when those delivery trucks get there. We'll just stack them in the queue in line. I'm kidding. So the other elements of the plan that we did keep, we're still going to put the temporary I said, call them temporary during construction. They always stops at Longfellow and Windsor. And then we're installing an always stop. It will be permanent at Emerson and Glenwood and at Emerson and Glenwood, we will be installing our first. I call it a push button stop sign. It's going to be pedestrian activated. The crossing guard will have the ability to push a button and then the LEDs around the stop sign will begin to flash. So just another visual cue that something different is happening at that intersection. I move approval of this item for the no parking and pedestrian as well. Well, it's not part of this. This is just this is just an information just information. Yeah, sure. This is just for the parking lane. I don't really understand there. Is it a separate action to approve the pedestrian plan? No, no, no, there's there's nothing to improve it was simply. We're working on the plan. The last time we discussed this. There was some impression that maybe they were linked. They're not really linked up the activity with the parking and the congestion happened currently. Yeah, they will be exacerbated, but they will be exacerbated by the onset of the construction, the heavy construction. But it's the expectation. I mean, you know, if I can ask Councilman Briggs. Briggs is your expectation when you're moving approval of the, you know, of the no parking that it would be in conjunction with the proposed pedestrian plan or you have done it or you're you have no particular expectation. No, that's that's not here on the that's not the item we're approving. It's just the no park. This is just informational saying this is what they're planning on doing with the with the pedestrian and they don't need action on it. Right. I'll second. Okay. I have a motion and a second for agenda item to a all in favor please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries five zero. If somebody could invite Councilmember Davis back to the work session room agenda item to be as we stated. Agenda item to be considered option of an ordinance of the city of Denton Texas approving a specific use permit to allow for multifamily dwelling. The, yes, go ahead. I move postponement of this item till next week like that's yes we're looking for it where 18 Councilman Ryan second. All right, we have a motion. See if Councilmember Davis gets here but we have a motion for postponement to February the 18th on agenda item to be Councilmember Davis on agenda item to be and there's been a motion and a second to be made to postpone that item to February the 18th council meeting as requested by the applicant. Any discussion on that since all in favor please signify raising your right hand. Motion carries unanimously agenda item to see. Consider approval of a resolution of the city of Denton amending the acceptance of sponsorship and donation policies, providing for repealer and declaring an effective date. Good afternoon Mayor council members, I'm Heather Gray with Parks and Recreation, and I'm here with some proposed amendments to the acceptance of sponsorship and donations policy for you. Just a quick recap on where we've been with this policy. It's a fairly new policy that was just adopted in June of 2019. However, in November of 2019, we held a public hearing for the naming policy, which is a different policy. And per the direction that evening, we were asked to move the naming rights section of the naming policy into the sponsorship and donation policy. So we did that and we brought that back to you on January 7, and we were given some additional feedback at that time. So we've since made some changes proposed some more amendments. This slide is a summary of the amendments that we've made as a result of the feedback that we received on January 7. So we removed any reference to sponsor naming from the policy, and we change that to sponsors opportunities for city facilities and amenities. We specified that sponsors will not be permitted to have the headlining name on a facility, and we gave an example of what that would look like. We also added language for any sponsorship opportunity for facility that was under $50,000 that that would that agreement will be placed on consent agenda so that council could be aware of that sponsorship. For clarification purposes we added some definitions, specifically for administrative buildings and for amenities. We also removed some language that mentioned that sponsorship opportunities could be in perpetuity. So we cleaned that language up a little bit. And then we added some clarification on the signage, the guidelines for signage. I have a question and I've read through the backup. I got an email about that. There's an upcoming decision I don't think this is it that may affect greater Denton Arts Council didn't community theater and all those kinds of things I don't, because they're funded I believe out of hot funds. Is there. They are funded through separate funding sources. Okay, I think part of it was on some of the events that sponsorships and things such as that but I'm trying to remember that on those two. I don't think it's really this is applicable to those two organizations as far as greater Denton Arts Council didn't community theater is that this is a city wide policy so would govern other departments within the city. I don't think it would have any relationship to outside entities. Well I think the question was is there going to be some kind of change in the funding mechanism of those two organizations I know hot funds. Allocates to those but I don't, I don't remember having sponsorships or things such as that but that's a question. Go ahead, customer. Did you have a comment on that. Well I'm wondering if it's two separate things because I know there's hot funds but there also was another sponsorship. So that committee would nominate input like okay well so you get this many hot funds and then this much for sponsorships so this is that this is something that's what we call is the co sponsorship right group where, where city is allocating got you funding to help support events, right. This is not really okay this is this is something totally different because you are right it's a hot fund sponsorship. It's referring to some other different type of mechanism or process of decision making that what we're talking about. That's correct. