Mar 02, 2020 City Council on 2020-03-02 11:30 AM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council on Monday, March the 2nd, 2020. It is 11 33 p.m. We will open this meeting. We do have a quorum, albeit barely, but we do, and so we'll move on through our work session reports. Work session 1A is receive a report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the proposed agreement with Keep Denton Beautiful. Mayor of City Council Gary Pack and Director of Parks and Recreation want to talk today about some projects that we've been working on over the past few months. Back in the fall, Keep Denton Beautiful, specifically the staffing portion of it, was relocated into the Parks and Recreation Department years ago, was part of Parks and Recreation. We're excited to have them back as part of our team. We've been working to integrate them into our daily operations. A few weeks ago you had an ordinance presented to you in regards to us trying to work out of the lease for the rail yard property, so we're working to sublease that. They have moved over to City Hall East. That gives them an opportunity to really get embedded within our organization and become more familiar with how we operate and how we could actually help each other. Since then, we've started a number initiatives with integrating some of their volunteer work or their volunteer management into our department, which we did not have. We're also trying to provide them some additional support for their staffing, specifically in regards to marketing, special events, etc. Originally, KDB had 3.5 FTEs. We'll go through this in the presentation. That's been reduced to 2.0 and there's some other proposals as part of that, but really integrating them into our operations and trying to figure out how there's opportunities to really improve from both directions has been a major opportunity for us. If you recall a few years ago when we presented the first agreement for the Denton Park Foundation back in 2018, we went through that same process in regards to an agreement for KDB. We used that as our foundation and the framework for the agreement that's proposed to you in your packet today for consideration and feedback, so wanted to point that out to you as well. One major process in that agreement is to really delineate responsibilities from both KDB Inc. and the Parks and Recreation Department specifically and our KDB staff. This slide here just kind of gives you that delineation of the responsibilities. KDB, in essence, is a fundraising tool, board operations, strategic direction for the KDB efforts as a whole, financial management, fund development as I mentioned, and then the Park side is more or less the implementation, whether it's programs, grant applications, marketing and outreach, those types of things. So this kind of gives you that real brief high-end elevated viewpoint of the differences between the two boards or the two groups. From an organizational structure, we've kind of fallen the 20% of KDB affiliates in the state of Texas where we have an official nonprofit, but it's still funded through city support. There are some that are operated where it's city structure only. It's city funded. There are some that are completely free and clear of any city operations and it's completely board nonprofit oriented. So we're a hybrid between the two. So that gives you kind of a little brief history of how we're funded and how we operate. Manix O'Connor is the president of KDB. He's going to come up and provide the presentation and then myself, Autumn's here as well and there's a number of KDB board members here as well, if they have any questions they could answer as well. All right. Great. Okay. No demonstrations of whatever they call it in the council rules of proceeding. I'm just teasing you. Thank you, Gary, and thank you, Council, for taking time to hear us today. The mission of KDB is to create a clean and beautiful addendum. KDB promotes community engagement. We encourage civic pride. We increase environmental awareness. We provide education for people young and old. Every resident within the city benefits from clean streets, clean public places, clean water, better air, and the beauty of a clean denton. Our organizational structure shown on the prior slide does not show ROI or efficiency or impact. We believe that the public-private hybrid model that we have is more efficient, delivers better ROI. We see more organizations moving in that direction. So KDB and Denton have a 33-year history of improving and refining this relationship. Today we continue that success. And just to mention a couple of things on the slide. We've been awarded over $525,000 for beautification grants. Those have gone for our street improvements, mainly medians and trees. You can see the dates and the locations of that. On the cutting edge of environmental thinking, we pioneered the environmental crimes unit. We got a grant for that. It was a seven-year program within the police department. We were awarded more than $27,000 for irrigation in the downtown. So we had plants and flowers can be grown and beautify the central denton. Our success at the tree giveaway was such that the city came to us saying, well, we have tree mitigation funds. Can you help us plant more trees in private and public areas since we do it a little less expensively because the public bears the maintenance costs for growing the trees initially. We've planted over 1,400 trees through the Denton Tree Initiative. And you're probably familiar with the mural projects if you drive on our streets or ride your bike or walk. I'm sure you do. They exist in Bell, Sherman, and scripture avenues. So that's an ongoing project. We have diverse income sources. We have sponsorships. All of these we always work on improving, increasing. So sponsorships, grant monies, contributions, direct contributions, in-kind contributions, merchandise. And we can apply these across all parties within the within the city. Individuals, businesses, and organizations. We work with all of them. All this income goes to programs. All of it. None of it goes to our operation. All goes to programs. Now the yellow highlights you see come from the city. So these are individual city departments which have identified something that KDB could do to help them further their own mission in a way that that they for some reason felt we were better at doing than they were for various reasons. Let me give me a couple examples. Watershed has a requirement from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to have storm water meet storm water requirements and we help with that with our trees and and that kind of thing with shade and water retention in the soil. Solid Waste came to us about adopt a spot because they were thinking well gee if we could have the community clean up certain areas which are a problem for us we can we can avoid the cost of contractors or more personnel to do that work and that's been a very big program. Denton Municipal Electric came to us about trees as well because they had in the past and and still continue an ongoing education issue with people planting things that grow up and then interfere with the high power wires right so they have to cut cut the trees if the tree is appropriate the right tree in the right place it makes their jobs much easier so we help in certain ways with certain particular parts of their mission. Now when you look at the city side of the budget it really goes 100% to fund employees and their overhead really nothing goes to the KDB programs other than what I just mentioned the the specific departments which come to us with specific requests that money allocated for specific uses. If you notice at the top right on this chart 2018-2019 there's a reduction of about a hundred thousand dollars this relates to what Gary spoke of the reduction of 1.5 full-time employees we have had in the past three and a half people with the city supporting the programs helping us to organize and deliver these programs we only have two now and I'd also point out so that reduced hundred thousand I'd also point out the second one on the right top line down second one fifty four thousand dollars that's rent as Gary mentioned we are vacating offices and reducing cost this is a we really the city gave us these offices they were beautiful and fabulous and they helped us but they certainly weren't needed for our mission when we could save the money and that's going to happen so I just mentioned we're working very diligently on cost reduction if you look at this graphically you see on the left side the dark circle is a hundred percent of the budget of that part of the budget goes strictly to city staff and their overhead if you look at the money we raise roughly eighty thousand dollars sixty five percent of it we raise from the community through all the means I just mentioned sponsorships in kind donations you know merchandise membership that kind of thing and that about thirty five percent is the programs that were asked to do by the various departments I mentioned wastewater and DME and that kind of thing so in terms of the total budget it looks like three hundred twenty one thousand dollars but actually I just mentioned we're reducing it by fifty four thousand dollars by eliminating rent and if you take out the twenty eight thousand dollars that is you that we've been asked to spend by the departments which I just mentioned you're really left with a hundred and eighty seven thousand dollar budget mainly for employee two employees and they're associated overhead each employee if you divide it it's each employee is about ninety thousand ninety three thousand dollars and their overhead about 25 so please note when you look at these investments you're making it doesn't include an ROI it doesn't talk about the savings the city gets from reduced road crews it doesn't talk about the savings the city gets from reduced contractor requirements it doesn't talk about the city the savings the city gets from reduced need for vehicle or maintenance or other salaries or overhead so it's not an ROI it's it is all of these savings are not accounted for or not shown and it also doesn't I think importantly and it can't this is an intangible account for behavior change if people don't litter it makes a big difference makes your jobs easier if people don't spray paint graffiti it makes the city more beautiful and makes your jobs easier if people keep their yards and their streets and their neighborhoods clean it helps the city makes more beautiful it prevents people once there's a little litter there's more litter you know that you know how it happens the broken windows theory so all of all of Denton benefits from the quality of life improvements that we are working on so KDB work is done by the community by your family your friends your neighbors our family friends and neighbors KDB promotes and develops engaged and committed citizens we reach every part of the city we reach every citizen enjoys the benefits of what we do we are not a special interest group we're a community interest group in 2019 we had 246 activities do you realize that's an activity almost except for four or five almost every working day not the weekends but every working day of the year these are garden workdays cigarette litter prevention cleanups educational events small business activities meetup cleanup and we've recently completed our first year of KDB a new film contest if you want to see the films that were submitted you and you get our newsletter the February this the newsletter in your email had links to the to the to the films that were submitted but if I might just hit on a couple things on the slide starting at the bottom I mentioned 246 activities we cleaned over 200 miles of streets over 700 acres of public and private land we collected almost 10 tons of trash and planted more than 2,000 trees and this was a year in which ours one of our signature events the great America cleanup had to be canceled because it was rained out we didn't want to subject people to potential lightning or rain or or or injury so we canceled it and during that event we get we usually add about another 2,000 volunteers to this so easily in our past annual reports you'll see is four or six thousand volunteers a year but even without that event two thousand volunteers four thousand volunteer hours and if you value those as a public interest groups do at about twenty four dollars an hour for a volunteer hour it's a hundred thousand dollars we contributed there so highlights of our past year the Texas legislature has designated Denton redbud capital of Texas I mean this is an honorific this is something KDB promotes through the signature event of redbud festival our tree giveaway is community funded to a large extent and it's so popular that register so as soon as we put it up register for a free tree it's sold out in two days it's we have to close registration so it's very well known very popular 2019 we collected a hundred thousand cigarette butts off the streets and and public properties of Denton we completed a gateway mural that I'm sure you've all passed by many times on Eagle Drive at Route 77 under the Union Pacific under over crossing and and finally Children's Arbor Day is something we've done many years and we go to the third grade elementary school we bring little redbud saplings and we teach them about how to grow trees grow plants in general and when you go to the redbud festival and sit there at the booth as I have and you and people come by and say oh I need another tree I have one it's so big but it's 30 years old now and I got it when my son was 10 and you know and now he's in college and when he comes back we talk about that and and so it's really touching how people have a personal connection to the trees and the beauty of our our city and how we promote that so and when we look at 2020 highlights we've already completed we're in q2 so we've completed a number of things tree giveaway is done we did something as Gary mentioned now that we're in the parks we have the opportunity for more synergies will closer partnership with the city and this is an example the North North Lakes dog park we organized 85 volunteers to plant 76 trees and that new facility that was not something we'd ever done but we did it spur of the moment and and it's the kind of thing that can happen more if we have the resources to do it this year we've already collected 400 of 40,000 40,000 cigarette butts so add that to the hundred thousand we've already collected a new thing we did again part of the synergies being with parks and recreation department the Mills Road cleanup roadway cleanup and property cleanup resulted in 250 pounds of litter collected and a cleanup of the property where there's going to be a future East Lakes Park we have seven new adopt a spot areas areas that have been noted as areas that continually get litter and we're going to help maintain that without the need for city adding any more contractors or personnel and and finally we had planned to do a new mural at Bellin Robinson at again the Union Pacific under crossing there and we had a plan and we'd raised money to do that when the Public Arts Commission approached us approached KDB to recreate a mural that was existing but will no longer be there the foundations of our history so we're in progress for recreating that mural in this location again areas where the synergy between the city because of our new co-location within the city buildings and our location within Gary and Sarah's group the parks what's so as as we mentioned we've relocated to the parks foundation parks and recreation department we think that's going to be very successful I've mentioned a few of the synergies already we've identified ways to save money the rent reduction in the rent which you've already heard about and upcoming so I would just say if you looked in your mail you got this I'm sure you all read this with great interest to our two signature events are listed this this month the Great America cleanup on March 21st and the Red Bud Festival on April 4th so we're planning for those working toward those though as well as our annual membership drive and increased fundraising at the same time our top priorities are this contract that we're here to talk about today and an executive director so if I can just highlight a couple of factors about the new contract you in your materials you have the contract you have all the job descriptions you have the submission for the governor's community achievement award this year keep your fingers crossed if we win that we'll have an add to our to our award grant money that we can use you have the board of director for KDB the contact list for the board of directors but I just want to highlight a couple of things on this slide first of all the the new contract we've been working on it diligently together for a while it's in line with the parks foundation audit recommendations that you're very familiar with and it's in line with the best practices for nonprofit organizations so we feel it's a very solid contract and in our 33 year history we know what works in terms of programs we're just now in it as we always do working to make it better so the new contract improves a delineation of responsibility between city of Denton employees and KDB board of directors like myself it removes any conflict of interest for the city of Denton employees in addition I might mention that the KDB board of directors of all sign non-conflict of interest paperwork so that's available for anyone to see third party we've delineate discusses third party certified accountant audits to be performed that's that's fine I have a comment about that on the final slide and the city employees very importantly city employees will not touch manage handle solicit or otherwise be involved with the KDB funds that we raise it in addition divides the role of an executive director so what today are we oh you want to can I I have a couple more comments Gary and then it just up so two slight modifications that contract as it exists today I want to mention here in the public forum the 50,000 it wrecked the executive director will be the key liaison between the KDB board and the city of Denton employees will be a community leader someone who goes out and solicits and raises funds needs to be someone who's familiar with nonprofits familiar with this city operations has a personality such that they're respected leader and the contract suggests $50,000 and that might work for a part-time person but if we we should have to do all the work that we need to do the board we've done research and we can discuss about about 80,000 really would be required to get the kind of person we need the other only other point I'd mention on the contract is we do have historically audited every other year the contract look asked for every year audits are about $4,000 and if we have a annual budget of about $80,000 it will grow but still 80,000 right now 4,000 is quite a lot out of that to do an audit so we suggest every other year so KDB is a legacy agency with a 30 year proven track record and and we share a vision so I'll with that I'll turn it back to Gary Councilmember Briggs had a question I have several I've been writing them down so just do you want me to ask them on our way till it's completely all done I'm done oh you're done so I can ask you your questions yes if you'd like okay so my questions are about the the staff and the reduction in your staff and then so there's the two FTEs for the city and this may be something for you too I'm not sure but I'm a little concerned because there's a lot of responsibilities on both of those sides and I just want to make sure that I saw that there's two FTEs on the city and grant writing is under that and that's a big part of what KDB does for the city and a lot of money that they get in and that's almost a full-time job so I want to make sure that that's being looked at as far as our side okay so just to kind of back up a little bit so 3.5 FTEs those are three full-time employees and then some funding for interns so that's been cut back to 2.0 FTEs for city staff so we've we still have the volunteer coordinator and the program manager the the executive director which is proposed we would fund the staff is proposing $50,000 to fund that position that would kind of be added to that FTE count although it would be directly administered and oversight by the KDB Inc board and then the synergies between the organization whether it's marketing park maintenance special event staff that we currently have would help augment some of that reduction and staff where we would help them with their operations as well and the grant writing for instance autumn led led the team in regards to the submittal for the governor's achievement award which is a huge grant application and that was submitted recently so it's still a major priority for us we wouldn't want that to to slide by any means whether it's done internally by Parks and Recreation KDB staff or with the board and the Inc or a combination thereof everyone's working together to try to achieve that where we don't miss opportunities now I think after we go through a full year we can reevaluate how things are operating and make adjustments as needed and see if we need to reprioritize kind of how we're how we're working or and redelegate as needed I just wanted to make sure that there weren't opportunities we were gonna miss because they weren't being looked at or yeah I think I think actually with the synergies and whether it's a Texas Parks and Wildlife grant for a park improvement park operations we're gonna try to use KDB when it's helpful in that opportunity because of the volunteer efforts okay to improve our grant applications and vice versa okay and I have a few questions for you so I saw two different tree giveaway numbers I saw a 2011 and then another I think for the the tree giveaway it was over 600 so was that 2000 number combined like the red buds and then the the tree giveaway or was that where did the full 2,000 trees come from I might defer to autumn on that one because I can quote you various amounts if you recall specifics hi bottom Natalia KDP program manager and the 2000 number is including the denton tree initiative trees that were given away so that includes all of the programs with rebates and yeah and bid to businesses and private homes private residents the 650 is just for that tree giveaway which is fully funded by the nonprofit okay and just to follow up because that tree giveaway closed in two days and it was I did get a lot of comments about how can we extend that a little bit more is that possible and going next time to extend that or have more trees to give away we've definitely looked into that consideration of expanding it or having one in the fall and one in the spring and that's something to consider okay and this may be a question for our city manager because we heard about the audit issue and how it's done every two years but it's $4,000 is that something our since it's part within our city department could our internal auditor look at that or no I don't see any reason it couldn't do that like in the off years or the city council could just simply increase the budget to have it done every year it's up to you is the concern the cost or is it I mean because to have an external auditor I think nonprofits probably within bylaws and things such as that have to be audited ever so often it what's the primary interest you're well it's like it's the cost to keep it beautiful I mean it's a we're we're finding part of it and they're fundraising and if they have to fundraise you know four thousand dollars just to go to an audit every single year I was just looking for ways to help that if you could step behind the mic yeah because I got a notice on the with $80,000 really is the amount we're talking about this year is fairly simple and straightforward for so not federal law requires nonprofits if they raise seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to have an audit so at our size nonprofits suggested is really just to have someone look at the books not even necessarily really audited we've been audited every two years we'd be happy to do that every two years and it's simple to be a normal policy and and if the city could you know just look every other off year that would certainly for that amount of money there's hard there's not that many line on it's it's a couple of couple of page budget I have a few more but I'm gonna let other people go in yeah I guess a couple things one is I see the contract but I know that I've been involved in some conversations in the past when mr. Langley was here and things were different and we had these different issues about the contract so have those been resolved and everybody's come to sort of an agreement on that is that my understanding I don't want to speak for from Manix and I'll let him speak on that but since we started this process in early fall I think we've been working very well together to put together an agreement that everyone felt comfortable with and could could be satisfied with move forward it's the draft in front of you would be it's a short-term agreement basically it would get us through this fiscal year and then we would come back just like we do with the park board during the budget process and give you kind of where we've been or where KDB's been over the past year and what we've accomplished as a group and where we're gonna go next year with the next annual plan and then the ask again for funding for that upcoming fiscal year so that way both the park foundation and KDB's request would be in the budget and then provided any feedback from counsel at that point time we would come back in the first meeting in October with an official agreement for that to be ratified to move forward and executed so so my last my next question is and it's more it's not one that's gonna be resolved here today but I think something for the council and for everybody if we could go back to the slide that sort of shows let me see which one it is go back through keep going you know keep going the one that's got the little round thing that shows number of volunteers and all these kind of things yeah all right here so I guess what I it's not wrestle it's not struggle I'm just curious about because we've been doing this a long time and I think it's something that came up in the conversation some of the contract conversation that we've had is that before the desire for an executive director for KDB in essence the city of Denton was primarily handling all the functions of the program is that am I correct on that is that is that my correct understanding because KDB had a did they have any staff at the actual nonprofit level or was all the staff that which is city of Denton staff all the staff is city of Denton staff okay that's correct so all these things I see up here those would be sort of a knit not controlled by but you know coordinated by I guess city of Denton staff the question for me is what outside of the executive director we're funding almost the entire budget it seems like outside of the fundraising what what's the value of keeping all this separated what's the value of saying hey because we are funding it and councilmember Briggs it sort of when you asked your questions like well we want to save KDB four thousand dollars on auditing well we're already paying so where do we see the benefit of we're funding the whole thing so just help me understand and I'm not saying there's not but I think it's a valid question of okay here it is and it's a sort of a national franchise organization the city's in essence funding most of it except for this request of the executive director and we're also providing all the staff support and we're coordinating all these things that we see up here so refresh my memory on the rationale for you know the bifurcation and having the nonprofit with the city funding it and having city employees that a lot of it is a perception and community involvement people like to support our mission they like to support their fellow community members they want to become engaged because they're motivated for that as a as a city it becomes more difficult as a city just because of the perception of you're the city and the taxes and that kind of thing so having the ability to work on private property which the city improved private property which the city may have some legal issues with having the ability to solicit funds which the city clearly all this contract is about that we don't want to do that so when you look at the fact that we can work on private property raise private funds and and spend them for a mission that people are engaged and enthusiastic about really provides the kindling the fire the fuel that in a enables your staff the city staff KDB staff to organize things that are effective because the public is involved I think if the city were doing it themselves they there would just be less of a level of enthusiasm for the for the programs for the projects people feel connected to it because they feel it's theirs so you had mentioned city staff and KDB staff when I KDB doesn't have any employees okay we have as you see people who are very committed sitting here and working board members is that the board members and committee chairs and volunteers yes but