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that clarification. Thank you. And just as a clarification on that this this policy regards the city being the city staff being able to accept sponsorships on donation. Okay. All right. Any questions comments. Yes, Councilmember Davis, just a fast comment. Thank you staff very much for working with the council and working with the community on getting this right. Welcome. Thank you. Councilmember breaks. Yeah, just a comment because I sent in a comment earlier that we received regarding timing, like having a defined duration of time so that it's it's specified in each agreement. Can you speak to that why it's, I think, I've got a response back from Gary that it's to give you more flexibility, but if you could just speak to that a little bit. Yes ma'am so regarding that as far as having a we specified for the public display option. It would be the life of the asset, or the term that specified in the agreement whichever came first, just to give us a little more flexibility. If there was a like a natural disaster or some vandalism that put that item that was sponsored beyond, you know, repair and we had to seek funding to replace it, then we might have to get you know a new sponsorship on that item. For instance, just an example of a tornado knocked down a pavilion that was sponsored. We might have to rebuild that and may not have the same sponsor on it, but there will be a date within in like an end date, so it could be either or yes it would be whichever comes first. Yes, so there would be a date a term specified in the agreement. Okay, yes. Thank you. So real quick on your example. Let's say ABC company sponsored the pavilion for 10 years or the life of the pavilion, whichever comes first. Natural disaster, straight line wind comes and blows it down. Does that mean that that's when because the life of the asset it's basically been changed? Does that mean that sponsorship changes at that time? In other words, they're no longer the sponsor. When it gets rebuilt, then it's open again for or is there some kind of accommodation made for if there's some kind of natural disaster or act of God as they typically are called in insurance policies and so forth. So obviously if it was a brand new shelter and it was year one and something like that happened, then we would want to honor that. We'd probably use insurance or self-insured depending on the the cost of that we may have to just figure out how to how to fund that. But like say for instance the pavilion was a 20 year lifespan and the contract was for 30 years. And at year 18, it starts to rot and decay and we need to take it down. That gives us the ability to take it down. The same thing with playgrounds. Playgrounds are typically 15 years, but sometimes they last more than 15 years, depending on if they're vandalized or if they're in the shade. They may last longer. So that that could fray that on either side of when that contract could be. So for instance, if we said it was a 15 year agreement to sponsor a playground and after 10 years, it needs to be replaced. Then that playground is going to be eliminated and that sponsorship would go with it. Okay. And that's those decisions, unless there's some type of natural occurrence. That's made by staff. It's going to have to be because it's on a case by case basis. Every situation might be a little different. Do we have anywhere, because I know these are going to be agreement. This is a policy and then we're going to have specific agreements. I would just encourage some of that language that we're discussing be put in the agreement to help provide some clarity so that somebody doesn't misunderstand that. Oh, wait a minute. You told me and now you get to decide just just for a disclosure. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Any other questions, comments chairs looking for action on this item? Mayor Pro Tem. Move approval. Second. We have a motion and approval for agenda item to see all in favor please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries six zero. We'll move on to our agenda item to D consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton amending chapter three titled airports. That's succinct of the code of ordinances of the city of Denton regarding airport governance adopting airport rules and regulations and airport minimum operating standards. Good afternoon mayor members of council Scott Gray airport manager. I have the privilege today to be in front of you to talk about our airport guiding documents which has been a process that's been going on for for some time now. I'm going to walk you today through each of these documents certainly answer any questions you may have talk about the public process that we went through and then request some guidance from the council this afternoon. So first a little bit about the background Denton enterprise airport is operated under FAA guidance and rules and regulations, but primarily the things that we always look forward to is our funding that we get through the text dot division of aviation through FAA that requires us to be compliant with our grant assurances. And part of that is to ensure we have updated documents and regulations that we operate our airport under. The city currently has chapter three of the city code that is titled airport. But some of those provisions are from 1966 a little long in the tooth. We need to update those and get them up to current standards and also it's kind of kind of a mix of a bunch of information that really needs to be separated out for clarity for not only staffs interpretation but also for our users. So let me talk about kind of the way this is framed in first and foremost is the is the chapter three will remain chapter three, and that's kind of the regulatory framework for all of these documents that that document will refer to the rules and regs the minimum operating standards and the airport rates and fee schedule, which the council already previously adopted back in May of 19. So let me touch upon a moment on the timeline and the public process that we followed for getting to today. The council airport committee was briefed back in April of 2018 so it's been a while to get us to where we're at. But it was important that