they're technically I'm sorry they're not they're not so I just didn't know if I'd miss something no no no no my I miss okay all right thank you just one addition to that you know we provided a slide here in regards to kind of the makeup there's a number of different ways that it could be structured obviously our goal is to have community engagement and if that's through a nonprofit that's brewing that excitement and that ownership and they're successful that's great if it takes a different direction you know we'll have to ship I'm just curious because I know we've had this conversation before and we had it with the Parks Foundation board as far as the rate of return the ROI and funds raised and those kinds of things so I wanted to make sure that we looked at it with the same level of deliberation as we did with the Parks Foundation board can you buddy over here just don't want to miss anybody I'm sorry I guess I'm left-eye dominant Councilman Briggs do you have a question yeah go ahead sure go ahead so three more questions so I and the contract it says that the approval of the the city manager to use the facilities for any of the keep didn't beautiful events is that new or is that something that was in the last contract that that is new we just added that as we were going through all the recent policies on in kind donations and all that just so we were clear in regards to what the city is providing the nonprofit just like we do arts and jazz festival and so that's just a hey we need this and you're okay it doesn't have to go through the full process and come to council and I mean what how does that work it's in the annual plan it's in it's in the agreement if it's something that's significant would definitely want to bring it to you to make sure you're aware of that okay next thing I've had people ask me and this just may be for you guys to think about or the board I don't know if keep didn't beautiful it cannot or it's not just about trees and if there's a program for wildflowers maybe eventually in the future so you can give out wildflowers as well because it's about beauty that's one another question so you can ponder that the other thing I've heard or asked from the community is that is it possible to organize a volunteer tree ID group so that people can members can learn how to identify trees and come on to city property and that way give us a count and identification of the trees that we have because we have different studies we have a plan but we know we don't know exactly what we have and how many of them I might say two things with regards to wildflowers with first of all if you talk to your constituents and they ask questions like that please please please refer them to us okay we'd be so happy to get more people involved with us we've funded a wildflower gardens Denver Brewing Company in the front of we funded part of their butterfly garden so absolutely yes and and to with tree identification we had a program and we still have the data where we went out and identified trees throughout and we mapped them on software so absolutely we can do this the issue Keeley is resources people ours volunteer hours so the more you can refer people to us we will absolutely take their ideas and run with them that's fantastic thank you so much just just follow up on the watch yeah well don't we have a what is it arborist program our tree within the city don't we have something that they that they have classes that you take on identifying trees and things such as that and how to take care of them so I think that could be something that could be easily incorporated absolutely into a program like that for volunteers yeah I think councilmember you had asked about wildflower areas or no more areas in the city and between sustainability KDB and our parks and recreations that we've been meeting to identify those locations so we can utilize volunteers to help with that process as well thank you any I'm sorry councilmember Ryan on the fifty thousand dollars that's being recommended for an executive director you also mentioned that this is just to get us through this fiscal year so would it be likely that that would have recommendation for a higher amount would be in the future because if you divide that by the seven months we've got left this year multiply it by 12 that's 85,000 so from the staff recommendation it was $50,000 for a full fiscal year okay if council decided to prorate that that's an option or if it was a lump sum for the full year that's the council's discretion but the recommendation from staff was $50,000 to get that process rolling I know KDB Inc. has another recommendation for that but that was staff's recommendation that's we put in the agreement as a placeholder for that discussion point okay thank you yeah protein yeah no I'm gonna say I'm comfortable with staffs recommendation only because for primarily because that's what's in the backup that's what people made aware of so if we were if there's a different number proposed I think we would have had a duty to disclose that just personally - I'm but I'm open to if we can get the other space released and somehow $50,000 is not being spent on that piece of property then I'm happy for the city manager to bring it back and let's discuss that further to say but you know ultimately it's on paper it's $100,000 until we get that relit and so unless am I calculating that right it's fifty fifty thousand dollars a year it's 40 I can't remember what the monthly breakdown is but it's roughly fifty thousand dollars for a full year's lease that that lease agreement is up at the end of this calendar year so officially in January we're being free and clear that if we don't sublease it sooner right and that that was the whole goal of getting out of there is one not just for the staff benefit of getting them integrated into our park department they were kind of over there by themselves in that location but also gives us an opportunity to try to get out of that payment got it yeah so that's that's my look and then looking forward just transparency and full disclosure I mean this really gets back to the question I mean we have an executive director for the parks foundation we have executive director we're looking at for Katie B at some point we need to reconcile those two and three or whatever else we're providing for and say is there a individual a department that should kind of feel that responsibility that we're paying one person more and they're in charge of multiple departments or is it best to segregate it and then pay each individual head I just that questions coming I'm just letting you know and during a budget cycle because I think we think we need to I need to reconcile those to understand who's doing what and if there's crossover overlap that we can take advantage of and just have a resource for all departments versus each because I think this repeats it because it makes sense if any asset that's adding to needs a executive and so to have a resource for everyone seems to make sense versus taking it one at a time nails yes my most interesting understanding in that direction and in understanding the job descriptions and just really whether or not those things do collapse it's you know my overall feeling is you all seem to be in agreement with each other it's short term and we're gonna kind of it's a lot of changes already and you know you're gonna come back and tell us how it works you know when we get to the budget cycle so I'm basically comfortable saying you know try out what you think is right but I would be interested in a kind of moralistic look at how how we deal with all these you know I've talked previously about the idea of a Denton foundation or you know common resource yeah just kind of there's there's a lot of moving parts related to these nonprofits so customer Meltzer it seems like they're in agreement I'm pretty much an entire contract except for the funding for the executive director one is 50 and you know Katie B has come in and asked for 80 so I'm not sure where do you sort of fall on that yeah I frankly don't have enough information I'd like to you know see what the job description is I mean this you know it would just be it would just be a guess I mean at this point what's the foundation for saying it's 50 what's the foundation for saying it's 80 I don't really have a basis for for giving direction on it okay so right now as far as that component of the contract it's it's not one that you're giving direction on as far as that so it would be I need a little more information to be able to okay any other comments yes I'm good with the recommendations for the rest of the year but and that's this will come back to us before during our budget during a parks integration budget presentation we'll have a couple slides similar what we did last year with the president of the park foundation will invite the president to come back again kind of one or two slides can here's a brief overview of where we've been where we're gonna go and then council discussion at that point time then we'll follow up once the budget is approved with an official agreement again for to be executed so I'm okay with that but I'm also okay with the recommendation for the audit every two years and having our audit fill in just to look over I might be the only one on here but that's sufficient for me I'm good with the recommendations and I'm fine with the odd years just being a review by an outside source as opposed to every year audits so when you say recommendations as well councilmember rigs y'all talking about the $50,000 recommendation okay and then coming back to and to reconsider that yeah and and I'm okay I'm okay with that I guess as it comes back I won't be here talking about it at least from this seat it might be from some other seat but if you could try to also put it in terms of how we've structured that with the parks foundation because I know we went through a lot of discussion with that about you know their fundraising efforts the rate of return and those kinds of things so this is really a whole different paradigm then you know that KDB and the city didn't run into so I just want to make sure that we're exploring that and I really appreciate that if y'all come to the terms of the contract because I know the last discussion I was in there were some some differences of opinion but I'm glad that we've been able to come to some collaborative agreements on that so I think it sounds like the recommendation is to move forward with the contract with the recommendation of the 50,000 for the remaining fiscal year and I don't know if that's prorated or if that's 50,000 total and which means I guess that's my question yes you did you have a discretion in regards to how you'd want that whether it's prorated or the lump sum well I guess my question to you is when you when you recommend fifty thousand dollars and if it's was based upon a yearly contract are you saying lump sum of the proration or either you're not saying give the whole 50 thousand you're saying give a lump sum of the proration or spread it out over the remaining months the proration of that 50,000 the 50,000 basically subject to the remaining years once they hire an employee for executive director so if it's three years left of that 50,000 we would divide the 50 by 12 and then figure out by three to provide the funding for that employee or did you rather just give them the 50,000 and let them make the decisions they want to do so they can move forward on their own. Councilmember Meltzer. Could we get a little help without it taking too long from the city's HR department to just look at the job description and kind of rate it and say you know kind of give their assessment of you know based on the market what really is required to meet those those needs. Sure we can do that. Yeah so this will come back for council considering you know for official action so at the time it comes back we'll be able to have that data with us the difference between the 50 and the 80 compared with the job descriptions and so forth. I'd just like to mention because because it is of interest Councilmember Meltzer the when we look at this the compensation nationwide for and when we look at locations like Glassdoor, salary.com, LinkedIn, the Parks Foundation this is a Dallas Fort Worth Texas recruiters network and the nonprofit executive directors group these are all online kind of things where you can do research you find that someone with experience in the nonprofits sector that you're that you're gonna have you want to have longevity because they become more effective the longer they're in the role of course with the kind of interpersonal skills that are required to interface with the city and with the community and to be a leader that you know you're the nonprofit executive director salary ranges for this kind of person are about 72,000 to 153,000 so we're on the lower end of that because we don't have any employees you know it's a simpler in that way but you need a pretty pretty sophisticated person really to be effective at fundraising and diplomatic in the political realm and savvy about organization to you know for our programs that they would have to get involved with so so that's what that's what the data tells us from the marketplace I would just say you know you know you may be exactly right I don't question that it's just from you know my perspective sitting here I just don't know why you aren't on the same page with each other so and I and I love you both so I assume there's a reason you know we can talk about that coming back because I I hear what you're saying in the data but but that's very high level I mean here it's an executive director that's coming in to an organizations never had one has no employees we've got an entire city staff that's dedicated to all the program implementation and those kind of things and I think if you're gonna say that they can do fundraising then that means we might want to build into the contract some metrics for that because I know that's what the Parks Foundation one part of their rationale was hey that you know this is what we've done in the past but y'all have not really had to do fundraising you have but you've done it because you haven't had to do it for operational fiscal support so I think that coming back with if you were able to provide maybe a white paper from your perspective and then we'll get the HR and then we'll be able to have some some really good comments conversation about that we'll get that in the fall to you as soon as possible real quick councilman Ryan I was just gonna say I see it as a not to exceed number much like we do with some of our hot funds that you send him a check they have to prove up that they've actually spent it and if they haven't then they'd have to return the rest of the money you know after September 30th okay yeah we can we can talk about that when we come back because it shouldn't be that long of a conversation when we come back for a final approval okay thank you so that's really the only thing that I've heard is still outstanding other than that contract looks good haven't heard anybody stating objections to any of the terms of the contract this is the only one that we might need to tweak a little bit okay thank you very much thank you appreciate it thank you so much thank you all for being here and thank you for your service to the community as well thank you all right we'll go on to agenda item work session 1b receive report hold discussion of staff direction regarding updates to the integrated pest management program good afternoon mayor council members Laura Barron's assistant director for the Parks and Recreation Department today I want to give you an update on our integrated pest management program or IPM we'll be reviewing our current program and also going over peer review that was conducted by three independent organizations of the current program their recommendations and then also some proposed moving forward action plans that we have so first just a quick overview of our current IPM program the current IPM program only covers that property which is managed by the Parks and Recreation Department it was reviewed and had assistant in development by an independent focus group made up of citizens from the city of Denton it was also some considerable research that was put into the initial IPM program it was tailored to meet our specific community needs that included goals and the elimination of glyphosate through this process we also developed a pilot site which is at Deena Park and continues to this day and we were approved to move forward with the current IPM program in May of 2019 just to give you an update too on the budgeting process for the current IPM program we were approved for additional funding to implement this program there was a breakdown of the initial costs and where we are today so for mowing you can see that the majority of the budget goes towards increased mowing in our park system specifically for class A and B parks that mowing cycle begins on 214 so we just I'm sorry 217 so we just started that mowing cycle and haven't really seen what that cost is going to come out to you yet in addition we also have some contracts that are out for bid on mowing in terms of soil amendments and supplements which is fertilization we have an open PO for that and prepared for the season as well as for the extra watering and labor that's associated with that we have used approximately $3,000 in testing different subproducts throughout the park systems we have some money allocated for that and then the final component to that was top dressing and we do have a bid out for that now I believe the bids are going to be reviewed at the end of the week and that's for dino dirt dino dino soil I forgot to put on here dino light and sand and lava sand so here recently we had our IPM that was peer reviewed by three organizations and you've got some detail on that in your backup I'll be going over the hitting some highlights of those recommendations as well as giving you a snapshot of that detail but during these discussions there had also been some questions about taking this IPM citywide so not only the properties that are maintained by parks but other city-owned properties and how we could implement these best practices in the care and maintenance of those turfs and landscapes we took the peer review recommendations back to our original focus group in January and shared with them the results of that and some of the proposed changes that we'll be making to the current IPM we're here before you today also going over that review and then we'll be presenting this to our parks board tonight so the three organizations that took a look and gave us some recommendations and feedback included the Texas A&M AgriLife extension the IPM Institute of North America and non-toxic neighborhoods all three of them provided us with feedback and you've got copies of their feedback in your backup we do have a draft revised document that incorporates the majority of the comments and recommendations that were made for the most part and overall we got very positive feedback on the current IPM program and a lot of their recommendations and comments really helped to support and strengthen our current IPM program we will have ongoing evaluation as that is built in to the IPM program itself so in the draft document I did a little color coding so if you see any changes in the draft document that are highlighted in yellow for instance those are going to be comments that came from Texas A&M AgriLife extension so this is these are just the highlights of the comments from the three peer review agencies and then the pink or kind of magenta color are going to be comments or like comments that were made by two or all three of the agencies so for Texas A&M AgriLife they recommended that we actually break out the IPM program into two sections the first section being outlining the methodology of the IPM program and then the second section being your operational manual so taking those strategies and converting them into SOPs so the methodology would act as your policy piece and then the strategies would act as your ongoing SOPs and how to implement that methodology there were also a couple of areas where we needed to update the license applicator requirements we did have a section in here that specifically talked about personal protective equipment how that is used and the requirements for that but we didn't have an outline of the minimum standards so they recommend that we include those in which we did and then they also asked us to define drift because we do talk about drift and minimizing drift so that when there is any kind of use of products that that doesn't go beyond the target areas and so we did implement a definition for that from IPM Institute of North America they recommended that we actually change this from a program to a plan because that's really what it is and then for in terms of the use of pesticides they had a recommendation to broaden this not only from city properties but also to structural buildings currently our facilities maintenance department oversees the use of pesticides within our buildings so that's something that we can actually look at ongoing to coordinate those efforts with them and see how we can implement some of these best practices in our structural facilities they act they also recommended that we include a goal for program sustainability so once this is implemented and there are any changes in staff any changes on the council that there are some mechanisms in there that this program will continue to thrive expanding record-keeping for non-chemical interventions this really would help us in showing the how the IPM methodology works because right now all that we're recording are those chemical interventions and that is required by law but to be able to show and to demonstrate all of the non-chemical interventions that actually are in a line with the IPM methodology would greatly demonstrate some of the goals that we're setting for ourselves and some of the new criteria for reporting and evaluation that we've included in the updated IPM program the addition of specifications to strategy 16 on playgrounds is strategy 16 specifically deals with playgrounds and one of our main ways to keep weeds and insects out of the playground areas is the way we implement some physical barriers in the playground area so that includes the use of gravel the black tarp all underneath the wood chips that we use in those areas and they work but they recommended that we actually put in what the specifications are for that those have been included a clarifying the use of ninotics in the pollinator strategy which has been updated and then also to include aesthetics as a component for thresholds for consistency throughout the document from non-toxic neighborhood we actually received a recommendation to move from an IPM program to what's called a progressive pest management program or a PPM there is a draft copy of that in the backup and as you can see it's very similar to an IPM program itself and we took several components from that draft PPM and incorporated it into the proposed update they also made a comment about adding a goal to eliminate and or minimize the use of EPA level pesticides and I took it a step further and actually provided an outline for pest controls based on property type and minimizing the types of pesticides that can be used within each one of those property types all of which have been included and then finally for them one of the recommendations was to secure a contract service for a third-party monitoring of property conditions some of the common recommendations that we received were to define or outline organic in community gardens so we have a section of our community garden that is for organic gardening only and there really isn't much in there other than this is an organic section and only organic products can be used so being able to provide a little bit more clarification on the types of methods that are appropriate appropriate and are allowed in that in that area we heard from a couple of the agencies to add fire ants to strategy 16 and 17 again 16 is our playgrounds and 17 are our dog park areas including soil testing in the maintenance strategies and procedures which we currently do and have included and include a process for program evaluation and reporting we actually added this new section to the beginning of the document where we're outlining how to evaluate our program reporting criteria that would be included annually and then again how to incorporate that additional non-intervention reporting and then finally something that we heard from all three was to convert our approved product list from the product name to the active ingredient so we can still use the use the product name but actually start with the active ingredient we took it a step further and put the concentration levels for each active ingredient the product name that we're currently using and then the EPA level for that product a snapshot of the matrix that's in your backup gives a little bit more detail it also has the deliverable or actions that we took based on those recommendations and the page number where you can find those revisions we also have on here the status of each one of those recommendations again the majority of those are complete for the community garden we are working on updating the contract that we have that our gardeners sign so that we can include language that is consistent with the IPM program and I believe everything else for AgriLife is has been completed IPM Institute of North America probably gave us the most comments and certainly a lot of detail so you can see what the status is each one of those comments the pages for the changes and then where we are on those today really the only ones that we're continuing to evaluate and and look at ongoing is going to be that expansion of a pesticide management program into our actual structural facilities and then finally from non-toxic neighborhoods many of their comments again aside from changing the entire IPM program to a PPM their comments were already addressed in IPM or sections of their proposed PPM we're taking right out of that document and inserted into the IPM program so again this was the feedback that we got was very positive and very compatible and supportive and just really helped to strengthen our current program the third-party recommendation we do have in there for future evaluation so moving forward one of the recommendations that we received and that did come from the non-toxic neighborhood group was to form a PPM focus group and since we started with a focus group for IPM we really would like to continue that we think it's a great recommendation and a great idea to have that focus group continue to evaluate our IPM and help us with new techniques new products new methodology certainly one of the things that is very important to us and that that came out of that focus group was getting the various and diverse perspectives from our park users and many of them have a background in not only environmental services but also within the gardening community so if you'll recall we had representatives from the two gardening groups the master gardeners was one of them and then we also had somebody from the Texas native plant society we had a representative from the beekeepers Association and then I'm just gonna give a little shout out to mr. and miss so who also served in our committee and gave us some great and valuable feedback during this process so we would we would ask and we would actually just recommend the formation of a standing IPM committee beginning really with that fundamental structure that we started off with which be similar to our focus group with a minimum of eight members that would meet annually that annually is a minimum so if we had any proposed changes that we wanted to make to the IPM we would ask that group to reconvene to review those proposed changes prior to bringing that forward to council if it was anything significant or major through this process too we've also been working again with non-toxic neighborhoods who provided us with one of the peer reviews and looking at working with them to setting up a second pilot site at Avondale Park so we're waiting to hear back from them on coordinating date and time when they can visit the city visit that site and do their preliminary assessment of the park and then here we are today again to present those proposed updates to you again you've got that in your backup receive any other independent direction that you have moving forward we would recommend incorporating any final comments into the revised document that's been presented and then formally adopting that first policy section of the IPM as a resolution again keeping those SOPs separately because those are our operational manuals but bringing any changes back to the focus group and to council when needed there's also an appendix within the IPM program that where we would document any changes or updates to to that plan and that's all that I have for you this afternoon I really appreciate the methodical process and and getting all that input just one narrow issue I just keep hearing about it I just have you know don't have expertise to to drill down on it and but now that you've gotten all this input I wonder if you have