we took the time went methodically through the process and engaged our, our tenants and the public to get their input. We also gathered a number of other guiding documents from other airports, whether they were locally or just in the United States that provided a good guidance. They've had them in place for a while they you know they were able to use those and give us some information about maybe changes that they made through time that we could, we could start with a pretty good solid foundation. So we began to draft those documents in conjunction with working with the legal department to create chapter three was kind of the first brush. And then we went into each of the other documents. So in the airport advisory board meetings beginning in April of 2019 through the end of the year, we had eight public meetings soliciting comments from our users and general public. There was one meeting that was canceled there if you're wondering why it doesn't add up to to nine. But we, we encouraged all of our tenants to show up, we sent out constant contact notices we post on the airport's Facebook page and encouraged everybody to come out we started with 40 or so members of our, of our airport community at the meetings. They provided a number of comments and I'll go through those in a moment. We posted all of our draft documents as we went through them on the airport's web web page. As we went through them, we provided marked up documents each month, posted them on the web came back and talked about the changes. And once we were done, then we moved on to the next document and just kept going till we finished all three documents and then we kept bringing all three documents back to go over them again if there were any additional comments. In December of 19, the airport advisory board did make a recommendation to move it forward to counsel. We did present the same documents to the Council Airport Committee, and then they recommended as well bringing it forward to the full council in January. So just take a moment and I won't go through each of the bullets but these were the general areas of comments that we received during the process. Chapter three was really just business fees. We had a reference to fees that we removed, added a lot of angst to a number of our tenants, primarily the businesses that knew fees were coming and that certainly wasn't our intent. So we clarified that. And here's a number of areas that we did some changes in the rules and regulation area and I'd be happy to answer any questions on those specifics if you have any. The rules and regulations are really the day to day operations and safety at the airport is really what that document is about. So that's what mainly some of these were, clarifications where sometimes there's some regulations that you can find that a lot of other airports use that need to be tweaked for our condition. So sometimes there may have been some language that didn't quite fit us so we were able to address those. All of these were addressed in the rules and regulations to the satisfaction of those that brought them forward. Minimum operating standards, this particular document is for our businesses. So it's the minimum standards that we ask our businesses to meet, hours of operation, sizes of the facilities, things of that nature. So these are the number of comments that we had relevant to that where we made some changes. Again, one of the biggest, the two biggest areas of concern were any new fees that were being proposed so that was not the case so those were removed. And then clarification on some insurance provisions, which we worked with the risk management director at the time and got those clarified. And then a number of other minor changes to reflect the needs of our particular airport. So now what I'll do is I'll go through each of the documents and some of the specifics, how it's laid out and then some of the areas where some things have changed from our previous regulations. Chapter three, again, is the foundation document. It's broken into four main articles that you see there with a number of divisions for the last article, which is relevant to enforcement. I can tell you that having similar codes like this at a previous airport I worked, it's been in place for 20 years. I don't believe any of the enforcement efforts were used more than two or three times in 20 years. And why is that? You know, unfortunately, we have to have regulatory enforcement capabilities. But our goal isn't to do that. Our goal is to educate our aviation community to do things safely, do things correct. Don't put us in jeopardy of not getting our grants and so forth. So our first and foremost is education. Try to let people know. An example of that, somebody speeding across the ramp, we would go meet with them. Hey, the speed limit is 15 miles an hour. We ask that you slow it down. After a while, if they don't want to follow the rules, then we have kind of a various regulatory enforcement efforts that we can do from administrative all the way through to the court if need be. Councilmember Briggs has a question. Just on that scenario you just provided, so how do you know how fast someone is going? It's an interesting question. It's probably not the greatest example, but we do have cameras on the airfield, so we can see the cameras and you can tell how fast they're going by the distance they went over a period of time. Generally speaking, it's 15 miles per hour on the airport. And it's fairly easy. I mean, if they're doing 18, 20, we're probably not going to notice. But we've had some people do 40, 50 miles per hour across the ramp, and it's obvious. So we would approach them and ask them to slow down just to be safe. You know, there's moving props. There's jet blasts and things like that. So here's some of the specifics that have changed from our current regulations to the new regulations. We updated all the definitions. You know, some of the definitions were rather old, so we've updated them to include any of the new FAA regulatory definitions. As I mentioned earlier, the rules, regs, minimum standards, and rates and fees is adopted by reference in Chapter 3. The airport advisory board, if you recall, we were before you some time ago about the purview of the airport advisory board. That purview did not change. All those things remain the same with just the addition of some rulemaking, oversight, and