gotten any specific comments about dino dirt little history I've heard it just heralded by Master Gardeners as an incredible product and I've also heard it reviled including you know at this table as a very harmful thing with no scientific basis for its use so which of these what did you get any specific input we have gotten some input our dino dirt and Dr. Banks is here and can maybe speak to some of this but there were some initial questions that came out originally about the use of dino dirt and and yes we hear the same varying degrees of yes this is great and you know we want to move away from this so I think we're probably falling somewhere in the middle what we can say and what we went through with Dr. Banks is that there are regulatory requirements for dino dirt there is annual testing of it we monitor that closely the dino light is my understanding does not have that bio solid component to that product so that is really where most of the concern comes from is having the inclusion of a bio solid in that product but dino light does not have it and again I apologize that was not included in the presentation but it is one of the products that's on the list for out for bid so are we moving away from the dino products that are not dino light because that's you know you listed a number of them well what we're actually doing is using topsoil where it's needed again kind of going back to the original methodology of an IPM program is to evaluate each site independently and maintain it according to what that site needs so dino dirt is one of many ways that we can add soil amendments to an area where it may be deficient so we're not just spreading it everywhere we're spreading it where it's needed based on that particular area that turf that landscape I have several questions mostly for clarification I appreciate this report and all the recommendations so my first my first question of clarification because after we did the glyphosate glyphosate it was we weren't really sure well is that just for parks or is it you know for all city departments because we decided we don't want it to be used and the reasons we don't want it to be used apply not just in parks but other places and so I heard you know varying things so whenever it says on their structural facilities is that what that's addressing or it's glyphosate I have such a hard time saying that is that still used in our structural no so when we eliminated the use of glyphosate it that was actually citywide okay so even though we've got areas of our city that are independently maintaining other pieces of our property that also applied to them so we brought that larger group together and we actually we are continuing to work with them on how we can better manage and certainly implement a citywide program of property maintenance under this new proposed IPM program but specifically for glyphosate that was across the board okay thank you for that clarification another question is in the in the plan it has the use of level one through three from cautious to dangerous pesticides and that was in and it says when deemed necessary to protect public health and so my question is what situations would we use the number one most dangerous pesticide and who would deem that necessary in the process so the number one is going to be really if there is any safety issues or concerns that are directly associated with that particular pest so whether it's an insect or a weed and I know weed sounds funny that you know are there really any safety concerns and there there could be if it's detrimental to that environment so if we have invasive species that are coming in you know we've talked a lot about privet that's where our our goat program our pilot program came in but there there are certain things that if they're not controlled properly we don't keep an eye out for them they could actually be devastating to that landscape or to that environment so it's under those conditions that we would implement or use after we've gone through those first steps that would be the the final step kind of the last resort who would make that call it's really going to be between our park superintendent in coordination with somebody like our urban forester if we're talking about something that's impacting our trees and also with our lead our licensed pesticide manager so it's going to be a decision that's going to be made in coordination with those staff members we there would also be occasions where we could bring in somebody from Dr. Banks group especially if we're talking about an invasive an invasive species in a pond you know bringing in our staff members from watershed who we work closely with and you know this document actually supports a very close collaboration with a watershed so we may be coordinating with them to on what their thoughts and opinions are on targeting a particular pest that we're having to you know to combat to make sure and keep that chemical out of the waterways yes yes yeah or if it's appropriate to use in a waterway okay and so all of that would be and I think it was added as a recommendation or you've already done it the pesticide forms and so all of that would be documented appropriately yes regardless that would have to be documented that's required by law but what we've done is we've put a little bit more parameters around it and made it a little bit more specific this was taken it out of the PPM let's see yeah that's yeah so if you can see in and we have a definition for parks and playgrounds is you know self-explanatory but for park areas that have a heavy traffic or heavy use we would never even get to a two or three we would stop at the I'm sorry a one or two we would stop at three organic products first level three and that's where we that's where we end so as we get into other areas where our you know least populated it's gonna be the right of ways of course we could get up to those two and ones but overall the goal which we included would be to eliminate the use of those higher level EPA classifications okay and I have a follow-up question to you about the community garden because it says I'm just for clarification so 50% is gonna be strictly organic that's the goal that we get to 50% okay but does is the whole thing gonna be non pesticide use but only 50 or can 50% still use whatever pesticides chemicals whatever they want yes because we have such a diverse group of users there we are allotting dedicated plots for those who want to you know manage and grow their their items the way that that they want to or that they're used to and then we have some that are specifically for organic use and dedicated use we've done some things to improve you know to remember really just the logistics and the location to reduce and ensure that we have minimal drift that we have minimal cross-contamination with those gardeners that are using their own products or pesticides that are just market you know market pesticides so that those are some of the improvements that we're making to ensure that those community garden gardeners who are getting the organic plots are separated from the other area but it's the intent to allow for both just because of the diverse user groups that we have are they are they allowed to use glyphosate no we've actually had new signs made and I think they're posted that says that you can't use that particular product everything so we're being consistent that's was yes my main thing okay thank you very much and the last question what is green shield certification so that's one of the certifications for a building okay and that was part of the recommendation to also expand an IPM program into structural facilities and the green shield certification is the implementation of an IPM program within a building okay okay thank you anybody else thank you for the presentation all these recommendations it was there a cost associated with these as far as implementation or these just sort of to hone in the document in other words doesn't sound like there were a whole lot of recommendations outside of what you had presented what the committee had presented with the other person that was chosen to say here's how we want to implement this this was more cleaning up the document giving it some a little bit more bones to it so to speak is that is that yes that's correct and because we've just started with the implementation in the fiscal year with the budgeted you know the allocation amount that we have we'd really like to get through this year to see what that impact you know actually looks like before we make any recommendations for additional funding well first I want to say thank you to the original committee I think they did a stellar job and I think and I really appreciated your answer on the community gardens because I think you're absolutely right that we have a very diverse community here in Denton and people who have varying different levels of beliefs along this whole scale and that it's not that we're going to choose some of the most to either side of what those beliefs are and I appreciate that you've tried to strike a good balance with these recommendations and was sending it out because I know that some have been very more passionate about this and in some ways maybe overly so I guess though this all stemmed from basically a council member and an individual who was very displeased with this process but I'm seeing that the recommendation is to have a similar process with this ongoing focus group and I just don't want the same thing to be repeated that somehow you got people who come together spend their time and their energy and this isn't about you this is me saying what I need to say so I don't want you to take it as and they spend their time and their energy to give the best of what they have to their community and then it's highly questioned and so then we're going to go back to that I don't want this same thing to be repeated for the sake of those people who would be willing to volunteer for this committee that for my understanding is this was a good exercise in the sense of it helped us get some clarity and maybe more specificity within the document but from the standpoint of the implementation at least at this point those recommendations that were provided earlier seemed to really carry the day with most of these organizations save for a couple of tweaks correct so I appreciate the yeoman's work in walking this through and facilitating this and appreciate at least the council members who were here or not council member the committee members yes who knows that might have been a Freudian slip but committee members here that that did spend their time and energy and their expertise to provide that to our community and certainly appreciate their work and the product that's that's come forth out of this so and the input that we might need to look further but we looked further and realized that okay some of our operations would seem to be pretty solid we just needed to and that's that's helpful that's very absolutely yeah okay so the next step is you will come back you're gonna present it to the parks board tonight I believe and correct the parks board tonight to see if they have any additional comments for us and again we can incorporate you know any direction that you give us direction that they give us or recommendations from them and then bring this document back to you the first portion of it outlining the methodology of it which really is gonna be the first part of the document all the way up to where the strategies begin bringing that to you in the form of resolution for formal approval and then those strategies becoming our policy and procedure manual in carrying out the IPM program okay all right appreciate it thank you very much all right we're gonna take a quick five-minute break we'll come back for our last work session item welcome back to this meeting of the Dent City Council on March the 2nd 2020 the time is 102 p.m. we're on our last work session report work session item agenda 1c receive a report hold a discussion to give staff direction regarding the electric water and wastewater management study performed by new gen strategies and solutions LLC afternoon mayor council members my name is Kenny bank Kenny banks sorry I forgot who I was and I'm the general manager yeah I had a little sinus medication going on here so yeah if I drift off into other places please rain me back in I'm glad to be in front of you today to present the utility management study this was conducted by a company called new gen and has been in the works for quite some time and I'm going to try to get through there's a lot of material here we'll try to kind of hit the high points and get through it relatively quickly and I will be handing off to to Terry Nolte to handle the municipal electric side of the of the presentation so we'll have a little back and forth as we as we go through the the presentation itself so I think that the management study itself is a requirement of our charter and I'll go over that in just a few minutes but I want to give a little bit of background talk about the high level findings and recommendations by new gen we did conduct a follow-up survey I think it's very important to think about the context and time frame about when this the bulk of the data collection was going on here in the for the management study most of what was done was collected or most of the data was collected in the fall of 2018 so I think timing is important when we're thinking about this we felt pretty strongly that we wanted to have a follow-up survey just to see how things are today and so that was conducted in a very late fall to this of 2019 talk a little bit about conclusions and then talk about some staff actions that we've already taken that we have in the works so as I said the management study is a charter requirement the charter requires it to be conducted in an interval not exceeding ten years it's not very prescriptive about what elements the management study should involve and various management studies have have been have kind of had flavors about them through the through the years basically the report and the recommendations are to be made public and that's pretty much the the requirement study elements I've listed for you here it's supposed to be a comprehensive look at the at the organization but from an organization standpoint this is not about particular policies of the organization it's more about how the organization is is run and governed so new gen was retained to perform this study and a project kicked off in September of 2018 and most of the data collection including the staff interviews occurred at that in that time frame I want to move right into some general findings and recommendations that that new gen had so the 1998 and 2008 management studies generally had similar scopes of work but they really focused on particular topics so 98 focused on electric utility deregulation 2008 really focused on the cost of shared services this one was was very broad and holistic it wasn't centered on any any one particular topic it was just an overall thorough look at the organization one of their recommendations is they feel the ten-year time frame may be a bit long and changes can occur during that time obviously and and they did want to point out that that each of the three utilities have experienced leadership changes that had occurred right about the time that the data was being collected for this particular study so some recommendations that they had was basically that future management studies should align with a more holistic approach instead of being centered on a particular issue and then a pretty strong consideration for an internal or external management study interim review to occur at about every five-year interval just to track the progress of the recommendations from the ten-year study so I'll turn this over to Terry to talk about the electric component and then I will be back to talk about water and wastewater good morning mayor or good afternoon mayor council good afternoon Terry Dalty assistant general manager DME so again I'll just echo a couple of things of what what Kenny was mentioning you have to put yourself back in time a little bit here to think about what was happening at DME at the time that the consultants were in and doing the evaluation and what they found was there was a lot of turmoil going on at that time and so a lot of the responses have to be viewed with that that environment in mind so organizationally I think they found generally that our employees thought it was a good place to work they definitely pointed out that infrastructure and reliability was one of our strengths and just to give you some idea are are what they call the safety here which is the it's a statistic that deals with the frequency of interruptions and the SATI which is the duration of the interruptions our numbers are actually very good on the on the SATI numbers we're about half of what the national average is on the safety numbers which is the frequency of the duration we're actually in the top 10 percentile of public utilities nationally so you know that's a great shout out to the guys in our substation group our O&M group on the line line maintenance side and on our line construction folks yes sir just to pass along to and they probably already discovered but if we try to sign on to the backup on on Granicus or even the city didn't website it's giving me some code error so we're gonna rely totally upon your presentation here because we can't follow you in the backups I just like I planned it yeah okay so anyway really really good reliability numbers and our team needs to be complimented and appraised for that they do a great job communication was an area that they found we need to do some work on and I think as you're all aware we have done a restructuring in in the Denton Electric Department that restructuring was in part a great deal to do with increasing the level of communication and a level of transparency across the organization so they found there were some silos again the new leadership that we've put in place has has remedied a great deal of this we don't have that type of lead of communication gap any longer in that new restructuring we are now combining our engineering group into a single group we had two separate engineering groups and we found that there were some communication issues there we've moved our metering organization under our energy services group headed by Chris Lutrick who many of you know that helps fully integrate the the reading of meters all the way to the billing cycle that we send over to customer service the recommend one of their recommendations was to do a 10 year financial forecast we are we currently do five years we are going to be doing a 10 year beginning this year as you may recall this council approved recently the monies to develop a advanced forecasting model that is one of the key things that we need to be able to forecast properly out 10 years on both the load side as well as what we think prices and prices for electric and for natural gas are going to be debt service was an area that they focused on and this is the Fitch metric of 2.1 debt coverage ratio we don't use Fitch as a rating agency the city does not it's got the most aggressive of the of the debt coverage ratios of the three rating agencies Fitch like the other rating agencies tends to think of utilities as being revenue bond organizations and we don't issue a lot of revenue bonds if we were issuing revenue bonds every day then we would probably have to have a higher debt coverage ratio but we don't do that yep Nick Vincent assistant finance director we do actually use Fitch in our bond ratings currently with Fitch we have a double a plus on the general fund side and a double a or an a plus on the revenue side so we do use Fitch and S&P both what is the what is the debt coverage ratio in general do we split it out among utilities or is it just one large one for the system-wide utilities no we do split it out so electric has a debt coverage ratio and water and wastewater have a separate one so we just split it out what's the what's the current one for utilities at least it's average or however that's I haven't here so water and wastewater electrics about 1.7 is a debt coverage ratio and water and wastewater is about 2 so 2.04 on the water side and 2.19 on wastewater side so just in about a minute could you just describe real briefly what the debt coverage ratio is and its relation to if it's up or down if it's lower or higher yeah so the city we do have an internal policy the policy is actually a 1% debt coverage ratio so one most of utilities we do strive to have 1.25 debt coverage ratio coverage what that is it's basically a percentage of what the debt payment is of your expenses minus certain expenses within the categories so yeah so it's it's it's not based upon revenue it's not it's not based upon that it's based upon what is the what is the debt compared to your overall expenses that's correct yeah so what it is it's your expenses it takes your debt service out of the utilities so for example in water and divides it by your expenses to get that debt coverage ratio apologize we don't use Moody's of the three working capital you know we do track days cap days cash on hand we try to keep that around 60 days or greater the higher days cash on hand you have the the more able you are to to weather a storm so to speak if you had a major hurricane or tornado come through town put it back together you'd need to use those funds again remember at the time that the study was done there were some there was quite a bit of turmoil within the DME organization and morale was was fairly low again we've made significant changes in this area we've have since that time we've had two general managers and we've had several other leadership changes the most recent one is really focused on providing that stability and providing transparency throughout the organization they also identified an area that we needed to work on which is succession planning we are working on succession planning we've identified for those key areas where we only had one person we are we have now brought other people in or shifted forces around to be able to provide those key and critical positions with some succession planning on turnover and resource allocation they identified that there were a number of vacant positions those positions have either been filled or have been or will be filled or reallocated through this reorganization one of the years we did that was in energy services where we've promoted Chris Lutrick to the executive manager in that area and we've got Juan Pagoda and chase Whitman along with Liz in that area and I'm sorry Liz Ruiz in that area and that's areas focusing a lot more externally on customer service and customer programs we are currently revising the electric service standards and the joint use standards which were two areas that the consultant identified focus areas for us and we'll be coming to you as part of the budget process requesting authority to spend some money on doing a strategic plan for for DME plan that will also involve significant public input that was one of the recommendations as well with that if you don't have any questions on those items turn it back over you can I really appreciate the mayor's question about the the debt coverage ratio and you know now it's sort of bothering me I mean I feel like you know I can't just that lightly sort of dispense with the topic without a better understanding of it you know they're indicating to us first of all if the answer had been that our actual was something like 2.05 you know but 1.7 to 2.1 it's pretty different so I'd like to understand what risks we're bearing you know far in excess of what would be recommended and how do we feel about that yeah it doesn't and knowing that it's not about revenues right your original comment sorry to go on just a little more the original comment was that it you know we don't do we don't do a lot of revenue bonds but if it's not really about revenue it's a different kind of dimension of risk right so you can yeah I'm happy to your Tony put my mind at ease so Tony point to chief financial officer and also the general manager for DME I think a couple things that you got taken to context that council member so this 2.1 times coverage that they're talking about is from one rating agency and one rate one factor along a number of different factors right so we have to evaluate the overall health of the fund this is certainly one way another way to do that is to cash cash on hand right number of days cash on hand we have operating reserves there's a number of other measures a long-term liabilities and so there's a number of things that even Fitch alone takes into consideration so they've cherry picked Fitch as an example SMP has a different median coverage ratio I don't know what that is offhand just not can I ask some clarification because when when the definition of debt coverage ratio was given I it didn't comport with what and so I'm reading the formula at least and it says that the debt coverage ratio is net operating income divided by debt service that's correct is it so that's what we're talking about here so so it's yes so it's actually it's actually net surplus revenue so it's operating revenues minus operating expenses for the purposes of our bond covenants we actually will will not include franchise fees and return on investment some of the ratings agencies do so there's a different interpretation within the rating agencies on how to even calculate this particular measure right our policy our debt policy dictates a one point two five times coverage ratio for the utility system right that includes water wastewater and solid waste we do say within that policy that each each of the funds will strive to have a one point two five coverage ratio now the other thing the other thing to to take into consideration here is that when we talk about debt coverage ratio that's generally in terms of revenue bonds right as as the council may recall the only revenue bonds that we have outstanding currently are those that we should 2017 for the deck right revenue bond covenants actually only require a one times coverage ratio right so when we're looking at all these times coverage ratios and and the different measures certainly the one thing that you want to look at is what is it gonna buy you as you say right is it gonna buy you a rating increase therefore a reduction in the amount of interest payments that you're gonna make well I will tell you is that if you look at our times coverage ratio today based on the 2019 for just the revenue bonds we're in excess of 12 times that number right because of the number because of the amount of revenue bonds that are outstanding if you look at all of the debt revenue bonds CEOs geo geo refunding bonds that we've issued for for the utility system it's actually closer to 2% a little bit above two times that coverage ratio but it's still not gonna buy us a rating increase the other the other things that I'll mention is that since 2010 we've been issuing CEOs that are tax-backed right those CEOs are already a double a plus rated which is a higher rating than a single a minus so the single a plus and and a double a minus that the revenue bonds are giving you now having said all that it's still a good measure of the health of the fund I will tell you that I have I have no concerns about where we are with the health of the funds not just with that with that particular factor and that measure but all the other various components that we have in measuring the full health of not just this fund but the overall utility system you know we we get high marks generally on our financial management so not you know fundamentally troubled so let me just say that and also you know I totally get it that you know sometimes we care about these ratios because it would get us a better rating and lower interest but I'm really more asking from the point of view of you know why why the rating agencies ask for that when they give a rating you know it's it's it's a risk measure right so and the idea is you know if our revenues fell by half we'd still be able to cover our debt service that's basically it right or even a little more not that I see a scenario where like that could happen but who knows but I guess I'm still left with a question of why do you think we're right and Fitch is wrong because because Fitch is telling us right through their annual ratings that this is not an issue that that's a good answer Fitch Fitch gives us a good rating correct and and and every year they they reapprove the same exact rating that they've given us in the past and they give us a stable outlook in our rating okay thank you for taking the time I think the other thing to add on to what Tony's saying is when you ask the question why because with the the rating agencies more is always better so you oftentimes councils like this will have this discussion regarding you know utility rates property tax rates versus the need to get to that next or the desire to get to that next run on a on an overall rating and that's really it from their perspective the more reserves the better and in many places in this country you get it immediately into discussions about over taxation because the money's just sitting there not doing anything other than