approval through staff's efforts. So they're still not getting into leases and some of the other things that were not in their purview before. Another item that has changed, again, working with legal on this, is the use of city-owned airport property. Everything we do at the airport right now is a lease, even if it's a month-a-month. It makes it somewhat challenging in some instances. So another practice that's common in airports is the use of permits and lease agreements. And there's some provisions in here about how long they have to be and what has to come back in front of council. So if it's a true lease agreement for property, it will always come through council. If it's a short-term use, then it will likely come forward as a permit. Next section was rulemaking authority. Again, as I mentioned, staff would develop any tweaks to the rules that would be necessary over time. The airport advisory board would be briefed on those and reviewed and provide approval. There's periods of time that it has to be posted for the public to be engaged. If for some reason there's some situations that maybe that staff believes is more important to bring further than just the airport board, the council airport committee will be briefed and they certainly have the authority to act and then bring it to the full council as necessary. One of the new items, which actually isn't new, it's been in the existing rules, is a business permit. So any aviation-related business at the airport that's conducting business will be required to submit for and receive a business permit. The primary purpose of this, as we've seen as we've started to investigate all of our facilities and the folks that are out there, is there's some operators that have over time sprouted up in somebody's hangar unbeknownst to the city. Usually it's minor maintenance, could be aircraft sales, but it happened as a sublease agreement to one of our agreements that we were not notified. This permit will allow us then to identify those folks and ensure that they have insurance so we can protect the city's interest. In some cases there are operators that don't have any insurance and this hopefully will allow us to address that and get their insurance. And if they don't, then we will no longer permit them to conduct their business on the airfield. As I mentioned, the enforcement efforts, there's a number of sections in that, denial of use, sanctions and procedures, license revocations, and then abatement capabilities. So if there's certain things that are done in violation of the rules, we would ask them to correct it or the city could correct it and then invoice them for our time. So with that, I'll just answer questions on Chapter 3 or I can just keep going into each of the other documents and answer at the end if you'd prefer. As far as in these public meetings, as they've seen this final draft, everybody's generally okay. I mean, I've heard that there was some discussion in the beginning of this process, but those challenges and some of those objections have been worked through. Yes, sir. There were some significant challenges at the beginning. We worked through all but one, and I will point out what that one is and why we believe that it's still addressed in the interest of the city. But all of those other things that you saw listed, we corrected all of those to the satisfaction of those that brought them forward. Okay, thank you. Next is the proposed rules and regulations. Again, this is the general operating environment rules at the airport, dogs on leash, speed, how you park your airplane, how you ensure you don't have prop wash where people are, things of that nature, and then a number of things about fueling regulations. So these are some of the new items in there. Again, the updated definitions, general use of the airport, specifics about aircraft parking, maintenance, washing, smoking, waste, so solid waste, what do you do with it, or hazardous waste, what do you do with it, animals. Unfortunately, we have animals that aren't on leashes, which is actually a city ordinance, but we also put it in the airport rules. There's been occasions that dogs may run across the apron. It's not safe for the animal or the aircraft operator, so we want to make sure that folks keep their animals on leashes, rules about firearms, etc. Something new is wingspan limitations. Some of our areas of the airport are restricted by the size of airplane that can go in. That's not documented anywhere. So this gives us an opportunity to document that there are wingspan limitations, and there will be a map available on our website to indicate that. Again, as I mentioned, speed, you're required to have the state required automobile insurance, things of that nature. And then lastly, the fueling area is environmental, what happens if there's a spill, where fire extinguishers are, what do you have to do with the tanks and the trucks that you use to fuel aircraft, and how to keep that safe. Any questions on that? And by the way, there's your new parallel runway there on the left. So questions on rules and regs, I'll go to minimum standards. Again, minimum standards is only applicable to businesses. It's not generally applicable to any other type of activity at the airport. So any type of business that you can imagine, we try to capture as much as we can, but if it's not in the document, we have provisions to allow a temporary permit until some minimum standards can be drafted. But this has a number of articles, primarily the first five articles are general and apply to everyone. Article 6 is specifically for fixed base operators, which is basically the fuel provider, the concierge, if you will, for the airport meet and greet airplanes. And then Article 7 is all the rest of the services that can be provided at airport, and there's 12 sections inside of that particular article. One of the new processes is the application process for that business permit that I talked about before. Where's the business going to be located? What's the details? Do you have to construct anything? What's the legal structure of that business? A lot of that information will be gathered. Again, for those that are already in existence today, this will be a pretty easy process. They're somewhat grandfathered. They've already got a lease agreement. They're already conducting this business. We'll still have them fill out all