keeping a bond rating so it really is as Tony's saying you've got to look at multiple variables at one time I know it's a balancing act there's you know there's really like a yellow light flashing risk then you might not be have you might not have the right balance but right to me that you know the answer that kind of puts my mind at ease was their own holistic assessment of us is expressed in the rating is strong so correct and typically when you're looking at commercial private transactions for lenders you know they look at debt coverage ratio and it's typically 1.25 to one and a half they like to see and if you're up in the 1.7 I mean that's they that's that's some stellar operation so and the ratings obviously impact if we go out for bond issuances impact the interest rate that that's correct is that correct yes okay good thank you appreciate thank you councilmember for that question kind of the same format on water and wastewater organizationally their findings where it's a good place to work loyal staff good people who enjoy working here at the time the project management office was just getting started and they they viewed that as a positive change that had been made to the organization we'll see a little bit further on that they had some concerns about the amount of capital that had been amassed and in our capital programs and our ability to get that those dollars spent and those projects out the door I'll talk a little bit more detail on that but that that was one of the ideas behind the project management office they they did make some recommendations to have and and recognize some of the efforts we were doing at the time to have more data driven focus to our to our overall management approach limited wastewater spills on the on the infrastructure side and award-winning drinking water quality were two things that they noted so a lot of the same findings that that were pointed out and in DME just improvements to communication both internally and externally one of the one of the things that we've done to address that on the internal side is just to we've done some reorganization we're undertaking a management training program that I've put together where we're meeting on a regular basis to talk about these kinds of things so there are already some of these activities moving on in terms of public relations the they felt we needed to tell our message better and I agree with them and in the water and wastewater utilities we've kind of been focused on on just getting the projects done running the systems and it's nice to start having some conversations with our public communication office about how we're going to tell our story better how we can better educate people and on kind of what water and wastewater does and then basically capital project education is kind of the same thing we're very capital intensive on the water and wastewater side and we really need to do a better job trying to get information out so people understand why we're doing these these projects I think it's pretty easy to describe projects that we're doing I think it's it's pretty easy to cost those out but to really explain why we're doing them and what we're why these projects help our system is something that we are really working hard on right now so execution of capital planning the utility has adequately planned for growth but it's we we needed at the time especially to get more efficient with our capital planning programs and getting our projects out the door we've made a lot of changes in that regard over the course of the last year to year and a half utilities rate group their recommendation was to form a utilities rate group comprised of utility and finance staff we've done that basically pointed out in the same way as DME to look at a 10-year plus financial forecast and basically get information out there so that we're looking at scenarios so that we can have a much better understanding of what rate increases or decreases do and how that influences our major capital projects improve the timeliness of capital spending we've talked about that already we're doing a lot of work on that and would like to bring some of that back to y'all at some point the debt service coverage ratio below the Mitch Fitch median of 2.1 and we've had that conversation long-term forecasting the utilities financial strategy document is has a suggestion in it for a 20-year pro forma to be completed NUGEN I believe was expecting that to be a 20-year financial pro forma and I don't see anything wrong with doing that we're actively looking at that now especially with some of our larger capital programs coming up like the the plant expansion we do have a 20 year plus forecast though to look at our water consumption and that in turn drives our our budget so we're already looking at in excess of 20 years on our forecasting but it isn't financial in there hasn't been financial in nature until recently there was a service delivery backlog that was identified for the capital projects they did note that using internal crews for capital projects can benefit our ratepayers but we've got to be careful that we have enough capacity to be able to complete these projects in a timely manner so last budget process we did actually do some supplementation of internal crews with the current approved budget to try to address some of these concerns and then our working capital targets for our enterprise funds so basically wanting to to recognize that that our working capital needs are met within the within the fund currently we have a 30-day minimum of working capital that we keep at any given time and we've got some healthy reserves they simply were pointing out they wanted to ensure that we had taken a look at how our restricted and unrestricted working capital are allocated just to ensure that we have access to be able to use that money if needed and don't over commit that to to future capital spending so succession planning we we did not at the time had a have a formal succession planning program at the utility level and their recommendation was to to develop one we're currently working with human resources staff to do just that along with some recruiting and and job description changes they did point out that silos exist at the time between water and wastewater internally within each utility and basically recommended to do take whatever actions we felt were necessary to open communication between those those groups and had a couple of recommendations there departmental head manager bi-weekly meetings are monthly we're doing that right now and then instituting a cross-training session to educate the departments on what each other does we're doing that not only within our departments but we're also reaching out to other areas of the city need for a training program for utility operations and management we're working very diligently on this there's a couple of things that we have undertaken just in as this plan was being put together we have a heavy focus on getting licensure so that we have more effective and more educated employees at all levels in the organization we're working very diligently on our standard operating procedures to make sure all of that information is documented so as that institutional knowledge leaves the organization we can as seamlessly as possible pick up and and continue the the operations and basically resource allocation we did have a lot of positions open at the time within the organization and there was a recommendation to conduct an FTE analysis we have not done that at this point but we we plan to and then there was some resistance to to change and there was some struggles that were going on at the time and basically this in my in my opinion had a lot to do with with communication and being completely open about why those changes were being done with all staff at all levels and we've done a lot of things organizationally to try to address that within the time frame that this was being put together so strategic planning we've talked about that a little bit already their recommendation was to develop a roadmap on in the next three to five years and really track that over time and then recommended forming a strategic planning process formally doing that at least every five years so technology they they pointed out that we have a lot of manual processes and we are continuing to to look at that but skate a system is one of the things AMR is another one automated meter reading some things that we're looking at we're really building out our GIS program and want to continue to do that but we do need a technology roadmap and that's something that we're going to be developing as a part of this study one thing that I think it was was very important to do is we wanted to have a follow-up survey done by this man as a part of this management study so much of the information that was collected was as I stated done in the fall of 2018 new gen distributed a survey to the original survey participants in fall of 2019 there were a total of 50 people that were surveyed in the original study 47 of those individuals were still here and so we did have some folks leave but but not many and basically just real quick on the on the results I'll go ahead and cover the electric unless Larry unless Terry just wants to jump up here but the short answer on this is that that the the questions that were asked among all these various areas that you see over here on the left side of the graphic was basically compared to your responses in 2018 of fall when that you were surveyed the first time would you say now in the fall of 2019 that things are somewhat better better about the same somewhat worse or worse and as you can see generally the the scores had a fairly large amount of somewhat better to better overall the the averages were dear for which rank as somewhat better same thing for water and in wastewater you can see the the relative changes there and and proud of this one in particular because most people surveyed thought that our communication had gotten much better than it was a year prior and you can see that there were several metrics in there that were that scored relatively high so again most scores are near four which ranked as somewhat better and then shared services is basically those things that that we share with other areas of the organization so basically technology services fleet human resources procurement finance etc and the question was just basically asked with regards to those shared services you think things are better worse etc and again you can see that the scores ranked right around in four for most of the metrics indicating somewhat better to to better so a couple of benchmarking issues were done there's an extensive benchmarking section that that was provided as a part of the study and so we'll we'll go over those real quickly and like I said there's quite a bit more in the study itself but these were the ones that new chin thought were most important to point out okay yeah we'll go through this really quick so on the benchmarking they did benchmark our rates and on the rate side you know we if you go to the website today the DME website in the city of Denton webpage you'll see our rates compared to other competitive retailers and our rates are right in the middle so our rates are very competitive one of the things they point out here that I wanted to just highlight is they said the last part DME should review its rate structure ensure adequate fixed cost recovery given the nationwide trend in the growth of customer cited distributed energy resources what that is getting at is we have a high penetration today almost four megawatts of rooftop solar in our system which is great the problem that it creates for the utility is that if they are selling surplus energy back to the utility and we're not collecting any revenues for the the cost to maintain our poles wires transformers capacitors the things that are necessary to serve those loads when they're not generating energy we're not recovering that money back so they've they've suggested we look closer at that area expenses of GNA expenses were a little higher than the than the benchmark group we're looking into that as part of our budgeting efforts as we go through our budgets for 2021 just a follow-up to that because I went to the the solar presentation and it had on there and this may not be enough but it had on there that there's a base rate that is going to be charged every month regardless to customers for those operations cost is it just that that rate they're being charged is not enough no it's that the under the current structure back for surplus energy sold back to DMA we effectively refund back to the customer all the costs so the full rate tariff so when we're refunding that back that effectively negates the that fixed cost piece that you're speaking of on the bill though it showed that there's a fixed cost monthly as well so there is it there is a customer charge okay and that is not sufficient to cover all that so that's what my question yes that just needs to be increased a little is what you're saying well well I think it's part of the budget process and as part of our rate studies that we're ongoing we'll be coming back to council with some recommendations in that regard thank you so just clarify what I thought I heard you say don't ever eat peanuts for you try to think and I didn't have enough water what I heard you say was that when we reimburse the entire tariff rate back to those using solar panels the rest of the community who don't have solar panels are having to pay a greater share of those fixed costs of wires those kinds of because the other people aren't really being charged for that fixed rate of that equipment or those that infrastructure I guess is what I'm saying well that that is a an unintended consequence of the program what my point was simply that no no I understand that and that's not I wasn't trying to say that it was deliberate but it's just one of those one of those unintentional cost or factors that we need to relook at so that we don't necessarily have that situation occurring that's correct and my point was simply that if if you have a solar panel and this council's policy is what it is and in the in the ratebook it's clear on what those what we pay but if you have a solar panel on your home or any other form of distributed energy be it a battery or whatever to the extent that you're not revenues aren't coming to the utility and you're netting out zero we're not collecting the money that it costs on a per customer basis to maintain the poles and wires and transformers to serve that customer and to provide the poles transformers and wires that allow that electricity to people back