of the information so we can gather it to make sure we have all the correct insurance risk management. We'll review it with us as well. And then I think the next -- no, it doesn't go back to one slide. So the process will be for new businesses that come in. If they don't have a lease, maybe we found them as a sublessee, so we don't have an agreement with them. We don't have any insurance. The process for them will be to fill all this information out, provide it to us. We will administratively approve it if they meet the minimum standards. And then we will ask them to come in front of the airport advisory board and just present themselves as what their business is, what are they going to do. It provides an opportunity for our airport board members to see who's coming to the airport and what services are available. And then obviously for any of the members of the public that are there and/or our users will now know that there's a new business. It will be in our minutes, so those that review them after the fact will know that we now have a new operator at the airport. So take a moment to talk about the minimum standards relevant to being a fixed base operator. Again, these are the provisions that they have to talk about what it is they have. The meat of this is actually in the minimum requirements section. A lot of this is in the current lease agreement that they have today. It will be pulled out and put into this document. Lease agreement will be more of a standardized document that does not have those minimum standards. And these may change over time depending upon how the airport moves through time with changes of what lands available, what services might be needed, and so forth. Again, insurance and then airport fees in this particular case references the airport rates and fees document that's already been passed because it actually includes their fuel flowage fee on that document. This was the one item, Mayor, that we had. The existing FBO did express some concerns regarding the language for allowing other than a lease agreement for meeting apron requirements. And that had to do with the property that's immediately adjacent to the terminal building. Staff indicated at the meeting and subsequently to that that the language that's in the document, which is land and facilities, shall be through lease license permit agreement from the city sufficiently address their concerns because it still is going to be an agreement with the city that would control that particular piece of apron or any other property at the airport. Staff believes that that just provides flexibility for not only the council, but staff to enter into agreements that's in the best interest of the city at the time. So in some cases, a long-term lease isn't in the best interest of the city. It could be that we have plans, but we want to go ahead and collect some revenue for a shorter period of time that we could use a different mechanism, whether that be a license lease or otherwise. So that was the only item that operator did come to the to the council airport committee and express the same concerns. And it was addressed there as well in the same fashion. Lastly, is the general aviation specialty services. And this is just a list of all the different types of operators. Most of these are actually at the airport today in some form or fashion. So I'm like all of the previous guidance applies to all of these, but they have some specifics of what they need to do for their minimum standards. A lot of times it's do you have the FAA certificate to be that maintenance provider? Do you have an office? Do you have enough place to park your airplanes if you're if you're doing aircraft hanger leasing and so forth? So any questions on minimum operating standards? So the real quick the back to the one issue that was sort of unsettled or not unsettled, but was there still an objection? I think I missed that meeting, the airport committee. Was there still an objection from the individual or individuals who brought that concern to the committee after hearing the same explanation? Is there still an outstanding objection to that? And if so, what would that what were they requesting that that language be the operator was at the Council Airport Committee and they brought up the same thing that they would prefer that it would be long term lease. And then we offered that we believe that the options available to the city would address those needs. It still has to be provided as an exclusive use for that operator, whether it be a permit or agreement or whatnot. But they still felt that it needed to be a long term lease. If you could just go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, I actually don't clearly remember, you know, kind of how we left it other than we did agree to go forward. But the gist of the see if you agree the gist of the complaint is that they don't want to be put at a competitive disadvantage. Okay, because they've got a lease. So they want someone else to come in without that burden. It's a very competitive kind of business. And and it's basically that space that's in front of that one building is that's north of the terminal. Yes, between the terminal building. Right. And they're they're saying that they want if there's something to be done with that apron space or that what would you call it? That's correct. That whether it's them or the person who's the company that's occupying the Greenpoint Greenpoint has been old name. Correct. Okay. That no matter who it is, they would still want that to be on a long term lease or or is it they don't want to somehow there's something I remember correctly. There was some concern there that they might take up all that space under some type of lease agreement or permit or some type of agreement with the city. That would foreclose anyone else in the airport using that space for any reason. Is that right? Generally, their concern was not to make that decision just yet. Okay, the rules and regulations hasn't made the decision what will happen with that apron. That's another item that will have to be moved through either a lease amendment or some other agreement that has not been addressed yet. This document just allows the flexibility for the city to choose what they believe is the right document to do that. They have a number of underlying issues relevant to the use of that apron and they would like some