on the grid correct and they're getting full costs for that they're getting full payment fat that is correct yep okay that's a bit of a side point but are we are we paying a price for the energy that we receive from rooftop solar you know we're paying a price that we think is a fair price we're netting out the full tariff rate so that full tariff rate is considerably higher than the wholesale price so if we would put it this way to the extent that the generation from solar worse was more than we needed to serve load and we had to liquidate it into the market we would recover roughly 20% of of the cost that we're paying the customer all right so my I mean that's the other piece we might not be pricing that right like if you have two different transactions one is I charge you for basically connection right to cover all of our fixed costs and the other transaction is I'm buying energy from you and if those are both priced fairly yeah you might end up ending up you know with a zero bill or even paying a customer but if they're priced right you should be you know happy about the result I agree with that okay and we'll be looking at that in detail later this year liquidity liquidity we talked about liquidity and debt coverage ratios we do have a minimum of 60 days that we target we have used some reserves to keep rates stable but at some point you have to maintain a level of reserves and liquidity to be able to weather the storm and then load growth we are continuing to see a reduction in load per household and that's due to primarily LED lights and high efficiency appliances however that is being overshadowed by the high rate of additional facilities that we're serving in our community so we're seeing about a two to two and a half percent load growth per year on average increase Kenny just real quickly on the water and wastewater one thing that a new chin did point out was the effective rate which is basically the revenue per million gallons across water and we water and wastewater that we should continue to work towards attaining a balance between our reasonable rates and sufficient revenue essentially that the liquidity issue we've talked about already and and I won't belabor that point in terms of productivity they there they did a number of efficiency measures and they did point out that we had indicated lower than average productivity and some of those metrics against the benchmarking group that they chose to to benchmark us against but they were quick to point out that this measure is impacted by how services are shared across a municipal organization and I can give you one example of that that that was pretty evident customer service at the time was actually budgeted in the water department it has since been moved out and most of these metrics are calculated simply by a measure of productivity divided by the number of full-time employees that you have for the entire fund so in that particular case we had approximately 40 employees that a lot of other funds wouldn't have included within their funds simply because of the way we had our budgets arranged so that's since been corrected basically going into conclusions Nugen stated that they believe DME is operationally run very well they didn't find any red flags requiring immediate attention and they felt that the findings and recommendations would help improve and refine our operations water and wastewater they'd stated were operationally sound they also didn't find any red flags requiring immediate attention and again the same statement they've made some recommendations that will help us improve the organization the survey in 2019 indicated that substantial progress has been made since the study commenced in 2018 and one of the things that we have done you know this these types of studies take a long time to do and we had already taken action on a number of fronts so we've done some reorganizations in DME water and wastewater some of those have been mentioned the idea is to improve efficiency safety initiatives we've got a we're doing a complete evaluation of our safety programs right now communication and staff development we're doing a mid-level manager meetings staff training getting all of the the leadership groups together to talk about issues on how we improve our organization financial we've revised our reorganize our financial responsibilities within the organization and now they're centralized in finance we have taken a practice of doing a zero base budget and more data-driven CIP decisions and one that I would really like to bring back and I intend to do this at some point in the in the future talk about our asset management program we've completely built out a brand new asset management program for the water system we had a good program for wastewater I didn't think it was and still don't think it's being used to its full capabilities but these programs are simply about us being able to demonstrably get the maximum amount of remaining useful life out of every one of the assets that we have in the ground or above the ground for water and wastewater so that's pretty much the end of the presentation like I said those items that I mentioned on there some of them will be coming back as future work session items for you so be happy to take any questions so just a follow-up on the the follow-up survey that we did on a couple of them my question there's some of them are worse right did we follow up on that and when it says strategy what what did that mean do you think someone just didn't understand what what that was about it's a it's a possibility but it was explained to them pretty well I mean strategy is basically if you if you think about our strategy is an organization now compared to then do you think it's better worse or different you know that's an example and you know these it's it's difficult to to say exactly you know these these surveys while while all of the individuals we know all of the individuals that were surveyed the results were kept anonymous in terms of name by new gen so I can't really point to a reason for someone making that kind of ranking I can only you know say that that was their their opinion based on their understanding of the question I just wondered if it was more like a strategy like a strategic plan type thing it could be because you know one of the things that they that they pointed out was as particularly on the water side we do not have a we've got strategic plans but we don't have a formalized organizationally adopted strategic plan and that is something that we are working on right now and we'll continue to work on so yes it could be something like that it's I wish I had a you know an ability to find that out a little bit more but there's not an easy way to do that without violating the anonymity of that how the survey and I wouldn't want to do that it just I saw it on it was the only one that was on both for electric and water so I I just wondered if there was a common definition or if it you know strategic right maybe right it could be my hope is that you know as an organization on the water wastewater side and I'm sure DME is the same way I'll speak for water wastewater just because I'm familiar with it the we have met as a management group more in the last year than then we had met as a management group the entire time I have been here and so my hope is that what's going on is that while we may not know the exact answer to that my hope would be that during those discussions especially now that people are becoming a lot more comfortable in voicing their real opinions that those types of issues will be brought up and we can work on them perfect that's good so and I just have a follow-up question to the last one and I want to stay on topic but it's for the electric for what we were just talking about and the recommendation and so I just want to clarify because what you're saying is that they recommended that the ECA oh here it is yeah yeah well we talked about it while ago with the well no it's it's the charge it's the the charge that I was talking about it's the ECA charge it's like almost forty eight dollars a month and that's what every customer gets and so I've just is that the one they were no the ECA charge is the actual cost of purchased energy to serve the customer and all customers pay that so regardless of what class you're in you pay an ECA charge okay so then there's a base rate and in the base rate there's a customer charge the customer charge in the base right and I can't tell you exactly what it is for the operations that you're speaking seven or eight dollars a month and so that's the one in the study that we'll need to look at we'll need to look at what they what they said is we need to make sure or we need to examine what we're paying those customers that are feeding energy back to us to make sure that it's it's adequately covering the cost that it takes us to serve the customer so just as a hypothetical to really because let's just say for instance you had 70% of people in Denton went to rooftop solar okay and that they received additional revenue for money for electricity they put on the grid all of those fixed costs that we have in transmission lines distribution lines substations transformers we would we would either not be collecting that if we do it the way we do today which is we give them the hundred percent of the tariff or there'd have to be some kind of formula or pricing structure that would allow them to participate in the payments of that infrastructure because number one they're taking advantage of it by putting it back on the grid that's correct okay all right yeah and and so this has been a big issue in the desert Southwest yes that is the case now in our in our tariff we we do net metering so if if a customer has a rooftop solar and they can generate enough surplus energy they could net their their bill to zero they don't get a credit above that so if they're pushing more right they can only break even at zero but if we collect zero from that customer then we're not covering all of our fixed charges obviously which is normally done in our regular tariff that everybody else pays that's correct okay councilmember mayor pro tem and then councilmember Meltzer yeah and then yeah we're we're running on two and a half hours of this so yeah we could wanted to touch on just insight the and it was one of the slides but I think it's a salient point timing on spending specifically assets land acquisition etc I think about the kind of all that came from buying the land south of oak on Bonnie Bray and it still sits there you know it's and I know there's a plan but I just would really like to see us if we're going to move that early we need to have a purpose for that if there's a cost if there's a you know just need really need to tie what we're doing to a purpose so that it's transparent that way it's and it doesn't bring you know angst early and it's it shows a intentional approach to it I don't say that it doesn't make sense I just say that if someone asked me I can't really articulate why we move that early on that piece of property right and so I'm sure there's or there's a logical path to it I just don't know it and so if we had something archived you go back and look at it and attach to that is kind of an approach for why we did what you know and then secondly I do want to ask about the the one follow-up survey that did not receive somewhat better in any at any capacity and what training are we given the public utility board I'm sorry so public utility pub leadership here pb leadership yes I'm assuming that's the board right I'm assuming that's and so my question is it has zero blue as far as better somewhat better but no better and so that to me is the outlier because everyone else has some and and so I tie that to the citizens component of that and maybe there's some consternation with them not understanding duties charge versus and I could see that just guessing you know you have someone that's in the industry and you try it you have someone that may or may not be at that level of sophistication kind of giving feedback and that would be frustrating if you're not hey you're not understanding so I'm curious what training are we giving them well I mean they get they they are given trying to think about in terms of training they're definitely provided information on Legistar on how all of the all of the packets are put together all of that but in terms of education a lot of times that's simply done at staff level on on a on a per item basis we do not have any formal training that is done on the public utility board from water and wastewater side I don't know if there's any on the DME side we do not have a formal training program what we do is we have offered tours of our facilities for the pub they've been out to the deck they've had an extensive overview what we do in the Emo the energy management office they're welcome to see our crew operations at any time I think part of the response that you're seeing here a council member is that I think our member this is a survey of employees and so I think our employees we could do a better job with them to kind of articulate what the role of the pub is relative to the role of the council I think that may be where the confusion is got it yeah no understanding its employees but my read was the employee if if I'm an employee and I and this board is given guidance and that they're not tracking with me that would be a source of consternation right it's like him I'm trying to explain and they're not they're not following and that could be frustrating so okay but I accept to read it and I think that to me I'd welcome any feedback as far as what we could do going forward as you look at it to better equip that group I mean because it is a significant decisions and significant input so whatever we could do to better equip them to give direction would be fantastic right right I agree and the only other thing that I'd like to say on that is keep in mind we had a we had a quite large changeover in our pub I'm speculating but I think some of that may just be because the employees weren't really sure you know where the pub was at the time thank you for this I would just say procedurally general when we generally go out and pay money to have consultants a lot of the benefit of that is their expertise but it's their objectivity and I like it I'm just telling you I like it when council gets to hear directly from the consultants rather than sort of you know giving our own report card and so you know that's a point of view okay any other questions comments thank you very much appreciate it all right then we don't have any other agenda items I do not believe so we will adjourn at 1 49 p.m.