of it, part of it, sure, all of it, whatever the case may be. But that decision hasn't been made, other than the guidance that we did receive in the FAA letter that we got a number of months ago, which they that's been shared with them. In the FAA's opinion, the city should not lease license permit or any of that area to the existing operator because they have all of the rest of the apron space at the airport and it would create an economic disadvantage for anybody else. Okay, good deal. Thank you. All right. Is that, oh, here we go. The last piece, if there's not any additional questions, is just asking the Council's direction here is adopt the ordinance that has all of these documents attached to it as provided. Certainly, if there's still some concerns, we can go back to the Council Airport Committee to review and take additional information at that point or not take any action today. Council Member Briggs. Yeah, so the actual Airport Committee went through these and approved and voted on this as well. The Airport Advisory Board did and the Council Airport Committee. Okay. So I saw in there a couple of times permits and fees and I thought I heard you say increase but I couldn't find a schedule of what the permit or the fees were and what they are now. Sure. Can you just go over that a little bit because we've had some increases in other departments that have come back, you know, so I'm just trying to. Absolutely. And one of the big contentious items when we started this process was there was a reference to business fees, monthly business fees, and all of that was removed. Staff has not proposed any new fees at all. So that was really what the issue was at the front. So there are no new fees proposed as part of these documents the airport rates and fees schedule that was adopted back in May of 19 had new fees, and that went through a whole other process at the time, but we have not proposed any new fees as part of these documents. So there is no increase to be had. You know it doesn't doesn't prevent obviously the Council or Airport Board to bring forward later on, as we go through time changes to that philosophy but there are no fees added to this one. One more question. So as I was going through I was trying to find the right section to ask this but I didn't I may be under rules and regulations but is there a protocol or certain things that you have to do if, if there's an emergency out there someone asked me, you know, like, I don't know I didn't see it but if there was, you know, a takeover of the tower or, you know, is there. Or, you know, another takeover of a plane or, you know, what, what is the protocol for something like that is a separate book. Yes ma'am, it's not this document there is kind of a underlying issue that is addressing here about the general public helping in case of an emergency we don't necessarily want a bunch of people running out onto the airfield because we're still open is an airport. In some cases, that's all that's attached in here, but we have an airport emergency plan that is coordinated through police, fire, dispatch, and our emergency services department that addresses specifically how we address the various types of aircraft alerts. There's three different types. And then there's two different conditions which would be, I think, more what you're talking about is either hijacked or a bomb threat or things of those nations that's covered in a separate document. Yes, of course. And so is that is that document does that come to council for approval or is that just something that you have like in your policies, or is it. I don't believe it came to council before it pre existed. Okay, but we're in the process right now of completely rewriting that to bring it up to date names names of all the players have changed over time. And we're working with fire, new leadership there that we're working with them just to make sure we have all of the terminology correct and the dispatch is happening correctly so we're actually just started addressing that now. Okay, certainly, we can bring that forward if that's the desire of the council I don't believe it was in the past, I was just I'm just curious someone asked me about it and I hadn't seen anything and so I'm sure scenarios have also changed. It's also a subset of the city wide. Okay. All right. Thank you. Um, quick question, just walk me through some new development there at the airport. So I'm a business owner I build a million dollar facility that then conveys to the city, or do I still own that. Good question. When we come forward, go through our lease process first that lease would be a long term land lease agreement to allow you to build whatever it is that you needed office hanger and so forth. The term maximum term is 30 years with two five year city options. At the end of that term, the, the facility that you constructed reverts back to the city and the city becomes the owner of that building. Our facilities on the airport are that way today. There haven't been any revert to the city yet we have two or three that are coming in the next five years and then as those leases terminate they'll, they'll come into the ownership of the airport. Then, then rather than a land lease agreement. The city would do a building. Is that that's normal. Yes, sir. Yeah, and the airport business that is normal. It's, it's kind of hard for people to get their arms around. We have a lot of conversations with our, with our developers that wait a minute I'm not going to own this forever now that's just not the way it works on an airport. You get a land lease of say 30 cents per square foot. The city does a lot of capital improvements using federal funds and matches of our own. And as part of our grant assurances, those facilities. I don't want to use the word subsidize here they're subsidized over a period of time because we provided a lot of the infrastructure through grants and so forth. And that at some point in time they want the airport to take back that asset and become self sufficient so you'll gain some additional revenues at that point doesn't mean the city has to take it back. The city could ask that it be destroyed. If it's not in good condition, the city could extend their lease agreement if they were to do additional additional construction, we could give them additional time. So there's a number of other options, and that reversionary clause is what it's referred to that policy has been in place, every airport I've been in. And so I would, I don't know what councils temperature is but I sure would like to see those. I think I think it could be in there and maybe there's automatic public hearing triggered or some sort of work session but I don't know what everyone else's pain threshold is for that but I would like to at least be able to know when that's happening kind of make that decision or kind of participate in that deliberation, versus it being versus it being an automatic trigger. It's staff desire to bring forward leasing and reversion policy for the council to consider it would provide us that guidance, but certainly we can bring forward any of those items they typically would come to the Council Airport Committee first, because it's a leasing decision it doesn't go to the airport advisory board, but we can certainly bring that forward. And let me track with you you saying that's something in the works already. Yes, sir. Okay, well great. Thank you. Making sure it's all brought up today. Any other any other questions. So you're looking for direction today on one of these three options. Yes, sir. Councilmember Ryan with approval. Councilmember Davis. Second. All right, we have motion to second for approval of agenda item to to to D to D. Everybody in favor please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries five zero. Move on to six zero I'm sorry, six zero. Six zero. Move on to agenda item to he consider adoption of an ordinance of the city of Denton, a Texas home rule municipal corporation authorizing the approval of change order number one to the contract between the city of Denton and quality excavation LLC for the Hinkle and Windsor paving and drainage project. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, council pretentious deputy city engineer here to talk about the first changer for the Magnolia drainage project, popularly known as the Hinkle Windsor widening project. Just a quick background, it started as a drainage project. There were several large drainage pipes and infrastructure under the Windsor pavement and portion of Hinkle pavement so that that's the beginning that was the envisioned project and then certain aspects such as street pavements and reconstruction project was added on to it. So that was the beginning. So the original scope includes drainage as well as pavement. Subsequently, during the construction, there was a new development that went in and we had public meetings and there were a lot of concerns about cut through traffic. As part of that, we did come up with an alternative. We had proposed a roundabout at Mimosa and Hinkle, it's right about here. And as part of that added scope to have the elements of the roundabout and to add the curb and gutter, the additional infrastructure that was needed in that particular area, some utility adjustments. There was an increase in the cost for this particular project and this is the change order that we're bringing forward. Currently, this change order itself is a little over half a million dollars. I do want to bring out there are certain other elements added cost. This project, we will be wrapping it up by May. The current schedule is May of this year. And we are anticipating some additional items to be added on to as far as construction. And let me give you an update or background on those items because I don't want to present a second change order without going over. There are certain additional quantities that were not anticipated as far as rock excavation is concerned. So when we first went and did our design, it was anticipated that this yellow line would be the only area that would encounter rock. We had some core samples. We took the samples and based on all of that investigation, we anticipated rock to be encountered only in the yellow area. We have encountered rock all the way along this red area. So this is something that was not anticipated when it was designed. There are some additional signs and markings that are needed as part of the roundabout. So we're making it much safer. Also, there was additional paving, I'm sorry, additional striping required for the bike lane and the infrastructure that was associated with adding the removal of parking and adding buffered bike lanes. So all of that will come as a change order too in the future, but what we currently want to recommend moving forward with a change order for the first component or the first change order of $518,744.21. >> Yeah, I'm just like a little clarification in the AIS, it says this amount is budgeted. But if they're unanticipated and it's a change order, how is it already budgeted? Or wasn't the money taken from somewhere? It was unanticipated that it wasn't budgeted, right? >> So typically what happens is these components are broken down into their respective categories. So drainage has their own budgets. Water, wastewater has their budget. So if there are additional infrastructure needs, for example, there's some water main that was added in the second. So water, wastewater will have budget to add that or replace that, and that's why they're called budgeted. Not so much that they were budgeted in this particular project, but overall, water and wastewater or drainage had budgeted amounts to take into account some of these changes. So there are sort of category budgets for types of expenditures, and then you're allocating them to a project. >> To a degree, but also when we brought these projects forward to council for budgetary purposes, if you go back to 2017, you look through the progression through 2017, 2018 of all the projects that we had inherited, which this was one. Funds were initially only set aside for construction. As we put together entire project budgets, we also included a contingency category for items like, we just didn't know that rock was exactly in the wrong place at the right time when we're building it. So those things are there so that council's not taken by surprise down the road, and then we're trying to figure out, well, where do I pull this money from? It's there. We're just simply asking for these changeable items so we can make the project whole. >> Okay, so the dollars were sitting in a contingency fund. >> Yes, sir. >> Councilmember Briggs. >> Okay, so I thought I heard you say May completion, which is another four or five months likely. Yeah, well, I'm just going by construction time. Because I honestly, this is for the people that live on Windsor and just in that corner is a nightmare. I mean, it has been really bad, and I know that there's weather and there's other issues, but there's been a lot of delays. And so I'm wondering if you could just tell me what the original timing was and what the new date is. >> So when the contract for the contractor was taken to council, it was originally planned as May. We had anticipated that if we would expedite some of this, so we had talked to contractor to get things done as much as possible. But the rain delays and the pounding of rain didn't really help the situation. So we're, we still are within the, we have not extended the contract. So the original contract was May that the contractor will be out by that time. >> So for the drainage or for the streets? >> Both. >> Both. >> Both projects. It's a combined project. >> And so can we break this up into sections? Are you saying the whole L shape is going to be closed until May or is it likely that we can reopen part of Windsor before that time? >> It is likely that we'll start opening as we go. It would be phased. As we move forward, we'll start shedding that or paving that particular. The paving portion is not going forward as much as we want it to just because of the rain delay. But once we get out of this rain phase, we'll start moving that as fast and start opening pieces of it sooner. >> Pieces of Windsor? Or Hinkle? >> Hinkle. >> Okay. So when does Windsor reopen? >> So I can. >> I'm just, I'm curious. >> What's the issue? I mean, this is a major project. So what is it, are people denied access to their driveways? >> I'm worried about the fire station. >> Fire station number five? Is that the one at the end of Windsor? >> I'm just curious about response times and if that's hampering or it's hindering them on their access into this area, if they have to go all the way down the neighborhoods and through and back around. >> So there are a couple ways we've handled it. We've talked to the fire chief and we've talked to the battalion chief at that particular station. So they have a rerouted and the other station on this side. So both these stations we've communicated with them. There is a detour that they have to go on a longer route. But in talking to fire chief, there is a special vehicle that they, it's the off-road emergency vehicle that they can use. It is called off-road vehicle that they can actually use to cross this particular area on the north side and cover that time. So there are a couple of options. The other option is that the other fire station can reach this area and respond at the same time. So we are working with them constantly. Any changes to the route, we're making them aware of that. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Councilmember Davis. >> So one slide back on the change order we're talking about today. Can you tell them what the unforeseen costs were on curb and gutter? I think I followed on most of the other stuff you're talking about, but a lot of that pertained to change order number two that we're not doing on today. Can you tell me about the changes in curb and gutter and then also on the roundabout? Because I see an item here and then an item on the change order. And am I remembering correctly that the developer had some buy-in on the roundabout as well, that they were going to help us out there? >> I don't believe there was any developer buy-in. We would have been able to use some roadway impact fees for this type of additions. So the roundabout here, I just want to go back, replace curb and gutter. A portion of this is related to the roundabout. It's just separated out slightly different because the way the line items break out within the contract items, it shows up as a curb and gutter item, but it's under a roundabout. A portion of the curb and gutter was just not up to par when this project was envisioned. It was envisioned that a lot of this curb and gutter would not have to be replaced, but as construction progressed, as we had rain events, the curb and gutter couldn't hold on when it was under excavation, when the liming process was going on, the curb and gutter could not hold on. So some curb and gutter sections were added. It's not that the, it is because of the rain events and some of the activities that happened. As far as the second roundabout change order, that is related to additional signs and markings. It is just the pavement markings and signage. It's a very small amount. It's in the range. It's under $50,000 just for signs and markings only. Help. Any other questions? >> Any other questions? Council Member Mouser. >> Well, okay, sort of a question. I'm ready to move approval, but just for the benefit of certain doubting members of the public, we'll get it on record. In the end, the surface of Hinkle, this is a question, will be flush with the university and flush with the side streets. Is that true? >> Correct. >> That is true. Okay. I move approval. >> Okay. >> Mayor Pro Tem. >> Second. >> We have a motion and a second for agenda item 2E. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries 6-0. Moving on to agenda item 2F, consider nomination appointments to the city board's commissions and committees, library board. >> Move approval. >> Council Member? >> Jim Owen, good man. I second. >> We have a motion and a second for Mr. Owen on the library board. All in favor, please signify by raising your right hand. Motion carries 6-0. Concluding items, any concluding items, then we're going to go into closed session. Any concluding items? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem. >> Just real quick. I do want to mention, I think parks had their valentine's dance, was that last night for folks with -- I forget when it was. I have a friend that DJ'd it and he mentioned it. So I just thought that was fantastic of the parks to do something like that to make sure we're taking care of our citizens. >> Fantastic. You bet. Thank you. Anybody else? All right. We will therefore adjourn this open meeting of the Denton City Council and we will now convene in closed session at 447, pursuant to Texas Government Code under Section 551.0 -- oh, that's not it. Texas Government Code Section 551.074, deliberation, discuss the evaluations, duty, discipline, procedures, and contracts of the city auditor.